"Fuck! This really burns through money!" Han Qingyu muttered ruefully in his heart, even as he walked coolly amidst the horde of dajian.
At the same time, Wen Jifei—who had been watching through his sniper scope—suddenly cried out, "Qingzi!"
His index finger pulled the trigger at that very instant.
Bang! Elegy of the Square rang out.
Captain Milla fired right after him. Bang!
Suddenly, both of Stream Blades' Endless sniper rifles opened fire frantically, seemingly telling everyone that a dire turn of events had just struck the battlefield.
"What's wrong now?!" Rusty Sister raised her oversized pillar sword, turning her head with a metallic click as she asked.
"He needs to swap his source energy blocks," Wen Jifei answered hastily while continuing to fire.
He had been jumpy and erratic these past few minutes, showing none of his usual composure.
Han Qingyu needed to swap his source energy blocks. As one of the battlefield procedures Azure took most seriously, this normally wouldn't be an alarming issue, but the current situation was exceptional—he was all alone, surrounded by the dajian ranks.
"Still, those are concentrated source energy blocks made specifically for Supers, in a custom metal case that can hold several at once..." Though it clearly wasn't the time to be thinking about such things, Rusty Sister couldn't help marveling inwardly.
An entire tube of concentrated source energy blocks had been drained just like that.
Fortunately, Han Qingyu had always carried plenty of source energy blocks, and his technique and speed in swapping them were second to none.
Relying on liquid source energy for less than a second, the metal case snapped open and shut in an instant; a bundled tube of concentrated source energy blocks was already in place.
At that very instant, Wu Xu roared in warning, his voice surging with source energy: "Red Shoulder!"
In truth, the number of Red Shoulders in this rear horde was small.
The proportion of Red Shoulders in the previous defensive lines hadn't been high to begin with, and as the main obstacles, most had already been slain by Wu Xu, Theodore, Weize, and the other top combatants.
However, few did not mean none.
As Han Qingyu slaughtered his way through, they had been biding their time, lying in wait for an opportunity. Only now did they finally strike.
Whoosh!
That Red Shoulder lunged out from his right flank. During the split second of swapping the block, Han Qingyu's center of gravity and attention had been focused entirely on his left.
Its pounce was blistering fast...
"It... it didn't collapse!" Having grown accustomed to the sight of dajian dropping dead on their own, the soldiers suddenly realized this.
"..." Han Qingyu had actually tried. Channeling full control, he exerted a snap, but this time, he failed to break the iron armor behind the Red Shoulder's back.
It seemed the dajian hierarchy was indeed rigid; not only did their strength and weapons differ, even the quality of their dead iron full armor was distinct.
Then, Han Qingyu tried to wrest the pillar sword from the Red Shoulder's grasp, but likewise failed to wrench it free.
On the battlefield, the Red Shoulder's pounce continued...
Every eye was glued to the scene.
"Major Qing's magic... seems to have failed," even Ashleia couldn't help worrying.
Suddenly—whoosh!
Across the icy field, a pillar sword belonging to a fallen black-armored dajian suddenly vaulted at an angle from behind, rocketing like a javelin toward the Red Shoulder's right scapula.
Han Qingyu had switched his target of manipulation.
Yet the Red Shoulder actually dodged it!
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!
Three more, and the Red Shoulder managed to dodge all of them.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!
Another four.
Now, a total of six pillar swords were impaled in this Red Shoulder's body.
In other words, the pillar swords it had truly and completely evaded were only two. The other six had merely missed its fatal right scapula; other parts of its body took the hits.
Amidst the bloody battlefield, a scene that made one not know whether to laugh or cry suddenly played out.
"Th-that thing's been turned into a pincushion," He Tangtang muttered blankly, eyes wide as he wrapped bandages around himself, temporarily letting go of his worry.
Beside him, Weize gave a corpse-like nod. "Yeah."
He was wounded too, in several places across his body, but his wounds shed no blood.
Yet even impaled like that, the Red Shoulder was still alive. Bristling with pillar swords, it shrieked and kept lunging toward Han Qingyu.
At the same time, another Red Shoulder had silently burst from behind Han Qingyu's left flank, leaping into the air to bring its blade down.
Major Qing didn't seem to notice it. At least, he didn't turn his head; he kept walking forward, seemingly preparing to meet the Red Shoulder in front of him.
"Watch out!" The soldiers around Wen Jifei cried out in chorus.
Boom!
A sudden detonation drowned out their distant shouts.
In the soldiers' view, the first Red Shoulder was dead.
