The frozen canyon was deep, steep, and long. Han Qingyu had already been walking in it alone for over twenty minutes. He knew how far he had come, but he had no idea how far lay ahead or roughly where he was now.
Even on the Antarctic Peninsula, the towering cliffs lining both sides of the path ahead still retained the distinct contours of a mountain range. Looking up, aside from a few patches of bare, exposed brown rock, the vast majority of the range was coated and smothered in thick ice and snow.
A faint tremor traveled from afar, vibrating up through the soles of his feet.
A subtle *thud... thud!*
*Thud, thud, thud, thud.*
Then, the snow accumulated overhead was the first to slide loose. It was dense and heavy, peeling off in massive slabs that plummeted and only fractured midair, smashing down in shards and clumps.
Next came the sounds of countless layers of ice fracturing on their own and grinding against one another.
In an instant, the cliffs seemed to topple...
First came hundreds of icicles hanging like stalactites, raining down in a torrent. Then came the collapse of ruptured ice sheets—fragmented or whole, some like awls, some like bushel baskets, some like boats, and some as huge as small houses...
Soon, the whooshing, shattering, and booming impacts of falling ice blended into one deafening roar.
Of course, a scene like this was not enough to injure Han Qingyu; even relying purely on instinct, he could protect himself well.
Yet at this moment, the world before his eyes seemed to have collapsed, completely blotted out by a blizzard of falling ice and snow. Han Qingyu was as good as trapped in the cataclysm of an avalanche; looking forward, backward, or upward, he could see nothing clearly.
*Rumble, rumble, rumble, rumble, rumble...*
Finally, the thudding vibrations in the ground transformed into the thunderous footsteps of a swarm of Great Spikes. The entire frozen canyon began to shake violently.
From the commotion, one, two, three, four, five... ten? Far more than that, most likely.
"You bastards!" Han Qingyu's hand gripping his blade trembled slightly as he cursed through gritted teeth.
"We clearly agreed it would only be two for the first time! Everyone told me that when we made the plan... especially that bastard Wu Xu! Usually he looks so honest and like a wooden block, but turns out he's no good either!"
"Sure enough, not a single person in Stream Vanguard is decent. I shouldn't have agreed to come back and be their boss!"
Dressed all in black, that bastard Wu Xu's figure finally appeared in Han Qingyu's sight. Because of the disparity in size and numbers, he looked like a frail, solitary human fleeing for his life before an overwhelming demonic horde.
Naturally, Han Qingyu knew that all these Great Spikes had actually been rounded up and gathered one by one by Wu Xu himself.
Through the blurred snow, Wu Xu leaped abruptly from the ground in full sprint, stepped onto the icy cliff, kicked off the rock face with another step, and hung suspended high in the air...
Meanwhile, the dense, dark swarm of Great Spikes behind him didn't even pause for a token second of hesitation... because just as they lost one target, they instantly spotted another.
The pack of Great Spikes saw Han Qingyu.
Human was human anyway. *"Screee-aww!"* One Great Spike led with a roar, and the entire pack roared along, barreling straight forward in a furious charge.
"So... many... How the fuck many are there?! Fuck your uncle, Wu Xu!" Han Qingyu's source energy surged as he shouted in outrage.
"Around sixty." The swiftest reply didn't come from Wu Xu, but from Wen Jifei, who had appeared atop the canyon cliff at some unknown point.
Sixty was the number they had prearranged. Glancing through his sniper scope, he figured it was pretty close.
"Not 'around'. It is sixty."
Wu Xu delivered this with meticulous precision. Before his body could lose momentum and plummet, the Binggu Spear shot out and struck into the cliff. Hanging by one arm, the spear shaft bent slightly—*twang-hum*—and launched his entire body upward, landing him on the cliff top as well.
Only those sixty Great Spikes were left in the canyon—predominantly black-armored, interspersed with a few blue-sheened ones—crashing through ice and scattering snow as they charged straight at Han Qingyu.
