No one was permitted any hesitation or sentimentality on the battlefield. This was Han Qingyu's ironclad rule, and thus the ironclad rule of Stream Blades.
And they had always lived by it themselves, ever since the bloody battle in the Myanmar gorge all those years ago.
At its core, such an ironclad rule was rooted in trust—absolute trust. Trust that your comrade could pull off his part, so you had to carry out yours to the fullest so his efforts wouldn't be wasted; trust that even if he ultimately failed, he would never want to become a pointless drag or cause useless sacrifices.
Carving an undulating arc, CA117 had already begun banking right and pulling up.
At the speed of a source energy airship and according to the calculated timetable, it would exit the low-altitude boarding envelope for Han Qingyu and Pegmont within 1.5 seconds, and its entire remaining time in the sector would not exceed three seconds.
The situation at that precise instant:
On the ground, at least a hundred Red Shoulders had already reacted. Leading more than two thousand perimeter Black Armors and blue-sheened Great Spikes, they sprang into motion, poising their column swords to launch an assault on the airborne target.
The slightest hesitation from CA117 would seal its doom.
Pegmont was still airborne, but under the relentless barrage from below, his body had lost the momentum to advance or climb any further.
Pulling his gaze back from CA117, he braced himself to fight—to vault backward, drop down to Han Qingyu's position, and wage one last battle alongside the bastard who had annoyed him for years.
Han Qingyu was trapped deep within the dense horde of Great Spikes, fighting with strained exertion, seemingly with no chance of carving through this army of ten thousand in time.
The Great Spikes were simply too numerous and too densely packed, wedged into that cramped combat pocket. Not only were the living Spikes attacking him, but the piled corpses of the slain blocked his way, gradually leaving him without even enough room to swing his blades.
Today's rescue had proven far harder than anticipated. An unexpected factor had caught Han Qingyu off guard—not their descent underground, but the transformation that had overtaken Pegmont over the past year.
How could one describe this shift? Han Qingyu had asked himself that while subterranean, and the conclusion he reached was that Pegmont had become more like a real human being.
This pink-haired freak, who had never seemed quite right in the head, had spent a whole year fighting and surviving alone in an alien land, far from his own kind, only to end up closer to a normal human. He was no longer blindly, irrationally confident as before; he felt fear, even helplessness, and unconsciously relied on and yearned for help.
Han Qingyu could hardly criticize him or feel disappointed. No other individual in the entirety of the human race had ever lived through what Pegmont endured this past year. Above all, Pegmont had always been human deep down; otherwise, he never would have persevered as one through solitary despair, fighting on and holding out hope for so long.
Yet this turned what was meant to be an explosive double-spearhead charge by humanity's two stars of hope into a situation where Han Qingyu had to shoulder far more of the burden alone...
"Looks like we won't be boarding," Pegmont said, lips parting in a faint smile as he leaped back through the air. In that rare smile lingered a sense of relief after prolonged struggle.
Mid-vault, he parried an incoming column sword with his blade in both hands and opened his mouth toward Han Qingyu.
The sentence had formed in his mind, but he only had time to get out the first syllable.
Below, Han Qingyu suddenly jerked his head up. "Catch it!"
Even as the words left his mouth, a streak of blue light shot out from the swarm on the ground, arcing diagonally upward toward the distant CA117.
Pegmont caught it. He hadn't had time to think, nor had it crossed his mind that he might fail to grasp the column sword.
The blue streak shot like lightning, hurtling him toward the airship.
*What about you?* he suddenly wanted to ask, wanted to look back, but in the realm of source energy combat, there was no time for such motions.
All he heard was a deafening *boom!*
Amid the explosive concussive blast, a ring of Great Spikes was hurled backward. Han Qingyu's figure vaulted straight out of the dense horde, appearing in midair.
Then, with a shrill *whoosh*, his body shot forward in rapid pursuit, pulled along by his tether to the column sword.
Mutual tethering between man and column sword was Han Qingyu's unique exploit. Naturally, it still required an anchor point and drained substantial energy; otherwise, with two column swords in hand, wouldn't he be able to fly straight to the heavens?
At that moment, CA117 had not yet reached a safe altitude.
Han Qingyu's blue-glowing column sword pulled the two toward the ship. Simultaneously, thousands of column swords from below—especially over a hundred blue-glowing blades hurled by the Red Shoulders—swarmed like locusts toward CA117...
Whether they struck or missed hung by a hair.
"..." When the moment came to act, there was no time to speak, and Han Qingyu didn't try. In the middle of raising his blade and spinning around, he simply shot Pegmont a glance.
As a fighter who had once stood on equal footing and possessed comparable battle experience, Pegmont understood instantly. The moment he caught the look, he let go of the column sword, drew his blade, and spun around as well.
At that exact moment, thousands of column swords shot up from below.
Han Qingyu whirled midair, erupting with full strength, and slashed downward into the empty air.
