Zhong Yun’s mind raced. The fact that Yang Bingchang was handing him this high-grade mecha indicated that both he and Yang Yunrong knew absolutely nothing about piloting one. And he was just a novice; taking the mecha up would be utterly useless. However, Yang Tianlie must surely be a Mecha Master. Back at Yu Daoqing’s mecha training base, his initial instructor, Bai Yuwan, had once stated that a Mecha Master’s strength was directly proportional to their physical combat proficiency; a Level Ten expert was often a Mecha Grandmaster. If he gave this advanced mecha to him, dealing with the surrounding attacking mechas should be effortless. The decision made, Zhong Yun began contemplating how to relay the information to Yang Tianlie without alerting the enemy. His eyes darted, and an idea struck him. More than a month ago, while traveling to the mecha base on a starship with Yu Daoqing, she had taught him a cipher—reportedly a specialized code used by high-ranking military officials. If the ship were to crash, using this cipher to contact the Davo military would secure the highest level of rescue. Yang Tianlie, as a lifelong Grand Marshal, would certainly know this code as well. Having decided, Zhong Yun prepared to act. Yet, there was one thing Zhong Yun hadn't noticed: Yang Bingchang and his son seemed entirely unconcerned about Yang Tianlie’s safety...

A sharp, arrhythmic bird cry suddenly sounded, causing Yang Tianlie, who was mid-battle, to momentarily falter, nearly missing the mecha arm stabbing directly toward him. Watching Yang Tianlie almost fall into danger, Zhong Yun’s heart leaped into his throat in tension. Only when he saw Yang Tianlie eventually evade the attack did his heart settle back down. He hadn't expected that cry to distract him and almost lead to disaster. Damn it. I nearly became a national traitor. The thought sent a cold sweat down his entire body. That strange bird cry had aroused the suspicion of the enemy Mecha Master. He scanned toward the source of the sound but found nothing unusual, so he dismissed it. A while later, Zhong Yun attempted to replicate the bird call again. Seeing that Yang Tianlie was not affected, he felt relieved and began transmitting the message through the bird calls. He repeated the call twice before stopping, staring intently at the tiny silhouette darting between the six steel giants in the sky.

Casually dodging a sweeping ionic oscillation blade, Yang Tianlie intentionally or unintentionally dove downward. Several mechas instantly perceived his intent and launched furious assaults. An opening.

A flash of brilliance erupted in Yang Tianlie’s eyes. His downward trajectory warped and shifted sideways with bizarre agility. He dodged a massive mechanical fist whistling past, his hand blazing with milky-white light. Like a blade, he brought it down in a silent cleave across the joint of a mechanical arm. With a loud crackling explosion, that mechanical arm blew apart mid-section and dropped from the height, smashing onto the ground with a bang, kicking up a cloud of dust. Zhong Yun, watching from below, was utterly dumbfounded. He couldn't see Yang Tianlie’s movements clearly at all; he only saw Yang Tianlie suddenly vanish, then reappear two meters away, slicing off a mecha arm thicker than a human body with a palm strike. The indestructible war machine looked like tissue paper before him. Is this the strength of a Level Ten expert? A deep craving, a craving for power, rose within Zhong Yun’s heart. Just a few more months, and I can be as strong as him, Zhong Yun thought, deeply stirred.

With one mecha having lost half an arm, the entire encirclement was disrupted, and Yang Tianlie appeared even more composed. He descended another fifty meters and paused. By then, he had already kicked the mechanical head off another mecha. A hint of joy flickered in Zhong Yun’s eyes. Yang Tianlie understood the cipher after all. The message he had just sent meant: I am Zhong Yun. If you can understand, please descend fifty meters. Yang Tianlie had descended fifty meters as requested, incidentally severely damaging two mechas. Amidst his elation, Zhong Yun noticed something strange. If Yang Tianlie wanted to escape, entering the forest below—with its complex terrain—would make shaking off a few mechas very easy. Yet, Yang Tianlie remained entangled with the enemy in the open sky. It was like the Red Army abandoning guerrilla tactics against the Japanese invaders to engage in static positional warfare—using his own weakness against the enemy's strength. Yang Tianlie could not possibly fail to understand that logic.