Up to this point, Major Qing still hadn't swung his blade. In their sight, he had merely paused his step in silence and tilted his head slightly... and in that split second, seemingly by sheer will, he ripped all six pillar swords out.
The Red Shoulder that hadn't been skewered to death was ripped to death instead.
Punctured with gaping holes, blue-red blood sprayed into the air like an erupting fountain.
Then, the soldiers quickly noticed that the Red Shoulder behind Major Qing's left flank was now also bristling with pillar swords.
Skewered into a porcupine midair, it crashed to the ground.
Just like the previous Red Shoulder, it wasn't dead yet, still struggling to raise its pillar sword and pursue him.
And Han Qingyu, just the same, never looked back.
He continued walking forward.
Along the way, the dajian continued to pounce toward him and collapse.
Bang! The pillar swords tore out, and the Red Shoulder burst apart.
Then, swish, swish, swish, swish...
Leaving the Red Shoulder's body, six gruesome pillar swords did not fall. Arranged in echelon, three on the left and three on the right, they came howling forward from behind Han Qingyu.
As if carving out the boundary between life and death, they shot forward like lightning down both sides along the outer edges of the dajian formation.
Any low-tier dajian lunging forward was cut down instantly.
...
By now, except for a few high-level combatants who still harbored doubts, the vast majority of Stream Blades' officers and soldiers firmly believed that their King was back—and perhaps even stronger than before.
At the same time, Azure could no longer bother with Zhe Qiuhong's deductions and assessments.
"Latest battle report: Antarctic Eastern Front, Major The Qing has entered the battlefield... Antarctic Eastern Front, Major Qing has entered the battlefield!"
The familiar announcement swept across the entire Antarctic battlefield in an instant.
This was perhaps the only good news across the entire Antarctic battlefield so far that day. Though out of caution, Refusal had not elaborated on Major Qing's current condition.
Countless eyes looked east at that moment.
In truth, without even realizing it, they had long grown accustomed to trusting and looking forward to that name, even though this time he had been confirmed gravely wounded, suffering amnesia, and silent for so long.
Refusal's dispatch made no mention of the developments on the Eastern Front following Major Qing's entry into the fray.
Yet all of it was reflected in the shifting tides of the other battlefronts.
On the Western Front, aside from Daie still being tied down by Pegmant, the speed and volume of Red Shoulders pulling back to reinforce the east were escalating rapidly.
It seemed Daie was ready to abandon the Western Front.
"Turn back?"
"Split our forces?"
At this juncture, even Marshal Hua wavered once more.
Yet on the Antarctic Peninsula, the dajian swarms on the battlefield grew even more frenzied, sweeping across the entire peninsula like a final, desperate offensive...
At almost the same time, a battlefield photograph suddenly appeared on televisions across the globe broadcasting the Refusal channel.
It was a wide shot. Beneath a somber sky over the dark ice field, a colossal horde of dajian parted down the middle, leaving a single "road" in between.
"What is that..."
"A person!"
Midway down that road was a human figure.
From his posture, he seemed to be walking forward...
Could it be... had he walked all the way through the middle of the dajian horde?
It seemed so. Yes, it was—because the path behind him was strewn with dajian corpses.
There was even a dajian riddled with holes, spraying blood, standing on the verge of collapse.
"And what are those?"
"Which ones? Oh, they look like pillar swords—the ones dajian use."
"They're flying!"
In the foreground of the photograph, three blurred silhouettes of pillar swords on either side looked like the vapor trails of cruise missiles frozen in midair, seemingly rushing straight toward the viewer's eyes.
The shot had been taken from too great a distance for anyone to make out his face.
Yet almost everyone in this world could recognize who he was.
"Qingzi?" Back in Fenglong'ao, at the Han family home, someone finally blurted out.
"Yes, it's Qingzi," came a resolute reply.
"Qingzi's Ma, quick, wake up..." Han Youshan excitedly helped his wife up, turning her toward the television screen. "Look, Qingzi! Our Qingzi seems to be amazing again!"
Zhang Jiexia's eyes slowly fluttered open, blurring into focus. Joy flashed first, followed by a startled gasp: "Aiya, I can't look! Ooh..."
Terrified by the brutal scene in the photograph, the mother closed her eyes again.
In an ordinary household in Kanagawa.
A little girl stood closest to the television. She seemed stunned for several seconds before slowly turning her head toward her parents.
"Sugoi!" Her round, wide eyes blinked, then went saucer-wide as she said in exaggerated astonishment, "Major-sama is back!"
Chapter 811