84: Chapter 84 War? Yes, war!

The clamor in her ears gradually faded away,

Shen Qingci's world fell into an eerie silence.

She stared fixedly at that shirtless back, which looked incredibly small amidst the dark red waves of light,

Her heart felt as if it were being gripped tightly by an invisible giant hand.

She should rush forward.

She should draw her blade.

She should do something.

But her legs felt as if they were nailed to the ground.

She didn't dare go over.

She was afraid of seeing that scene.

...

So this was fear.

The emotion of 'fear'

Could actually override all tactical instincts and the martial heart.

He clearly could have retreated,

He clearly could have chosen not to come.

A guy with a bright future who was supposed to take the college entrance exam tomorrow,

Why would he use his life to guard a defensive line that had absolutely nothing to do with him?

It was all because of her!

At this moment,

Shen Qingci loathed her own rationality for the first time.

In her memory, that mercenary youth who asked her for potions and haggled over accounts was frantically overlapping with the back currently standing before the God of Death.

From their first meeting at her doorstep,

To him taking the robot's heavy blow head-on,

To that line in the wolf pack: "How dare you touch my people and my dog,"

And then to him smilingly calling her Senior, shamelessly crashing in her tent, and saying with a straight face that he was a "Gold Medal Foot Massage Technician"...

The bits and pieces of these past few days,

Felt as if someone had pressed the replay button,

Surging frantically through her mind frame by frame.

She suddenly realized one thing.

She didn't want him to die.

This thought was like a red-hot, blunt knife,

Stabbing ruthlessly into her chest cavity,

It wasn't fatal,

But it hurt so much she almost couldn't hold her blade.

She discovered for the first time,

That when a person truly enters another's heart,

It doesn't require years and months,

Just a few moments of facing life and death together,

Is enough.

Before meeting Su Ming,

Her life was a harsh and cold cultivation journey,

Where all emotions were suppressed by the goal of the "Peak of Martial Arts."

But this man,

With his unreasonable strength and his roguish smirk,

Had forcibly torn open her frozen world,

Chiseled a hole in her heart,

And then moved in with a perfectly clear conscience.

This inexplicable sentiment,

Was hotter than any Source Energy,

Burning her eyes until they ached,

Burning her with the desire to rush over regardless of everything.

"Su Ming... you can't die..."

Her heart, which hadn't melted for ten thousand years,

At the moment she witnessed that dark red afterimage charging toward Su Ming,

Had already melted.

After melting,

It actually began to burn frantically.

It was the most scorching obsession, rebounding from the point of absolute freezing!

Weng—!!!

An unprecedented surge of golden Source Energy exploded from within Shen Qingci,

The Tang cross-sword [cold edge] in her hand vibrated violently,

The dark golden Geng Metal Qi was no longer wrapping around like silk threads,

But had transformed into a towering wave of crimson fire!

This was... the fluctuations of Tier 3!

The heart-wrenching emotional fluctuations,

Were like a key,

Forcibly prying open the bottleneck she had been stuck at for a long time at the peak of Tier 2.

It wasn't step-by-step cultivation,

It wasn't the accumulation of days and months,

It was forced out by that reckless fool,

Using his life!

Tier 3 Silver!

Every cell in her body was cheering,

Every inch of her bone was singing.

From now on,

She was no longer a genius student who needed protection.

From now on,

She could stand by his side,

And fight together!

The golden metal aftershocks of her breakthrough instantly crushed the surrounding rubble into powder,

Shen Qingci's long hair danced wildly in the golden light,

Her eyes changed from cold and clear to a piercing dark gold.

Advancing to Tier 3 brought not only a surge in energy,

But a qualitative change in her control over power!

The Geng Metal Qi, which was originally as cold and aloof as frost,

Was now like being thrown into a furnace,

Transforming into a thick, crimson, dark golden fluid radiating extreme heat,

Pumping from her heart to all her limbs and bones.

This was the limit state of Geng Metal power!

Supercritical Metal Plasma!

