For General Siglo, when he could finally set his worries aside and relinquish his command responsibilities, bursting forth with all his might at any cost to rush toward the traction field... this was perhaps his lightest, most relieved and liberating moment since the Antarctic Expedition had begun.
Even if this was, in truth, a form of self-escape.
He Tangtang, on the other hand, was in no such state.
The speed of those two monsters, Daie and Qingzi, was indeed beyond anything he could normally imagine. Even though they traded blows the entire way, and Qingzi deliberately circled around and paused multiple times to wait for him, He Tangtang still found it terribly difficult to catch up. A few times, he had almost lost even the sound of their collisions.
On top of that, He Tangtang was nearly spotted several times by swarms of Great Spikes that had flanked around.
"Sure enough, as a scavenger, my hunt for food is always fraught with danger, demanding immense patience and grit."
*Pant! Pant!* He Tangtang had no idea how fast he had run along the way, or how long he had been running.
With his peak top-tier constitution, for running alone to push him to his physical limit, making his heart ache sharply and feel overloaded, was actually no easy feat.
Finally, he caught sight of Qingzi and Daie again.
Continuing to sprint while craning his neck to look, and swapping out the source energy blocks in his metal case, He Tangtang thought to himself: *Han Qingyu, you bastard, hurry up and give me something to do! Otherwise I'm gonna run myself to death, and even if I want to block a strike for you, I won't have the strength left to do it!*
Just as the thought crossed his mind—*Boom!*
This was already the fourth time within his line of sight, and who knew how many times outside it. In their clash, Han Qingyu took a frontal cleave from Daie and was hammered down hard from midair, slamming into the ice.
The ice shattered. The man scrambled up from the sunken crater quickly and clumsily, stumbling into a run. Unable to outrun his foe, he had no choice but to turn back and hastily brace for the next attack.
In all the years they had known each other, He Tangtang had never seen Han Qingyu look so powerless and battered. Not once.
The heartache and fury brought on by such a sight far surpassed He Tangtang's fear of whether Qingzi might die in battle today. He never believed Qingzi would die in the first place; right now, he simply couldn't bear to watch him suffer such indignity and torment.
*Fuck your Spike mother!* Cursing through gritted teeth in his heart, He Tangtang raised his blade and erupted with power, his trait surging as he charged toward where Qingzi had fallen...
Give it a slash.
Or take a bite out of it.
He Tangtang knew his trait was not suited for battle. At least when facing enemies stronger than himself, it was virtually useless; even those Red Shoulders he had eaten previously were gnawed on only after others had already chopped them to pieces.
But he couldn't care about that now. Even if Daie was still full of vigor, taking a bite out of it would still be something—who knew if his bite carried bacteria?
"Qingzi, don't—" The words had barely left his mouth when He Tangtang suddenly realized that Han Qingyu and Daie had vanished from his sight once more.
He couldn't even risk his life to land a single hit.
Fortunately, the sounds of battle still echoed over.
He Tangtang followed the sounds and continued his pursuit...
Until a massive volcano in the midst of an eruption suddenly appeared in his sight, followed by ground where red and yellow lava flowed.
Mount Erebus, the lava zone—they had actually come back!
Right at that moment, the battling figures of Qingzi and Daie reappeared before He Tangtang's eyes.
Qingzi landed and was wading through the lava, sprinting toward the crater.
Daie landed as well, giving relentless chase...
"Ah, what is Qingzi doing? Did he panic? Or really can't outrun it?" Seeing this, He Tangtang couldn't help but grow anxious.
Reaching the edge of the lava field, rolling heat waves blasted into his face.
As a peak top-tier combatant, He Tangtang was confident that by raising his source energy defense to its absolute maximum, taking a few steps through it wouldn't gravely injure him. But to run further, to stay longer—he probably couldn't endure that.
What should he do? Detouring around was definitely too late, and the clash between Qingzi and Daie was unfolding right on the volcano. Qingzi looked like he could barely run anymore.
