One Man as a Bulwark

On the blood-red world of Mars, the attacking fleet of Great Spike craft was diving at breakneck speed, continuously ejecting units along the way. Swarms of Black Armors and Red Shoulders launched into the air before plummeting straight toward the ground like fiends spilled from the heavens. Crashing into the dirt, they quickly crouched and sprang back up, raising their pillar swords high as they charged furiously toward the Expeditionary Force's positions. In the middle of their attacking formation, the Ptar that had been hurtling forward suddenly planted its colossal frame, coming to an abrupt halt that defied all inertia. Then, with a resounding thrum, it raised the four-edged pillar sword with one arm, thrusting it straight toward the sky, towering like a mountain... Torrents of fierce source energy surged violently through the air around the blade. It opened its mouth, its hoarse, booming voice producing a sequence of simple syllables that sounded like: "Yeklasha." All around it, the charging hordes of Great Spikes howled in response, their assault growing even more frenzied. Soon, a Refuser communications officer's anxious voice relayed the latest intelligence: "The tens of thousands of remnant Great Spikes previously scattered across Mars have all moved at once! They're massing and charging straight in our direction!" Clearly, the Ptar was summoning them. With the summons complete, its massive frame lunged into motion once more, pounding forward. As its heavy strides fell, the ground began to tremble and quake with ever-increasing violence. An army was bearing down in an overwhelming, crushing advance. Meanwhile, across the human Expeditionary Force's positions spanning several thousand meters... All fifty transport vessels, large and small, were still in the process of charging up. Not a single one had lifted off. Among the tens of thousands of troops on the ground, only a small fraction had boarded in haste. Most were either still frozen under their previous orders, standing in battle formations to repel the enemy, or thrown into brief disarray, unable to respond clearly in time. Most of the retired veterans, who made up the overwhelming majority, exhibited stunned, chaotic, and momentarily paralyzed reactions. This was not born of cowardice. The staggering pressure exerted by the Ptar before them, and the manic onslaught it spearheaded, was something these veterans had never once faced or felt in their entire fighting lives. They were humans of flesh and blood; the blank numbness and dread born of overwhelming shock were things human beings could not suppress through sheer will. Even if they had no fear of death, that could not change reality. "Run!" Admiral Yergana shouted in anguish. "Run!" Wen Jifei screamed. It was against this desperate disparity that Han Qingyu, pushing his gravely wounded body to its limit, erupted with source energy and charged in reverse toward the enemy, preparing to intercept them. He was alone, leaving only the fading echo of a command behind him: "Don't follow me." This was not the first time Major Qing had reacted like this on the battlefield. Back when he went to slay the Daie in Antarctica, he had even said his goodbyes beforehand. But this time was different. This time, Han Qingyu had no illusions about solving anything with a blade, nor did he entertain any thought of turning the tide. Because it was impossible. As the strongest person present—indeed, one of the pinnacle combatants of humanity—Han Qingyu knew better than anyone that against a fully intact Ptar, they had no room even to fantasize about victory. The chasm between them was so vast that whether he was injured or not hardly mattered anymore. Even if both he and Pegmont were in peak condition right now, leading all the high-end combatants of the Expeditionary Force in an all-out assault, it would still be virtually impossible to halt and slay a healthy Ptar. If previously someone could calculate the strength of a Daie as roughly equivalent to a certain number of Red Shoulders... the combat power of a Ptar was simply not something that could be measured by any number of Daies. As Chen Buer had put it after that battle in Antarctica: "This Ptar, to use a chess board as an analogy—ordinary Great Spikes, Red Shoulders, and Daies are like the pawns, horses, cannons, and rooks on the board... This Ptar is an airplane and a tank." ... Yet even under these circumstances, Han Qingyu still chose to charge out to intercept them... because his ever-sharp battlefield instincts told him that right now, he had to try to hold them back. To try to hold back the Great Spike swarm, to stall the Ptar. To buy as much time as possible, and see if a few human ships could seize the chance to take off successfully, accelerate their escape, and carry some people away—the more, the better. And then, if there was even the slimmest chance, Han Qingyu would run too; he would try to use the pull of a pillar sword to pull himself aboard a ship. He wasn't here to be a hero. He had come to fight for survival—his own survival, and the survival of his brothers and comrades in arms. Even if not everyone could be saved, he had to ensure at least some survived. If he didn't try, then given the distance between the two forces and the state of the battlefield, not a single human craft would manage to take off, and not a single human being would survive in the end. Han Qingyu had fought a Ptar in Antarctica. In that battle, if Ne and Chen Buer hadn't arrived to join the coordinated strike, then even though that Ptar had been heavily wounded with only half its combat power remaining, it most likely would have slaughtered everyone on the battlefield. "What are you doing?!" Over the comms, Wen Jifei's tone was a tangle of emotions, carrying a faint reproach like a friend chastising someone for getting into trouble right before the college entrance exams. "I'll hold them off." Han Qingyu paused for half a second after answering, his sprint never slacking. His voice sounded calm on the surface, but suppressed beneath it. "We can't wait for everyone to board." "...I know." Wen Jifei naturally understood what Qingzi meant. Without hesitation, he switched channels immediately and yelled: "Disregard boarding orders!" "Ships will not wait!" The first command was for the troops on the ground, telling them to ignore earlier assignments: board whichever ship within sight was closest to completing launch prep. The second command was directed at the pilots: any ship that completed its charge and was capable of liftoff must launch immediately—even if someone was just one step away, do not wait. The guards behind them moved, hauling commanders Yergana and Wen Jifei back toward the mothership's hatch. Across the battlefield, everyone began moving faster. The source energy engine compartments of fifty human ships roared like rushing torrents... Also standing on the ground, Wu Xu gripped his long spear, looking around blankly before asking woodenly, "Me?" *Why are they calling me specifically to board?* he wondered in confusion. "I'm not boarding. I'm going to help Qingzi." *Whoosh!* On the other side, Han Qingyu, counter-charging the horde, began his final burst of acceleration. As he sprinted at full tilt, the dead iron straight swords in his hands were released close to the ground at roughly the height of a Great Spike's ankle. The Rusty Sister Dimple Slash carved out two overwhelmingly powerful arcs like ghostly streaks of lightning, slicing all the way through until they plunged completely into the enemy ranks. In an instant, dozens of Great Spikes along the two arcs toppled forward onto the dirt, obstructing part of the oncoming charge behind them. And Han Qingyu, charging head-on without slowing in the slightest, finally made contact with the enemy. "Die!" With a roar, he vaulted forward into the air, driving his combat boot outward. *Crack!* Han Qingyu's full-force stomp snapped the armored, thick neck of a Red Shoulder clean in two. Midair, using the momentum of his leap, he gripped an oversized pillar sword diagonally downward with both hands, spun his body in a rapid full rotation, and hurled the blue-glowing pillar sword in a straight line like a hammer thrower. This, of course, was no newly mastered killing technique or proper combat stance for Major Qing. It was merely a desperate gamble from a gravely wounded man throwing every ounce of his remaining strength into the fray.