It was precisely because nobody had any answers left.
A towering pillar holding up the heavens was about to collapse, and though the world had ten thousand hands, not one could prop it back up. He was invincible under the heavens... yet on earth there was no medicine, and no one could heal him.
This was Xu Xiaohong's superstition, and the superstition of all people across the world.
Or perhaps the Chief of Staff was not truly superstitious; he was simply using this mocking, playful way to cruelly remind his old comrade:
"You can't die yet. This world cannot, will not, permit Chen Buer to die."
This stubborn Huaxian peasant, invincible under the heavens, had shouldered the world for more than forty years. Now, before their very eyes, he was on the verge of collapsing under the weight.
Chen Buer knew this better than anyone else. That was why he had struck that slash at the South Pole last year—a strike that should never have been made. The reason behind that slash had not been sentiment. A man carrying the hope of an entire species on his shoulders could not afford the luxury of personal affection; it had been his wager on the future of humanity.
If the weight determining humanity's ultimate fate had once rested solely on Chen Buer's shoulders, then now, with the eventual arrival of what Azure historians called the "New Yanxiu Era"... the old man had made his choice first.
Yet even with the wager placed... his hands could not yet leave the table.
"I only hope he can give this world a little more time, and that fate will grant this world a little more time as well."
Finishing his thoughts, Xu Xiaohong turned back, casually shutting the courtyard gate and the room's doors. Then, before a certain person's incense-shrouded altar, he set down a low table.
Atop the table sat warm wine and small side dishes.
"Tsk." Raising his cup in tribute to the "god," Xu Xiaohong downed a cup of hot home-brewed rice wine. He chuckled smugly, set the cup down with a light clack, and said:
"Immortal Chen bless us, the world has seen seven months of peace."
"Oh, wait, no. It just hit me—calling you the God of Satiety might be more fitting."
When Xu Xiaohong reached this point, the deity atop the altar flared with anger, puffing hard through his nostrils like a bellows fanning sparks.
The Chief of Staff paid him no mind, pouring another cup of wine and continuing:
"Just look at your name. Back then, your parents probably hoped and prayed for nothing more than for you to have enough food to eat. Yet once you were full, with nothing better to do, you went and made yourself invincible under heaven."
…………
After the battle at the South Pole last year, Azure appeared prosperous and at its zenith on the surface, brimming with hope and vitality. In truth, however, the entire human world remained in an extremely weak and perilous state.
In the period that followed, to say nothing of Miwang and the main Great Spike force, if even a single Puta'er appeared, humanity would have absolutely no power left to resist.
In the face of time, the survival of the species could almost only rely on the favor of fate.
And fate, it seemed, truly did favor humanity in the end.
Since the battle at the South Pole, the world had gone seven consecutive months without suffering any direct invasion or threat. Meanwhile, the new-generation geniuses who embodied hope for the future were growing at a speed previously unimaginable.
As batch after batch of Yanxiu successors were discovered and nurtured, if humanity could just find the remains...
Yet Azure and experts across the globe had already combed through nearly every place on Blue Star within their reach during this time.
The outcome remained empty-handed.
Two more months of peaceful, undisturbed time passed under fate's favor.
Two months were more than enough for Liaison Officer Yang, sent by Azure, to establish a distinct personal image within Stream Blades. To be specific:
[Can't get enough to eat, can't get anything done.]
"Tell me, how can this Liaison Officer Yang from Azure act like she hasn't eaten in her entire life? She isn't fat at all, but she eats like a horse!"
In the kitchen, a young cook chopped vegetables while keeping an eye on the soup, grumbling indignantly.
He simply couldn't understand it. She was just someone from Azure—since when had Stream Blades treated people from Azure with such hospitality? Seeing how greedy she was for food, they had actually assigned a dedicated team to whip up two lavish tablefuls of dishes for her lunch and dinner each day, and even breakfast came with a choice of over a dozen varieties.
"No kidding," the veteran chef tossing a wok beside him agreed, sighing toward the ceiling. "The key is that the girl is thick-skinned and acts like she's everyone's old friend. Heh, she actually orders specific dishes, and switches up what she orders every single day."
"All the major Huaxian regional cuisines, plus French, Italian, Mexican, Turkish... she's already cycled through nearly two rounds of them all."
