Beyond the Zenith

In a modest room on the second floor of an old house, an overhead light illuminated the hole torn through the ceiling. The walls were a mixture of mud and brick, and the floor was wooden planking.

A young girl in a school uniform lay unconscious on the floor, passed out from fright, with her schoolbag beside her.

Liu Shiheng stepped over and untied the ropes binding her hands and feet.

In truth, leaving her tied up would have made it easier to carry her out, but it wasn’t exactly a good look, so he undid them regardless. Then, picking up her red schoolbag, he slung it over his right shoulder.

He Tangtang kneeled on one leg to inspect the space under the bed. There was blood beside his knee.

Han Qingyu stood there with his device activated, listening for footsteps—both near and far, on the roof and the street. There were at least a dozen people; that much was certain.

Activating his communicator, he made a call back to base. “Team compromised. Requesting backup and scene cleanup.”

He then relayed a message to the van. “We might have to fight our way out.”

It no longer mattered whether this was a trap or an accident. The only thing that mattered at this point was the predicament they were in.

“She’s... already dead.” He Tangtang twisted his head to get a better look. “Her hands are bound, but her clothes are intact. Judging by the wound on her head, it seems she refused to surrender and deliberately smashed her head against something to kill herself. Quite stubborn of her.”

As he spoke, he stood up, walked over to the three scumbags lying on the ground, and gave them a good kick. “What should we do with them?”

“Find some water and wake them up,” Han Qingyu said coldly, remaining vigilant of the footsteps outside drawing ever closer.

Bending down to pick up the bloodstained schoolbag from the ground, he sifted through the contents. Inside, he found her high school textbooks, homework notebooks, a songbook, a collection of corrected exam questions, and a small booklet with a plastic cover.

The booklet was a makeshift photo album containing group photos of the girl with her classmates and family, as well as pictures of her alone. Her youthful face beamed radiantly in every single one.

Han Qingyu flipped to the very end, then back again before finally pulling out a solo photo of the young girl with a defiant expression, which he propped up on the small table by the window.

He Tangtang brought over a white metal thermos and poured boiling water over the faces of the trio on the ground.

The three scumbags screamed awake in agony.

They frantically twisted around in search of their attacker and soon spotted Han Qingyu’s trio.

Panic in their eyes, they asked, “Who are you? You—”

“We’re the ones who’ll chop off your fucking heads,” He Tangtang said.

Han Qingyu said nothing; he simply reached out to grab the one wearing the device, pushed him to kneel at the table, and forced him to look at the photo of the girl resting on the tabletop.

He Tangtang dragged another one over.

Liu Shiheng did the same.

As if foreseeing their impending fate, the three scumbags started wailing, begging for mercy, and making excuses.

“We didn’t kill her—it was suicide, suicide!” one of them cried. “If you don’t believe us—”

“We’re not the police,” Han Qingyu said, letting go and turning away.

The thug immediately tried to escape.

Han Qingyu’s dead iron straight blade slashed across the man’s neck in one fluid motion.

He Tangtang and Liu Shiheng followed suit.

The three scumbags weren’t quite dead yet, heads pressed against the ground as they twitched and struggled, twisting, wailing, and screaming before the photograph like three maggots.

“To be honest, I never really thought much about the Wipers before this. I just knew they were our enemies.” Han Qingyu stood, still facing away from the girl’s photo. “But if we run into them from now on, it’s kill on sight.”[1]

By this point, the heavy footsteps outside were drawing very close.

Han Qingyu glanced around and quickly assessed the situation. “We can’t stay here; we need to leave.”

The walls and floor of the cramped room they were in would not protect them in any meaningful way if their enemies were using source energy maneuvering devices. In fact, the structure only obstructed their view and made them vulnerable to an ambush from outside.

Not to mention, they had to wait for Wen Jifei and Shen Yixiu to arrive with a vehicle for extraction. Given the circumstances, they hadn’t been able to pre-arrange a meeting point, which left them with only two choices: Go up to the roof for a better vantage point, or go down to street level.

Considering they had a young girl with them, Han Qingyu decided to head downstairs. “This whole thing could’ve been a setup to avenge that Snow Lotus traitor. We don’t know how many of them there are or if there are any skilled fighters among them, so let’s get out of here first. Head downstairs and toward the van.”

S-19 was there.

With that, Han Qingyu stripped off the oversized coat he’d been wearing over his Only Witness Legion’s combat uniform and drew both his blades.

He Tangtang did the same.

Liu Shiheng followed suit.

They were going into battle as members of the Only Witness Legion.

***

The people on the rooftops and alleyways no longer bothered quieting their footsteps.

Han Qingyu’s trio stepped out of the house and onto the street, with Han Qingyu taking the lead.

Liu Shiheng walked in the middle, cradling the fainted girl in his arms and carefully covering her face. With his maneuvering device active, he could easily draw his blade with one hand and defend himself if necessary.

He Tangtang brought up the rear, carrying his blade with his back partially turned—essentially crab-walking.

