Ascent and Fall

"Major Qing!" "Major Qing has recovered?!" Watching this unfold, the soldiers made such a guess only because they had no idea that even if Han Qingyu had returned to his prior peak condition, he would still have been utterly incapable of matching Puta'er. Of course, even if someone had told them that right now, they still wouldn't have believed it. They had witnessed far too many of his miraculous victories, and at this very moment, their own eyes were watching the colossal energy storm unleashed by Puta'er's gathered might veer off course and begin to disintegrate under Major Qing's head-on slash. No one understood the exact mechanics behind it, not even Han Qingyu himself. The mutation and deconstruction that occurred when two purely different types of source energy collided was a subject human source energy scientists had not yet even touched upon; for ordinary grunts like them, it was simply far too remote. Naturally, the prerequisite for such mutation and deconstruction was that the life source energy Han Qingyu poured into that strike indeed contained an immense amount of power... He had not held back even what was required to sustain his own life. The residual force of the dispersing energy storm still destroyed more than ten source energy airships, including two of the Great Spikes' own dreadnoughts. One could easily imagine what would have happened a moment ago had Han Qingyu not unleashed that blade. Yet the price paid behind all this was that Han Qingyu himself had already plummeted straight toward the lunar surface like a kite with a snapped string. His body curled in midair, his right hand still gripping the dead iron warblade tightly, but he made no further movement. Amidst the cries, soldiers rubbed their eyes, fearing their vision was playing tricks on them, because they could clearly see a translucent gray hue settle over the falling Major Qing, followed by an afterimage that wavered and separated continuously. How could a person take on a translucent gray color? And how could a body generate phantom doubles that endlessly overlapped and drifted apart on their own? They did not know that at this moment, Han Qingyu was already on the verge of death. In terms of human medicine, aside from brain death not having fully set in, every other organ in his body had already died, devoid of any lingering breath of life. The next instant, Silver Yeke led the charge with its four-edged greatsword, diving straight toward the spot where Han Qingyu was falling, while all the surrounding Great Spike airships swooped down along with it. Protect Major Qing? They couldn't do it. Snatch the skeletal remains? There was no time. They wanted to protect the dying Major Qing; they wanted to secure the skeletal remains. Yet the staggering disparity in strength denied them even the chance to throw away their lives... Their speed couldn't keep up with Gunie at all. As the silver Gunie's form vanished from sight, only futile shouts lingered in the air. Wen Jifei wanted to issue some directive or countermeasure to the ground personnel, but in that fleeting moment, he couldn't devise a single meaningful action. Everything seemed beyond salvation, unless the Commander-in-Chief... Suddenly, far off in the sky—shhhk! "Something is flying toward Major Qing!" someone observing from midair noticed and urgently reported to Wen Jifei. "Skeletal remains! The position of the skeletal remains cache is locked! The object flying from underground toward Major Qing is the remaining half of his Yanxiu skeletal remains!" a commander searching on the lunar ground immediately reported to Wen Jifei. So the prior deductions of Wen Jifei and the others had been correct: the skeletal remains had indeed landed on the Moon and been buried. And the resonance between them and the skeletal remains in Han Qingyu's body finally occurred—at the very brink of his death, when the Yanxiu had nearly been driven out of his body by Gunie's blow. Yet not a single person felt any direct sense of joy at the news. This was partly because no one knew whether Han Qingyu could successfully complete the integration in his current state, and partly because the appearance of the skeletal remains at this moment seemed entirely ill-timed. Could his integration be as fast as Silver Yeke's descent? Yeke and Gunie were both super Great Spikes who had possessed complete, mature Yanxiu forms for decades or even centuries. Within their own species, they belonged to the second tier, second only to Miwang, whereas Han Qingyu had only just begun to merge with his. Abruptly—"Aooo!" This roar was not the screech of a Puta'er, but... a dragon's roar. The emergence of the dragon's roar meant the integration was complete; both the Yanxiu and its host still lived. The soldiers of Azure and Stream Blades had once been so familiar with it, yet none was more