Realizing this, Zhong Yun suddenly grasped Yang Tianlie’s concern: he intended to tie up the enemies, preventing them from breaking away to pursue Yang Bingchang and the others, thereby creating a chance for their escape. With this in mind, Zhong Yun altered his plan and used the bird call to transmit a new message: “They are safe now. The enemy’s target is you.”

In the sky, one mecha abruptly spun around, revealing a cannon barrel in its chest, firing a massive shell. The area where the sound originated erupted into a sea of fire, turning hundreds of meters into an inferno. A white light flashed over Yang Tianlie, and his entire body suddenly vanished from his original spot, reappearing in an instant behind the mecha that had fired the shell. With a roar, he swung his right hand down, slicing cleanly through the connection point between the mecha's arm and its torso, severing the entire mechanical arm. Lifting the still-sparking stump of the mecha arm, Yang Tianlie swung it around with force and slammed it into the back of the now unbalanced mecha. With a deafening collision sound, like two streamlined vehicles crashing, sparks flew everywhere. The back of that mecha buckled inward with a dent, and its flight thrusters sputtered twice before extinguishing. Under the pull of gravity, the mecha fell straight down. Halfway down, with a bang, the pilot ejected from the cockpit, deploying a glider mid-air. Yang Tianlie shook his hand, and a beam of milky-white light shot out, piercing the body of the mecha pilot floating slowly in the air. A spray of blood rained down from the sky, possessing a peculiar, strange allure. Yang Tianlie’s figure flickered again, and a streak of pale yellow light passed through the afterimage he left behind. When he reappeared, he was already behind the mecha that had been firing particle beams. “Speak. Who sent you?”

Yang Tianlie was still holding the severed mecha arm. With one hand, he gripped the two-meter-long spike protruding from the middle joint. Amidst a grinding metallic screech that made teeth ache, the area where the spike connected to the arm was forcibly bent backward. With a hard pull, he wrenched the spike free. Tossing the massive mechanical arm aside, Yang Tianlie swung the spike he held, a sinister grin flickering across his face.

The remaining five Mecha Masters watched, their eyes nearly bulging out of their sockets. While it wasn't entirely surprising that someone powerful could damage joints—the joints being the mechas’ weakest points—the spike on the elbow joint was the primary close-combat weapon, forged from the hardest metal. Even a metal cutting machine would take a considerable amount of time to sever such a spike. To break it off by hand? Was he even human? This inhuman strength plunged the five Mecha Masters into despair. Coupled with his ghost-like speed, he was already in an invincible position. The intelligence was flawed; this person's strength was definitely beyond Level Ten. They needed to re-evaluate him. All five Mecha Masters transmitted this data, hoping to deploy greater force next time. This time, to avoid detection, they had deployed eight mechas, piloted by extremely capable Mecha Masters; eliminating a Level Ten expert should have been more than sufficient. However, the orchestrator of this assassination had not anticipated that Yang Tianlie's power would become so terrifying, resulting in the loss of a prime opportunity. Having lost this best chance for assassination, would the Yang family afford them another opportunity? But that wasn't their immediate concern. After sending the message, they prepared to make a final attempt. The five mechas converged together.

A sharp glint flashed in Yang Tianlie's eyes, and a powerful sense of crisis washed over him as he rapidly retreated. The five mechas emitted an extremely dazzling light, and the entire space seemed to contract momentarily before expanding into an unparalleled sphere of light, instantly engulfing Yang Tianlie’s body. With a tremendous boom, the resulting shockwave swept down, flattening a large section of the coniferous forest below. Sand, rocks, and debris flew, devastating an area spanning a thousand meters. The five mechas had clearly been prepared for a mutual destruction scenario, carrying powerful explosives; otherwise, relying solely on the mechas themselves could not have generated an explosion of such immense power. This explosion was even more violent and powerful than the previous one. However, because it occurred high in the air, the impact on the ground was less severe than before.

Two minutes later, the effects of the explosion had dissipated. “Pah, pah,” Zhong Yun lifted his head from a small crater on the ground, shaking his head to clear the dust. “That was close, almost got buried alive.” He felt lingering terror.

P: Featured post, requesting monthly votes.