At the moment when darkness was about to turn to dawn.

A cheer suddenly erupted from the bottom of the pit that had been dug very deep.

“Found him!”

Tie Ci looked up sharply.

A large group of people rushed down, and soon they carefully carried out a person.

This person was covered in black mud and scorched earth, his head and face covered in blood, the muscle suit on his body had been blown apart, and he still held in his arms a torn piece of clothing that didn’t look like a muscle suit. But clearly, the places covered by this garment had miraculously avoided major harm. Obviously, it was these two layers of protective equipment, especially the latter, that were extremely powerful.

He clutched tightly in his hand a section of chain. It was precisely by following this chain that someone had pulled him from the pile of corpses. It was also this iron cable that he had held onto tightly, keeping him pressed against the edge of a cave with minimal explosives, preventing him from falling into the bottom where all the gunpowder was concentrated.

This iron cable was the one that Rong Pu had ordered lowered from the caves below when he saw Xiao Xueya fall into the crowd.

The stronger protective garment that had blocked most of the damage was what Tie Ci had thrown out—Xilin—at the last moment, and what Xiao Xueya had quickly stripped from Xilin’s body.

Tie Ci tried to stand, but her knees went weak and she nearly knelt before Xiao Xueya, only saved by Rong Pu’s quick reflexes in supporting her.

Tie Ci reached out with trembling hands to test Xiao Xueya’s breathing.

Everyone held their breath at this moment.

Just as her fingertips were about to touch Xiao Xueya.

Xiao Xueya coughed violently, spitting out a clump of mud that nearly sprayed all over Tie Ci’s head.

Cheers erupted thunderously.

Tie Ci, splattered with muddy dirt on her face, had no time to wipe it clean. She lowered her head, and a tear fell onto Xiao Xueya’s face.

…

At the moment when Tie Ci wept tears of joy at Qingyang Mountain, Daqian Academy was shrouded in a murderous atmosphere.

Rui stared intently at the screen before him, where there had originally been green dots representing drone swarms and red dots representing warrior groups—now they had all disappeared.

But most fatally, the yellow dot representing Xilin was also gone.

The disappearance of life signs meant something Rui hardly dared imagine.

He had been commanding from headquarters, watching the Daqian Emperor and general’s false surrender, seeing Xilin captured, seeing the entire Lion Eagle Squad pursue, seeing them lured onto that low mountain platform by the Daqian Emperor and general, crowded together, unable to fly or move due to terrain restrictions and the hostage, unable even to fire their guns.

He knew it was bad, but was powerless to act. Both he and Yun had been temporarily stripped of command authority, and the space-tearing device was only in Xilin’s hands.

Even though he was so anxious his palms bled from his nails, he could only watch helplessly.

When the bombardment erupted skyward and large swaths of light dots instantly disappeared, he had originally hoped Xilin might survive—after all, his protective armor was the highest grade and most expensive type, capable of withstanding nuclear-level impacts.

As long as Xilin lived, things wouldn’t be irreparable. Even if the sky fell, Xilin would hold it up.

But at the last moment, that man had grabbed Xilin by the throat with one hand and stripped off Xilin’s armor with the other.

At that moment, his vision went black.

It was over.

How could he face this catastrophic loss, how could he face the general’s and Management Division’s fury?

Battle reports and casualties had been transmitted in real-time to the Management Division. He didn’t know what kind of storm he would face next, only slumping down in defeat and lighting a cigar he had never smoked before.

Yun sat nearby. The Management Division’s interrogation of her had been temporarily suspended due to this great defeat, with the bosses hurrying off to meetings. This actually relieved her. She opened a bag of potato chips, eating while yawning and saying she was going to sleep.

Rui stared at her, unable to believe she could sleep at a time like this.

“What else can I do if I don’t sleep?” Yun pointed at the screen. “After all, next I might face many interrogations, questionings, and possibly even imprisonment. There won’t be many chances to sleep well in my own bed, so I advise you to hurry up too.”

Rui looked at the screen and said bitterly: “I never imagined things would turn out this way.”

