Facing "Ne"

Every battle was fought to survive—so that one could live on, so that others could live on, and so that the human race could continue to survive and multiply upon this azure planet. As for the past hundred years, and these recent years, in all those battles where men threw themselves into death, what humanity had desperately fought to salvage was, in truth, time. When humanity faced a chasm-like disadvantage against the Great Spike civilization, and when the future and hope had always remained so slender and bleak, only time had the power to alter destiny. And so, generation after generation of human warriors rushed to the battlefield—from nameless obscurity in silent shadows to eventually becoming known to all mankind—using countless sacrifices to stave off the arrival of final judgment... Then came the invincible Chen Buer. Then came Ne. Then came the Fourth-Generation source energy device. Then came the God of Strength, Bochen. Then came the Sixth-Generation device. Then came Butcher Ivan. Then came Ye Jian (crossed out). Then came the Ninth-Generation device. Source energy firearms. Source energy airships. The Tenth-Generation source energy three-dimensional maneuver gear. Then came Han Qingyu, Pegmont, Wolf... beginning with the Zenith War, an era ablaze with supernovas. And another era—one of global conscription, where geniuses arose in legions. In the eyes of historians of the source energy world, these past three years had been the period of the swiftest advancement in humanity's overall strength across the entire historical course of their civilizational resistance. All the progress laid before their eyes had made the faint glimmer of hope in the distance grow clearer and brighter. They said that so long as the legends did not fall and the newcomers grew into their own, within ten years at most, humanity's source energy martial civilization would usher in its first golden age in history. That trajectory had almost been severed—nearly cut short upon the Lost Continent expedition, amidst the frozen snow and ice of Antarctica. Fortunately, the legends remained unbroken, and the story began anew... After an unprecedented catastrophe and sacrifice, humanity had once again bought more time. ... At this very moment, satellite footage from the Rejectors was broadcasting to all humanity the awe-inspiring sight of the super tractor field's collapse. At the bottom of the screen, looking down from high above within a colossal circle, swarms of Great Spikes were routing outward from the center, moving in clusters of blind, wandering black specks. ...The entire human world cheered, shouted, and uninhibitedly vented and celebrated amidst pouring tears. Yet at the South Pole, where the three thousand battered remnants of Stream Blades remained, directly beneath the tractor field where the surviving Azure forces had finally ground to a halt; and on the Antarctic Peninsula, across the battlefields where blood and fire had at last subsided— In these places, no one cheered. There was not the slightest joy of victory, not even high-fives or embraces... The soldiers were starving. In a state of source energy combat, they could go for long stretches without feeling hunger, fighting like machines. But once that source energy state was released, all the pain, exhaustion, and hunger struck them with madness all at once. Those who could lie down collapsed where they were; those still standing sat down on the spot. Soldiers with blood-stained faces used equally bloodied hands to pull out military rations—cans battered flat and compressed biscuits shattered to crumbs. Hands trembled uncontrollably from pain and sheer weakness, turning every movement into a struggle. They painstakingly tore away the packaging, lunged with both hands to clutch their food as if catching a flying, hopping insect, and then fought with all their might to raise their arms and shove it into their mouths. In utter silence, they chewed in huge mouthfuls, their Adam's apples bobbing heavily as they swallowed. Their fallen comrades lay right beside them in the ice and snow... Amid the frantic gorging, a soldier's tears suddenly spilled unbidden, splashing onto the crook of his hand and the bread held within. Then, one after another, the tears of a crowd of soldiers began to fall in silence. They did not utter a sound. They did not sob. They merely kept straining to lift their arms, shoving bread and canned meat mixed with tears into their mouths with both hands, taking huge bites, chewing hard, and swallowing it down. Some stuffed food into the mouths of wounded comrades. Because hands were trembling, someone accidentally smeared food across a comrade's face, then frantically pulled out water, cracked the ice within, and poured it over his face and into his mouth... Across all of Antarctica, people were eating, and not a single soul