Just as Wuchang began backing away with the princess under his control, Ye Tian arrived from the north at the head of the Guard. The moment he saw Wuchang holding her, all the blood in his body rushed to his head—and mixed in with the fury was something very like shame.
A miserable miner, a filthy ground rat—how dare you lay your arm across the princess's neck? You even dared to hold her, a princess of noble blood!
"Wuchang, you treacherous little bastard—I already agreed to your deal, and you dare go back on your word?"
"Fuck that, I do what I like. Come bite me, then. You think I was raised on lies? You think that little scheme of yours can fool anyone?"
Wuchang really was a ruthless piece of work: he held the princess tight against him with his right arm, the short blade gripped in that same right hand, its keen edge pressed right to her soft pink throat.
Wuchang retreated one step at a time, and the soldiers followed step for step. None of them would let him go, and none of them dared make a move.
"Young man, why make things so hard on yourself? Kidnapping a princess is a capital crime—do you really think you can get off Huang'e? I'll be straight with you: the space around Huang'e is under total electromagnetic control right now. No space fold can even form..."
Before Gu Bai could finish, a land vehicle came bursting out from behind Wuchang. "Kid, get in and let's go—quit dawdling here..."
Wuchang didn't need to turn around to know it was Minghe, the one who had struck first. The man seemed to have known all along where Wuchang was hiding; all through the fight he had been steering the princess toward Wuchang, whether he meant to or not.
Wuchang put his mouth to the princess's ear and whispered, "You're pure gold and jade; I'm a broken roof tile. It'd be a real waste for the two of us to burn together, so you'd better cooperate with me..." Then he flung Ye Mei into the front of the land vehicle, pressed himself tight against her back, hit a switch, and the vehicle shot away like an arrow.
Ye Tian was so miserable he was about to vomit blood. Seeing Wuchang's body pressed so tight to the princess's back, he could no longer hold his temper in check. Without thinking, he was about to order the soldiers to fire and cut this filthy, disgusting man down with the Phalanx.
Gu Bai, a seventh-dan martial artist, caught that flicker of losing control in Ye Tian's eyes at a glance. "Captain Ye, restrain your anger. Your job right now is to ensure the princess's safety."
The voice, deep as a temple bell, woke the blood-dazed mind. Ye Tian ground his teeth and said, "Guard, follow them—don't close in, and don't lose them..." Only Gu Bai did not see that Ye Tian's hand, clasped behind his back, was quietly tapping something into his terminal.
"Notify the fleet—get the satellite net up at once, and send out the drones while you're at it. Let this poor kid find out what it means to have no road to heaven and no door into the earth."
At Gu Bai's command, the fleet in space launched over a hundred small satellites in a single burst, quickly spinning a net across Huang'e's near orbit. In only three minutes, a three-dimensional map of Huang'e's entire terrain was finished.
At the same time, dozens of small unmanned scout craft dropped from space through the thick cloud layer and kept watch over the hundred-kilometer radius around Wuchang's flight, streaming real-time imagery to the whole space fleet.
Once the intelligence gathering was complete within ten minutes, one landing ship after another drifted out of the Flying Maiden's bay doors, hundreds upon hundreds of soldiers in Raider-series war armor standing by inside without a flicker of expression. On the faces of these battle-hardened veterans there was only a faint thirst for blood.
Wuchang had no idea he was already completely surrounded. The whole of Huang'e was held in a net woven by the regular army; the moment Gu Bai gave the word, a textbook landing operation would begin.
But for some reason, Gu Bai fell silent at that moment.
"What's your name? Is your surname Wu? Then why are you called Wuchang? Your parents gave you such a strange name—at first hearing, people would think you're that 'impermanence' from 'the impermanence of all things'..."
"What did you just say? What do you mean, burn together? Where's that from? Who taught you to talk like a noble?"
"Oh, could you drive a little slower? The wind is wrecking my hair..."
"All right, all right, I won't scold you anymore. You really are a bad man—I tell you to slow down and you speed up instead. Not a gentleman at all."
Wuchang was on the verge of losing his mind. He had never seen a hostage so cocky—she had actually spread both arms wide, copying a scene from some classic film. You little bastard, do you think you're shooting a romance here?
By now Wuchang had the accelerator floored, and the vehicle was long past eighty kilometers an hour. At that speed, anyone who opened their mouth ought to be swallowing a mouthful of wind—so how was this woman's talking completely unaffected?
Looking and looking, Wuchang found the trick. The princess's cloak carried a thin, barely visible film of light that shielded her face; neither the driving wind nor the volcanic ash could reach it, so she could say whatever she pleased.
Wuchang's eyes were opened. In the market he had seen flickering energy shields, and now on the run he was seeing this strange protective light film—every bit of it was beyond anything Wuchang could have imagined.
"Will you shut up? You need to get your position straight—you're a prisoner, all right..."
Ye Mei pursed her lips. "Are you really going to kill me? I don't feel the slightest killing intent off you. And look up..."