Pegmont whirled midair, erupting with super-ability, and slashed downward into the empty air.
*Hum!* Two continuous reverberations of pure energy overlapped into a single sound.
No one knew what had flashed through Pegmont's mind in that split second, but his strike speed had matched, and the effect of his slash appeared almost simultaneously without flaw.
With the long-awaited combined slash from humanity's two greatest hopes... two circular, planar energy barriers, nearly identical in size, mirroring and gleaming with condensed radiant flow, swiftly formed and overlapped in midair.
*Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud...*
Beneath the mirrored planes, thousands of Great Spike column swords were brought to a grinding halt.
After a heartbeat of deadlock, *boom!* The condensed energy detonated.
Thousands of column swords rained down.
At the same time, Han Qingyu and Pegmont coughed blood as the shockwave blasted them upward, hurling them into the turbulent wake of source energy along CA117's flank, where they caught their footing.
CA117 finally completed its climb and shot off into the distance.
...
Han Qingyu and Pegmont were back, stepping from the ship's exterior into the cabin.
Just seconds earlier, the crew had been cheering wildly over their sublime coordinated combat and triumphant boarding. Now their clapping hands froze in midair, their cheers dying in their throats. They stood in stunned silence, watching the two disheveled figures trudge wordlessly toward the ship's source energy reserve compartment, where they plunked down side by side amidst the piles of source energy...
"Wh-what is this...?"
Before a hundred dazed stares, nearly half a hold's worth of source energy blocks "melted" like icebergs under a blazing sun, flowing like water into Han Qingyu and Pegmont until it vanished into them.
"Felt pretty easy, huh?" Pegmont said, leaning his head against the wall of source energy blocks, acting as if he hadn't just looked completely out of his depth.
"Yeah," Han Qingyu grunted with a nod.
They were replenishing source energy—not into the metal cases on their backs, but into their very bodies. While conceptually simple enough, the sheer volume and speed of their consumption was still staggering.
Besides, the airship's propulsion reserves were practically being "devoured." What were they supposed to do now?
Throughout all of this, Yang Qingbai remained quietly at the helm. He neither celebrated nor offered a greeting, focusing entirely on piloting the ship in their continued flight.
In between, he tried once more to figure out an angle, but still couldn't see any possibility of making it out alive today, so he stopped dwelling on it.
To this moment, the fact that Yang Qingbai, as the pilot of CA117, could never return today remained a realization known only to him.
He didn't mention it, nor did he have time for self-pity or theatrical heroism.
He was simply preparing himself, waiting until Qingzi and Pegmont recovered, to calmly discuss finding a suitable time and place to drop them off first.
*Clack...* From the other end came the sound of the communicator being lifted.
"Qingbai?" Han Qingyu's voice came through, sounding casually offhand as though he were just checking in to say they were fine.
Before Yang Qingbai could reply,
"By the way, I know where their tractor field is," Pegmont piped up beside him, sounding rather excited. "How about it—let's go blow it to pieces!"
The meaning of those words... was he suggesting that right now, just like this, with one airship and just him and Han Qingyu, they go hit the tractor field head-on?!
Yang Qingbai was dumbstruck.
Even Han Qingyu seemed to freeze for a moment, not replying immediately.
"Well? We can just do what we did back there," Pegmont pressed, proving that Yang Qingbai and Han Qingyu hadn't misunderstood him in the slightest.
"Are we doing it? Before they finish massing their defenses—plus, a huge batch just came out to hunt us down."
Pegmont chattered on eagerly. At this moment, he still looked every bit the half-naked Martian wildman, but that spark of blind, ignorant, arrogant swagger seemed to be rushing back into his eyes.
*No! Hell no!* Without a second thought or weighing the options, Yang Qingbai rejected the idea frantically in his mind. It was far too reckless, too disturbing, completely devoid of reason—he could never agree to this.
Those two guys... they were the two great hopes tied to humanity's future!
Just moments ago, their rash impulse had nearly cost them everything, and they had barely made it back alive... The future of mankind rested on their shoulders.
The confidential directive issued by the Azure high command had made it clear: in the event of defeat, even if the entire expeditionary force had to be sacrificed, every effort had to be made to keep those two alive...
Yet, "Why not?" Han Qingyu's voice drifted through the communicator—flat, unhurried, neither warm nor cold.
He had decided to do it. It wasn't an impulse, but a calculated conclusion.
It had always been like this. The more dangerous the task, the more absurd and illogical the proposition, the more Han Qingyu preferred and fell back into this "dead fish" tone to lay down an unalterable final decision.
"..." Yang Qingbai suffered a second of agonizing, helpless hesitation.
If this was how they acted, was there really any hope left for humanity's future?
Whatever. He was exhausted. If they were going to do it, then so be it.
They could go wherever they wanted. After all, he was just the driver.
Chapter 915