"Regardless, let's board the ship first."
Wen Jifei called out to the others. In the days since Qingzi had lost his memory, Wen Jifei had effectively shouldered all the primary responsibilities. The pressure weighing on him internally was immense, terrified that a single misstep on his part would bring disaster upon Stream Vanguard, upon the people beside him, or upon Qingzi.
He simply never let any of it show.
As the group walked up the airship's boarding gangway, a soldier from the Maple Leaf Nation Front sprinted over and delivered a faxed document.
Such occurrences had not been uncommon lately; plenty of documents had arrived from Azure. He Tangtang casually took it, brought it aboard, and handed it to Wen Jifei.
"Guess what—is the chubby doctor trying to tell the world that Qingzi lost his memory this time, or will she just flat out announce that Major Qing is dead?"
Wen Jifei sat down in his seat. Smiling as he continued their previous conversation to lighten the mood, he tore open the envelope, pulled out the fax, and began reading.
His eyes fell upon the page, and his voice cut off abruptly.
Only after ten-odd seconds did he speak again, but his tone had completely changed.
"Qingbai, turn us around. We're going back to Huaxia." Wen Jifei's voice hitched with a choke.
When the others looked back at him, his eyes were already red, fighting back tears.
...Around half a year ago, during the Zenith War, Stream Vanguard had withdrawn from the battlefield early after Han Qingyu delivered that sky-splitting slash, but the war itself had not ended there.
Within a short span, the swarms of Great Spikes blanketing the skies over twenty-seven cities worldwide—including the twin Huaxia cities of Yuzhou and Shenghai—had launched ferocious assaults against the ground without exception.
Those were twenty-seven grinding, unimaginably brutal battles of attrition.
During the fighting, the Great Spike motherships over most cities joined the offensive, descending to the ground or close to it. Toward the end of the campaign, as the Great Spikes began to withdraw, Azure issued an urgent order: All battlefields were to keep the Great Spike motherships from escaping at any cost.
Battered soldiers struggled to their feet after the bloody fighting and charged those motherships to halt their escape.
Tens of thousands died mid-charge.
Some hung from the hulls.
Some fought their way into the compartments...
In the end, the tally of captured vessels was six.
As for the casualties among Azure's soldiers, even now they could not be accurately counted.
The first group of confirmed fallen had long since received a mass funeral. Yet there were others who could not be found. Most of them had been carried off by the Great Spike motherships; perhaps they had been taken to Antarctica, their fates unknown, or perhaps they had died en route, their bodies falling into the sea...
Azure could not bear to declare them all dead.
And indeed, they had found critically wounded survivors on islands in the Pacific. Of course, far more often, the search parties only recovered the remains of their comrades.
Those found were only a tiny fraction; the vast majority of people on the missing list had yet to be located. Azure's searches continued unabated.
Now, the document in Wen Jifei's hands contained three passages:
One was an official statement from Azure:
[The day before yesterday, our search party discovered a damaged large craft structure on the seabed of the South Pacific. Analysis indicates that this structure belongs to the main propulsion compartment of an escaped Great Spike mothership.
Clear signs of battle were found within the compartment, and a total of eleven soldiers' remains were recovered. Upon identification, all were confirmed to belong to the Azure Huaxia Front, Sole Witness Legion, Shenghai Theater Fourth Army.
The fallen officers and soldiers include: Supreme Military Commander of the Shenghai Theater during the Zenith War, Azure Lieutenant General, Commander of the Fourth Army, General Zhang Chiyuan...
The Azure Council and the entirety of Azure hereby issue this notice, expressing deep mourning and utmost respect.]
Another came from the Huaxia Front, Sole Witness Legion:
[...With deep sorrow, we announce: Eleven soldiers of our Huaxia Front, Sole Witness Legion, Shenghai Theater main force Fourth Army, who had previously been missing in action, have over the past two days been discovered and confirmed by search units to have unfortunately all perished.