Yun tossed a chip in her mouth: “I actually find it unsurprising. You don’t know my disciple—her greatest advantage is being ruthless enough to herself.”

Rui looked at her.

“An emperor who can be ruthless enough to herself, never considering status in anything, only considering gains and losses. At least none of our Management Division bosses can do this.” Yun snapped the chip bag flat. “Otherwise we wouldn’t have been dragged down by that incompetent Xilin.”

She really did go back to sleep. Rui watched her retreating figure, sighed, and rested his head against the cold screen.

Someone knocked outside. An adjutant came to report that the capital’s citizens had delivered a new batch of supplies and requested the supervisor to come and inspect them.

Previously, Rui had always gone personally, but now, filled with anxiety, he had no mood for such trivial matters. These capital citizens, having witnessed the various miraculous weapons hidden in the academy, had long been frightened into having no fighting spirit. Before, they had maintained vigilance, but nothing had ever gone wrong.

“Handle it yourself.”

The adjutant left with orders. At the Daqian Academy entrance, supplies had previously been exchanged at the academy gate, with delivery people not permitted inside. After entering, supplies went through three rounds of sterilization and scanning procedures—any problems would trigger alarms.

Later, as supplies increased and personnel decreased, soldiers gradually became lax. Finding the repeated transport and sterilization troublesome, they let delivery citizens bring things in themselves while armed soldiers stood guard nearby. If alarms sounded, they would kill without mercy.

But indeed, alarms had never sounded.

Today there were also many delivering supplies. Leading was a woman with a protruding belly, accompanied by several honest-looking men. The leading woman bowed to the adjutant, smiling: “Sir, I’m the proprietress of Jumei Restaurant on South Market Street in the capital. Today it’s South Market’s turn to deliver food for you gentlemen.”

In the agreement signed between He Zi and Yun Buci, it stated that supplies were voluntary donations from citizens and businesses seeking protection, to avoid official involvement that might cause unease. Yun Buci had agreed, so various main streets and districts of the capital took turns, and today happened to be South Market’s turn.

The adjutant noticed the woman’s belly. In the Alliance era, as reproduction became increasingly difficult, pregnant women received extremely high protection and enjoyed many accommodations and conveniences in society. Harm to pregnant women carried extremely heavy sentences—this was reflexive consciousness formed in the Alliance. The adjutant instinctively stepped back and became much gentler, seeing this pregnant lady being very attentive, even wanting to move things for him to inspect first. He quickly waved her off and stepped forward to look briefly himself, pointing at a cart of live animals at the front in amazement: “Why are there these things?”

The cart contained several large boxes with live snakes, crocodiles, scorpions, turtles, and other animals.

He was surprised; the pregnant woman was even more surprised: “Sir, haven’t you been to our Jumei Restaurant? These are popular dishes in the capital recently, brought from Yannan—chrysanthemum snake soup, roasted snake skin, fried snake segments, ginger-scallion crocodile, Farewell My Concubine, fried scorpions… all famous dishes recently popular in the capital. I specially brought them for you gentlemen to try. Since these are best handled live, I also brought cooks.”

She even casually picked up a snake and opened its mouth to show the adjutant: “Non-venomous.”

The snake obediently opened its mouth wide in the pregnant woman’s hands, very cooperative.

The adjutant hadn’t expected her to be so fierce, stepped back, and waved his hand, indicating they could enter.

This had happened before—people delivering ingredients. Soldiers from the resource-scarce, rationed Alliance couldn’t cook, nor could they learn the profound and ever-changing culinary arts of Greater China. Rather than look at delicious food and sigh, they had agreed to on-site cooking by chefs.

A line of carts rumbled in.

After more than a month, there were far fewer soldiers in the courtyard, and their spirits weren’t what they once were. Seeing supply carts enter, they were quite happy and came over to examine the supplies, but they no longer maintained their previous wariness, focusing all attention on the good things.

Therefore, no one noticed that in the snake-filled boxes, one snake with rather dull, unremarkable coloring quietly slipped out of the box and off the cart.

A team of fire-red scorpions silently disappeared into the grass.

A small crocodile hid in the shadows of wall corners.