familiar than they were with the Little Prince's dragon roar. The next second, a prehistoric dragon as if made manifest surged abruptly from the lunar surface, its massive head plunging straight into the vault of heaven. Major Qing, having just completed the integration of the complete skeletal remains, held his warblade with both hands and slashed against Silver Gunie's four-edged greatsword. Blade locked against sword, with a mortal body, he forcefully drove the colossal Gunie back into the high skies! In their eyes, Major Qing rose alongside the boundless dragon, single-handedly forcing the Great Spike Gunie back above the lunar vault. What immense battle power was this?! "Roar!" The soldiers erupted into wild cheers. "You really seem afraid I'll die, don't you?" Amidst the dragon's roar, Han Qingyu scoffed at himself and the world, tossing a barb at the broken dragon that had slumbered for so long. Yet the true situation was known only to Han Qingyu himself. He had merely taken advantage of being able to push off the lunar ground, coupled with catching Gunie off guard, to appear on the surface as though he held a certain upper hand. In terms of actual strength, there remained a considerable gap between him and the silver Gunie, to say nothing of the even more formidable dark-gold Gunie on the other side that was currently hunting down Nikola. At the same time, the human airships finally reacted and began hurtling madly toward that lower altitude. All deployable human super-combatants, including Rusty Sister and Jiang Longchi, exited their cabins mid-flight, recklessly trying to swing their weapons toward Gunie. Instead, human and Great Spike source energy airships collided continuously in midair, detonations ringing out without end. "Someone is integrating the skeletal remains." The communication between the two Gunies carried no concealment whatsoever. "Yes, down below." "Understood." Wen Jifei quickly analyzed the battlefield situation, simultaneously commanding airships to blanket the low altitude to protect the skeletal remains. What he needed to decide now was whether to order the super-combatants aboard the airships to jump down immediately, search for skeletal remains on their own, and begin integrating. Would their skeletal remains actively seek them out? Would there be a resonance, or would they need to find them themselves? Could their integration be as fast as Qingzi's? "Qingbai, Yang Qingbai?" Wen Jifei suddenly shouted over the channel. "Here!" Yang Qingbai answered at once. "Find a way to get over here and bring Wu Xu down. See if he can sense the skeletal remains and integrate them." "Understood." "Qingzi, you..." Although Qingzi was still locked in combat, Wen Jifei couldn't hold back from asking. "As long as Nikola can hold out over there, I should be able to hold my own for a little while," Han Qingyu answered briskly and candidly, because once the dark-gold Gunie came over to help, he truly would have very little chance of survival. Before Yang Qingbai could reach the flank of the Ping'an command ship, and before Wen Jifei could make a final decision... Nikola died. Driven by its obsessive greed for the skeletal remains, Nikola was distracted once again. The dark Gunie's pillar sword pierced through its body from behind, then detonated with force, shattering it into several pieces. Alice's body shattered in midair. It died silently and simply, as a matter of course rather than an earth-shattering event. The lifeless fragments continued to fall. This was likely the inevitable fate of a madman on this battlefield. Aside from regretting that Nikola could no longer help tie down the dark Gunie and feeling anger over that fact, not a single human present lamented its death. Only a solitary small source energy airship appeared beneath that patch of sky where Alice's shattered body was falling, opening its top ejection hatch in the hope of catching even just a part of her. A rain of blood fell into the cabin. That was the loneliest airship on this battlefield. There was only one person inside this airship right now, and his name was Liu Shiheng. The madman Nikola had dismantled every piece of communication equipment aboard this ship, and Liu Shiheng possessed neither the ability nor the courage to pilot it into the fierce battlefield above to find a chance to draw near the human warships and tell Qingzi, Plague Chicken, and the others that he was there. His friends did not know he was here. His lover was already dead. Liu Shiheng was crying, weeping as helplessly as a child, but no one could hear him. Just like earlier, when he had tried with all his might to respond to Yang Qingbai, wanted to call back Alice's consciousness, wanted to reach Plague Chicken, Qingzi, and the others... but had been unable to do any of it. Young Master Shiheng was now the loneliest person on this battlefield.