As the leader of Stream Blades, Han Qingyu had never shown concern for his officers and soldiers all these years—or at least, he had never voiced words of that kind.
Most likely, that bunch of bastards had never needed him to say them either.
At this moment, his figure struggling into the distance and that trench gouged across the ice spoke for everything in total silence.
In the end, Major Qing had forbidden anyone from Stream Blades to join the fight aside from Wu Xu, Shen Yixiu, and He Tangtang—without the slightest concealment, and without a single word of explanation.
Everything he did and said had been seen and heard by the Azure soldiers ahead.
Ten thousand pairs of marching boots pressed onward. Not a single person among them questioned it or voiced dissatisfaction; many even felt considerably relieved because of it.
They all knew what Stream Blades had done before, what they had been through... Thus, they had once believed they had braced for the worst, that based on experience they could envision this unit's current state.
Yet just now, when they finally encountered them and marched past those three thousand living souls—when they saw those standing silhouettes, those critically wounded carried on backs, and even the corpses...
Their instincts as elite soldiers quickly told them that beneath their superficial ease and defiance, this force before them had long since reached the point where a single touch would shatter them.
This gang of bandits was merely putting on a brave face out of habit.
Through their past feats, they had proven that they might well be the fiercest, most iron-blooded legion in human history.
However, the current Stream Blades truly could not withstand another single battle...
Not that they were unwilling,
but that they truly could not.
In name, three thousand of them were still alive. In reality, perhaps not even half of them could muster a single combat charge.
As for the wounded, especially the critically injured—including super combat power Theodore, three detachment commanders, and numerous top-tier fighters... if they did not receive prompt and effective treatment within the next twelve hours, they would perish without a fight ever needing to happen.
Within twelve hours, at least three to four hundred would die on their own. If twenty-four hours passed, that number would approach or even exceed a thousand.
Under the current situation on the battlefield, there appeared to be no hope left for them at all, whether viewed by others or by themselves.
Yet Major Qing did not accept this reality. He refused to believe it.
He had said he would come back, and then take them home.
"What do we do now?" As a gust of wind and snow swept past, the vanguard ahead finally vanished from view. Before the icy trench, someone asked in a daze.
Who was supposed to answer? Commander Storm looked around, turned to glance at Theodore, and after exchanging looks, turned back and suddenly chuckled:
"Stay right here and wait for Qingzi. What else is there to do?"
Right. The soldiers froze in a brief daze before realizing that things were really that simple—because that man was Han Qingyu. Since he had said so, they would stay here, rest properly, and wait for him. That was all.
...
"How does it look?" Wen Jifei asked, lying prone as he turned his head toward Captain Milla, who was lying prone in another icy crevasse.
"It's near the limit of our range, but the angle is great. I'm good on my end." Milla raised her head to make a ready gesture before lowering it once more, burying her face behind her scope.
"Then we stay right here. If things go south, remember—turn around and run." Having said that, Wen Jifei raised his rifle, first searching for Qingzi's silhouette, then tilting the muzzle up toward the Great Spike horde facing the tractor field, then the blue light barrier, and finally the colossal tractor field hidden within the dazzling brilliance.
They had followed. To be precise, Wen Jifei had brought Milla and four soldiers along with him.
When no one else in Stream Blades dared defy Han Qingyu's orders and cross that trench—when the Little Prince, that sly bastard who constantly claimed he was going to stew Han Qingyu, didn't dare, and Miss Milla, that former captain, didn't dare... Wen Jifei dared.
If there were three people in Stream Blades who, under certain circumstances, dared to and could disobey Han Qingyu, those three were Wu Xu, Rusty Sister, and Wen Jifei.
If there were only one, it was Wen Jifei.
Aside from offering a bit of face when necessary, he was not afraid of him in the slightest.
