In the quiet depths of the cosmos, a super-dreadnought so vast its borders could scarcely be seen continued its placid advance at a seemingly sluggish pace.
Sluggish, of course, was relative; it only appeared that way because the space it traversed was unimaginably vast and deep.
"Tap! Tap..." The heavy footsteps of an enormous entity echoed through the core section of the ship's hold.
It stopped before a pool of shadow and spoke respectfully: "The conduit has completely collapsed. The waiting scout ships report no returnees."
"Oh. It seems the Daie-tier forces on that planet have suffered total defeat." Miwang did not appear surprised, merely more certain that at that distant target, the entity that had caught the beam of energy it had cleaved out back then was indeed a human.
Had that human survived after all?
"Bolasgon has not returned either."
"Indeed."
Bolasgon was the supreme commander of the tractor force. As a Puta'er, it should have had a chance to return.
"Perhaps it crossed over to the other side." "Let us continue forward and wait to see if any word comes from it."
...
High in the skies above the South Pole.
The nearly hundred-meter-long greatsword was already raised high overhead in Bolasgon's hands.
Just as Nikola had said and as everyone could plainly see, it was gravely injured—its armor fractured all over, blackish-red blood dripping like rain.
And yet,
"To think they are merely such tiny creatures."
What Bolasgon saw upon first arriving at this planet filled it with perplexity. "Is it truly such a frail, feeble race that multiplies and thrives here, watching over a planet serving as the burial ground of the Yanxiu?
"What a grotesque waste, and what an insult to strength.
"Very well. Allow me to bring an end to it all."
None of these words were spoken to anyone; they were mere mutters. Bolasgon would not deign to converse with such insignificant creatures.
As its voice drifted away, its massive body flared with the blue radiance of an all-consuming fire, and the greatsword in its grip slowly began to swing.
Bolasgon saw the warship charging straight up from below. For a split second, it seemed vaguely familiar, but that was all.
"It will all be destroyed anyway."
Muttering those final words, it cleaved its greatsword downward.
From this altitude, Bolasgon meant to obliterate everything in the air and on the ground—and regarded doing so as entirely natural.
*Whoosh... crack-crack-crack-crack!*
The sweeping blade seemed to tear through the vault of heaven. Wherever it passed, the thick cloud cover parted like sheared silk, then was churned and dragged along in the wake of the blade...
Visually, the sky roiled with churning clouds, and stars flickered in and out of sight...
Beams of radiant light rained down from higher above...
An attack by a demon, yet its grandeur resembled the wrath of a god.
...
The Snow Lotus warship climbed, prow tilted upward, its hull near-vertical as it met the incoming strike at maximum speed, rocketing straight toward the giant Great Spike high above—this was the very first Puta'er that the Blue Star had ever encountered, and no one knew just how powerful it truly was.
The warship shot forward like lightning. Air compressed into physical wind, streaming around the hull like fast-flowing white vapor before detonating into bursting clouds.
*Whoosh... crack!* High above, the greatsword finally unleashed the tearing sonic boom of a high-speed slash. The Puta'er's attack had arrived.
Simultaneously, *whoosh-shh!* Outside the Snow Lotus warship, the most terrifying burst of power ever heard by any Stream Blades fighter or Azure commander present erupted into the air.
The figure of Alice (Ne) had already ejected, arriving above the warship.
At the precise moment her upward momentum died away, she seemed to come to a halt in midair. With a mere tap of her right toe against the empty void, she soared straight up, threw her head back, and spread her arms wide to either side before drawing them upward at an unhurried pace.
As her arms came together, a colossal, translucent blue blade seemed to be summoned from the void, gradually sharpening and solidifying in her hands.
This blade, too, was a hundred meters long.
"Oh?" Bolasgon seemed to let out a grunt of mild surprise from above, but that did nothing to hinder the full descent of its downward cleave.
*Boom!* The greatsword crashed down from the high sky, sweeping down half the vault of clouds in a furious blaze.
The overwhelming momentum made the heavy warship surging upward look like nothing more than a frail skiff beneath an apocalyptic wave.
*Boom!* Ne swung the translucent blue colossal blade with both hands to meet the slash.
Even before the physical impact could land, a deafening hum resounded, freezing and throwing back half the roiling sea of clouds.
...
"Incredible." When He Tangtang woodenly uttered those words—using them to praise his food—it was because he genuinely could find no other phrase to describe what he felt in that moment.
This had completely surpassed human comprehension.
In truth, not just He Tangtang, but even Han Qingyu, Wu Xu, and Marshal Hua had never imagined a battle of this caliber and intensity, let alone witnessed one.
They were all still far from this level.
