But we all knew that life was always full of hardship. More often than not, after solving one big problem, we ran into an even bigger one. That was true of life, and even more so of war.
While everyone spent three or four hours organizing into groups and moving toward the remote shipping lanes, the new flagship of Yang's fleet, the Hyperion, received a new uncoded battle report. It was news of General James Picard's final battle. Just like that, every Independence-class dreadnought the Blue Star Commonwealth had sent to the New World was reduced to smoke and dust amid the flames of war.
The fleet's jubilant mood vanished at once, and everyone sank into silence.
Yang Xiyi had sensed this coming long ago and had prepared himself for it, but it still felt like his heart was being torn apart.
General James Picard was hardly a brilliant and virtuous commander. He could not even be called incorruptible. But overall, he was forthright and generous, a man who valued loyalty and treated his own people very well.
Yang Xiyi had served for only a year as a staff officer at General Picard's headquarters, yet the general had already considered him one of his own. Yang himself disapproved of the general's decision to run contraband with the Tenth Fleet, but he wasn't the sort of person who hated evil so fiercely that he couldn't tolerate a single grain of sand in his eye. The two of them had actually gotten along very well, and could even be called friends despite their difference in age.
And now, General James Picard had proven that although he was imperfect and not entirely pure, he was a patriot full of courage.
But this was no time to let himself and everyone else spiral into