Is There Really Any Hope for Humanity's Future? (Part 1)

Yang Qingbai: "..." His momentary speechlessness was not because Pegmont had died so abruptly and unexpectedly. In truth, given how he had always perceived these freaks, Yang Qingbai hadn't truly accepted or believed the premise that Pegmont was dead—that Qingzi had accidentally hacked him to death. He simply found the way things were unfolding utterly absurd and baffling, not to mention a little depressing. If those two bastards really were the hope of humanity's future, was there truly any hope left for mankind? Then again, there wasn't the slightest hint of a joke in Han Qingyu's voice. The possibility he spoke of genuinely existed. After all, this was a Pegmont who possessed neither gear nor source energy blocks, and who had already been fighting on the brink of death. By all logic, it should have been completely impossible for him to withstand that onslaught just now. And Han Qingyu had obviously known that. Yet because his subconscious mind had long harbored a deep-rooted impression of Pegmont's sheer strength, he had been careless the moment he decided to strike. Only realizing it now... seemed to be too late. "I'll arrive on schedule. Watch your timer, keep comms open, and give me your coordinates when the time comes," Yang Qingbai finally spoke. He didn't waste time debating whether Pegmont was alive or dead, choosing instead to simply continue doing what he had to do, assuring Han Qingyu that he would follow the agreed plan. This time, there was no reply from Han Qingyu's end. Or perhaps he had replied, only for his voice to be promptly swallowed by the renewed clashes and violent cacophony of battle. The Great Spikes on the battlefield would never halt their assault. After that torrential river of dead iron swept past, they had merely paused in collective bewilderment for a single instant before launching into another wave of slaughter. Even though that extraordinary attack had brutally plowed a five-hundred-meter path of corpses through the dense swarm and inflicted catastrophic casualties, the nearly one thousand surviving Great Spikes flanking the area pressed their siege forward without pause. At the same time, some of the remnants among them who had come from Blue Star—having just relived that Antarctica nightmare in the flesh—finally recognized with absolute certainty who this human standing before them was. Word spread rapidly through the swarm. ... From high above, the entire vast wasteland was blanketed by swarms of Great Spikes. Converging from every direction like dozens, even hundreds of stampeding herds of wild horses, they charged frantically toward the battlefield. At this rate, Han Qingyu being trapped in a siege of ten thousand Great Spikes seemed only a matter of time. More and more Red Shoulders began to appear within the enemy ranks as well... Han Qingyu gradually began to feel the strain, spending most of his effort parrying and dodging. He had just unleashed an ultimate move. While its scale was nowhere near as magnificent as the one in Antarctica—and that Yanxiu had long since been fused into an integral part of him—the consumption required for mass-scale dead iron traction remained enormous, inevitably dampening his subsequent combat strength for a time. Strictly speaking, had he not been desperate to rescue Pegmont, Han Qingyu never should have, and never would have, chosen to do such a thing while surrounded by a host of ten thousand. Precisely because Pegmont's situation had been so critical, he had gone all out—no, he had taken a reckless gamble, throwing everything he had into a desperate rescue. And in the end, Han Qingyu's heedless rescue... had ended up saving Pegmont straight into the grave. Just thinking about it was heartbreaking. That bastard had resolutely fought alone on Mars for over a year in such an isolated, helpless state. Despite having gone so long without gear or source energy blocks in an environment crawling with Martian Great Spikes, he had stubbornly survived. At long last, reinforcements arrived, bringing the light of hope. So he had happily popped out to say hello... only to be blasted into oblivion by a super move from his own reinforcements. "..." Han Qingyu found it difficult to describe how he felt right now. For the most part, he hadn't fully accepted that he had chopped Pegmont to pieces, but he genuinely couldn't think of any other explanation. His emotions still hovered on the precipice of agony, like knuckles clinging to the edge of a cliff... despairing, yet not entirely letting go. The battlefield was deteriorating, and objectively speaking, Han Qingyu ought to leave this place immediately. He needed to fight on the move just as he had earlier to prevent the battle from becoming anchored. If he lingered any longer, his escape routes would soon be sealed off, making a breakout increasingly difficult until he was eventually worn down and killed right here. Yet despite that reasoning in his head, his actual actions kept him drifting and circling within this very area... *Pegmont's blade? Maybe it was swept away by the river of dead iron.* *Tattered clothes... Shreds of flesh?* Han Qingyu thought he ought to see something, at least, but there was nothing. The situation grew increasingly dire; Han Qingyu had to go. Glancing back one final time and still finding nothing, he twisted his body with force, preparing to carve a bloody path out to survive... *I'm sorry, Pegmont,* he thought. "Here! Here!" A sudden shout came from behind him. Han Qingyu froze for an instant, stepped back to deflect a barrage of thrusting pillar swords, and whipped his head around... Nothing! "Here! Here! Hurry!" Along with the voice, a cloud of sand and dirt suddenly erupted from beneath the feet of a Great Spike group on the opposite side. Han Qingyu finally understood. *No wonder the ground here was so severely pitted, as if it had been bombed out!