Beyond the Zenith

Han Qingyu called down every curse word he knew upon Lao Jian’s head.

Suddenly, he heard two screams ring out, and then the fighting on the hilltop went quiet.

Thud, thud, thud. A body came rolling down the hill.

It landed less than fifty centimeters in front of Han Qingyu, caught on a shrub, rocked back and forth a few times, and came to rest.

Han Qingyu stayed quiet.

“Where did he land? I’ll go check,” a voice said from the top of the hill.

Han Qingyu’s heart leaped straight into his throat.

Friend or foe, good or evil, it was impossible to tell. Regardless, as far as Han Qingyu was concerned, this was a matter of life and death, plain and simple.

There was no guarantee that the person up there wouldn’t simply finish him off upon finding him there. He had no chance of fighting back against someone with a source energy device.

“It’s just a source energy core, what’s the hurry? Let it be for now. I promise I won’t compete with you for it,” another voice said.

“I’m worried they’re not dead yet.”

“They’re dead as a doornail. Besides, it’s almost completely dark now. You can’t see anything down there in this darkness. Don’t worry about it. Let’s do what we came to do. I reckon the Azure Coalition’s people will be coming back any time now.”

The exchange ended there. Not even footsteps followed.

The top and the bottom of the hill were actually quite close together, but Han Qingyu had been so tense that he hadn’t actually caught much of the conversation. The few scattered words that had reached his ears were vague, guarded, and hard to parse, things like “the Azure Coalition’s people” and “do what we came to do.”

He couldn’t even tell whether the two men had already left.

The lack of footsteps seemed to indicate that they were still there. Then again, they could probably make themselves virtually silent if they had source energy devices and were simply treading carefully.

In any case, it seemed they weren’t coming down for the moment.

Han Qingyu let out a small breath of relief. It was only at this point that he noticed that the back of his shirt was soaked through with cold sweat.

He stayed still for a little while longer. Finally, mustering up some courage, he lifted his head slightly and peered at the body in front of him.

The body had come to rest on its side in the undergrowth, head lolled to one angle, eyes staring straight toward Han Qingyu’s ditch. It was strikingly similar to Lao Jian that night.

Why are they always staring at me?Staring at me won’t do you any good. I swore I’d never save anyone again. The last time I did, it cost me. Besides, you’re already dead.

Almost without thinking, moving in slow motion, Han Qingyu reached out and gently closed the corpse’s eyes... only for them to slide back open on their own.

Is he not quite dead yet?

The unblinking eyes suggested that the person was dead. The body only confirmed it. A knife wound sliced across the throat, and two bloody holes punctured the chest, blood seeping out into the deepening dusk.

He was definitely dead. Even his metal belt had been slashed through. He simply died with eyes that wouldn’t close.

Stop looking at me. I can’t avenge you either. I can barely keep myself alive, Han Qingyu grumbled inwardly, forcing his gaze away from the dead stare.

Steadying his breathing, he composed himself and took the time to actually study the body more carefully.

He quickly noticed that the dead man before him not only had the same metal belt and other gear as Lao Jian, but also an identical gray button-up uniform to the ones Lao Jian and his people had worn that night.

The rank insignia on the shoulders were the same, too, save for the color of the star. Lao Jian’s was silver, while this man’s was the color of dark iron. Everything else was identical.

So the man lying dead before him was one of their own. Which meant the “Azure Coalition people” mentioned up top were likely Lao Jian’s side.

That meant the two above were enemies. They had just killed an Azure Coalition soldier, and apparently had some important task yet to carry out.

This conclusion caused a fresh wave of cold sweat to break out across his body. He quickly pulled his head back down into the hollow, went completely still, and strained his ears.

For a good while, nothing moved overhead.

Had they gone? Han Qingyu couldn’t be sure if they had. Still, he knew he had to go. If he stayed, they would almost certainly find him when they came down to search the body.

Staying here meant only one thing: Death.

He raised his head, prepared to scout the surroundings and find a route of escape, but as his gaze swept the ground in front of him, something caught his eye. The dead man’s metal case had fallen about a meter away.

Inside that case was a source energy core.

Han Qingyu took two deep breaths, but ultimately couldn’t resist.

Might as well take it before I go. It’s not like it makes any difference now.

In the slowest, gentlest motion he could manage, he eased his body up slightly, stretched his arm out as far as it would reach, and finally, with the very tips of his fingers, touched the edge of the case.

Then, slower still, he felt along the side of the case until his fingers found a small vertical pin, twisted it free, and pushed upward with painstaking gradualness.

The case opened.

Han Qingyu had opened a source energy device for the first time.

He shifted his position and looked closely.

The contents were not quite what he’d expected. Sat in the center of the case was not the dark-gold, semi-molten chunk of metal he’d glimpsed once before and very likely already absorbed, but a deep blue crystal cube no more than six centimeters on a side.

At first glance, it resembled a block of dark-blue gelatin, but with a solidity that gelatin did not have. The insides seemed veined with irregular fractures, or perhaps constrained and curving lines of light, or even the frozen glimmer of trapped stars. Whatever it was, it was beautiful, breathtakingly so.

So this was the processed, issued source energy core the troops used.

There was no time to think further. Without much hesitation, Han Qingyu reached out to touch it. As he did, he realized that taking it would be less efficient than absorbing it.

If I really can draw in source energy directly...

Unlike the last time, when perhaps nerves or ignorance had left him with no awareness of the sensation at all, this time, he felt something surging toward him the instant his fingertips made contact with the crystal.

The feeling was like a single drop of warm, clear spring water. It began at his fingertips, flowing slowly through his palm, wrist, and forearm, pulsing through his veins and flowing into his body. Then came another drop, and another.

That’s it?!

