A Martian day and night were slightly longer than on Blue Star, rendering military watches partially ineffective, but their accuracy and reliability as high-precision chronometers remained unchanged.
After ending his call with Yang Qingbai, Han Qingyu reached back to the side of his metal case, detached the reinforced watch dial, twisted on the backlight, and checked the time. Rubble and dirt clung to his head, but his voice carried through low-frequency source energy pulses:
"In 4 minutes and 42 seconds, CA117 will pass from southeast to northwest using Boulder H4 as a reference point. He'll try to secure about three seconds of low-altitude flight for us to board."
Measured against the speed of a source energy airship, four minutes and forty-two seconds meant Yang Qingbai and his craft were still far away. Constantly boxed in and pursued on all fronts, his final flight path sweeping across Boulder H4—the designation assigned on the operational map charted once the Expeditionary Force neared Mars—could at best only guarantee a general heading.
Then came those three seconds of low-altitude flight. Considering the dense swarm of Great Spikes on the surface, those would be CA117's most perilous three seconds—and a life-or-death window determining whether Han Qingyu and Pegmont could escape today alive.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
On the surface of Mars, tens of thousands of Great Spikes swung their column swords, chaotically battering the ground. While they had not yet achieved collective resonance, the surface across the entire sector was already sinking inward.
Underground, almost all the horizontal passages had long collapsed and sealed shut. Even the new tunnels dug by Han Qingyu and Pegmont couldn't hold up for half a minute after they passed through.
As for the vertical shafts, though they were caving in as well, their overall state was considerably better. The two moved continuously from one vertical passage to the next, just barely keeping from being buried alive.
"So do you actually know where this Boulder H4 thing is?" Pegmont couldn't help asking amid what felt like aimless wandering.
"Roughly." Han Qingyu wasn't particularly confident either. Before leaping down, he had observed and memorized the major landmarks around the area, but he was hardly a genius in navigation. Being trapped deep underground now, the best he could do was settle for an approximation.
He checked the directional needle on the dial, then closed his eyes and racked his memory for two seconds, three seconds...
"Spirits of heaven, spirits of earth, lend me your grace," Han Qingyu muttered, then pointed decisively. "This way."
Pegmont bought it.
Second by second slipped by. The two pushed swiftly through collapsing horizontal tunnels. As the earth and rock continuously compacted and the older passages caved in, their maneuvering room shrank tighter and tighter.
Finally, "This is it." Han Qingyu stopped and stood upright inside an old vertical shaft.
Pegmont, arriving half a step behind, grumbled and urged him to climb up to make room.
Yet Han Qingyu didn't climb. Instead, he pressed his back flush against the wall of the shaft, tilted his chin upward, and signaled, "You'd better go up first."
"Oh, then... wait, me first?!"
Pegmont was caught off guard. Given their current situation, whoever surfaced first was guaranteed to take the brunt of the onslaught. Factoring in their respective strengths and physical states, the job of breaking through should have fallen to Han Qingyu no matter how one looked at it.
Ignoring Pink Peg's rare display of cold feet and shock, Han Qingyu nodded impassively. "Yeah. You first."
"Wait, shouldn't the best strategy be for you to go up first, unleash Ten Thousand Blades Paying Homage to blast open some breathing room, carve out a foothold, and wait for the opening?"
"The logic is sound, but I can't blast like that anymore. I already used it earlier because I was in a rush to save you. If I do it again, we truly won't have a prayer today."
Han Qingyu was telling the truth. If his Ten Thousand Blades Paying Homage could be unleashed without limit, the Expeditionary Force wouldn't have needed more than a hundred soldiers.
He then began laying out the tactical details: "Our strength isn't that far apart. You tank the first wave for me, and then..."
...
Under the harsh glare of the Martian sun, the grand aerial pursuit involving hundreds of source energy airships raged on across the sky. CA117 was still alive—and had circled back.
This was far more difficult than imagined—far, far harder. As for why Han Qingyu had never once doubted Yang Qingbai's ability from beginning to end? It wasn't born of deep understanding or unshakable trust; it was simply because he didn't know how to pilot an airship himself and had no grasp of what it entailed.
As the fastest craft in human hands, CA117 actually held no advantage in speed; it was merely on par with the Great Spike craft, while the enemy outnumbered it hundreds of times over. Fleeing in a straight line under such conditions was relatively manageable, but the moment one attempted to double back, pursuers would instantly snap at its heels or converge from every direction to cut it off.
Amid the ceaseless, high-speed hurtle... the dark silhouette of Boulder H4 appeared in CA117's observation scope.
At this point, whether the rescue ultimately succeeded or failed, the performance—the aerial miracle—Yang Qingbai pulled off in the Martian sky today would almost certainly never be replicated.
That applied to himself as well; he was unlikely to have a future to replicate it.
Because today, he was probably going to die. No pilot could fly a single human source energy airship and completely shake off the relentless pursuit of more than four hundred Great Spike craft behind them. Not even with Han Qingyu and Pegmont aboard. Not even if the pilot was Yang Qingbai.
If the rescue succeeded, he could do his best during the ensuing flight to engineer an opportunity to drop Han Qingyu, Pegmont, and the others off, hoping their luck held out. But for himself, no such chance existed. If he handed the controls to anyone else on this vessel, CA117 wouldn't survive ten seconds.
"No, talking about dying is far too unromantic. It would break the hearts of hundreds of millions of girls back on Blue Star. It should be said: Major General Yang Qingbai, the greatest pilot in human source energy history, will from this day forth steer his beloved named airship, flying on and on without pause, a journey of no return... straight to the edge of the universe.
"I really should have recorded these lines and sent them back. Pity there's no time."
No one aboard CA117 knew that Major General Yang was thinking such thoughts at this very moment. To onlookers, his face was grim, intensely focused, and composed.
Glancing through the scope again, Yang Qingbai realized that the massive, dragon-like dark formation was not a single monolith as initially assumed. In truth, it consisted of over a hundred rocks, resembling a megalithic circle deliberately arranged according to some design.
"Don't tell me there really are Martians?"
"Whatever."
The scene on the other side of the megalith formation caught Yang Qingbai's eye. It was... a grand, bustling scene of collective labor. At first glance, it looked like tens of thousands of Great Spikes out hoeing the fields together.
"Holy shit."
"I'm here."
The "holy shit" was muttered to himself; the "I'm here" was meant for Qingzi. As for where Han Qingyu and Pegmont were positioned underground or how they planned to board, Yang Qingbai had no idea. All he could do was ensure he skimmed low across that sector precisely at the agreed time, heading, and flight path.
To achieve that, he had to execute a dive, a right turn, and a pull-up over the target. Without decelerating at all, he would rely purely on his turns to keep the airship in that low-altitude pocket for about three seconds.
Chapter 913