Time gradually slipped by. After fleeing through the night, the exhausted, starving civilians of Oceania sat slumped on the ground, heads lowered as they quietly chewed the food they had brought with them and sipped their water with utmost care.
The scene seemed to slowly settle into calm.
Beneath the surface, however, an emotional state was spreading silently... Many teetered on the brink of breakdown or madness.
"It won't devolve into chaos, will it?" Qin Guowen took a bite of compressed ration and asked in a low voice.
"Probably not for the time being. After that, it depends on what the Daie does tomorrow." As Lao Jian spoke, his gaze drifted back from the crowd, his eyes dimming slightly.
Deep down, they all understood that the current predicament had no solution.
There was no way Azure could fight the Great Spikes while fully protecting so many people.
Yet they could not simply do nothing either.
At this point, the only question for command was which course of action offered the most advantageous choice.
The Great Spikes had become smarter.
Or perhaps, simply through the emergence of this single Daie—its terrifying capacity to learn and its rapid comprehension of humanity—the entire Great Spike force had grown cunning and far more difficult to handle.
In the past, formidable though their combat power was, their intelligence had been sorely lacking, whether in defensive engagements against grassroots Azure squads or later battles at Xilang Peak and Antarctica.
Even when red-shoulders were present, the improvement in that regard had been negligible.
Beyond black armors and blue-sheened Great Spikes, there seemed to be a severe gap in both combat strength and intelligence.
"It has to die," Lao Jian said.
"Yeah. It needed to be killed anyway. After that parade it made around the world, humanity will lose all hope if we don't put it down." Qin Guowen paused. "If we kill it, the Great Spikes might lose their chain of command. Even though a massive battle will almost certainly follow and plenty of people will die, it's still far better than this. We just have to give it everything we've got."
In war, casualties were inevitable.
Tactically speaking, if the Daie died and the swarm of Great Spikes plunged down in chaos... Azure could potentially concentrate its top-tier and sub-top combatants to operate those giant javelins, attempting to intercept a portion of the craft hurtling toward the civilians before troops actively engaged the rest across land and sea.
"The problem is, how do we kill it?" Lao Jian offered a bitter smile, looking up toward the sky.
The altitude where the Daie's craft hovered lay far beyond the reach of Admiral Bochen's Skybreaker Hammer. Even if it could reach, the chained hammer would most likely be intercepted by the Daie emerging from the cabin—its deployment speed was simply too fast.
"Forget about that. Let's leave it to the generals and strategists at command." Qin Guowen waved a hand and whispered, "I just wonder if the Legion Commander is feeling any better."
In truth, Azure had never issued any clear statement regarding the Huaxia Legion Commander's health; for the sake of morale and conviction, they could never release such information.
Yet ever since the Zenith War broke out, Chen Buer had not once appeared, let alone struck. The Huaxia soldiers who loved and trusted him most naturally began to sympathize, speculate, and understand on their own.
*The Legion Commander's health must be failing.*
*Yeah, look at his age.*
*Besides, hasn't he been nursing old injuries all this time?*
Whenever soldiers from other fronts raised questions, they offered the same explanations.
"Remember that rumor?" Lao Jian asked.
"...Yeah." Qin Guowen nodded.
Through a series of deliberate or inadvertent leaks, hardly anyone in the world remained unaware of that rumor: once the Huaxia Legion Commander delivered his peak slash, his life would come to an end.
Han Qingyu listened to their entire conversation, but did not interject.
***
Over in South America, word of the recent events in Oceania had not yet arrived.
Moving along two routes across the same sector, Wu Xu and the Little Prince had drawn farther and farther apart from Theodore's trio.
They sprinted forward without needing to leap high for visual reconnaissance or quiet their steps to listen for movement.
If a battle between supers and red-shoulders broke out, the surging turbulence of source energy in the air would reach Wu Xu's senses long before anything else.
As he ran, Wu Xu concentrated his mind, feeling for fluctuations of source energy adrift on the wind.
Beside him, the Little Prince kept pace while scouring the ground for any trace of battle left behind.
The difference in their running speeds was substantial. Rather than traveling in a straight line, Wu Xu darted at sharp angles, constantly widening his sensing radius before cutting back, yet still effortlessly keeping up with the Little Prince.
"Wu Xu! Wu Xu, come back!" Not long after Wu Xu shot off again, Zhu Jiaming called him back.
Ahead lay a stretch of barren grassland.
"Five on two... a battle broke out here," the Little Prince analyzed as he examined the ground. "Then, a third red-shoulder entered the fray."
Just as they had deduced, there were three red-shoulders.
Five against three.
"...Let's go!" Without wasting time on further deductions, the Little Prince pointed in a direction and broke into a full sprint alongside Wu Xu.
Finding him too slow, Wu Xu grabbed hold of him and dragged him along.
"Someone was injured back there," the Little Prince took the opportunity to continue his breakdown. "Then it became three and two—three people facing two red-shoulders, and the remaining two facing one. They split up here."
The deduction deviated from what they had anticipated.
They had originally assumed a two-two-one formation: Shu You drawing one off alone to kill it as quickly as possible, while the four remaining supers split into pairs to stall the other two, holding out until Shu You completed his kill.
Yet someone had been injured back there, and severely at that.
Under the current circumstances, Shu You, the wounded fighter, and one super were likely handling two red-shoulders, while Nguyen Thi Minh Nguyet and the other Azure super had drawn away the third.
This made things far more difficult than Shu You facing one alone, as he could not focus entirely on a single target. If he did, the two Azure supers at his side would quickly suffer casualties.
"It's fine. Knowing the direction is enough," Wu Xu said.
"Yeah. But let me tell you one thing: Theodore and his guys probably won't find a damn thing."
What Zhu Jiaming meant was that both groups were somewhere along their own route, albeit in different spots. But if he went alone, he wouldn't be of any help regardless of which side he chose.
"Both sides must be having a rough time right now. Just now, I deliberately avoided judging which group is down this path."
The Little Prince paused. His meaning was simple: once he made that judgment, they would be forced to choose, and he did not want to make that choice.
"...Yeah." Regardless, the image of Cat Girl looking back along that street of fallen leaves flashed through Wu Xu's mind. He nodded.
Then he continued sprinting forward with all his might.
Chapter 687