"Don't!" Wen Jifei hastily yelled to stop him, knowing that bastard He Tangtang truly would stab himself.
Yet Ne was no longer afraid of him for the moment.
In the brief instant just now when the scheme began, the Snow Lotus warship that had been hovering motionless in the air had already finished firing up its engines. At this moment, its prow tilted upward, surging toward the vault of the sky.
It rapidly opened up distance.
At this distance, whatever was inside He Tangtang most likely could no longer threaten Ne and Nikola; otherwise, they wouldn't have dared make a reckless move.
At this point, the scene in midair:
Wen Jifei's figure was still falling, while Han Qingyu, Wu Xu, and He Tangtang—at uneven heights—strained to climb upward. High above them, Rusty Sister hung suspended as if dangled by a rope, being dragged away at high speed alongside the warship.
The warship tilted its nose up, ascending in a straight line as its massive hatch slowly closed.
At the same time, the invisible rope of source energy was retracting.
The distance widened swiftly, growing further and further.
Under these circumstances, relying solely on their bodily energy and speed with nothing to push off from, Han Qingyu and Wu Xu couldn't possibly catch up...
"Fuck your whole family!"
Blared over an external loudspeaker, a curse suddenly echoed from high in the sky.
Yang Qingbai's enunciation had always been clear, and all the more so when cussing in an emergency.
He was shouting from the cockpit of a Swordfish-class source energy airship.
The airship cut horizontally across the sky at maximum speed.
It had just arrived on the scene.
Before his words faded, boom!
As Yang Qingbai ejected into the air, the Swordfish-class airship rammed into the flank of the Snow Lotus warship in a suicide collision.
If the warship were compared to a person, the impact point would be roughly at the ankle.
A mere Swordfish-class source energy airship couldn't truly shake a heavy warship, but this warship had just launched and was still accelerating. Moreover, its hatch, which occupied nearly half the side, was less than halfway closed, leaving the vessel inherently unbalanced.
Amid the deafening collision, the enormous Snow Lotus warship swung violently sideways, its nose pitching left and stern swaying right.
Like a person stumbling, teetering on the verge of falling over.
In that single instant, a momentary stall was created, and an opportunity re-emerged.
Bang! Han Qingyu and Wu Xu each kicked out, landing their boots squarely against the dead iron plating over He Tangtang's buttocks.
He Tangtang shot toward the Snow Lotus warship like an oversized rocket...
"Die together?!" He Tangtang asked earnestly.
As he spoke, he was right at the edge of the warship, floating against the hull like an astronaut outside a space station. The combat blade in his hand pierced the skin over his heart, blood oozing out...
The Snow Lotus warship came to an abrupt halt in midair. No buffer, no struggle—even its inertia was completely suppressed.
The threat from Lord He left no room for hesitation or wishful thinking.
Because he was He Tangtang. He had always been simple—simple enough that everyone present, friend or foe, knew he was truly the kind of person who would stab his own heart to save a teammate.
Ne was evidently rational and wise enough, so he did not hesitate, did not gamble, and entertained no false hope.
"Alright, it seems I failed. In that case, she's yours again," he said casually, as if it were nothing out of the ordinary.
The warship's hull plate lowered again, forming a midair platform where He Tangtang could land firmly. Then, the bindings around the iron armor were released, and it was laid horizontally on the deck not far before him.
Rusty Sister was still alive, but her injuries were far worse now, and she had slipped completely into a coma.
Soon, Han Qingyu and Wu Xu strained with everything they had to reach the platform as well.
The standoff was restored, only now with even less mutual trust.
"Fuck it, why don't I just slaughter them and get it over with?" He Tangtang suddenly blurted out after a brief, tense silence.
"Don't! Maintaining your threat is your best option. After all, neither of us can be certain whether things will truly unfold as reasoned," Ne hastily dissuaded him. "What if, in the end, you die, but either I or that creature doesn't? When that happens, what will become of your friends?"
"Makes sense," Han Qingyu agreed with a nod. Then he asked, "So what now? We can't stay at a stalemate forever."
Ne pondered for a moment. "How about I lower the warship's altitude and let you leave?"
"No, you no longer possess any credibility, Mr. Ne. This time, you're the ones leaving." Han Qingyu gestured with his eyes. "Jump."
"..." Ne was taken aback. "Major Qing probably doesn't realize that this vessel is the headquarters of Snow Lotus. It holds vast amounts of my research, resources, equipment, and over two thousand of my most loyal followers."
"Then let them follow you and jump, seeing as they're so loyal," He Tangtang said, holding his blood-stained blade as he stepped forward, closing in on Ne.
"..." Ne's face showed a flicker of helpless distress before he shook his head resolutely. "No, I refuse. Let's think of another way. Damn it, I've forgotten how many years it's been since I last had to bargain with anyone. What a troublesome bunch."
The Swordfish-class airship that had suddenly crashed into the warship had already broken apart completely, scattered fragments plunging downward.
The question was, why had it appeared right at that precise moment?
To Ne's frustration, it looked very much like a variable born of sheer luck.