Han Qingyu tried three more times and confirmed that the source energy core was empty. The deep-blue crystalline shape remained, but the energy inside had been entirely drained.

A brief pang of regret filled him. Perhaps he shouldn’t have absorbed every last bit of it. The regret faded as quickly as it came.

Han Qingyu didn’t even have time to properly check whether his body had changed. Survival took precedence.

He needed to get out of here as fast as possible.

***

Han Qingyu scouted his surroundings again in the last faint traces of fading light, heart sinking as he did.

He was finished. He couldn’t understand why he had chosen this spot in the first place. There was no way forward, and dry branches were piled up on all other sides.

Layers of dead wood surrounded him, like years of felled and discarded branches slowly accumulated. The moment he moved in any direction, whether crawling or walking, it would instantly set off a flurry of noises as the branches snapped.

Thinking back, he’d stepped right through them on his way here. It had been fine then because his situation was not actively fraught with threat, and he hadn’t registered the noise as dangerous. He’d even thought the piled branches offered a kind of cover. At that point, all he’d been thinking about was hiding, not getting away.

So, now what? Han Qingyu wondered.

He could push the corpse and let it roll all the way down to the base of the hill. Perhaps the two up top would hear the sound and assume it was a natural fall, then leap straight to the bottom to check, instead of stopping where he hid.

No. That was too risky.

Despite racking his brain, he came up with nothing. Spirits deflated, Han Qingyu turned his head subconsciously back toward the sloping incline.

Perhaps they aren’t up there anymore, he thought bleakly.

That possibility did genuinely exist, but there was not a single scrap of information on which to base that judgment. It would be a completely blind gamble.

However, looking in that direction also revealed something else. The one route that did not involve any snapping branches was the hill itself.

It was a moderate gradient. Nothing there but firm, faintly damp red earth and a dense growth of grass.

But why would I climb up there? To see if they’re still there?

After thinking it over for another three seconds, Han Qingyu decided to do just that.

If they weren’t there, he’d make a run for it.

If they were, he’d come back down, push the body, and gamble.

He refused to make a blind bet, but he also didn’t want to lie here waiting to die. He wasn’t about to let his own cowardice and despair make him miss a chance of escape, or let random delays keep him pinned until the two came back.

Lifting himself from the ditch, Han Qingyu found the soldier’s blade and tucked it into the back of his belt. He also found the cone-shaped dagger, which he gripped in his hand.

He slowly turned around.

One hand drove the dagger into the red earth in a slow movement, as if boring into the earth. With his other hand gripping a tuft of grass, Han Qingyu took his first step up the relatively steep hill.

In that tense moment, with every ounce of strength in his body gathered and concentrated, he couldn’t help but notice that the blue-crystal source energy he’d just absorbed had not simply been absorbed into his body the way the dark metal had before. It was more like a small pool of water sitting in his palm, faintly perceptible through the channels of his body.

Of course, that small pool could also be metabolizing, just not quickly enough to sense clearly.

Its effect was also more outward-facing. When Han Qingyu exerted force through his arm, the source energy flowed in that direction, amplifying the effort, and was consumed in the process.

The results were noticeable. Han Qingyu could clearly feel a short-term change in his strength, speed, and explosive force.

It made the climb considerably easier.

The hill itself was not tall to begin with, so despite moving with caution, Han Qingyu closed the distance to the crest quickly. Right before the peak, there was a small dip in the incline, just enough to create a downward slope for him to press his body flat against.

Han Qingyu plastered himself to the reverse slope and steadied his breathing. Then, he slowly eased his body upward just high enough to peek through the obscuring grass to the top of the hill.

Those last few centimeters felt to Han Qingyu like waiting for fate to reveal its judgment.

He drew a deep breath, held it, and stretched his head the final centimeter.

Then he saw.

They were there.

Han Qingyu could see them clearly through the gaps between blades of grass. Two men, backs to him, sitting sprawled side by side in the grass, completely silent.

Less than three meters away from him.

Both of them had source-energy devices on their backs, though the design differed from Lao Jian’s. It looked like a black disc with an equilateral triangle set into it, and metal bands extending outward from the center.

The devices appeared to be deactivated at the moment, or in some kind of dormant, powered-down state. Their clothes looked slightly different as well.

But these were the least of Han Qingyu’s concerns.

Suppressing the crushing disappointment in his chest, he swallowed down the deep, bone-cold fear of death and the trembling weakness, preparing to retreat down the hill, push the body, and gamble.

He began to ease back, but as his line of sight was about to drop beneath the base of the obscuring grasses, something made him freeze.

A voice rose from somewhere inside him. Since I’m gambling with my life either way, why not gamble on whether I can kill?!

The shift that occurred within Han Qingyu in that split second was difficult to describe, like a wall of superfrost rapidly freezing over the surface of a lake. Everything abruptly froze into utter stillness, then something like a burning, red-hot blade of iron drove down through that ice, straight to the bottom.

Two seconds later, Han Qingyu was leaping forward. He sliced through the air, at a very low height, like a swift and lethal arrow.

In his left hand was the four-grooved cone dagger. In his right hand was the straight blade, held in a reverse grip, the flat pressed along his forearm.

The two men sitting on the ground immediately sensed movement behind them. The source-energy devices on their backs gave a single shudder.

There was a light, but it died as quickly as it appeared.

Too slow.

Two men. Two bodies.

One with his neck cut open from behind by the straight blade, and the other with the cone dagger buried in the back of his skull.

Both the knife and the dagger were still being gripped tightly in Han Qingyu’s hands.

Three hours earlier, on the road, Lao Jian had said to Han Qingyu, “Take me. I’ve been at this for nearly ten years, and if I don’t activate the device, a knife through me will kill me just the same.”