Wuchang did not know why he trusted this princess he had never met before. Was it simply that men had no natural resistance to beautiful women? Clearly not. Wuchang's control over his own desires was very strong; being blinded by lust was simply not something that happened to him.
Later, when Wuchang looked back on it, he would say that his unconditional trust in Ye Mei at the time had really been the helpless choice of a man driven into a corner—nothing at all like the crap about love at first sight that the rumors made it out to be.
Still, Wuchang might have superb control over his emotions, but he was a healthy man after all, and with his skin pressed against a beauty of Ye Mei's caliber, he could hardly help certain associations.
Ye Mei lay on Wuchang's back, the loose cloak draped over her and covering them both. The two soaking-wet bodies were pressed tightly together, and the feel of skin on skin sent a strange restlessness stirring through him.
Fuck, why isn't this woman wearing a bra? Don't women in this world even go in for the things?
Good God, and she keeps them this perky without one? What was she fed growing up?
Forget it, what am I even going on about? A princess of a star system must hold more power than the princess of any country back on Earth. People like that live a quality of life we can't even imagine.
Hiss—this feels way too fucking good...
Racing along at full speed, Wuchang felt the friction of those points against his back, and the stimulation nearly sent him sprawling several times. Each stumble made him curse furiously in his head.
Ye Mei had no idea what was going through Wuchang's mind. She simply thought his lower-body footwork was far too unsteady, and every near-miss earned him a good scolding.
"Aren't you a third-dan martial artist? How is your lower-body strength and stance this weak? You've run barely ten li and look how many times you've nearly fallen!"
"Oh, whoever ends up your woman is in for bad luck. A man with a weak back leaves his woman a widow in all but name..."
Listening to Ye Mei's mockery, Wuchang was boiling with anger; he would have loved to dump the woman off his back. But on second thought, he didn't dare strike back. This prison break needed her support in far too many ways. And deep down, in his subconscious, dropping a princess was simply far too impolite.
Deep breath. Calm the mind. Wuchang slowly adjusted his breathing and his state of mind; his formidable meditation skill quickly steadied that faintly restless heart, and soon his running took on a smoother, more rhythmic cadence.
Soon Ye Mei noticed the change in him; the man was growing calmer and calmer. That loss of composure she had just seen was very familiar to her—this woman was utterly confident in her own charm, and she knew perfectly well what had been making him stumble.
But now she was a little surprised; she had not imagined the man could cool down this fast. Good heavens, is this even a man? I'm practically naked against him and he isn't moved in the slightest? Interesting. This man is really too interesting.
While Wuchang raced through the underground mine tunnels with the princess on his back, directly above their heads Guard Captain Ye Tian was busy directing his men in a frenzy.
Remote-controlled mines were laid underground one after another, and automated machine guns were hidden inside the stone pillars. Though the area was already covered by satellites and unmanned reconnaissance drones, Ye Tian had still set up more than ten portable radar units.
Ye Tian stood atop an enormous stone pillar, the four watchers Gu Bai had assigned to him at his back, and with grief and fury all over his face he drove several hundred subordinates through a nightlong, unbroken bustle. All Ye Tian felt now was humiliation: the princess had been kidnapped right under his nose, and Gu Bai even suspected him of plotting to murder her—enough to put him under what amounted to house arrest.
"Wuchang, you little bastard, just you wait. One of us dies—there's no other way." Ye Tian's fingernails had already dug into his own flesh, blood bright red.
Meanwhile, in the secret underground base, Lane and the others had learned the whole course of events from Dr. Song. When they heard that Wuchang had actually kidnapped the princess traveling incognito, the dirty old man burst into tears on the spot.
"You fool, you absolute fool! Kidnapping a princess is a capital crime that gets your whole clan wiped out! You've really got a death wish—you're a reckless desperado, that's what you are! What did I do to deserve taking in a useless disciple like you right before I die..."
It was the first time Lane had ever acknowledged Wuchang as his disciple. Perhaps he already sensed that the end was close at hand for master and disciple alike.
"My foolish disciple, trading hostages is easy—escaping with your life is the hard part. The Second Princess of Three Seas Star is famous for her fiery temper. Why would she ever let you push her around?"
"And besides, even if you do make the trade, you'd have to do it up in space, on a ship. Then one space fold and we're gone. Worst case we spend the rest of our lives as pirates—still better than letting you land us all in a pointless grave."
Lane was purely angry—angry that Wuchang wouldn't listen, and angry at himself for failing in his duty as a master, for not teaching Wuchang properly.
Boss Pan spoke up from the side. "Don't blame yourself so much. It was Ye Tian who proposed the exchange; Wuchang never responded. Things may not be as bleak as all that."
"What are you crying for, you dirty old man? If we're going to die, die like a man. Since Ye Tian won't leave us a way out, let's raise some hell—and when we go, we drag someone down with us." Wild Bull got to his feet and said it in his deep, booming voice.