"Yeah, exactly! So when we were clearing the table after dinner yesterday, do you know what she suddenly asked me?"
"What?"
"She asked me if we could make the Manchu-Han Imperial Feast."
"...Oh, to hell with her! This is Stream Blades, the kitchen of the world's strongest legion! Does she think this is the number one restaurant under heaven?!"
The cooking ladle struck the bottom of the wok in fury. Grumbling and cursing, the kitchen staff looked out through the window toward a training ground in the distance.
Over there, a certain shameless Azure liaison officer was preparing to spar with the Little Prince.
They had heard early on that this Major General Yang possessed super combat power. When she first arrived, she had indeed been brimming with pride, picking Major Qing as her very first sparring partner.
Later, she switched to Wu Xu.
Then He Tangtang, Theodore... the other super combatants of Stream Blades.
"Today, she's completely abandoned all shame."
"Yeah, moved on to bullying a top-tier."
"Go get 'er, Little Prince! Beat that fake super-tier!..." shouted the indignant cooks in the kitchen, echoing the shouts of the Stream Blades soldiers spectating outside.
Amid the roaring crowd, the Little Prince, fully geared up, edged nervously toward Han Qingyu. "Qingzi."
"Hmm?" Han Qingyu turned his head.
"What's the deal with her? How come she can't beat anyone?" the Little Prince asked, half suspicious and half worried. "She wouldn't be playing weak on purpose, bottling up her strength just to beat me up, would she? Technically, I didn't bully her back then as much as you guys did."
"Still plenty enough," Han Qingyu replied. But before he could finish—
"No," Wu Xu spoke up, an unusual occurrence.
Wu Xu was as trustworthy as they came. The Little Prince turned to him at once. "Then what is it...?"
"She's afraid of blades," Wu Xu said.
"Afraid of blades?!"
"Yeah, because she no longer has her iron armor. In truth, she has never faced blades or battle in her own physical body," Han Qingyu explained, a thoughtful look in his eyes.
"Understood... Kill!" The Little Prince muttered the first half with a grin, before suddenly turning ferocious and fearless in the second half. With a roar, his source energy surged, and he charged forward with blade raised.
It had been a very long time since he had won against anyone.
…………
"Kill!" On the Martian battlefield, Pegmont let out a valiant roar as he fought his way out of an encirclement of over a thousand Great Spikes, bolting away without glancing back.
Out here, running away—even for someone who considered himself among the top four of humanity—held no shame when turning on his heels against enemies. After all, nobody was around to see it.
"Besides, I really am too weak right now."
Having finally shaken off the Great Spikes' pursuit and encirclement, Pegmont kept running, deep in thought, when something suddenly felt off.
"Aside from those first four months, it's been almost five months since these stupid bastards ganged up to hunt me down like this."
"And their fighting spirit was so resolute."
"Plus, how did they manage to assemble so many Great Spikes all at once today?"
Pegmont stopped, standing atop the ridge of a low hill. He turned his head to look back with puzzled eyes. "Could there be something over there that they can't let me find?"
This was an area Pegmont had never visited before. There were two reasons he hadn't come:
First, it was too far from his lair; second, the surrounding grounds near his lair had never lacked hunting spots.
And the reason Pegmont had run all the way out here today was that:
After two months of scientific thinking and analysis, he had finally determined that his communicator probably wasn't broken. (Because if he disassembled it to check whether it was broken, he definitely wouldn't be able to put it back together—so Pegmont had no choice but to conclude it wasn't broken.)
Since the communicator wasn't broken, Pegmont could only suspect that something in the area where he had been staying was jamming the communication signal.
So, he had decided to try a different location...
As it turned out, no sooner had he arrived in this area than a sudden horde of Great Spikes encircled him before he could even place a call. To conserve source energy blocks, Pegmont hadn't lingered in battle, opting instead to break out immediately.
But now...
"No way. I've got to go back and take a look."
"I'll wait until dark."
In the latest edition of Elementary Source Energy World General Knowledge, currently in universal use across Blue Star, there was a passage that read: A Great Spike's vision is unaffected by darkness, so whether combat takes place during the day or at night makes little difference to them.
Pegmont was an adult, so naturally, he had no need to know things that only elementary schoolers understood.
Chapter 874