Compared to the dread inspired by the Puta'er's overwhelming might, what stunned them even more was Ne's display.
"He actually withstood a blow like that!"
"Indeed. No wonder the world ranks him alongside the Legion Commander."
Amid the murmurs, an even more astounding sight immediately followed.
"FU** YOU... AND *XXXXX*..."
Ne, who appeared to have held off the Puta'er's onslaught, abruptly began cursing like a sailor. Considering his status and the refined impression he always projected, this was nearly unimaginable.
The target of Ne's cursing was Nikola; he was simply too furious and exasperated to keep it in.
The reason he cursed wasn't that Nikola had failed to go all out as promised. Nikola truly had assisted with all his might—he had no desire to die.
The problem was that he had misjudged... Ne realized he couldn't hold on at all.
"FUC** YOU***!" "Even with only half its strength left, it's still this monstrous?!" Ne demanded, straining with every fiber of his being to hold the line.
"Its offensive power suffered comparatively less damage, so its attacks remain overwhelming," Nikola replied. "Its defenses, however, are weakened to the absolute extreme. If only we can shatter this condensed mass of energy, everyone will have a chance to strike at it!"
"Shatter my *XXXXX*!"
Shatter it? Impossible. By now, Ne had already made a crystal-clear assessment.
Inside the cabin, the others heard Ne's cursing and finally realized something was terribly wrong. They hadn't gone out to assist not because they wanted to take the chance to let Ne die, nor because they were afraid of death, but because with their level of strength, the crushing pressure of the Puta'er's blast prevented them from even triggering an ejection.
At this moment, the entire heavy warship was pinned down completely, unable to advance an inch further.
*Crack-crack-crack-crack...* The sound of fractures spiderwebbing across the translucent blue giant blade rang out.
Outside the hull, Ne suddenly turned his head slowly. Bearing a calm, helpless smile that held a touch of self-mockery, his eyes calm and detached, he glanced back at the cabin.
He was Ne. He had no one he needed to bid farewell to, nor anyone he could bid farewell to. The only farewell he had to make was perhaps to his own mad ambitions and ideals of human super-evolution.
So be it, then. Farewell to humanity.
Farewell to this frail native species he had planned to sacrifice at least ninety percent of in exchange for ushering in the cosmic era.
"Alice!" In Liu Shiheng's eyes, that glance was Alice looking back at him one last time.
*Whoosh!*
Another burst of energy, comparatively faint, suddenly erupted outside the warship.
A figure appeared near Ne, directly facing the sky-enveloping sea of clouds and the Puta'er's bombardment.
That figure...
"Major Qing!"
"Qingzi!"
Han Qingyu had managed to eject after all. Joining the fray, he unleashed an all-out strike with every ounce of his strength.
Yet aside from easing the pressure on Ne by a fraction, he failed to shake anything. He was injured—gravely injured—and had already reached the end of his rope... In truth, even uninjured, he likely could not have turned the tide.
So, was it over?
Was it over?
Was it truly over?
It was over.
...Wait, what was that?
One of our small craft.
...There seems to be someone on it!
...
"Just fly."
Through the communicator, the old man spoke to the pilot of the Needlefish-class craft, a man he didn't even know.
Fortunately, the pilot was Huaxian; otherwise, all the old man would have been able to say was "Go" over and over.
Azure had hundreds of source energy craft of various sizes operating around the South Pole. Originally ordered to evacuate the critically wounded following their victory, they had not departed when the Puta'er suddenly appeared and the fighters boarded the warship for one final stand. Instead, they patrolled the perimeter, waiting—in the slim hope of victory—to rush in and catch the human warriors who had chosen to charge toward the sky.
During that same stretch of time, an old Huaxian man had finally swum across the vast expanse of ocean, hauling himself ashore from the icy waters. Then, at a frantic sprint, he had raced toward the Pole.
Just as he was about to arrive,
he discovered that the enemy was in the sky, and so was the battlefield—high, very high up.
Seeing that he was running out of time, the old man hurriedly picked up a communicator from the ground, keyed into the channel with supreme authorization, and flagged down a Needlefish-class craft.
The craft did not land, nor did it lower a rappel cable.
It swooped down, skimming the ground at high speed before pulling up sharply.
The old man simply leapt aboard, catching the handle of the side hatch with one hand, his other hand drawing his saber as he shouted to the pilot, "Go! Let's charge up there!"
The Legion Commander had said "let's."
The young pilot was both terrified and thrilled.
In the final instant before bursting into the battlefield, he was trembling all over, and shut his eyes.
