The Antarctic wind blew on, a freezing flurry of snow locking in the smell of blood and foul stench.
The sounds of battle had drifted away without a trace. Those names shouted in final farewell had also fallen into the wind, drifting, drifting...
Home was too far away.
On this battlefield, He Qingfeng was an ordinary man. Even if he was a married-in son-in-law from Xiaoshan, that hardly made him special here.
He was looking back on his life.
Thinking this was probably the last chance in his life to chat with someone, He Qingfeng spoke of things he had usually wanted to say, yet never brought himself to voice.
"Truth is, I had my hardships back then." Cupping his hands around the cigarette in his mouth, He Qingfeng took a drag, looked up, and said, "Back then, after working odd jobs for a few years, I refused to settle. I scraped together money every way I could to open a little processing workshop, running around trying to pick up work from factories. But my operation was too small, my funds too tight. I begged high and low, but nobody gave a damn about me.
"Later, when I was about to go under, one of the bosses I'd begged several times suddenly told me that as long as I married into his family, he'd give me orders.
"Heh, was I that kind of guy? I, He Qingfeng, had ventured out in my youth, standing tall between heaven and earth... If I hadn't seen that his daughter looked decent enough, I definitely would've turned him down on the spot."
So in the end, he hadn't refused. Otherwise, it would probably have been a different story. On this brutal battlefield, as Private He Qingfeng's sole listener, Shao Xuan looked at him and gave an earnest nod.
"Damn it, I had a momentary lapse and got duped," He Qingfeng said. "I thought my workshop finally had business—damn it, I ended up losing myself."
"Swallowed whole."
"Me and the workshop, both." He Qingfeng chuckled at himself. "Later on, I became their workshop director, then deputy factory director. Six years—in six years, their family factory expanded threefold.
"Along the way, I also gave them two sons." It should have been something to boast about, yet as He Qingfeng said it, he grew rather glum instead.
"Impressive," Shao Xuan chimed in.
"You bet. Captain Shao, you might be a super combatant, but back in ordinary society, I could hold my own against anyone." He Qingfeng grinned.
"Then why did you come enlist?" Shao Xuan asked while adjusting his breathing. "I mean, you're not young anymore, you were doing very well in regular society, and you have kids..."
"Wasn't it for humanity?! All for one, one for all. If you back down and he backs down, who's going to defend Azure? Besides, since I'm already this awesome, how boring would it be if I didn't do something else?" He Qingfeng grew slightly impassioned, then paused for a few seconds. "Or... should I tell the truth?"
Shao Xuan nodded.
"Truth is, aside from the righteous cause, I wanted to prove one thing: that this guy He Qingfeng is a real man, a badass, someone remarkable. He Qingfeng the man, not their family's married-in son-in-law..." He Qingfeng said, "Most importantly, I wanted my two sons to know that when they grow up."
His reason for enlisting didn't seem lofty at all, nor was it something many people could necessarily understand. But to He Qingfeng himself, it was immensely important.
With that, He Qingfeng finished.
It was a ramble almost entirely unrelated to the battlefield, seemingly just the murmurings that had lingered in this ordinary man's heart for half a lifetime, finally expressed in the end.
Not bad at all—he had a super combatant listening.
Silence settled over the ice hollow.
The freezing wind whistled sharply overhead.
He Qingfeng suddenly turned around. After hesitating for a few seconds, his feeble fingers slowly checked the unconscious comrade's breath, then his heart...
He was gone. Even source energy nurturing hadn't been able to keep him for long.
At this point, an unnamed Huaxia Front squad on the distant Antarctic Peninsula had only one person left—an ordinary private, a married-in son-in-law of Xiaoshan.
He Qingfeng needed to unload the source energy block from his comrade's device. He did so, thought for a moment, and picked up his comrade's blade as well, gripping it in his hand.
Shao Xuan watched all of this "calmly." Feeling that his body had recovered enough, he stood up and said, "Shall we go together?"
