Within the white circle on the ground, flames blazed fiercely. After dropping their bombs, the nine aircraft circled once above the valley before flying straight into the distance. The Lord Protector-Governor surveyed the scene below from the sky, then flew directly toward the crowd on the hillside, with Gao Tianqi hurriedly following behind...
In the blink of an eye, the Lord Protector-Governor descended from the heavens with imposing force, landing before the group of uniformed men on the hillside.
The uniforms these men wore were neither those of Great Xia's regular provincial armies nor the dress uniforms of the Four Upper Armies. Instead, they were grayish-green uniforms similar to those worn by merchant corps armed forces and great clan private armies. To distinguish them from Great Xia's regular troops, there was a conspicuous diamond-shaped insignia on the cuff of each uniform, identifying their status. Anyone familiar with the military systems of Great Xia's provinces could glean even more information from details such as their shoulder badges, collar insignia, cap badges, and armbands. Their cap badges bore an especially distinctive design: crossed double swords framed by wings made of steel gears.
Among the crowd, five bespectacled people dressed in blue engineers' work uniforms stood out conspicuously amid the soldiers.
There were fifty or sixty people in the group, every one of them lean and capable. More than a dozen strange six-wheeled off-road vehicles painted in camouflage were parked nearby as well. Compared with ordinary steam-powered automobiles, these vehicles showed almost none of the easily recognizable external features—steam engines, boilers, pressure tanks, or exhaust systems...
Both the Lord Protector-Governor and Gao Tianqi, after landing, could not help taking a few extra looks at the people before them and the vehicles parked behind them.
The sudden descent of two knights took the group