A line of gray ants, like shadows in sunlight, flowed into cracks in the stone pavement.

…

The next day, heavy rain struck the capital.

After the downpour, many people developed small bumps on their bodies. Nothing else was wrong—just itching. Only stripping naked and sunbathing helped somewhat. As soon as they put on heavy clothing, the itching penetrated to their bones.

The unit naturally had military doctors who examined them, saying it should be due to acclimatization and excessive dampness. Obviously, until this skin condition healed, neither mechs nor muscle combat suits could be worn.

The rain was so heavy it even broke many cameras in the academy.

Several days later, the command center’s computer mainframe went “pop” and went black.

Tech soldiers opened the case to check and found the internal circuits severely corroded, even growing colorful mushrooms. Everyone sighed that Daqian was indeed too damp.

This kind of damage couldn’t be repaired—they could only file reports for equipment replacement. The only one who could file reports was Yun Buci, because Rui had already been urgently recalled to the Alliance by the Management Division several days earlier. Reportedly, the general was furious and vowed to avenge his son.

The general had originally wanted to come personally, but too much equipment in the academy had been destroyed, preventing stable construction of jump points. Neither the general nor follow-up equipment could come through temporarily. To supplement equipment and establish jump points required filing reports first, but filing reports required computers, and the computers were broken.

This created a paradox—Yun Buci’s side couldn’t get supplies, without supplies the other side couldn’t come through, and Daqian Academy temporarily lost tracking ability on Tie Ci, entering a short-term state of dysfunction.

In the hostile capital, this situation was obviously dangerous. Yun Buci sent letters to several main disciples while ordering no more acceptance of capital-delivered supplies, sealing the gates tight, strengthening vigilance, and forbidding anyone from stepping into Daqian Academy.

She had expected to face a series of open attacks and assassinations, but actually everything remained calm. When Daqian Academy didn’t want people delivering supplies, they stopped delivering. When entry was forbidden, they didn’t enter. Capital residents continued their small lives. Residents within ten li of Daqian Academy had moved away long ago, with losses compensated by the government.

Gui Qizhai had been forced to close all stores when the crisis occurred and was now directly sealed by authorities, then compensated to nearby merchants who suffered losses due to Daqian Academy.

This state continued for over a month. The general, unable to leave due to intensifying power struggles, sent his personal adjutant to oversee the situation, bringing a batch of equipment, weapons, and personnel. But this time the command center wasn’t established in the capital. After connecting with remaining drone signals, the military colonel adjutant discovered Tie Ci had moved toward Yannan. The new colonel felt the capital was too far from Yannan, and judging by how the Daqian Emperor kept moving farther away, continuing to use the capital as command center might cause signal problems later. So he simply set up a mobile command post and led people in direct pursuit toward Yannan.

As for Yun Buci, she was left in the capital to “oversee the overall situation.” Honestly, there wasn’t much of an overall situation in the capital for her to oversee now. The Management Division was still arguing whether to reward or punish her, so Yun Buci could only idle away her days.

Two months later, a group of riders galloped along the official road toward Yongping.

Leading was Tie Ci, much thinner than before.

Beside her were Xiao Xueya, You Weixing, Pingzong, Jingxu, A’kou, and Buqing.

Everyone looked somewhat weary, having just experienced a great battle.

In the deep mountains of Yannan—nameless places that even locals had difficulty navigating.

The new colonel hadn’t underestimated the Daqian people. After all, the Alliance had suffered heavy losses these past months, and Xilin’s death had put everyone on alert. The adjutant came bearing the general’s mission of avenging Xilin, specifically consulting Rui and Yun Buci beforehand. After arriving in Yannan and seeing the pursued entering deep mountains, observing Yannan’s continuous mountain ranges and overly rugged terrain that would inevitably affect signal transmission, and fearing a repeat of the Qingyang Mountain incident, he hesitated and dared not enter.

But watching Tie Ci’s group continuously penetrating deeper into the mountains, fearing they’d ultimately lose the enemy’s trail, plus constant urging from the general, he specially deployed a batch of insect drones, called in mech warriors, brought ion cannons—digging out another large chunk of equipment from the Alliance’s already scarce end-times arsenal. Before leaving, he had made a military pledge to the general, swearing to definitely behead the Daqian Emperor and avenge the young master.