Among them is our Fourth Army Lieutenant General and Commander, General Zhang Chiyuan. He represents the highest-ranking and highest-titled officer of our forces to fall on the home front during the Zenith War...
At present, the remains have returned to the homeland. The Legion has decided to hold a separate military funeral to bid farewell to General Zhang Chiyuan and the fallen soldiers of the Fourth Army under his command.]
The final passage consisted of just a single sentence:
[Come back to see him off. You haven't seen each other much over the years, but he always praised you guys. I've arranged it so that you and Wen Jifei will both be pallbearers.]
Signed, Chen Buer.
............
Stream Vanguard had maintained too little direct contact with Azure lately, and even less did they inquire into affairs. It was only now that they learned how, at the very end of the Zenith War during the final moments of the Shenghai battlefield, Zhang Chiyuan had personally led a squad to storm a Great Spike mothership.
They had breached the main propulsion compartment and wrecked it.
Ultimately, they plummeted into the South Pacific along with the severed section.
In truth, the squad hadn't crossed paths with General Zhang Chiyuan all that many times in their lives. But the most crucial encounter between them had happened precisely during their greatest hour of peril.
Back then, they had just seized the Bone of Eternal Life and escaped from the Qu clan. Han Qingyu was unconscious and critically wounded after a grueling battle in which he decapitated Qu Zongyan, while Wu Xu and the Little Prince were severely injured as well... The group had been pursued across mountains by Zhe Shouchao and the hidden clans, chased by multiple top-tier combatants and over a thousand troops.
In that life-or-death crisis, it was Commander Zhang Chiyuan who, leading roughly a hundred accompanying soldiers and logistics personnel, held off the pursuing enemy for them.
The man wasn't even quite top-tier himself, and he had only that handful of troops with him. Yet he said to Zhe Shouchao:
"Within a hundred li ahead, everything in sight is my enemy."
"Anyone who commits insubordination shall be executed without mercy."
"Who the hell do you think you are? If you have the guts, try stepping over the corpse of a Huaxia Front army commander!"
"If you don't have the guts... get lost!"
Such was the veteran of the Huaxia Front, a commander of the Sole Witness Legion—when it came to risking life and playing rough, they feared no one.
Zhang Chiyuan had saved their lives. In their few brief encounters afterward, he had bragged about it proudly every single time.
He was someone impossible to forget: a tall, somewhat rugged middle-aged man with a hearty, boisterous laugh. He loved blustering, beamed with pride easily, and acted haughty whenever he boasted...
He always said that what he hated most was the Ninth Army.
He would say, "Come roll with me in the future. I can look out for you guys better than that Lu Wuzheng of yours."
He also said, "You all owe me a favor. If the Fourth Army ever needs help down the road, you've got to repay it."
And then he would constantly tell outsiders, "Those are my little brothers! Azure did them wrong—no matter how much hell they raise, they're in the right. What, I can't say that? Bring the Azure Council Chairman right in front of me, and I'll say the exact damn thing!"
"What's wrong, Plague Chicken?" Seeing Wen Jifei like this, everyone inside the cabin grew worried, and He Tangtang asked uneasily.
"Commander Zhang Chiyuan... he was killed in action."
The moment Wen Jifei looked up, tears rolled down his cheeks.
A brief silence filled the cabin, and then—"Uuu..."—Rusty Sister burst into tears.
He Tangtang cursed through the ache, gritting his teeth as he fought to hold back his emotions.
Even someone like Wu Xu parted his lips without a sound, choked up for a moment, looking dazed, furious, and at a loss.
Affected by the atmosphere, Han Qingyu felt sorrowful, yet his grief was not concrete. Over this past period, he had heard Wen Jifei and the others mention those past events and speak of such a person, but he had no memory of the man's face, or of the moments they had shared...
He would never have the chance to get to know him again.
He could never personally repay that colossal debt of gratitude.
"The old man said for us to go back and attend the funeral. And then... the two of us will serve as pallbearers for Commander Zhang," Wen Jifei told him.
Han Qingyu nodded hard.
Chapter 737