Perhaps it was the certainty of death that roused the viciousness in everyone's hearts, for even Gopher Pike, usually the most cowardly of them all, was riled up. "Right! Drag someone down with us! Cowering like a coward is death, trading one life for one life is death—I'm going all in!" With that, the little guy picked up a sharp piece of volcanic rock from the floor and began furiously grinding it.
The atmosphere of despair had been turned around by a couple of sentences from Wild Bull. The little guy's eyes fixed greedily on the Hercules armor in the interrogation room beyond the bars, and he asked in a low voice:
"Old man, since we're all dead men anyway, why don't you teach me how to use war armor? If I can take one for a spin before the end, I can die happy..."
Lane heaved a long sigh. "Fair enough. Since death is unavoidable, we may as well forget about whether it cripples you or not. Mind you—with your current physique, piloting Hercules armor is completely impossible. Never mind anything else; the reflective force of the magic light membrane inside that armor alone would rip every muscle in your body apart."
"War armor is high-end equipment; it's always been a martial artist's privilege—only their bodies can handle that kind of wild force. Since you want to try it before you die, I won't hold anything back. Memorize this first—the password I set for this suit of armor is..."
In the dead silence of the deep night, behind the main volcano of Huang'e City, a landing ship of the newest model hovered eight hundred meters above the ground. This was Centurion Gu Bai's temporary command post. Aboard the ship were six thousand of the finest special-operations warriors, waiting anxiously for the order to move.
Gu Bai was like an ant on a hot pan; the spacious command room was a wreck, and the big man paced back and forth like a headless fly.
"What is the princess thinking? Why have us stand by? Doesn't she know how dangerous it is out here? The First Princess's spies are everywhere—what makes you so sure Ye Tian is loyal?" Pacing around the room, Gu Bai muttered to himself without pause.
Just then, a subordinate's image suddenly cut into the screen of the command cabin. "Sir, the concealed missile emplacements on Huang'e have just repositioned. Four Earth-Moon missile launch racks have been activated and are now aimed at the Pillar Forest..."
With the voice came a real-time image captured by a reconnaissance craft: the rock-camouflaged hatch doors had opened, and silvery-white launch racks had risen out of the mountainside, the fearsome Earth-Moon missiles showing their savage true forms.
"Ye Tian... fuck you and every ancestor you've got—so you really did betray the Second Princess, you bastard..." The enraged Gu Bai was about to order Ye Tian's arrest on the spot when another image shoved its way in from the edge of the screen.
"Sir, a large number of cannibal tribes have suddenly appeared in the Pillar Forest and are attacking the Huang'e Guard. Ye Tian's men are taking heavy casualties. Requesting orders—do we reinforce them...?"
The words left Gu Bai stunned. "Cannibal tribes? Why would those mutants suddenly show up and cause trouble? Didn't Ye Tian already clear them out with orbital cannon fire?"
A mess—it was all such a mess. Veteran of a hundred battles or not, Gu Bai had never faced a situation this tangled: the princess couldn't be reached, there was no telling whether Ye Tian was a traitor, and now even the cannibal tribes were joining the chaos.
While Gu Bai hesitated over whether to rescue Ye Tian, thousands of cannibal tribesmen in the Pillar Forest had already finished encircling the Guard and were squealing as they pressed the attack on Ye Tian.
Ye Tian had no idea where these cannibals had crawled out from, but he could absolutely tell that their intelligence had improved again: they had actually learned to split their attacks and launch wave assaults.
Whenever the Guard swept through the cannibal tribes, the monsters would all charge in a furious mob like a pack of wild animals, and a few Swarm Phalanx units could easily mow them down in swaths.
Today was different. The cannibals had actually spread out into a loose skirmish line and refused to bunch up, which sharply reduced the Phalanx's effectiveness—often a single salvo failed to kill even a hundred of them.
Worse, the whole horde seemed to have someone commanding it. They had chosen wave attacks, committing never more than two hundred fighters at a time, trading the fewest casualties for the greatest possible waste of Phalanx ammunition.
The Phalanx needed ammunition resupply, after all. Four consecutive salvos was the absolute limit of a military land vehicle's magazine, and these wave-attacking cannibals were not going to stop at four. When the Phalanxes finally fell silent, the cannibals' main assault tide appeared at last—a black mass of more than a thousand warriors pouring out of hidden cave mouths from every direction like locusts.
Ye Tian had gone mad by now. Watching the ambush position he had so carefully designed be wrecked beyond repair, the black fury in his heart could no longer be contained, and he made a gravely wrong decision.
"Charge! All troops, attack! Kill these cannibals..."
The men Ye Tian had brought out today were all his most loyal subordinates, trained by his own hand—his ironclad core for controlling the entire Guard. They knew full well that their captain's order was irrational, but bound by deep debts of gratitude, they had no choice at all, and could only drive their land vehicles charging at the black mass of cannibals.
The light machine guns on the land vehicles opened fire, but against a tide of cannibals, that little firepower was a drop in the bucket.