After the Great Battle

Survived a disaster.

Qing Chen stood in the center of the devastated battlefield and looked around. They had won, but no one could be happy.

Because nearly 10,000 people actually died in this war, even though Qing Chen was the victor, he didn't think it was anything to be happy about.

This battle.

Chen lost two southern fleets.

Two A-level artists were lost.

The company lost one Field Division and two Field Brigade.

Seven Purple Orchid Star were lost, along with one of Chen Yu's plants.

Most importantly, Chen Yu also lost more than fifty Painting Scroll.

When Chen Yu used the Immortal Brooch to take his place in death, time had already frozen the moment. Although the person was gone, the painting was left behind and destroyed.

The loss of these fifty-odd Painting Scroll alone would keep Chen Yu confined to his home for two years.

This was the time that Shadow was buying for Qing Chen. If Chen Yu couldn't kill Qing Chen within two years, then there would be no more chances. He believed in his younger brother.

On the other hand, Kashima lost a demigod.

Two battalion-level marine units were lost, along with 21 plants of Longevity Sky.

To be honest, Li Bingxi is a really cunning old man. If the Shadow Unit hadn't found his wife in time, he probably wouldn't have lost his life but could have replaced Qing Chen and the Shadow Army, causing Chen Yu to suffer a heavy blow.

They can also exchange it for the core technology related to the Aerial Fortress from the Qing family, helping Kashima complete the most crucial step before its rise.

Unfortunately, Li Bingxi has not only lost his life, turned into a shadowy figure, and become a laughingstock of the Federation, but he has also failed to obtain the core technology.

Without Aerial Fortress, Kashima is destined to be a target in the air domain of future wars.

Sometimes, the war between conglomerates doesn't begin the moment the smoke of battle appears; controlling core technologies is the key to securing victory.

Qing Chen obtained Whale Island and Purple Orchid Star. The magical effect produced by the combination of these two magical objects is destined to bring a huge surprise to the world someday in the future.

This was a turning point in fate.

At this moment, Gu Dong sat on the back of the Killer Bear and roared to the sky, while the surviving wild boars grunted in response.

Gu Dong looked at Qing Chen and the others. "Gu Dong!"

Zard responded from the side, "Snap!"

Gu Dong: "?"

Yang Yang said speechlessly, "Can you even understand what he's saying? And yet you're chatting with him."

"I don't understand," Zard said, "But so what? He doesn't understand what I'm saying anyway."

Fair enough.

Qing Chen was both amused and exasperated. "He wants us to climb onto the bear's back and go back to the Forbidden Zone with him. This Killer Bear's back is indeed broad; it could easily seat more than a dozen people."

As he spoke, he looked at Gu Dong and said, "I can't leave now; more people might come."

"Gu Dong?" Gu Dong's fighting spirit surged again.

(Enemy?)

Qing Chen shook his head. "Not enemies, but friends."

Zard breathed a sigh of relief. He glanced back at Huan Yu, who was still lying quietly on the sand he had lifted up.

Qing Chen asked curiously, "Little Yu's intelligence is stuck at a child's level. Is Big Yu a normal person? I feel like he has some problems too?"

Zard scratched his head. "He's not quite right either, but he probably caught it from me."

Qing Chen paused for a moment. "So you do know you're not quite normal..."

Zard said, "But that Big Yu was really fierce at first. He had just arrived in the Outer World and was determined to establish his own dynasty here. Every time Little Yu wrote to him to chat, he would gradually stop mentioning it. I don't know what he's thinking lately."

Qing Chen frowned. He felt that some details were not right, but after the great battle, he had not had time to sort out all his memories and the clues behind them.

"What did Little Yu talk about with him?" Qing Chen asked curiously.

"I don't know about that. They won't let me see either of them. They're so stingy," Zard said, treating Little Yu and Big Yu as two separate people without any difficulty.

At this moment, Yang Yang asked from the side, "Who else will come? Li Changqing, right?"

"Hey, look, a flock of birds is flying back in the sky," Qing Chen suddenly looked into the distance. The flock of birds from Forbidden Zone No. 002 had returned, with more than half of them dead or wounded, but since they were able to return, it meant that they had won this battle.

As Qing Chen was pondering this, he saw Azure Falcon flap its wings and come to Vermilion Bird's side, its mouth opening and closing as if it were saying something.

They're too far away to hear.

However, the beautiful Vermilion Bird didn't even bother to acknowledge it...

In an instant, Azure Falcon was made to look like a sycophant.

Qing Chen was stunned for a moment. He hadn't expected that Azure Falcon would have two faces.

On the Qingshan Hao.

After confirming that the last Chen family airship had been shot down, Vermilion Bird gracefully flew back to Forbidden Zone No. 002.

Cheers erupted from the command center, power compartment, fire control compartment, and phased array radar compartment.

Only at this moment did Li Changqing finally relax his tense nerves.

However, as the commander, she didn't reveal much, simply saying calmly, "Stop celebrating. Return to your posts and check the status of Aerial Fortress."