He Qingfeng looked at him, pondering for a couple of seconds.
"No. You still have to go help everyone. I can't keep up, and traveling together would only drag you down. Besides, if we run into a fight, you'll definitely charge in, and then I'll have to pitch in whether I want to or not. You'd drag me to my death instead."
He found a very good excuse, grinning slyly after saying it.
Shao Xuan didn't try to persuade him, merely nodding. "And you?"
"I'll wander on my own. If I run into Great Spikes, I'll hide. If I run into our people, I'll join them and see if I can kill another one or two of those dog-ass Great Spikes in the end."
"All right. What you entrusted to me earlier, I'll remember it." With that, Shao Xuan turned and walked out of the ice hollow, heading off in one direction.
He Qingfeng lagged by two or three seconds, then set off at roughly a ninety-degree angle. On the Antarctic Peninsula right now, whichever direction one walked was probably the same.
They parted silently into the wind and snow.
"Captain Shao!" He Qingfeng suddenly stopped, turned, and shouted loudly.
Shao Xuan looked back, but could no longer see him clearly through the snow.
"My two boys don't understand anything yet. They'll grow up, won't they?"
"...They will."
"That's good. That's good, then." Having said his piece, He Qingfeng turned back and was the first to walk away.
Shao Xuan paused for less than two seconds. Hearing no further sound, he too turned back and continued forward into the wind and snow.
The time was 15:23 in the afternoon.
...
While almost the entire Antarctic Peninsula was in a state of scattered, fragmented battlefields, the only area that could still be considered a large-scale fierce engagement was the main base Azure had constructed around six motherships.
Here were the largest concentration of Azure forces assembled at the moment, the greatest number of people needing protection, and the genius Wolf.
As the main base, shortly after the fighting broke out, it had fallen into a tight encirclement by massed Great Spike forces, losing its connecting routes to the outside and constantly withstanding the fiercest assaults.
Wolf's presence was the most critical factor allowing them to hold out.
While Pegmont shone brightly on the Western Front, powerfully shocking the entire world, this barefoot boy and his pair of African long and short spears had quietly completed the solo slaying of six Red Shoulders on the peninsula battlefield. For at least half of them, the difficulty approached taking the head of an enemy general from the heart of an army.
At this juncture of life and death, the combat peak unleashed by Wolf, a fellow genius rising star, had similarly surpassed all prior assessments and human imagination.
Regrettably, it was still not enough.
*Clang! Clang!* Heavy blows—or the powerful impacts of living creatures—hammered against the space mothership's bulkheads, the sound reverberating with a dull thud.
Dead iron was not a good conductor of sound, and the mothership's bulkheads were thick, making it difficult for the people inside to grasp the concrete brutality of the battle outside before now.
Yet it had finally arrived. Along with the impacts, the ship's hull began to shake.
Neither Wolf nor Azure's colossal spear formations had ultimately been able to prevent the Great Spike forces from breaching the main base.
The warriors defending outside the ships fell dead.
Under the warriors' protection, the Voyage faction researchers and technical workers who had strived to break the lockdown on the propulsion system from the outside fell dead.
"They might burst in very soon," Lin Ya whispered suddenly in a corner of the *Doomsday Great Wall*, gazing at the bulkhead.
Yao Yue nodded. She was trembling, yet gritted her teeth and put on a brave front.
"We're going to die." Lin Ya, genuinely unafraid, said, "Yao Yue, the communication system still seems to work. Why don't you apply for a chance to make a call?"
Yao Yue turned her head.
"Ask them in Second Lieutenant Wen Jifei's name. They'll agree. Then, say something to him. That's how it always goes on television," Lin Ya said, tilting her head.
Hearing her say this, Yao Yue smiled mournfully with tears welling in her eyes. After hesitating for a few seconds, she said, "No, he can't afford to be distracted right now. Besides, I already wrote a terribly sappy letter a long time ago and left it at their base."
*Clang!* The ship shuddered violently once more, sending everyone inside tumbling head over heels.