The Geng Metal Blade Bone was humming,

The honey-marrow was boiling in her veins,

The tower shadow of the Pagoda Bone Brake flashed and vanished behind her.

The power of Tier 3

Circulated completely through her body for the first time.

Shen Qingci paid no mind to the shock of those around her.

She gripped cold edge tightly.

On the blade's body,

The originally transparent atomic lines suddenly erupted,

High-frequency vibrations caused the air to start burning,

Crimson plasma enveloped the blade edge,

Like a blooming red lotus.

Every blade scar was a petal of the red lotus.

Every ray of blade light was a vow to sever the world.

She looked up.

In the distance, dust and smoke filled the air.

In the center of that chaos,

A shirtless figure actually climbed up shakily from the pile of rubble.

He was covered in dust,

His left arm hung limply,

And a hideous bloody hole at his shoulder blade was still oozing blood,

But he still stood firm,

Like a spear that would rather break than bend.

He was still alive!

Shen Qingci's eyes grew hot,

But in the next second,

All her emotions turned into a sky-piercing killing intent.

She raised her hand and slashed cold edge diagonally.

[Red Lotus · World Severance]!

There was no loud bang, no dazzling pillar of light.

Only a crimson arc of light flashed and vanished in the air,

That high-density ice wall constructed with all his might by the Tier 5 expert Lieutenant Colonel Chu Feng,

Which was enough to withstand heavy artillery bombardment,

Was actually sliced through cleanly at the moment of contact!

The cut was as smooth as a mirror,

With charred melting marks appearing at the edges.

The extreme heat instantly sublimated the ice,

Sending up a large cloud of mist.

Lieutenant Colonel Chu Feng, half-kneeling in the air, saw this scene,

And almost failed to catch his breath.

Damn it,

What kind of monster is this now?

Are my skills just for show?

She got out that easily?!

We're all going to be working for the government in the future,

Are you really not going to give me any face at all?

"Da Huang! Keep up!"

The two-headed mastiff that had been guarding her side suddenly stood up,

Both the gold and fire heads erupted in an earth-shaking roar simultaneously,

Its body was covered in a layer of metallic sharp edge,

Transforming into a gold-fire meteor,

Closely following behind Shen Qingci.

Shen Qingci flipped and leaped onto the mastiff's back,

Da Huang's four paws kicked the ground,

And with an angry roar,

It leaped out from the crack in the ice wall.

One person and one dog,

Like a gold-red bolt of lightning,

Charged resolutely toward that death zone!

Dust hit her face.

Heat waves scorched.

Ahead,

Was the hideous roar of that half-turtle mutated beast,

Was Lieutenant Colonel Chu Feng's tottering back,

And was Su Ming's face full of dust and blood as he climbed out of the rubble.

Shen Qingci gripped the hilt of her blade,

The crimson plasma crackled on the blade's body.

At this moment,

She was no longer doing it for the glory of the Shen family,

Nor for her duty as a soldier.

She just wanted that bastard youth...

To live!

————

The mercenaries behind the ice shield were already dumbfounded.

"That... that's the girl from just now?"

"She... she sliced through the Tier 5 expert's defense with one strike?"

"Am I seeing things? She charged in too?"

Station Chief Zhou Ke gripped his combat knife with his single arm,

Watching that resolute back,

His lips moved,

But in the end, it only turned into a long sigh.

Madmen.

They're a pair of fucking madmen!

————

In the center of the battlefield.

A cough came from the dust.

The pile of rubble moved.

Su Ming climbed out from the rubble.

He shook his head,

And spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva.

His left shoulder was a bloody mess,

With a penetrating hole in the shoulder blade,

Where jagged bone fragments were clearly visible.

His entire left arm hung at his side,

Completely unable to exert any force.

He stood up.

He swayed a bit, then stood firm again.

Then he looked down at the hole in his left shoulder.

"Hiss... ptooey!"

The wound hurt!

But his heart hurt even more!

The quote on the system panel to repair his left arm and internal organs had already soared to 1,200 mass points.

"Repair!"