Ye Mei raised her head and looked where her finger pointed. "Those black dots up there are scout drones. The thousand li around us has already been sealed off by my people, and I know very well that at least twenty thousand marines are assembled and waiting in space. Do you think you have any hope of getting away?"
"Fine. Now you tell me—what's your goal in kidnapping me? My sister has no interest in taking me alive; all she cares about is destroying me physically..."
Wuchang truly could not stand the woman's nagging. "Can you shut your mouth? Just take me for a madman—what damn goal does a madman need for anything he does?"
"Ah!" Ye Mei said, the light dawning. "So you're a madman? But you really don't look like one..."
While Ye Mei was madly torturing Wuchang with her sound waves, the land vehicle plunged into the Pillar Forest. And just then Minghe, racing a hundred meters ahead, suddenly slowed down.
"Careful, brother—I feel an ambush up ahead..." The pirate Minghe's instincts were frighteningly sharp. Before he had even finished speaking, dense columns of light came stabbing out from the base of the Pillar Forest—the ambush had opened fire.
The high-energy bullets turned into short-wave energy rays in the air, streaking past the two land vehicles and up into the sky, drawing a scream out of Ye Mei.
"Ah... you bastards, are you trying to get me killed?" Is there a spy of my sister's among my own people? At that thought Ye Mei wrenched open the side of the land vehicle's control panel and actually pulled a little data-entry keyboard out of it.
"You bastards—you set an ambush without caring whether I live or die? You really take Ye Mei for some weak little woman?" The princess tapped a program rapidly into the keyboard, then shouted at Wuchang.
"Floor it! I've already started the overclock program—what are you standing there gawking for? I've never seen such a useless killer."
How could Wuchang have known that a military land vehicle had an easter egg like that tucked inside? He reflexively stamped on the accelerator, the speed leapt to a hundred and forty kilometers an hour, and the whole vehicle became a blur streaking away south.
The speeding vehicle tore past Minghe's side close enough to brush him. The speed left Minghe stammering, "Damn... damn, that's just insane..." And just then Minghe's own land vehicle took three hits in a row, black smoke already pouring out.
"Bastards, the lot of you—taste my wrath!" Minghe dropped like some gray monster bird from fifteen meters up, slammed into the ground, and in a flash charged into the ranks of the ambushers.
The princess had never imagined anyone would dare fire first without regard for her safety, and Wuchang and Minghe had imagined it even less. But when Minghe plowed into the fight, he found the whole battle being directed by two little fatties?
"Shoot, shoot! Captain Ye's put up a fat bounty—afterward I'll take you all on a trip to Left Bank Paradise Star!"
Perhaps the beautiful legends of Left Bank Paradise Star fired these killers up, because the idiots actually counter-charged straight into Minghe's path, pouring assault-rifle bullets out like rain.
Minghe didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Where had he ever seen such a stupid bunch? A martial artist had already closed to within ten meters of them—and instead of spreading out, they were bunching together? They even meant to fight a fourth-dan powerhouse with bullets?
"You two little fatties—did your mother smoke too much Yellow Mist before she had you? Are you idiots?"
Big Fatty and Little Fatty exchanged a look, then said in wide-eyed unison, "Huh? How do you know our mom smoked Yellow Mist before she had us? Are you the doctor who delivered us?"
"Fuck!" The two idiots' words actually broke Minghe's stride; he nearly stumbled flat on his face. "Damn it, none of this can ever get out once we're back on Fallen Nebula. Me, the great Minghe, brought down by two fat idiots—that's too humiliating..."
By then Minghe had already charged into the crowd. "Aah!" A shrill sonic attack sent the thirty-odd thugs' heads spinning, and a few of them couldn't even hold their guns steady.
"Fuck me, this is all the strength you've got, and you dare ambush me?" Minghe was ready to die of sheer fury. He crashed into the crowd like a tyrannosaur, and in barely half a minute he had already floored fifteen of the ambushing thugs.
"A ghost! Run!" Nobody knew who shouted first, but the thugs around the edges all scattered like mad. Minghe had no interest in chasing those caterpillars; he turned back to deal with the two fatties—only to find that the two little fatties had already run off.
Just then the whine of land vehicles rose from the northern sky, and Gu Bai's arrogant roar carried across the fields: "You bastards—who the hell dares set an ambush? I'll kill his whole clan, nine generations of them..."
Minghe ducked his head and slipped away into the depths of the Pillar Forest, gone in a puff of smoke.
Gu Bai had barely roared three times when the two fatties were already dragged over by the Imperial Guard. The Guardsmen planted two kicks to their knees, and the two fatties knelt on the ground like a pair of balls.
"Talk. Who gave you two the guts to make a move? Who gave the order?" Gu Bai roared.
"It was our boss! He sent us a message, told us to come ambush here and kill that bastard Wuchang..."
"Bullshit..." Just then another land vehicle came flying in from the north—Coyote Seven, dripping with sweat, had finally arrived.
Coyote Seven dropped to his knees in front of Gu Bai with a thud. "General, I really didn't give any order—I'm innocent, I swear..."