With virtually no preparation or wind-up, the Red-Slaying Saber struck once more. The three-foot blade reached toward the heavens, casting a thousand-meter blade phantom of white jade that seemed to descend from the celestial realm... Chen Buer let out a long roar and cleaved downward again.
The colossal blade phantom fell, bringing forth a spectacle that left all of humanity dumbfounded while setting their blood ablaze.
The Great Spike super dreadnought, with its thick hull of dead iron, was sliced cleanly in half by this single blow.
Forced apart by immense energy, the two severed halves were blasted obliquely backward toward the lunar surface, crashing down onto the soft ground like two falling mountains.
Boom! The lunar earth shook and mountains trembled.
Yet this strike was still not the end. The two Puta'ers seemed to have long anticipated that Chen Buer could cleave the dreadnought; seizing this very window, they had already ascended high into the upper sky.
At this moment, pouring out all their strength, they crossed their pillar swords in unison and hurled themselves down from the heavens like falling meteors, crashing toward Chen Buer, hacking toward Chen Buer.
"Good timing!" Chen Buer roared with delight. Still, he had no intention of receiving the blow flat-footed.
Planting a single foot against empty air, his entire figure shot upward like lightning. Raising his saber with both hands, he unleashed an immense blade radiance, cleaving straight up from below to meet them head-on.
Clang! Buzz—
Dead iron collided, and energy surged in every direction. This clash did not resolve as swiftly as the previous two. Two Puta'ers and one human—three weapons and the gargantuan pillars of energy they carried—locked together in midair, grinding against one another in a deadlocked stalemate.
This impasse held for a good while.
Everyone was gripped with worry, but not Han Qingyu. Even as he remained poised to strike at a moment's notice, he held an unshakeable conviction that in a clash of attrition, Chen Buer was certain to triumph. For no matter how powerful the Puta'ers were, their explosive surges operated on source energy surges; Chen Buer did not. From beginning to end, what he burned was life source energy.
Han Qingyu thought this way, yet he also kept himself fully prepared to intervene at any second.
"Can we not help?" Wen Jifei asked anxiously over the comms.
"We can," Han Qingyu replied. As the only unrestricted Star-level combatant on the entire battlefield, Han Qingyu could certainly assist.
"Then why aren't you going?"
"Because I can feel that the Army Commander is fighting to his heart's content, fighting with pure joy. This is the final battle of his life, Dafei. And even without my help, he will definitely win."
Wen Jifei was not a martial artist himself, so in this moment, he could not understand Chen Buer as deeply as Han Qingyu did.
Chen Buer was the world's foremost warrior, a man whose entire existence was defined solely by battle. Yet for the last fifty years of his life, he had been bound by the shackles of holding back that final strike; it had been far, far too long since he had fought with unbridled abandon.
These two Puta'ers were magnificent opponents. Though facing them might not match the sheer thrill of meeting Miwang's realm-breaking strike across the vast sea of stars beneath the vault of heaven all those years ago, they were more than enough to give the old man a battle that set his blood ablaze and left him thoroughly exhilarated.
What truly shook Han Qingyu to his core was the Army Commander's sheer might—a power that surpassed every guess and imagination he had ever harbored.
At last—screeech! Accompanied by the grinding shriek of the Red-Slaying Saber's edge, Chen Buer's figure shifted from below. Inch by inch, he worked his way up from an inferior posture until he stood level with them.
Then, bit by bit, ounce by ounce, he pushed back against their weight, until he forced both Puta'ers down into the lower position, pressing their two colossal pillar swords back between their necks and shoulders.
Neither side dared to withdraw first. If the Puta'ers let go, their throats would be opened by the Red-Slaying Saber; if Chen Buer pulled back, the two pillar swords, laden with built-up titanic force, would sweep directly across his chest.
Thus, another temporary deadlock was forged.
When supreme powerhouses clashed, life and death were decided in three to five moves. This was the moment that would decide life and death.
So let this mortal God of War offer his final farewell to the world he had guarded his entire life through an eternal legend—a myth of slaying two Great Spike Puta'ers by his own strength alone.
Now, he had stated that he traded his final strike for time. That borrowed time could never last long; when this battle drew to a close, he would depart.
"Eh?" High above the Moon, Chen Buer—who had just been preparing to conclude the battle before his eyes—suddenly let out a gasp of surprise.
An anomaly that no one else had noticed was picked up by his sheer instincts.
At the same time, he turned and squinted toward a streak of yellow light slashing through the void—a three-foot blade of divine consciousness.
His other hand held no weapon.
So he simply reached out, meeting it and catching it in his grasp.
Only at this moment did Han Qingyu and the others finally realize that at some unknown point, Chen Buer had caught a three-foot blaze of incandescent yellow light in his bare hand.
That yellow light was a divine consciousness slash sent by Great Spike Miwang!
[Aboard the Miracle Space Station, Xin Yaoqiao, who had been in a prolonged coma, suddenly fluttered her eyes open.]