The insect drones caused considerable casualties to the Yannan forces responsible for protection. After all, no one could distinguish which of the extremely familiar bees, butterflies flying by, grasshoppers jumping nearby, or ants and centipedes crawling past were real animals versus drones carrying deadly intent.

After consecutive casualties in the thousands, the army developed a habit of striking first against insects, especially those approaching their vicinity—Yannan forces entering mountains had their own mosquito and insect repellent oil, so insects mostly avoided them. Those that didn’t avoid but instead approached were naturally fake.

This way, insect drones also suffered greatly, forcing the adjutant to later order them to stay airborne—only monitoring movements, not seeking to harm.

As for Tie Ci’s group, they had muscle suits.

That earth-shaking explosion at Qingyang Mountain had destroyed many warriors’ muscle suits, but several reasonably intact ones remained, later equipped on other personnel.

This meant the pursuing force’s insect robots, nano-robots, photon guns, and similar weapons couldn’t cause too much damage to the group in the short term. Tie Ci’s bone injuries had been slow to heal before—afraid that healing would allow direct long-distance targeting by the enemy. Since putting on the muscle suit, she finally had a chance to heal.

To avoid massive harm to civilians, from entering Yannan onward, Tie Ci never entered any cities or towns, staying in deep mountains and old forests throughout. The pursuing adjutant was therefore quite exhausted, as mountain forest pursuit warfare was also very disadvantageous for Alliance warriors. In the highly developed Alliance civilization, warfare had advanced from information warfare marked by networks and information systems into the intelligent warfare era marked by algorithms and robots. Individual combat strength had degraded to the weakest link in warfare.

Unfortunately, Daqian was still at the intersection between cold weapon warfare marked by smelting technology and hot weapon warfare marked by gunpowder—three entire stages behind modern warfare: mechanical warfare, information warfare, and intelligent warfare. It seemed the Alliance should achieve overwhelming advantage with technology a thousand years ahead, but actually in overly backward eras, many high-tech innovations couldn’t be used, couldn’t make autonomous decisions, couldn’t form unmanned command systems. So-called chain-breaking and network-disrupting—destroying enemy effective organization and command—became meaningless.

Extremely powerful, devastating weapons could easily resolve these people, but no one wanted to easily deploy ultimate weapons, having already tasted the bitter fruits of such use.

In this awkward situation, mountain forest pursuit became miserable work. Dense forests prevented target confirmation, complex terrain caused poor signals preventing effective command, even flying vehicles and drones couldn’t be used. Sending elite forces for sneak attacks worked fine against ordinary soldiers, but when they were surrounded by ordinary soldiers, enemy leaders wearing muscle suits could take the warriors’ lives, not only achieving nothing but providing more muscle suits to the enemy.

Later, with no choice, they deployed even more elite and precious mech warriors. When three-zhang-tall mech warriors appeared, they immediately shocked Daqian soldiers. People looked up at the steel giants, hearts and spirits shaken, hardly believing their eyes.

When that giant stepped down and flattened a small hill, trampling three soldiers to death.

Almost all Yannan soldiers instantly lost fighting spirit.

If not for the emperor watching the battle nearby, they would probably have scattered in flight.

Southern regions had many mountains, ethnicities, and faiths—respecting heaven, earth, various deities, even flowers, birds, fish, and insects. Previously, insect drones, photon guns, laser swords, and the high speed, stamina, and combat power of muscle suit warriors had continuously shattered their understanding. They had persisted purely through loyalty to defending Yannan and to the emperor and Prince of Yannan. But when mech warriors appeared, most people’s defenses crumbled.

But unexpectedly, Tie Ci didn’t get angry at the soldiers’ retreat. Instead, she simply disbanded the army on the spot, letting them flee first while she continued fleeing with a small group. The mech warriors took on the task of clearing paths for Alliance elite forces—wherever they passed, trees broke and hills crumbled, dust rolling.