Inside the Aerial Fortress, the soldiers suppressed their joy at the victory.

"34% of the power storage remains. The reactor is overheating, but it is under control."

"The anti-gravity device is functioning normally, 12 anti-gravity honeycombs are damaged, and 84 remain."

"2% of drones remain."

"54 carrier-based aircraft were lost, and the remaining 6 have all returned to base."

"Main weapon compartment has 2% energy remaining, unable to continue fighting."

"The secondary weapons bay has 7% of its ammunition remaining, which is no longer sufficient to effectively intercept air-to-air missiles."

The main fire control compartment of the Qingshan Hao is used for attacking, while the secondary fire control compartment is used to intercept any attacks on the Aerial Fortress.

At this point, the Qingshan Hao was out of ammunition and supplies and could no longer continue fighting.

As Li Changqing listened to the reports over the communication channel, and once the Qingshan Hao quieted down, she opened the captain's channel. "Thank you all, this battle is yours. However, now is not the time to celebrate. We are now heading towards the ground battlefield, where the fighting may not be over yet."

The Qingshan Hao slowly started moving and headed north.

Old Twenty-One breathed a sigh of relief; it was finally over.

Moreover, while Li Changqing seemed to have found many reasons to save Qing Chen in this battle, she did indeed have strategic objectives.

Now that Kashima and Kamishiro are eyeing the north with hostility, Chen Yu's participation in the Battle of the Century has already revealed his ambitions.

The alliance between the Li and Qing families cannot be attacked from both sides.

When Shadow found Li Changqing, he made it very clear: this battle will destroy more than half of the Chen family's main southern fleet, and the Chen family will need at least two to five years to recover. This is to buy time for the Qing family and the Li family.

Shadow got into a fight with his younger brother, but the impact of that fight was far-reaching than anyone imagined.

Within two years, neither the Qing family nor the Li family will have to worry about being attacked from both sides, unless Kashima, Kamishiro, and the Chen family go mad.

At that moment, a communication request came from inside the Qingshan Hao, and Li Changqing had the communications officer connect it.

Qing Kun and Qing Yu appeared simultaneously on the holographic projections on either side of the command room. Qing Kun said, "This cooperation has been very pleasant. I had heard before that the Qingshan Hao was controlled by a woman, and I thought the Li family was being too frivolous. I didn't expect you to be so good at fighting."

Qing Yu spoke much more politely, "Lieutenant General Li Changqing, after this battle, the friendship between the Li and Qing families will be unbreakable, for our future..."

"We just won a battle, and now some scoundrels are spouting official jargon," Qing Kun said.

These words, laced with hostility, immediately silenced the Qingshan Hao.

The Li soldiers looked at each other, wondering what was going on. Why were the two Qing clan leaders arguing on the Qingshan Hao? Couldn't they have argued in private?

Qing Yu's holographic projection frowned as it looked at Qing Kun: "Are you out of your mind? We're connected to the Qingshan Hao right now."

Qing Kun said, "And you're wrong about one thing. It's not the entire Qing family that's cooperating with the Li family. Some of the old guys will get their comeuppance sooner or later. So the Li family needs to understand that the Qing family we represent is the Qing family of the Qing family head, and it has nothing to do with anyone else."

Qing Yu was furious. "Don't you even know what 'don't wash your dirty linen in public' means?"

Qing Kun sneered, "Someone's already selling core technology, and you still think you can keep this a secret? Your cousin must be out of her mind to do something like this. If she had any brains at all, even if she likes Chen Yu a lot, she wouldn't do something like this. And do you even see Chen Yu paying attention to her? How old is Chen Yu? How old is she? I wonder if Qing Wen will be ashamed for his mother if he finds out about this."

The cousin that Qing Kun mentioned is Qing Wen's mother. Qing Wen's father was a son-in-law who married into the Qing family.

The soldiers on the Qingshan Hao were stunned. Was this kind of secret something they could hear without paying money?

Li Changqing knew that Qing Kun was determined to say this in public to disgust Qing Wen's mother Qing Yun...

However, this method is a bit too crude.

Qing Yu then realized something was amiss. "Isn't my cousin your cousin?"

Qing Kun said, "No, I don't have this younger sister, I don't acknowledge her."

Qing Yu: "?"

Just because you don't acknowledge her doesn't mean she's no longer your sister!

Li Changqing interrupted their conversation, "Gentlemen, what are your plans next?"

Qing Yu: "Go to the land battlefield to see someone."

Qing Kun continued grumbling, "We finally won a battle, so we have to go and brag to our future boss, you bootlicker."

This time, Qing Yu was truly enraged. "Don't think I don't know. Your Faceless Unit is on the front lines, ready to steal the credit. What right do you have to talk to me like that?"

Qing Kun muttered to himself, "I'm not going anyway, I'm going home!"

After saying that, Qing Kun disappeared from the Qingshan Hao. In a fit of anger, Qing Yu also turned off the communication channel. The two Qing fleets quickly headed north, and in the end, neither of them landed on the main battlefield.