With that single opening of her eyes, a beam of yellow-and-white light shot out from her gaze. At first no larger than a crescent moon at a fingertip, it effortlessly penetrated the solid steel bulkhead and streaked through the boundless void. As it flew, it gradually elongated and transformed, ultimately becoming a three-foot translucent blade of yellow-white light... crossing tens of millions of li in an instant to strike into the lunar sky.
And by the time she awoke, that divine consciousness slash from Miwang had already arrived above the Moon, bearing down on Chen Buer's back!
Earlier, humanity had obtained an audio recording from Miwang—one where anyone who understood it perished. What it contained, beyond literal information, had at its core this terrifying strand of divine consciousness, forged through the sacrifice of boundless resources and painstaking effort by the entire Great Spike race and Miwang himself.
Later, Xin Yaoqiao had risked her life to decipher it. She had survived, but fell into a prolonged coma, and that strand of divine consciousness had remained concealed inside her mind until today.
Today, with Miwang's divine consciousness departed, Xin Yaoqiao naturally awoke.
This was the Great Spike civilization's true ultimate trump card in their invasion of the Blue Star to seize the remains... It had been waiting all along, waiting precisely for this human who had caught Miwang's realm-breaking strike beneath the vault of heaven all those years ago—Chen Buer.
Humanity had staked everything to plot against the Great Spike fleet, yet the Great Spike civilization had been plotting against Chen Buer from the very beginning.
"So there was still a trick like this, huh?" the old man muttered under his breath.
His life source energy surged forth, shifting to hold the saber with his left hand alone as he continued pinning both Puta'ers immobilized.
Amidst a high-pitched hum, the blade condensed from Miwang's divine consciousness slash trembled ceaselessly. Chen Buer's gripping fingers and arm trembled as well.
As the stalemate dragged on, the two Puta'ers pinned under his left hand seized the opportunity and began to struggle, striving to attack.
His single-handed suppression of the two Puta'ers was growing increasingly strained.
Chen Buer's dissolution into stardust continued. The two Puta'ers struggled with everything they had, yet even so, they could not fully break free from his grip.
"Army Commander!"
"Army Commander!"
"Stay back! You can't withstand this thing!"
With those words, Chen Buer exerted a fierce surge of force.
Crack!
The blade condensed of yellow light and his right arm shattered together!
The yellow light splintered and broke apart, fading into nothingness.
Yet Chen Buer's right arm did not tear apart into gory flesh, nor was it cleanly severed; instead, like a cloud of stardust, it slowly disintegrated and drifted, yet did not scatter far, gently swirling and lingering around his body.
And that slow stardust dissolution continued to spread from his severed shoulder toward his chest and neck.
"Delightful!" the old man praised heartily, yet from his voice, everyone could already hear his frailty and exhaustion.
"My time has come... What are you standing around daydreaming for? Hurry up and chop these two down!" The old man suddenly looked impatient, appearing just like his usual self.
His eyes flashed with arrogant pride. Yet as he turned his gaze back toward the Blue Star, a flicker of reluctance crossed his eyes. In his aged, raspy voice, he softly hummed a verse:
"I have a keen blade, shedding old robes to march..."
As his singing fell,
behold: the mighty human Source Martial Corps stood tall beneath the vault of heaven!
In an instant—whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh...
Thousands of source energy detonations roared in succession!
Thousands of stalwart human warriors of every rank stood ready.
Among them was Star-level Han Qingyu.
There were Dome-levels: Jiang Longchi, and Wu Xu, who had just assimilated his skeletal remains.
There were half-step Dome-levels: over a dozen human super-combatants who had freshly completed their assimilation, along with a singular Shen Yixiu.
There were super-combatants, nearly a hundred strong—most having just finished fusing with the remains, including veterans long stuck at the peak of top combat power unable to advance, as well as the super rookie Azimeng, who had never set foot on a battlefield before and had just stomped a symbiotic parasite to death during the fusion process.
And there were top combat powers, over a thousand in number.
In the next second, thousands of voices rang out in unison as they charged forward:
"I have a keen blade, shedding old robes to march;
Stroking the oars midstream, to save our vast harmony.
Heads crushed in yellow dust, etching glory on the vault of heaven;
From death until this day, our hot blood runs crimson still.
Through all time count myriad sons—how many truly men?
I have a red tassel, fit to bind the Azure Dragon..."
Clang—hummm!
The human airship fleet rolled forward like a juggernaut!
Hundreds of human super-combatants surged forward!
Great Spike Daie-level combatants deployed from their hulls!
The Great Spike fleet charged in!
In the next second, source energy surged tempestuously from thousands of human warriors as they slashed forth in a ferocious charge, storming straight toward the Puta'ers!
…………
Stardust filled the skies.
The Great Spike fleet was nowhere to be seen.
The Puta'ers were nowhere to be seen...
And gone, too, was that old man who had been invincible in the mortal realm.
Chapter 991