*Click.*
At the entrance of the Doomsday Great Wall's briefing room, Ashleia captured this photograph: Major The Qing and Major General Yang Qingbai, side by side to the left and right, walking toward the vessel's ejection hatch with their backs to the camera.
This would undoubtedly be a magnificent photograph. It possessed the cinematic texture of a sci-fi war film, layered with a surging undercurrent of fearlessness and hot-blooded resolve beneath an understated frame—*Though an army stands against me, I shall go.*
Yet simply recording this moment was clearly not enough to satisfy the lady journalist.
Granted clearance to document every development of the Martian battlefield, Ashleia had followed them here and remained stationed right outside the briefing room door all along. As such, she already knew what was about to unfold.
It would be an unprecedented, legendary flight in the entire history of humanity's source energy warfare.
A lonely, fearless dogfight: one against two hundred.
Beneath the skies of Mars, at least two hundred Great Spike craft were fanning out in an arc, conducting a sweeping search. Backed by the twin advantages of overwhelming numbers and superior performance, they held undisputed air superiority over this expanse—even the absolute authority to slaughter everything that flew.
Yet soon, another large human source energy vessel would emerge beneath these skies that belonged to them... cruising solo.
...
Unfortunately, Ashleia would not be able to capture that scene. Neither her equipment nor the technical constraints permitted it, and there was simply no time left.
By now, the fleet had already begun its detour.
Once the CA117 arrived, the Doomsday Great Wall would depart alongside the fleet under the control of its copilot. Across the vast sky that remained, only forty miniature exploration craft and that large human source energy vessel christened Wings of the Dragon would charge head-on toward the swarm of Great Spike ships.
No one had anticipated that this extraterrestrial war, upon which the fate of the human race hung, would be inaugurated in such a manner, by them.
"Please deploy a battlefield observation craft specifically to record that scene," Ashleia urged in a final message transmitted to the fleet's Refuser vessel via her special privileges as an expedition recorder. "Otherwise, we will surely regret it afterward. All of humanity will regret it. History itself will regret it."
Naturally, that human craft could not possibly win. But it—and they—would undoubtedly punch through the enemy host and return alive. Ashleia believed this with fanatic conviction, for she had witnessed far too many miracles worked by that man.
"Never mind that he's always doing dangerous things—Major Qing is actually terrified of dying, you know. Would you believe it?" Ashleia still remembered how, many years ago, Yin Caixin had asked her that very question.
Ashleia believed it. She had seen him march into battle, yet she believed his fear of death.
*Perhaps this is the Major Qing the world never truly knows. Armed with the fiercest will to live, he lunges toward the battlefields closest to death... and has always done so.*
...
"Exploration craft in position. Commencing observation and recording." Amid the Refusers' reply, an exploration drone appeared high in the flanking airspace, its fuselage banking slowly downward.
Almost simultaneously, a transmission sounded: "CA117 in position, escorting on the starboard side. Ejection hatch open." "Repeat: CA117 in position, escorting on the starboard side. Ejection hatch open."
"Maintain position," Yang Qingbai replied.
Then, *whoosh, whoosh!* Following two soft thuds from the dorsal ejection hatch, the Doomsday Great Wall banked hard and accelerated away, pulling back in an instant.
It left the two figures appearing as if suspended midair out of nothingness.
In the feed of the high-altitude exploration drone, framed against an endless blue-black void dotted with sparse starlight, Major Qing's figure appeared first. He seemed to stand on empty air for a fleeting second before Yang Qingbai leaped up after him.
*Whoosh!* Source energy detonated midair. As Major Qing soared sideways, he reached out to snatch Yang Qingbai by the collar...
He failed, because Yang Qingbai's spacesuit didn't have a collar.
So Major Qing shifted his grip, hooking his fingers under the lower rim of the transparent helmet visor from behind.
Like dragging an unwieldy giant fish he couldn't quite wrap his arms around, he hauled Yang Qingbai across more than three hundred meters of empty void in under two seconds...
...landing atop the hull of the CA117.