The three formed roughly a straight line, though not one that was parallel to the street. Han Qingyu positioned himself slightly to the left at the front, while He Tangtang was to the right at the rear, creating a diagonal formation. This made it easier to protect the person in the middle and allowed the rear guard to step forward and deliver finishing blows.

Six people burst out from both ends of the back street. Four blocked the front and two the back, trapping the three of them in the middle.

Then came the crack of roof tiles shattering, and applause suddenly drifted down from the rooftop.

Han Qingyu turned to see an officer on the roof, wearing the combat uniform of a Coalition major with a maneuvering device on his back, flanked by a slightly plump middle-aged man.

“Tsk tsk, the Coalition really doesn’t hold back.” The officer chuckled. “Old Wu ought to be satisfied if we manage to take down a once-in-a-decade genius from the Erasers.”

The officer then turned to the middle-aged man beside him and explained, “Mr. Zhu, you don’t know this, but one of them is hailed as a genius in the Ninth Army. A talent seen only once every ten or even twenty years.”

“Oh?” Mr. Zhu’s eyes narrowed with interest. “How much source energy could we demand from the Coalition if we capture him?”

“Fucking idiot.” He Tangtang swore up at the man, fed up with what he was hearing.

The officer didn’t rise to the bait. Instead, he smiled with the confident air of certain victory. “I know you’re in no rush. You’re just stalling for time. You’ve got another one hiding in your van, don’t you? It’s too bad, he probably won’t be making it.”

Han Qingyu ignored him.

Among the four people standing in the street before him was yet another person in a Coalition combat uniform. He was a bearded, burly man in his thirties who, judging by his rank insignia, appeared to be a first lieutenant.

Their gazes locked.

The lieutenant raised his blade and pointed it at Han Qingyu. “So you’re supposed to be the strongest recruit of the dec—”

Han Qingyu lunged straight at him without responding. As he advanced, he slashed his left blade horizontally at the lieutenant’s head while simultaneously sweeping his right blade, held level at waist height, toward the lieutenant’s right flank.

Combat using maneuvering devices unfolded in the blink of an eye. In a single instant, spanning just two attacks, Han Qingyu had already slipped past the lieutenant’s right and positioned himself behind him.

A clang rang out as the lieutenant parried the blade aimed at his head and leaped to the left, dodging Han Qingyu’s strike at his waist.

Then, his body started to twist in preparation to turn around...

The lieutenant was shocked to realize his waist wouldn’t obey him.

Dazed, he glanced down.

Two dead iron straight blades had sliced open his left flank from back to front. A fountain of blood gushed from the wounds on his waist and abdomen.

By then, Han Qingyu had already returned to face him.

In the few seconds of that exchange, Han Qingyu had executed an inverted V-shaped charge.

He first swept past the lieutenant’s right to move behind him, then, without turning around, kicked off the ground to spring back along the lieutenant’s left. During that returning leap, he had leaned slightly with both blades held level—one high, one low—to slice through the lieutenant’s left flank.

Blood sprayed forth as the struggling lieutenant glanced back up at Han Qingyu with an uncomprehending expression.

“That’s right,” Han Qingyu said, finally answering the lieutenant’s previously interrupted question. “I’m the strongest recruit in a decade. You knew that, but you still asked, and you weren’t even careful about it.”

The lieutenant collapsed into a pool of his own blood, his uniform becoming saturated with red in an instant.

“That’s much better. I really hated the way you looked in our Only Witness Legion’s combat uniform.”

Dead silence followed those words.

No one had expected a recruit, even one touted as the strongest in a decade, to be this strong.

Even Han Qingyu was rather astonished. Sparring with Shen Yixiu had helped him more than he had thought.

The one feat had stunned everyone into silence.

He Tangtang suddenly burst into hearty laughter and raised his blade toward the roof. “Come on, haha, it’s my turn now!”

He took advantage of everyone’s shock to launch an unexpected attack. By the time they had processed the earlier scene and He Tangtang’s laughter, he had already charged forward and returned.

The two Wipers blocking the rear path were left with one dead and the other wounded.

He Tangtang had also taken a slash to the chest and was bleeding, but it wasn’t a critical injury.

Up on the rooftop, the major’s expression darkened as he turned to look at the middle-aged man beside him. “Mr. Zhu, we can’t let this fight drag on. Why don’t we just use the thing you brought?”

Eyeing Han Qingyu, the middle-aged man nodded.

A strange, animalistic screech rang out.

Then, three bizarre human-ape hybrid creatures emerged on the roof ridge and leaned out halfway.

These hunched figures carried maneuvering devices on their backs, though instead of blades, they had long claws attached to a triangular strap on each hand.

“Are these... modified humans?” Liu Shiheng asked, sounding a bit rattled. “Little Qing, look at their devices. They’re different from any generation of Coalition devices we’ve seen.”

Han Qingyu nodded, already well aware that he was about to come face to face with Snow Lotus.

The legendary Snow Lotus, which was rumored to surpass even the Coalition in some respects...

1. The idiom used here is 格杀勿论 (gé2 shā wù lùn), which means to execute without prosecution, or to kill on the spot with lawful authority. ☜