By rights, Ne should have arrived by now. Young Master Shiheng had driven off with his entire home; with a commotion this massive, there was no way he wouldn't come to deal with it.
Yet he hadn't.
Aside from the white-robed Snow Lotus cultists outside the hatch, who were still hurling panicked threats and demands, the bridge had sustained no effective attacks.
Thinking it through, it was very likely that Ne truly was unable to move freely, just as they had speculated.
Earlier, Ye Jian had harbored suspicions that, perhaps due to the severe wounds sustained during the battle on the ice field all those years ago, Ne had never been able to leave the Under-Ice City—which was to say, this very craft.
Young Master Shiheng's conjecture went a step further: he suspected Ne might not even be able to leave that little blue chapel.
"I hope Alice listens to me and doesn't go there," Liu Shiheng thought with concern. That was his sole worry right now.
The ship drove straight upward, crashing repeatedly as its prow scraped against the ice on both flanks. The relentless shocks sent people and objects across the Under-Ice City tumbling, scattering, and shattering into disarray.
Yet the little chapel of blue glass remained completely undisturbed.
Alice stood alone in the center of the chapel. Resting her right hand on the back of a pew, she looked up and smiled. "It seems our opinions align."
The three of them had all decided not to stop Liu Shiheng.
"Hah! Do you think he can truly smash the tractor field to pieces?" Nikola's coarse voice sneered with contempt.
It hoped the army of Great Spikes would be pulled through, and Ne likely felt the same. Neither of them believed Young Master Shiheng's actions could halt the summoning.
"This will merely cause us to reemerge into this world... The timing is not bad. In the evolutionary history of this planet, it shouldn't just be an endless clash between two backward civilizations. It's time for us to make our appearance as well."
It was still Nikola's voice, raspy and imbued with the aura of a creator. As for Ne, he seemed nonexistent, not chiming in at all.
"Pfft!" Alice scoffed disdainfully, saying to Nikola, "You don't need to disguise it. I know you're doing this for the sole successful experimental subject. After absorbing so much life source energy, that body must have reached the perfect state you crave, hasn't it?"
Rusty Sister was that sole successful experimental subject. Her body was considered something between human and Great Spike, possessing advantages over Great Spikes in certain respects. As for the present Nikola, who considered itself a brand-new species, it too fell somewhere between human and Great Spike. It was a perfect match, and something it would never pass up.
The sole successful experimental subject was meant to replace Alice; once Nikola's plan succeeded, Alice would die immediately.
So when she laid it bare, Nikola grew flustered and agitated. Its immense consciousness surged over forcefully. Fearing Alice might take some drastic measure, Nikola chose to seize control of the body ahead of schedule.
As the undisputed strongest will among the three, Nikola was the only one who could take sole command of the body at any moment—though such complete dominance came with a time limit.
Alice bowed her head as if resigning to fate, offering no resistance. Knowing struggle was futile, she waited quietly for two seconds before losing herself entirely.
"THUMP!"
"THUMP!"
...
Impacts, relentless upward impacts. The subterranean depths were shattering.
The entire ground beneath the Great Spike tractor field—or rather, the thick layer of ice at the South Pole—had now buckled and heaved upward completely.
Beyond the countless fissures and fractures, the process resembled the birth of a mountain range. Glacial peaks sprang up abruptly, thrusting continuously toward the sky.
Before long, a jagged, ring-shaped mountain range had taken form.
Since the tractor field and the barrier of light remained stationary, the soldiers clinging to the steep cliffs found themselves carried considerably higher.
From here, they could see Major Qing's figure suspended in the transparent space much more clearly, gazing at him through only a single layer of the pale blue barrier.
Yet for some time now, he hadn't moved at all. Not even the faint rise and fall of internal breathing could be detected.
Grief abruptly seized the soldiers. An uncontrollable doubt crept into their minds: had the name that had represented humanity's hope and future all these years already passed away?
Though everyone here had long anticipated that they would likely perish in battle today, when they truly saw Major Qing motionless, passing away before their very eyes... it was more than just sorrow. A gray desolation, like dying embers turning cold, surged like a tide and swallowed every heart.
On what had been a furious battlefield, warriors gripping their blades stood still on the snowy slopes, looking silently and mournfully around this frozen expanse that was foreign to them.
So this was where the story ended...
"Look!"
A voice cried out, thick with cracked emotion.
Countless gazes snapped toward it.
Inside the transparent gravity field, Major Qing's body remained entirely motionless, yet there was light—a luminescence like molten lava—gradually seeping out from his chest.
From faint to dense.
Slowly spreading outward from his chest.
"He's still alive! Major Qing is still alive!" the soldiers roared in exhilaration.
They all recognized that molten lava. Memories flooded in—the strike during the Zenith War, the river of lava that had cleaved the sky, and earlier today, the molten dragon that had drawn thousands of blades into homage.
And so:
"He's not dead!"
"Major Qing is still alive, he hasn't given up!"
...
In truth, this was the Yanxiu's instinctual self-preservation.
Han Qingyu awoke amid searing agony. Sensing the fluctuations of that mighty consciousness, he lowered his head, opened his eyes, and looked down at his chest...
Then, with a bleak yet resolute smile in his eyes, he slowly and with every ounce of strength raised his head.
The molten fiery glow surged with his movement like a river flowing in reverse, climbing slowly upward, expanding and swelling as it grew.