Alliance warriors had easier roads, but because mechs were too heavy and slow, they still couldn’t catch up with Tie Ci’s group.

During pursuit, though the adjutant couldn’t distinguish terrain, he always felt the emperor was leading them in circles. He had simple topographical maps of Yannan—scan results from Gui Qizhai shops that had opened in Yannan. But Yannan’s mountains were too vast and continuous; Gui Qizhai had only provided rough outline maps within a few years. The most remote central areas of Yannan’s mountains, even Gui Qizhai had failed to successfully map.

This simple map let the adjutant see that Tie Ci was continuously leading them in circles, but also seemed purposefully heading somewhere.

But they could only pursue.

Mech warriors’ advantage was invincibility; their disadvantage was enormous energy consumption. After two hours, replacement energy sources were essential. In Yannan mountain tracking, the heavy mobile command post couldn’t keep up with main forces and fell behind. Muscle warriors had to return for energy changes, and sometimes when energy or power was insufficient or during rainy days, they had to wait for charging.

During these waiting periods, normally with muscle warriors’ speed, it was just a matter of minutes. But one day after heavy rain, due to insufficient power requiring manual charging, one mech warrior entered a state of complete power system energy depletion.

But the warriors weren’t worried. The remaining mech warriors formed a circle, surrounding the energy-lacking mech in the center. Surely these Daqian people wouldn’t dare approach the protective circle formed by mech warriors.

Their titanium alloy mechs—these Daqian people’s broken copper and rotten iron weapons could strike a hundred times without leaving a mark.

And they only needed to raise a hand—shoulder cannons, left-hand shotguns, right-hand missiles, infrared laser knives on knees—any of these could level half a mountain and turn these people into meat paste.

However, the miserable fate of Daqian people existed only in their imagination. Several li away on a mountain peak, Tie Ci was camping and resting with her subordinates, having no intention of taking advantage of their difficulty. The aroma of roasted meat drifted over, making the warriors who had recently returned to drinking only nutritional fluid absolutely ravenous.

They sat in the wet mountain area, drinking strawberry-flavored premium nutritional fluid while desperately craving meat.

But military regulations were strict—absolutely no use of any standard weapons for anything other than combat. Although Management Division bosses’ sons often indulged in extravagant, boring stunts like using anti-aircraft guns to kill mosquitoes, these ordinary soldiers had no such privilege.

But the fragrance carried by the wind grew increasingly intense, and the energy-depleted mech warriors couldn’t resist the temptation of their cravings.

This batch of soldiers were new reinforcements who had previously heard stationed colleagues in the capital describe the period of being supplied with delicious food—speakers salivating, listeners’ mouths watering, greatly regretting missing the good times. They’d also heard that Daqian’s ingredients were all fresh and delicious, making them long for them already.

How could they control themselves now?

Finally someone couldn’t resist and used a laser knife to bring down several birds. But because the laser knife was too powerful, the birds disintegrated completely and couldn’t be eaten, so they had to use shotguns to hunt several passing wild beasts.

They immediately lit a campfire and began roasting meat after simple preparation.

Fortunately, these beasts all had delicious, firm meat. Just casual roasting made them tasty, and sprinkling on portable seasonings made the aroma carry ten li, with everyone’s eyes glowing blue.

All praised that lower civilizations had advantages too—blue skies, sweet water, clear air, plants that weren’t weird purple colors, animals without extra eyes or legs or various deformities, safe to eat and eat freely. Unlike the Alliance, where no one dared touch unknown wild flora and fauna.

They wanted to swarm forward and tear into it.

But they still remembered discipline, deciding to eat in shifts with only one person coming down from the main control cabin each time.

The immobilized mech warrior didn’t need to stand watch, sitting by the fire eating heartily while others also feasted. After everyone had eaten their fill and eliminated traces, muscle warriors also caught up with backup energy sources.

Installing energy in the back, the warrior pressed the button.

The mech didn’t move.

The next moment, as a nearby mech warrior stood up and bumped the middle mech, sharp metallic friction sounds rang out as several huge armor plates along with weapons crashed down thunderously.

The mech warriors: “…”