"Back there, would it have killed you to hold me properly, maybe put your arm around my waist?" Yang Qingbai looked up, his eyes mournful and his tone exasperated.
"Yes." *Like hell I'm flying off into the sunset with you,* Han Qingyu thought, chuckling. Then, he shoved Yang Qingbai straight into the open ejection hatch of the CA117.
"What are you doing? Holy shit, screw you, Han Qingyu—"
"You'll be fine, it won't kill you," Han Qingyu said, patting the spacesuit. "This gear is tough."
"...*Thud!*"
"You're not coming down at all?!" Yang Qingbai shouted, scrambling to his feet and craning his neck upward.
"Nope," Han Qingyu replied over the communicator. He hauled the hatch shut with raw muscle, glanced ahead, and slowly sat down.
In the broader view, the massive human source energy fleet was arcing away to the right, retreating into the distance, leaving only one large source energy vessel shaped closely like a human fighter jet holding steady on its original flight path.
Because of the colossal disparity in size, the forty exploration craft were barely discernible in the video feed, to say nothing of the tiny human figure sitting atop the warship's hull.
Han Qingyu's four weapons remained strapped to his back. In addition to his weapons and the gear he wore, he carried a second set—a 10th-generation source energy three-dimensional maneuver gear designed exclusively for super combatants. What was more, its metal canister was crammed full of the latest, highly concentrated super source energy blocks.
"Say, do you think that Pegmont bastard might actually stand right up and wave at us?" Standing before the ship's control console, Yang Qingbai was his usual confident self. Operating in his supreme element, his mood and tone became exceptionally relaxed and composed.
"Who knows?" Han Qingyu chuckled.
Reason dictated the odds were slim, since doing so would be reckless and utterly idiotic... Yet he had brought along an extra set of gear anyway, because reckless and idiotic happened to be two things Pegmont excelled at.
"Well then, let's roll."
As Yang Qingbai spoke, the high-altitude feed captured the CA117 suddenly executing several sharp lateral rolls despite its massive bulk, its wings tilting up and down.
It looked as though it were trying to shake Major Qing off its roof.
Or perhaps it was merely Major General Yang Qingbai's warm-up routine.
Or perhaps, it was a greeting to the Martian Great Spike fleet they were about to collide with.
Immediately after, the CA117 raised its stern, pitched its nose downward, and detonated into acceleration with a thunderous *boom*, streaking toward Mars like a shooting star.
It was diving beneath Mars's atmospheric canopy to ignite this battle, drawing the Great Spike armada's undivided attention. Only then would the detouring main fleet stay concealed and safe.
In the Martian sky, the two hundred Great Spike ships fanning out in an arc were pitching upward, nearing the threshold where they would breach the canopy.
*BOOM—ROAR!*
Suddenly, a colossal detonation rang out—resembling a sonic boom, yet far surpassing one.
Amid the expanding roar, the clouds rolled outward like surging waves, revealing a gaping, billowing vortex.
A large human source energy vessel plunged straight down through that breach.
At least twenty to thirty Great Spike craft in the immediate vicinity were drawn in instantly. Through source energy fluctuations, they had already detected an incoming enemy vessel diving toward them; catching sight of it now, they swarmed forward in an aggressive pincer.
And as the forty exploration craft broke through the atmospheric canopy in scattered succession, darting out from the clouds, still more Great Spike craft were lured away.
The Martian air war had begun.
Amid the chaos, exploration drones were shattered one after another in direct collisions, disintegrating in midair with a series of subdued, continuous detonations.
The CA117 maintained a straight downward trajectory, pushing its acceleration to the absolute limit. In a single plunge, it dropped several thousand meters, causing the Great Spike ships converging from both flanks to grasp at empty air.
Now, the CA117 was closer to the ground than the Great Spike fleet. That forced them to turn back...
To ensure this, Yang Qingbai finally pulled up the nose, leveling the craft to hover in midair for a brief moment—waiting until even more Great Spike warships turned downward, hurtling toward him.
Chapter 907