"...Qingzi!" Wen Jifei's shout rang out, this time filled with joy and rekindled hope.
For he had just seen the river of lava permeating upward, and it was beginning to take shape.
Soon, even the warriors of Stream Blades farther away, who had been ordered to remain in place, could see it in the distance.
First came the familiar hue,
followed gradually by the silhouette.
"A dragon!" Who knew how many times it had been now, but the Little Prince uttered that same word with certainty and anticipation.
A dragon. Major Qing's signature molten dragon—the dragon that symbolized him at his pinnacle, erupting with everything he possessed—had appeared once more at the South Pole, outside the Great Spike tractor field, within that unshakeable super gravity field.
Regarding what he was doing and attempting to achieve, the researchers at Azure Headquarters had just used the perfect word: tear it to pieces.
The scene looked just like an ensnared dragon waging a desperate death struggle, trying to shatter the cage that bound it.
Not to escape, not to slip away, but to shatter it entirely.
At this moment, whether on the ground or in the satellite feeds of the Rejectors, people witnessed this sight: the molten dragon emerged and slowly expanded, yet under layers of crushing pressure, it still coiled with immense difficulty.
And beneath the earth where no one could see:
The ship's bridge shuddered incessantly in violent turbulence. Liu Shiheng stood rapt before the console, his gaze locked straight ahead at the final layer of glacial ice above him. Accelerate, accelerate, accelerate...
Ye Jian stepped over silently. He fished out his cigarettes, tapped one free, and held it to Young Master Shiheng's lips. Once Shiheng caught it between his teeth, Ye Jian lit it for him.
Then Ye Jian lit one for himself, took a drag, kept it clamped in his mouth, gripped his warblade in his right hand, and calmly walked to the ejection hatch.
"Can you really not pull it off?" Liu Shiheng turned to ask. He had acted earlier as though he had accepted it, but how could he truly be resigned?
Their eyes met... Ye Jian nodded, turning away as he said, "Yeah. Like you said, let's give it hell."
"Thanks!" Young Master Shiheng turned back as well, saying nothing more.
There was only the sensation of the craft's upward velocity rushing through the open ejection port into the bridge, violently wrenching their bodies backward.
...
It was coming.
Major Qing's final strike—and perhaps this world's final stand at this critical crossroads of fate. Everyone understood what it meant.
Inside the gravity field, the molten hues had expanded to the absolute limit. The form of the dragon was distinct and vivid.
Arched spine,
lowered head.
"This isn't... what my fucking dragon should look like," the Little Prince said, his tone a mix of mockery, fury, and heartache.
"...Skreee-roar!" A sound carried from the direction of the tractor field.
At last, the familiar dragon's roar rang out once more.
With a screech, the transparent gravity field emitted a sharp sound of being warped and strained.
BOOM—a surge of source energy erupted.
Major Qing raised his head.
The dragon raised its head.
Before everyone's eyes, the molten dragon fully unfurled in an instant, straightening out and rocketing upward as it threw back its head and roared.
Crack, crack, crack, crack...
Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch...
White fracture lines like splintering glass reappeared, more ferocious than before, spidering rapidly outward until they covered nearly the entire barrier of light, the whole gravity field.
Creak! Groan! The contest between dragon and gravity field, between Major Qing and thousands of Great Spike craft, ground on in a brutal deadlock, screeching with heavy, piercing friction.
Suddenly, pfft! A spray of crimson blood exploded in the air.
"ROAR!" The molten dragon lunged with its colossal form toward the zenith.
For the first time, the gravity field lost its original shape, warping, teetering on the verge of collapse.
Even then, no one on the battlefield dared make a sound.
They didn't even dare to breathe as they waited for the outcome.
...CRASH! The scene was actually silent; it was the visual impact that gave everyone the auditory sensation.
The dragon shattered.
Molten fire broke apart in the air.
Losing its form, the dragon disintegrated into fragments, dimming little by little.
The gravity field slammed back down, pressing inward from the perimeter to the center, rapidly ironing out every fracture...
Major Qing was about to die.
BOOM! A tremendous crash resounded, this time right nearby, from beneath the tractor field.
"ROOOAAAR!" It sounded like another dragon's roar.
A black, dragon-like phantasm abruptly surged upward from beneath the earth.
What was that? No one knew; they didn't even have time to grieve.
Immediately following it, a warblade swept up from below with a colossal blade glow, slashing straight into the blue barrier of light.
At the same time, the ice across the entire ground detonated as a massive chunk of dead iron—no, a colossal prow of dead iron—erupted into view.
BOOM! The black dragon phantasm dove, the warblade struck home.
CRUNCH! The giant warship slammed in solid.
SHATTER! The gravity field broke.
The craft, of which only the prow had been visible moments ago, gradually revealed the immense hull behind it.
It rammed into the tractor field from underneath, cracking its base open.
It drove straight up.
As if impaled, the tractor field ruptured upward, tier after tier...
The black vortex in the sky began to dissipate.
"Holy fuck!" Over the ship's external loudspeakers, a voice shouted, "Holy... shit! Who said I couldn't fucking do it?!"
What? Wen Jifei vaguely remembered this voice. Others who felt that same familiarity included Wu Xu, Rusty Sister, He Tangtang, Milla... and Han Qingyu.
"Long time no see... Your young master has arrived," the man said with a wild, triumphant laugh.
Chapter 846