In the next second,

A surge of scalding heat flowed from his chest into his left arm and internal organs.

"What a loss, what a huge loss this time..."

He muttered to himself.

During that collision just now,

He had used [Mass Heavy Cannon] to offset a portion of the impact,

But the power suppression of a pseudo-Tier 5 was still far too unreasonable.

If he hadn't advanced to Tier 3,

And his internal organ strength hadn't increased several times over,

This wouldn't have been a heavy injury,

But instant death.

Opposite him,

That pseudo-Tier 5 Iron-Spine Rhinoceros shook the blood off its horn,

A hint of human-like confusion showing in its purple pupils.

It didn't understand.

Why this collision

Hadn't completely crushed this little insect.

Su Ming flexed his now-perfectly-healed right hand,

His eyes becoming crazed once more.

Just as he was calculating how to fight to the death with this beast,

Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed a familiar gold-red color.

He saw a figure riding a two-headed giant dog,

Crashing through the dust and smoke,

Rapidly charging toward him.

The newcomer was dressed in black with long hair flying,

The long blade in her hand burning with crimson flames,

That resolute killing intent

Made even him feel startled.

It was Shen Qingci.

Su Ming was stunned.

This long-legged girl...

Why does she feel different somehow?

That aura, is it Tier 3?

She broke through too?

Looking at the direction she was charging from,

Su Ming instantly understood something,

And a certain place in his heart felt as if it had been gently bumped by something.

It was a bit warm, and a bit tingly.

He grinned,

And on his blood-stained face,

His smile was as bright as a fool's.

"Tsk, making such a big scene."

He grumbled in a low voice,

But his gaze was brighter than ever before.

The Iron-Spine Rhinoceros obviously also noticed this new interloper.

It even caught a hint of a dangerous aura.

The Iron-Spine Rhinoceros let out an impatient low growl,

Its massive body turning,

Preparing to first crush this new target that had recklessly charged over.

However, just as it moved,

Su Ming moved.

[Mass Engine] ignite!

His right leg kicked the ground hard,

And his whole body launched out like a cannonball,

Not toward the Iron-Spine Rhinoceros,

But moving laterally,

Using his intact right side,

He slammed ruthlessly into the Iron-Spine Rhinoceros's flank!

Boom!

A muffled sound erupted.

The Iron-Spine Rhinoceros's massive body was knocked into a stumble,

Its charging momentum forcibly interrupted.

"Your opponent,"

Su Ming wiped the blood off his face,

Pointed at his own nose,

His voice was raspy,

But it carried a madness that reached deep into the bone,

"Is me!"

"Roar!"

The Iron-Spine Rhinoceros, provoked repeatedly, was completely enraged,

It abandoned Shen Qingci,

Turned its head, and delivered a dragon-tail sweep,

Carrying ten thousand catties of force as it swept toward Su Ming!

Just then,

Shen Qingci moved.

Da Huang roared,

Biting down on the Iron-Spine Rhinoceros's hind leg from another direction,

Its golden teeth erupting with piercing sparks.

And Shen Qingci,

While leaping into mid-air,

Merged person and blade into one,

Transforming into a magnificent long rainbow,

And slashed down fiercely

Toward the Iron-Spine Rhinoceros's neck!

"To battle?"

Her cold voice

Resounded across the battlefield.

Su Ming looked at that beautiful figure standing side by side with him,

Grinned,

And roared back with all his strength.

"Then let's battle!"

"So chuunibyou..."

In the distance, Lieutenant Colonel Chu Feng felt goosebumps all over his body.

Watching this extremely hot-blooded scene that almost seemed to come with its own BGM,

The corner of his eye twitched frantically,

And he silently dissipated the cold qi of the ice spear he had halfway condensed...

No...

When you young people fight nowadays,

Do you have to say your lines so embarrassingly?

How did it suddenly get so fired up?

It makes me, a dignified Tier 5 Platinum,

Stand here like some oversized hype-man.

Should I...

Give you guys a round of applause?

Or maybe perform a figure skating dance to liven things up for you?!

...