Overlooking such a solitary battlefield from high above gave a peculiar sensation, especially when the ground below was an alien wasteland.
Han Qingyu's figure appeared minuscule as he touched down. The terrain itself was vast beyond measure, and the swarms of Great Spikes across the ground were far too towering, and far too many.
Yet the moment he picked a direction and launched into a charge, the spectacle instantly transformed into something magnificent and breathtaking.
This was a one-man assault by the strongest human of the present era.
A battlefield devoid of allies meant he had neither backup nor coordination. At the same time, it meant that as a being transcending the pinnacle of martial prowess, he had no need to hold anything back today. A single point unconstrained by frontlines or formations, he was the ultimate focal detonation.
The speed he unleashed in an instant, for instance, appeared explosive and utterly maddening even when viewed from high in the sky.
It was an absolute straight line.
At the head of that extending line, one could barely make out the tiny silhouette of that single human. Yet along its path, massive bodies of Great Spikes—one after another, by tens, in boundless hordes—were hurled endlessly into the air, crashing down, hurled up, and crashing down again.
Two dead iron straight swords alternated in tandem: one remained gripped in his hand while the other led the charge, tearing through enemies in the spinning posture of the Rusty Sister Dimple Slash.
Two blue-glowing pillar swords hovered in tow like autonomous cruise missiles, striking out relentlessly, blasting into one dense cluster of Great Spikes, then the next...
Man followed blade, piercing straight through the centers of swarm after dense swarm; trailing the pillar swords, he swept across their heads from time to time in midair leaps.
Before long, the scene of the ground battle vanished completely from the ship's rear viewing periscope.
Focusing his mind, Yang Qingbai piloted the craft, attempting to plot a course and find an opening to loop back.
Under the present conditions, turning the CA117 in midair was not excessively difficult, but executing turn after turn... making a full loop to circle back here was monumentally difficult and demanded tremendous maneuvering room.
The "tail" trailing behind it was simply too long and massive, while scattered Great Spike craft continued to launch from the surface at intervals to intercept him.
What was harder still was that the intention to return to this low-altitude airspace could not be detected in advance by the Great Spike fleet. The exact path and timing of the craft's final sweep across this low altitude had to synchronize perfectly with Han Qingyu and Pegmont breaking out.
"The Refusers report that the main fleet has completed landing and is now deploying ground troops," Yang Qingbai relayed the battlefield intelligence.
He ought to have felt joyful and proud because of this.
Yet he did not, for at this moment, the clattering clash of dead iron and the thunderous impacts of bodies poured incessantly into his ear over the communicator.
"If everything goes smoothly, by the time we wrap things up here, they should be done on their end too," Yang Qingbai continued with concern and helplessness in his voice.
Their mission up to this point was not entirely finished. According to Wen Jifei's plan, the fleet would subsequently have a portion of the source energy craft submerge underground to serve as encampments for the soldiers, while another portion would disperse into space in formations to remain hidden on standby.
Neither of those two objectives had been accomplished yet. Therefore, it was best for them to keep stalling for time—the longer they delayed, the better.
The problem was that Qingzi and Pegmont were down on the ground!
For them, longer was definitely not better.
Due to the profound shortcomings of human source energy combatants in terms of defensive resilience and energy endurance, even though both men ranked among humanity's absolute strongest, it remained entirely possible for them to be worn down and killed under a siege of ordinary black armor and blue-sheened Great Spikes... And down there lay not merely an endless sea of black armor and blue-sheened ones, but also a massive contingent of red-shouldered Great Spikes, as well as the presence of Daie.
"All right," Han Qingyu's reply finally came. Pausing for two seconds after crashing through a small cluster of Great Spikes in a dead sprint, he continued, "Can you make it within twenty to thirty minutes?"
In truth, finding Pegmont would not take him anywhere near twenty minutes. If possible, Han Qingyu would have preferred Yang Qingbai to return within ten minutes; given their situation, the longer they lingered on this battlefield, the crushing pressure of being encircled and exterminated would only mount.
Regrettably, that was unrealistic.
With the battlefield split in two, the peril and pressure shouldered by Yang Qingbai and the CA117 were not a fraction less than what the two on the ground faced.
"No problem. Twenty minutes, then—thirty seconds margin of error at most. Watch your chrono and prepare your timing... I'll definitely be there." Having said this, every emotion that had gripped Yang Qingbai—euphoria, agitation, worry, irritation—instantly flattened to zero.
He focused with greater intensity, bracing himself for the challenge.
Deprived of his "firepower configuration," the difficulty and pressure of the trial before him was no lesser than their earlier breakout.
...
The CA117 drew away into the distance. The Great Spike craft pursuing it across the sky seemed not to have noticed Han Qingyu's airdrop; or perhaps they saw it, yet deemed that the ground battle needed no aerial assistance, and thus continued the chase in full force.
From the moment his boots hit the ground and he charged, Han Qingyu had never ceased attacking and sprinting. He did not permit himself to halt for even a single second on this battlefield, for stopping meant he could be rapidly engulfed in layers of encirclement and slaughter.
Framed in that light, Pegmont's current predicament was bound to be far grimmer and far more perilous. Not only did he lack mobility traits or pillar swords to aid his movement, but he had also long run out of source energy blocks and gear.