spoke. After enduring an unprecedentedly horrific civilizational war, this continent of ice and snow abruptly fell still... It was a quiet beyond anyone's imagination, an eerie silence like that of a fallen realm. Only at the South Pole did a faint echo of battle linger. Clink. With a faint sound, the last palm-sized shard of dead iron fell from the sky, plunging into the ice. The chaotic roar of the tractor field's collapse had finally quieted completely. And then, the super airship from deep underground, beneath thousands of meters of glacial ice, returned. After piercing through almost the entire tower of the tractor field, carried upward for a distance by its momentum, it had finally banked around, leveling off silently in the air less than two hundred meters up, gradually coming to a halt. On the ground, Wu Xu, Rusty Sister, He Tangtang, and Wen Jifei—who had just arrived at the scene and was supporting Han Qingyu—stood in a staggered line, looking up at the vessel. They were waiting. Waiting for a man named Liu Shiheng. Thanks would certainly never be spoken aloud, and that "Brother Shiheng" they had never called him before would probably still stick in their throats. They simply had too many urgent questions for him—or perhaps they just wanted to see him right away, to know what was going on with him now. At last, with a screeching groan, a bulkhead on the side of the airship swung open. A solid plate of dead iron dropped down, extending horizontally in midair like a balcony. "Be careful. That ship is the Snow Lotus core base. Ne is very likely aboard," Hua Shuai's voice came from behind them, hushed and urgent. Ye Jian had just slipped away amid the chaos, but as he passed Hua Shuai, he had deliberately leaned in and whispered those words into his ear. Hummmmm— In an instant, the source energy devices of Han Qingyu and the others roared back to life, fully restarted. It was a warrior's instinctive vigilance and readiness for battle, but their fighting intent was not truly firm, because the bewilderment in their hearts was simply too overwhelming. Was that truly the Snow Lotus core base? If so, and if Ne was aboard... why was Young Master Shiheng there too, and looking as though he had taken complete control of the ship?! "Ye Jian took him there," Wen Jifei swiftly pieced the clues together and made his deduction. Seeing that the others were still somewhat lost, he quickly reminded them, "The Tenth-Generation device." The first Tenth-Generation device known to humanity had appeared during Stream Blades' assault on the Alphonse family, arriving abruptly and unceremoniously by smacking He Tangtang in the back of the head. When they investigated it back then, Wen Jifei and the others had only traced the device to Ye Jian. Shu You had explained that he was hunting Ye Jian down at the time, and the two of them had passed by Stream Blades' camp one after the other; Ye Jian was the one who had brought it. Yet Ye Jian was clearly not the kind of person who would go out of his way to do something like that. Though that guy sometimes didn't seem as completely hostile as the rumors made him out to be, he was by no means a proactive, warm-hearted, meddlesome good samaritan. Because it was far too bizarre and convoluted, the matter had been shelved at the time as an unsolved mystery. Now it seemed it had to be Young Master Shiheng. He was the one who got his hands on it at the Snow Lotus base and asked Ye Jian to deliver it—simply because Qingzi hadn't been strong enough back then, yet was determined to kill Alphonse at all costs. The riddle of the Tenth-Generation device was solved. Yet this hardly resolved all the confusion in Han Qingyu and the others' hearts; if anything, it only deepened it. "How on earth did Young Master Shiheng pull that off?" "How did he get so wildly powerful, arrogant, and brazen in Snow Lotus? Stealing Ne's stuff, and even flying his damn house out to ram the tractor field!" "Did he kidnap Ne?" Every one of them was asking and turning it over in their minds, but none had the slightest clue. This question, it seemed, could only be answered by Liu Shiheng himself—or by Ne. Thud! A heavy footstep landed on the dead iron plate suspended in midair. Due to the viewing angle, a tuft of black hair appeared first. Then bangs, forehead, brows and eyes, nose and mouth... Liu Shiheng's slightly changed yet unmistakably familiar face came into view as he stepped out, step by step. At his neck rested a blade. A combat blade that looked quite ordinary. Someone was holding the blade, walking out alongside him. Han Qingyu and the others on the ground had originally thought it was very likely Ne—that for the first time, they were about to come face to face with the legendary leader of Snow Lotus, the most brilliant mind in human history, Ne. Yet it was not. It was a slender, attractive, young foreign woman.