The time was 15:26.
Five minutes later, at 15:31, unseen and unknown by anyone, Private He Qingfeng of Azure's Huaxia Front faced a swarm of over a hundred Great Spikes alone, drew his blade... and died in battle.
Regrettably, until death, He Qingfeng never managed to find an Azure squad in the wind and snow.
And the squad to which he belonged thereby lost its very last soldier.
At 15:47, in Antarctica, at approximately 90 degrees south latitude, 67 degrees west longitude, Azure Huaxia Front, Sole Witness Legion super combatant, former captain of the Ninth Army's Golden Eraser, and the first top-tier combat mentor of Han Qingyu's life—Lieutenant General Shao Xuan—died in battle on the boundless ice fields.
On the ground after the battle, besides him, lay countless fallen officers and soldiers from various nations, as well as dozens of Great Spike corpses, including a Red Shoulder.
Captain Shao Xuan had fallen.
The death of a super combatant would have been a major event at virtually any other time. But here today, it went almost unnoticed.
Even though he was once the captain of the Ninth Army's strongest Golden Eraser squad, the idol of countless people across the military, and the guiding star and conviction for countless Azure warriors without S-grade integration.
At 15:52, a wounded Huaxia Front lieutenant colonel took away Lieutenant General Shao Xuan's epaulets. In the end, approximately 800 human source energy warriors survived this battlefield, continuing to fight amidst the ice field's wind and snow.
...
He Qingfeng's story and his dying wish would never be known by this world.
Perhaps his martyr's medal would return to that home, accompanying his children as they grew up so they could rediscover their father... if there was still hope for the Antarctic battlefield.
Aside from He Qingfeng, on this battlefield, there were countless people of every kind whose stories would likewise never be known by this world.
None of these details of life and death across the battlefield could appear in news broadcasts, nor were they on the Refusers' battlefield reports.
The sixth overall Antarctic battlefield report from the Refusers:
"[Led by Daie, the Great Spike forces' containment of the Western Front continues. Under Pegmont's lead, our forces have organized four charges and inflicted heavy casualties, but...
The redeployment of eastern Great Spike forces toward the center is also continuously underway. A dense blocking defense line along the connection between the peninsula and the mainland is nearing completion.
The battle on the Antarctic Peninsula continues...]"
Huaxia, Sole Witness Legion Headquarters.
As the rear command, the time it took to receive battle reports here was no slower than at the front.
The entire conference room was dead silent.
About two minutes later, Chief of Staff Xu, who had been standing all along, looked up. Thoughtful yet devoid of emotion, he said, "Their forces are running thin."
"They," of course, referred to the Great Spikes in Antarctica.
Because of this sentence, the young staff officers present grew agitated. Some stood up immediately, while others looked excitedly at colleagues beside them, all seeming eager to say something.
Yet in the end, not a single person spoke.
They had just heard good news and were thrilled by it, but quickly realized that the battlefield situation had not actually changed.
No way to break the deadlock surfaced in their minds either.
Gazes converged on the same person once more. At the far end of the long table, Xu Xiaohong slowly turned around and looked up at the map of Antarctica hanging on the wall.
His gaze moved away from the Antarctic Peninsula, traveling along the east coast until it slowly reached the Mount Erebus region, then snapped toward the South Pole.
"Is... is there a way?" Zhang Ziyue could not help but ask with earnest pleading.
Everyone was waiting.
The Chief of Staff's back remained silent for about four or five seconds. Then, he turned back, sat down, and, with apparent heaviness, slightly closed his eyes without uttering a word.
Huaxia had an idiom: besiege Wei to rescue Zhao.
With the Great Spikes running short on numbers, this was perhaps the only chance to break the deadlock in Antarctica right now.
Xu Xiaohong said nothing because he didn't know how to speak the words asking those six thousand people to choose death. At the same time, thinking of a certain kid in that force, he knew that he actually didn't need to say anything at all.
Chapter 799