Burning metal wreckage filled most of the image, melting into a grotesque, hunched mound of corpses against the ashen background. It was the destroyed ATAT. This ace armored vehicle of the Imperial ground forces had toppled onto the ground, like a beast that had been hunted down.
Twisted flames curled around the warped steel carcass, blurring the entire image in the scorching air and shrouding it in a suffocating atmosphere. Even through the screen, it seemed as though one could hear its tortured groans.
The ion cannon, capable of firing directly into near orbit, had long since been scorched beyond recognition. It drooped toward the charred earth like a withered tree trunk.
Standing atop that dead tree was a figure wrapped in a traveling cloak.
Military-green traveling cloaks were so common that explorers, mercenaries, pirates, and even the lower-class citizens living in slums all wore them in great numbers. They were durable, hard-wearing, and stain-resistant, and could be used for a long time.
But the heavy hood, which looked thick enough to shield its wearer from radiation, had already been torn away by the heat. It revealed a shapely figure clad in powered armor, along with a profile lit by the flames.
The distance blurred her features, and the image was full of shifting, indistinct patches of color. At a glance, it looked like the low-resolution footage from the dial-up internet era. Yet Yu Lian recognized her at once. Of course it was the long-absent Gongsun Qing.
The girl's jawline cut a sharp arc through the smoke, and her long, slender neck was taut as a bowstring. Her petite figure stood atop the ATAT's towering "corpse," which rose like a hill. She looked like a hero from the age of myth who had just slain a giant beast.
This was