"Peg!"
"Peg!"
"..."
The Martian atmosphere was thin and conducted sound terribly. Even when reinforced with source energy, Han Qingyu's shouts carried only a limited distance and garnered no response whatsoever.
Perhaps Pegmont had heard and replied, yet lacking any source energy to project his voice, his answers simply could not reach Han Qingyu's ears.
"Of course, it's also possible that bastard has already been hacked to death."
Anxious and frustrated, Han Qingyu had no choice but to repeatedly look for openings mid-combat to leap upward—never lingering in the air, dropping back down after a single glance.
He could not hope to spot Pegmont directly this way, as Great Spikes blanketed the wasteland, surging forward incessantly and smothering the entire area.
All he could observe and deduce from was the gathering behavior of the Great Spikes in any given spot—whether they formed a ring around a location, swung their swords toward a focal point, and so on.
"Holy... shit!"
On his twelfth or thirteenth risky leap, Han Qingyu finally spotted something. He did not see Pegmont himself, but he caught sight of an immense swarm of Great Spikes arrayed in a dense circle, hacking relentlessly toward its center.
That seemed to prove the guy was still alive!
Judging by the look of it, though, he was probably not far from dead.
"Peg!"
"Peg!"
"..."
Charging with all his might toward that swarm, he shouted at the top of his lungs with the aid of source energy.
"...I'm here." At last, a faint response drifted back. Whether voices sounded that way on Mars to begin with or the guy was genuinely on death's door, Han Qingyu could not tell.
"Hang on! Wait for me!" Han Qingyu felt both relief and urgency.
Although he had roughly pinpointed the location, Han Qingyu did not dare use a pillar sword to launch the spare gear over.
The odds of success were low, and he had brought only a single set.
"Duck and cover!" Shouting those words, Han Qingyu came to a deliberate halt for the very first time on this battlefield.
One second.
Two seconds.
Within three seconds, at least eight hundred Great Spikes closed in from all directions in an airtight encirclement, on the verge of submerging Han Qingyu completely.
Yet—"Roar! Howl!"
In the next breath, a colossal burning dragon surged abruptly upward from the midst of the surging, black horde of Great Spikes.
A dragon.
The Yanxiu dragon, rumored to have been lost by Major Qing and acknowledged by his own mouth to have shattered, reappeared after a year's absence—more solid, more stable, roaring to life on the distant battlefield of Mars.
Only, this time, the Little Prince was not present.
This time, no human eyes witnessed it, no voices gasped in awe, no tales were spread.
Only the three to four hundred Great Spikes hurled across the sky, along with their severed limbs and shattered torsos raining through the air, bore witness to this staggering, terrible spectacle.
The burning dragon ascended, roaring.
Explosive slaughter.
Carnage on a grand scale.
Yet the Great Spikes, fearless of death as ever, surged forward to surround and kill him on an even vaster scale and with even greater frenzy.
Among them, red-shouldered Great Spikes began to appear. (They seemed to have originally been amassed elsewhere, which was why they had only just arrived, and so far only a fraction of their number had reached the scene.)
Boom! The ultimate detonation of source energy tore forth with a lingering, muffled roar.
Next came the whistling screech of a storm of dead iron cutting through the air...
From all directions, the dense swarms of Great Spikes continued to pounce.
And then, the Great Spikes behind Han Qingyu began falling in swathes like wheat before the scythe...
Sweeping over them was an airborne river.
A river formed of the pillar swords and shattered armor fragments stripped from every dead Great Spike littering the battlefield behind him.
That river flew suspended through the air.
Because its velocity was blinding, one could not make out the individual objects within it; only overlapping blurs of streaming shadows could be seen, making it look exceedingly like a rushing, turbid torrent.
Once, on the Antarctic battlefield, Major Qing had conjured the miracle of ten thousand blades paying homage; this was a scaled-down incarnation of that feat.
The "surging river" blasted open the blockade along its entire path, hewing down a carpet of Great Spike corpses and mangled limbs...
Driving onward, it smashed through swarm after swarm of Great Spikes...
And finally, crashing in from behind, it plunged into the immense swarm besieging and attacking Pegmont.
Carving in.
Piercing clean through.
Cutting straight across the center.
Cleaving out the other side...
Its dying echoes faded, yet the gale whistled onward.
Han Qingyu arrived in the wake of that metallic torrent, a battleblade in his left hand and a set of source energy gear clutched in his right, standing dead center in the cleared clearing of the encirclement.
Here lay the shattered remains of Great Spike corpses across the ground, along with nearly a thousand living Great Spikes still pouncing toward him...
"Peg..."
Where was he?
Where was Pegmont?
He was supposed to be right here!
No, he was definitely here, without a doubt.
Unless...
"Qingzi, what's happening over there? You okay?" Hearing that massive howling roar and Han Qingyu's shout for Peg, Yang Qingbai couldn't help asking.
Qingzi did not reply immediately.
"What's wrong? Qingzi, are you all right? Did you find that bastard Pegmont?" he pressed anxiously.
"Yeah," Han Qingyu grunted. He had indeed found the place... Then, in a complicated tone, he added, "Though... I might have just hacked him into pieces."
Chapter 911