Yet upon closer thought, it wasn't.
It was bound to come. Because with these people stranded in midair, that pilot would inevitably think and feel that he had to come take a look.
Just like the arrogant, reckless bastard currently pointing a blade at him, who could truly plunge that combat blade into his own heart at any second.
...
The stalemate in the sky continued.
This time, the midair platform formed by the Snow Lotus warship was even higher and further from the ground.
So far that the people on the ground, including the newly landed Wen Jifei and Yang Qingbai, could no longer clearly make out what was happening above.
High above, the warship appeared no larger than a school desk, yet everyone on the South Pole battlefield remained frozen in their posture, craning their necks anxiously and straining their eyes upward...
"What do we do? We can't see a thing," an Azure general said.
"Yeah, no telling what's happening to them right now..."
"What about comms? Can we establish a link?" Marshal Hua asked Wen Jifei in front of him without looking away.
"I'll try." Wen Jifei hurriedly grabbed the communicator at his chest. Peering through his sniper scope, he called out, "Qingzi, Qingzi? Can you hear me..."
Ssshh—! No reply came from the other end; instead, fierce static erupted through the communicator, as though the signal were suffering severe interference.
Although the sniper scope showed no abnormal movement on the warship above, Wen Jifei grew increasingly tense. "Hello? Hello? Can you hear me..."
Abruptly, buzz... boom! Without any warning, the light and darkness in everyone's upturned vision scrambled into chaos for an instant.
Immediately after, the hovering Snow Lotus warship seemed struck by a colossal sledgehammer, dropping straight down at blinding speed and ballooning in their field of view.
It showed no signs of damage, nor had any explosion occurred.
The anomaly lay even higher.
Above the warship.
At the very apex.
There, the boundless canopy of the sky suddenly blasted open with a gigantic hole.
...
No one knew whether it was a real hole. Probably not, just as a black hole wasn't truly a hole.
Yet visually, it truly resembled a colossal hole blasted downward through the firmament.
From the ground, the hole appeared roughly five times larger than a Mid-Autumn full moon. Its aperture was radially circular, tiered with concentric bands of silver-gray and eerie blue light.
The light was in motion, slowly rotating in a continuous loop.
At the center of the luminous ring, deep at the bottom of the abyss, was pitch blackness. A single glance revealed no bottom, only the sensation that it could drag anyone into eternal darkness and dead silence.
"What is that? A black hole?"
"I don't know. Maybe."
"Could it be Great Spikes?! If this is Great Spikes..."
"I hope not."
If Great Spikes were coming, what rank could it possibly be? The legendary Miwang?! the respondent thought with deep dread.
Right now, Azure and Stream Blades likely didn't have what it took to defeat an entity beyond Daie.
Corps Commander Chen Buer was ill, General Bochen was wounded, Major Qing was wounded... and Pegmont had just hitched a ride on a spaceship to wander the cosmos.
Ne? He was a traitor to mankind; humanity would be fortunate if he didn't join forces with the Great Spikes to destroy them.
Amid the murmurs and anxious contemplation, the colossal hole at the zenith suddenly contracted rapidly, reducing in moments to a single streak of brilliant light stretching across the sky.
The residual light, like fire glinting off a saber's edge, spanned the sky. It expanded outward in a struggling posture for less than a second before ultimately vanishing into nothingness.
"It's gone."
"...Yeah."
Before the words had fully landed, bzzz... boom! A continuous, monstrous roar descended from the heavens, followed immediately by a physical shockwave.
Beneath the South Pole, the air throughout the entire region grew heavy and dense, slamming down upon everyone like an inescapable gale of astral wind.
In that instant, everyone on the ground felt like little fish in the water, when the surface had just been stomped on violently by an enormous foot.
"What the hell is that?!"
"What is that...?"
The first shout came from someone battered senseless by the concussive air, bellowing in outrage like an irascible brawler sucker-punched out of nowhere and itching for a fight.
The second person stood frozen, gazing blankly toward the zenith and asking in a slow, complicated tone.
In truth, he probably already had an answer in his heart; it was merely because the shock was so overwhelming, and his mind so unwilling to accept it, that he asked anyway.
A Great Spike.
Everyone saw it.
High in the air, right where the colossal hole had just vanished, a Great Spike stood suspended aloft, as if born from the void.
Humanity had already seen countless Great Spikes; they collectively referred to all combat organisms from that source-energy martial civilization as Great Spikes.
Yet this one... it was perhaps a hundred meters tall.
Even at its narrowest across the torso, it was likely thirty meters wide.
It was indeed a Great Spike, radiating the exact same aura as that alien race. On the front of its head, it also had horn-like structures—only unlike ordinary Great Spikes, it had two. Massive and curved, they looked as if two scimitars had been mounted atop its head.
"Grandpa, the Bull Demon King,"
a Huaxia child suddenly said, pointing at the television screen.
As the static that had blanketed the television screens finally receded and The Refusers' jammed battlefield transmission abruptly restored, the titanic alien creature high in the sky was broadcast directly before the eyes of all humankind.
Chapter 859