What to do? He Tangtang halted helplessly at the edge of the lava zone, beating his chest and stomping his feet in sheer desperation.
*Hum!* On the slopes of Mount Erebus, another clash of source energy detonated.
Falling back repeatedly, Han Qingyu spat blood and crashed to the ground. His back touched the lava, and he instantly bounced back up, continuing to stumble toward the crater.
*I have to go!* The conviction solidified in He Tangtang's mind. Since Qingzi had singled him out to follow, and Plague Chicken had agreed, then he definitely had a role to play.
Therefore, he had to go.
In his haste, he gathered several scraps of dead iron nearby, found the bodies of a few fallen comrades, and pulled out several dead iron bracers from beneath their secondary sleeves. The bracers were naturally curved and quite thin; He Tangtang used the spine of his blade to hammer them open slightly, stepped on them beneath the soles of his feet, wrapped them around his calves, and bound them tightly with gear straps...
"Don't panic, Qingzi, I'm coming! Don't panic, here I come!"
Perhaps because the eighteen-year-old Han Qingyu from his period of amnesia had left too deep an impression, He Tangtang didn't know why, but he always felt that Qingzi would be timid and easily frightened.
In this frame of mind, Tangtang even developed an illusion, regarding himself as his elder brother—someone who should and could protect him.
"...It's okay, I'm coming right now!" Shouting at the top of his lungs, He Tangtang forced his source energy defense to its absolute peak and charged recklessly into the lava field.
"Fuck!" Intense pain assaulted his legs.
"Ahhh..." He Tangtang roared at full volume. He did not retreat, nor did he give a thought to how he would pull back later, simply burying his head and charging up the volcanic slope at top speed.
Above, near the volcanic crater—*Whoosh!*
Qingzi suddenly leapt into the air. By the looks of it, he seemed intent on vaulting over the erupting lava plume of the crater to temporarily evade Daie's attack.
However—*Swish!* Daie leapt just the same, sweeping its blade and soaring across the crater to slash toward him...
The scene that followed,
Made He Tangtang abruptly forget his agony, freezing in his tracks on the volcanic slope.
It also stunned everyone watching behind the satellite feed that the Rejectors had finally tracked to this location.
The moment Major Qing and Daie vaulted across the crater, one after the other,
Major Qing suddenly twisted around. Snapping backward in midair, he vaulted to an even higher position, drew the large blue-light column sword behind his right shoulder with both hands... and cleaved down toward Daie with all his might.
"Let's go to hell together!" This was the very first time Han Qingyu had spoken to Daie throughout their entire pursuit.
Before his words had faded—*Clang-hum... Boom!*
Below, Daie raised its sword to parry. But for the first time in this relentless chase and slaughter, it failed to gain the upper hand in the collision.
Major Qing might have been conserving his strength all along.
In a desperate, decisive blow, Daie was struck downward.
Using the column sword and his own body, Major Qing slammed downward with all his power, hammering Daie straight into the violently erupting, lava-surging crater of Mount Erebus.
Tumbling down along with it was he himself.
This was likely the final gamble he had planned for so long. Which meant they were now inside the mountain, amidst the churning lava...
One second, two seconds... five seconds, ten seconds.
Neither emerged.
Major Qing did not come out.
Daie did not come out either.
At this point, inside the Rejectors' command center, everyone was completely stunned. Shaken to their core, they had not even had time to feel grief.
On the volcanic slope, He Tangtang was even more dazed.
Because aside from that shout of "Let's go to hell together," Qingzi had spoken another sentence as he plummeted:
"If you see that I'm dying, eat me."
This sentence was clearly not meant for Daie.
"Then... it was meant for me."
"Me... eat?" He Tangtang finally understood. He finally knew why Qingzi had called his name to come along. Standing there numbly, he muttered to himself.
In the past, he always loved to boast that once he became badass one day, he'd devour Qingzi, Wu Xu, the Little Prince, and Plague Chicken one bite at a time...
Just now, Qingzi said: If he was dying, eat him...
"Fuck your ancestors, Han Qingyu!"
Chapter 825