*How the hell am I supposed to fight this?! This is gonna get someone killed!* Han Qingyu suddenly felt the urge to run.
Even though ever since he woke up, the whole world had been repeatedly drilling one thing into his head: *You are Han Qingyu, you are extremely strong,* and he knew logically that he should indeed be monstrously strong, strong enough that these black and blue Great Spikes were nothing to worry about.
*"Top three of humanity, or top what again?!"* *"Still, this is my first damn time, and there are no outsiders watching anyway... Yeah, no shame in it."*
His mind made up, *whoosh*—with a burst of source energy, Han Qingyu turned on his heel and bolted.
"...Now that feels familiar."
Poking his head over the cliff edge, Yang Qingbai watched the spectacle and suddenly burst into laughter.
The world only knew Han Qingyu's cold, formidable, fearless side—the man who would march toward death without taking a single step back. But the people closest to him had always known he had another side: he was terrified of dying. Whenever there was room to weigh his options, he was frightened out of his wits.
In the avalanching canyon, Han Qingyu, on the run once more, displayed his astounding, terrifying speed once again—just like back then when he carried an airship on his shoulders, sprinting across the snow on the southern slopes of Xilang Peak.
The swarm of Great Spikes couldn't keep up.
"Hahahahaha!" The bastards on the cliff laughed uproariously.
Han Qingyu also finally let out a sigh of relief. Half amused, half vindicated, he turned and shouted with laughter toward the cliff, "Hahaha! Didn't see that coming, did you, you bastar—"
*Thud! Thud!*
"Didn't see that coming, did you?" Wen Jifei asked.
*Thud, thud, thud, thud. Rumble, rumble, rumble...*
An identical vibration and roaring commotion, this time approaching from the other end of the canyon.
"How many on your end?" Wen Jifei shouted from the cliff top.
"Around sixty, I think," Rusty Sister answered from the far end of the canyon.
*Heh... You traitors!*
Just as Han Qingyu skidded to a stop and was about to curse them out, *bang, bang, bang*—three consecutive sniper shots rang out.
"Sixty. Counted them for you," Wen Jifei's voice drifted down, seemingly carrying a twisted sense of delight. "Exactly one hundred and twenty in total. Work hard, Major Qing!"
Even during that short sentence, the voice grew fainter and fainter. Wen Jifei had already left the cliff top as he spoke, taking Wu Xu, Rusty Sister, Yang Qingbai, and the rest with him.
…………
*Boom!*
As they descended the reverse slope, the sound of the two swarms of Great Spikes colliding thunderously echoed up from the canyon. Rusty Sister paused, unable to resist glancing back.
Rusty Sister was an expert herself, so she understood all too well that the development of humanity's source energy combat power was actually deformed. This deformity manifested primarily in the extreme imbalance between offense and defense.
Simply put:
As Great Spikes rose in tier and combat capability, their offense and defense advanced together. The strength of red-shoulders and Daies, for instance, lay not only in their immense offensive power, but also in how difficult they were to penetrate, how hard they were to kill.
Humanity's defensive improvements, however, had never kept pace with the advancement of their offensive power, leaving a vast gulf between the two. No matter how devastating a human was at cleaving through enemies, they still couldn't take a hit.
Nowadays, the vast majority of human super combat powers, and even some formidable top-tiers, could easily hack low-tier Great Spikes to death; yet they could just as easily be impaled and killed by the lowliest black-armored Great Spike wielding a sharp dead iron weapon.
In reverse, ordinary human soldiers stood no chance of breaching a red-shoulder's defense.
This was not merely because most humans wore no armor, but also because of the innate physical constitution of the human race.
Were it not so, Master Duosang Jiacuo, whom they had met years ago and who was hailed as humanity's sturdiest shield, would never have been relegated to the rear lines just because his offensive capability was so dismal, left to practice his cultivation while swearing like a sailor.
Chapter 775