Li Changqing sighed, "What a mess this is."

The Old Twenty-One chuckled and said, "The Qing family is really extreme. They're either insanely crazy or as calm as monsters. I wonder how they were raised."

Li Changqing said, "Actually, the Qing family originally consisted of two branches. The current head of the Qing family, Qing Yun, and others were from one branch hundreds of years ago. They are descendants of Qing Zhen. Qing Kun and Qing Yu were from the other branch. Qing Kun's ancestors were surnamed Luo back then. They were descendants of Luo Lan, an illegitimate son of the Qing family."

Li Changqing: "In the previous civilization era, Luo Lan, the illegitimate son of the Qing family, was Qing Zhen's shadow. The two brothers had a very good relationship, so the Qing and Luo surnames formed the complete Qing family. However, more than two hundred years later, the Divine Era tried to sow discord between the Qing and Luo families, attempting to split the vast Qing family in two. At that time, the descendants of the Luo family pretended to collude with the Divine Era to deal with the Qing family, and then secretly joined forces with Qing Xing to bring disaster to the Divine Era and Kashima. After that, the descendants of the Luo family returned to their ancestral lineage and changed their surname to Qing."

The Old Twenty-One nodded. "No wonder they are so polarized; it turns out their inherited personalities are all different."

At this moment, the Qingshan Hao was about to arrive over the land battlefield.

Li Changqing said, "Open the holographic sand table."

The surrounding terrain appeared before her in a 360-degree panorama, but the lieutenant general suddenly froze. She looked at Qing Chen and the exceptionally young and energetic Yang Yang beside him.

Li Changqing remained silent for a long time. "Old Twenty-One, how many years have you been with me?"

Old Twenty-One chuckled and said, "It's been 16 years since the boss started listening to board meetings at the conference table when he was 18."

Li Changqing smiled and said, "It has indeed been quite a while."

She suddenly said, "Activate the anti-gravity device and return to base."

"Huh?" Old Twenty-One aback. "Aren't you going to see Qing Chen?"

"I'm not going."

After she finished speaking, she left the command room, Qingshan Hao suddenly gained altitude and entered the stratosphere, then quickly headed north.

On land, Qing Chen and the others had clearly seen the Qingshan Hao, but the next moment, the Qingshan Hao did not come over, but instead rose into the dark clouds in the night sky and disappeared.

Qing Chen gazed into the dark clouds and said, "Let's go to Forbidden Zone No. 002."

He climbed onto the broad back of the Killer Bear and sat on its thick neck. At this moment, Gu Dong, who was always a warrior, actually moved back a little to make way for Qing Chen to sit in the front.

The Killer Bear seemed very unhappy that so many people were climbing on its back, but Gu Dong punched it, and it became obedient again.

Qing Chen looked at Gu Dong and asked curiously, "How many Forbidden Zone do you control now?"

Gu Dong Gu Dong! *

(Six. In Forbidden Zone No. 40, there's a particularly troublesome giant python. My fighting methods are useless against it; I can't throw it. I spent two years fighting it. However, recently, I don't know what happened, but that thing was killed by something terrifying, which gave me the opportunity to conquer that place.)

Qing Chen was stunned for a moment.

Forbidden Zone No. 40?

Wasn't that the Forbidden Zone he and Ma Jingjing and the others passed through when they rode the Steam Train? There was indeed a giant python there trying to devour the Steam Train, but it was rammed through by the Steam Train...

Qing Chen looked at Gu Dong, never expecting that Gu Dong was also in that Forbidden Zone back then, and that his Steam Train had coincidentally killed the king of all beasts there...

Isn't that a coincidence?

Qing Chen said calmly, "I killed him."

This time, it was Gu Dong's turn to be stunned. "Gu Dong?"

(You? I don't believe it! How could you kill such a huge python! I feel like it's almost a spirit!)

As he spoke, Gu Dong spread his arms wide and gestured. "Gu Dong!"

(So big!)

Qing Chen calmly finished his sentence, "Was its tail pierced, and it bled to death while struggling?"

Gu Dong was immediately filled with awe. If he hadn't actually killed the giant python, how could he have known the cause of its death and even pinpointed the location of the wound?!

He re-examined this next generation leader of the knights. To be honest, he was initially a little unconvinced, but he was also a member of Forbidden Zone No. 002, so he was naturally a subject of Qing Chen, and he couldn't show his dissatisfaction on the surface.

But there's currently no foundation of trust to make him genuinely admire Qing Chen.

But things are different now. Gu Dong really thinks that Qing Chen killed the giant python!

How powerful must that be?!

As Yang Yang watched Qing Chen perform, she wondered if she should personally mentor Xiao Zhenji when she got back, so that she wouldn't pick up any bad habits from the knight.

That little girl was the last vestige of conscience in the Knight Organization.

Two 10,000-word chapters today, please vote with monthly tickets and subscribe!