*Whoosh!*
An aged figure burst forth. Amid an explosive roar that echoed across the ice sheet, he detached from the craft and accelerated to several times its speed, overtaking the Needlefish-class craft that had carried him here, and streaked past the Snow Lotus warship frozen in midair...
Azure Huaxia, Legion Commander of the Sole Witness Legion, Invincible in the Mortal Realm—Chen Buer had arrived!
A somewhat gaunt figure who had supposedly been plagued by severe illness for years, yet none of it showed now. Rocketing upward through the sky, he agitated the surrounding air into a chain of sonic booms, as though a myriad bolts of thunder were gathering fury.
The Red-Slaying Saber in his grip was dragged casually behind him.
And yet, wherever the blade passed, jagged black fissures flickered continuously into existence out of thin air.
"Get out of the way! I'm going to take this bastard one-on-one!"
"..." Han Qingyu and Ne didn't budge—because they couldn't move.
Of course, even if they could, they wouldn't have actually moved aside to let the old man fight the Puta'er one-on-one. Both of them knew full well what kind of physical state Chen Buer was in.
Though the two remained motionless, the Red-Slaying Saber finally moved.
To be precise, Old Man Chen twisted his torso, brought his left hand around to grip the hilt with both hands, and dragged the saber upward like a man heaving a massive sledgehammer from the earth.
*Whoosh!*
The blade rose. On the ground below, every dead iron structure left behind by the tractor towers and every single person involuntarily rose into the air, floating dozens to over a hundred meters high.
This was not a tractor pull from the Yanxiu flame-decay property like Han Qingyu's; it was simply the raw force of that man's swing wrenching the atmospheric currents.
Fortunately, the old man swung from high enough up; otherwise, the people and objects on the ground might well have been cleaved straight into the ceiling of heaven alongside his blow.
He unleashed the slash.
*Riiip!*
The sound of air tearing like paper rang out, swift and sharp.
Unlike Ne, Chen Buer's strike carried no pretense. As the blade slashed out, a colossal, solid projection of the saber seemed to magnify the Red-Slaying Saber a hundredfold.
Beneath the giant blade, a black fissure extended upward like a bottomless chasm.
"Eh?" Bolasgon grunted in surprise, freezing in place for less than two seconds. Then, blue radiance flared from its entire body once more as if burning its very life force, setting the clouds beneath its blade ablaze like fire.
*Boom!*
The direct collision of energy finally occurred.
At the core of the airburst, vision was completely obscured. Yet Legion Commander Chen Buer, Ne, and Major Qing shot backward out of the blast one after another like kites with severed strings.
Above them, the Puta'er's colossal form was also hurled upward like a thrown boulder, arched back in recoil.
From the shockwave, the massive Snow Lotus warship on the flank was blasted sideways nearly a thousand meters. Throughout it all, not a single person had been able to eject under the crushing pressure.
"What about us?" someone murmured despondently. They had come, yet it seemed they did not belong on this battlefield. No matter how much courage and determination they possessed, nothing could change that fact.
Despondency began to set in among many.
"Turn back," Marshal Hua said. Rusty Sister said it. Wu Xu said it. He Tangtang said it. Several Azure commanders and several Snow Lotus members said it... almost in unison.
"Turn back," Marshal Hua repeated, turning to order Ne's subordinates in the cockpit.
The ship turned back around.
At the same time, high in the air where the atmosphere was still violently churning nearby, three humans and one Great Spike erupted with power once again without exception. Twisting their bodies, they rocketed toward one another to kill.
The tiny contrasted against the colossal, three colliding against one, returning to the original battlefield.
Not a soul spoke.
Decisive and direct—*Boom!*
After yet another violent collision, Major Qing's figure was the first to plummet straight toward the ground.
And then, to everyone's disbelief, Legion Commander Chen's figure came hurtling down directly after. It seemed the rumors were true; he was indeed too frail and exhausted to sustain the fight.
Only Ne remained standing. "It seems that now, I am the strongest among humanity."
The fate of humanity now rested on Ne's shoulders?! Fortunately, the one standing there was in Alice's body; otherwise, the irony of the scene would have been unbearable...
Regardless, the final impending clash would be Ne versus the Puta'er...
No! It was many people.
The moment the Snow Lotus warship swept into the battlefield, hundreds of people inside the cabin ejected simultaneously—Marshal Hua, Wu Xu, Rusty Sister, He Tangtang, Brois...
Dozens of white-robed Snow Lotus devotees, shouting "Great Spike preserve us," slashed their blades forward.
Among them, the spectral shadow of a black dragon beast suddenly materialized...
*Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh-whoosh...*
Blades filled the sky, converging on a single point.
*Boom!*
Chapter 861