* *I actually thought it was just the natural terrain of Mars!* *No wonder he could survive for so long under siege by so many Great Spikes without gear or source energy blocks...* The very next second, with a fierce roar of energy, Han Qingyu didn't hesitate in the slightest. His source energy erupted instantly as he launched himself horizontally through the air, gripping a pillar sword before him with both hands. Spinning furiously, he breached their lines, plunging straight into the dense pack of Great Spikes on his flank. Then, amidst their formation, he dropped straight down like a plummeting stone, plunging directly into the hole in the ground. He decided to trust Pegmont. After all, aside from hacking things down, he had no better ideas himself. Even more so because Legion Commander Pegmont was undoubtedly the old horse who knew the way here, possessing a wealth of guerrilla warfare experience against Great Spikes on Mars that surpassed all of humanity... Then, very quickly, Major Qing realized he was wrong. ... The underground tunnels branched out in all directions... Saying so wasn't entirely incorrect, except that they were mostly deep. The deepest section reached down at least four hundred meters, so when Han Qingyu tumbled down just now, he had slid continuously downward, sliding and sliding... to the point he almost wondered if Mars was actually hollow. Furthermore, while there were quite a few crisscrossing subterranean passages, they were all clustered within a relatively modest perimeter, with very little horizontal expansion. This meant that it was utterly impossible for Han Qingyu and Pegmont to use these tunnels to leave the battlefield. They couldn't even get past the area where the Great Spikes were currently massing above. "You could try digging your way out. Aren't you Major The Qing? You're so strong, you ought to dig tunnels pretty fast too. Hey, erupt your source energy and start digging!" Pegmont offered this sincere suggestion. At that moment, Han Qingyu was indeed shoveling dirt. But he didn't dare erupt his source energy to dig as Pegmont suggested, fearing that doing so would cause the entire place to collapse instantly. Meanwhile, Pegmont lay sprawled not far behind him like an incorrigible chatterbox, constantly striking up conversations, rambling on without a second's pause about matters important and trivial alike... The fellow had probably gone far too long without speaking to another human being. Han Qingyu had no time to entertain him for now. He was obediently digging not because he thought they actually had enough time to tunnel their way out, but because he was currently jammed tight in a dead end. To ensure structural support and maintain durability, Pegmont had dug all these underground tunnels exceedingly narrow, just wide enough for a person to slide through ramrod-straight, moving like an earthworm. Han Qingyu had no choice but to first excavate enough space to sit up, and only then could he dig upward so they could burst back onto the surface later. If they didn't get out, they were going to die. Right now, discordant booms from the surface were reverberating downward into the earth in continuous shockwaves. The ground shook incessantly, showering dirt and rock from above. A large number of tunnels were beginning to cave in or get packed shut, especially the sections near the surface. It was likely that the Great Spikes had already sheared off an entire layer of the ground... If this continued, once those idiot Great Spikes on the surface wised up, or once a Daie arrived to take overall command and had them all strike together to create resonance... this subterranean world where Pegmont had lived for nearly two months would collapse entirely in a matter of seconds. Then the two of them would be buried beneath, pounded through the earth by ten thousand Great Spikes on the surface... pounded over and over until they were dead. *Hiss... crackle...* "Qingzi, Qingzi, can you hear me?" One had to admire Azure; the battlefield communicators specially developed for this Mars Expedition were remarkably robust. Even deep underground, Han Qingyu still picked up Yang Qingbai's intermittent transmission. "Why aren't you answering... How are things over there?!" Yang Qingbai's voice began to take on a panicked edge. "Hang in there, Qingzi, I'm almost there!" "Yang? Where are you?" Pegmont, whose Chinese wasn't very good, crawled over and reached out a hand to snatch the communicator. With his other hand, he squirmed and maneuvered frantically in the cramped space, strapping on the source energy maneuver gear that Han Qingyu had brought him. *Pegmont?* Yang Qingbai had no time for joy or excitement. Pausing for a split second, he said directly, "I'm in the sky. Where's Qingzi?" "Really? I'm underground, more than four hundred meters beneath the battlefield. Han Qingyu is here too. He's digging dirt right now while I put on the gear. We're planning to dig our way straight out..." Accompanying his words were the ceaseless rumbles and heavy tremors of the earth, stone and soil raining down in sheets. "..." Yang Qingbai tried to picture it: humanity's two greatest hopes, currently huddled together four hundred meters underground, pinned down and bombarded by over ten thousand Great Spikes above. Why did they go underground? How the hell did they end up underground? "Can you two actually dig your way out?" he asked tentatively. "No," Han Qingyu's voice cut in from the other end before Pegmont could speak.