"Screw your uncle, what can you do to me?!" Catching Qingzi's silhouette in his sniper scope and locking on once more, Wen Jifei muttered with a grin, "Don't forget, on the truck ride to the testing grounds that year, you said it yourself—that you'd protect me forever. Hahahahaha... Ugh, saying that to myself instead of using it to gross out Qingzi is actually kind of sickening."
Qingzi was preparing to make his move.
Due to the horde of Great Spikes contracting, the starting point of this assault was much closer to the tractor field than before. The weapons left behind by the soldiers earlier, the shards of Great Spike iron armor hacked off, and the column swords of fallen Great Spikes all lay behind the battle array.
Within the sight of Wen Jifei and Milla, they were moving.
First a faint shift, then jerky, short-distance skids forward... gradually turning into a state of poised momentum, vibrating violently and clanging against the ice.
Another Myriad Blades Paying Homage?!
No, this version could not compare to the previous one at all. Whether in the number of dead iron weapons, the range and distance they were gathered from, or the stir they created on the battlefield, it was several orders of magnitude smaller.
...
Blood seeped from the corner of Han Qingyu's mouth. All the high-end combatants on either side of him preparing to breach the line saw it... yet they could only watch in silence.
In the collective silence, the figure of a middle-aged man emerged silently from the crowd, stepped up to the very front of the assault formation, and came to a stop.
In the entire attack formation, this position lagged behind only Han Qingyu and Pegament, placing him even ahead of Commander Hua and He Tangtang.
"Who the hell is..." He Tangtang muttered in dissatisfaction upon seeing this.
Commander Hua shook his head at him, stopping him from speaking further.
This middle-aged man in his fifties was named Siglo. Placed here, he was merely a peak top-tier fighter. Yet at the same time, he was one of the top three generals directly under Azure Headquarters, the core figure of the Zenith War's primary command system, and the supreme commander of Azure's Lost Continent Expedition on the Antarctic front.
In fact, Siglo had caught up with the relief force long ago, but he had merely caught up and joined; for the rest of the way, he had followed silently among the ranks of soldiers.
Even when Azure converged with Stream Blades, and during the exchanges with Wen Jifei, Han Qingyu, and the others, he had not stepped forward to utter a single word, let alone taken part in any decision-making or command.
"Let me go to the tractor field with you. Let me be an ordinary soldier again." That was the only thing General Siglo had said to the commanders of the relief force, including Commander Hua, when he joined them.
Everyone understood Siglo's reason for doing this—why he had come, and what he wanted to do.
Many had wanted to dissuade him, asking Siglo to turn back in the name of humanity's future still needing him.
Yet in the end, no one voiced those words. For this assault was the final redemption for General Siglo—as the supreme commander in Antarctica and as an Azure warrior—regardless of life or death.
"Pfft!" Han Qingyu spat out a mouthful of blood.
"Boom!" Source energy surged.
"Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh..." Nearly a thousand dead iron weapons flew in from behind and from both flanks, soaring into the air. Falling after crossing over the Azure battle array, they aligned like a freshly unleashed volley of arrows, screaming straight forward.
"Swish!" "Swish!" Pegament charged out behind the dead iron arrow formation, followed by Han Qingyu.
The distance between humankind and the swarm of Great Spikes at the tractor field shrank once more to within one kilometer, within five hundred meters...
"Boom!"
Finally, the dead iron arrow volley slammed head-on into the horde of Great Spikes.
It tore open a breach.
It blasted through a path.
As the arrow formation surged forward after penetrating the horde, row after row arced upward from low altitude, piercing into the iron armor of one Great Spike after another and lifting them into the air.
Great Spikes flew everywhere across the sky, rising, plunging...
A bizarre and magnificent spectacle.
"Crash!" Pegament's figure—the gleam of his blade and a flash of flying pink—plunged into the Great Spike horde right behind the dead iron arrow volley, charging straight for the tractor field.
This was his stage.
As for Han Qingyu, he was merely an assistant.
Chapter 839