HPDBC Chapter 202 Qi Shanhe
Chapter 202 Qi Shanhe
Song Chen walked over and stood beside him, her gaze sweeping over the other three.
The first one was around fifty years old, with a square face.
His name is Qin Zhen, the fifth in the Great Xia Council, a sixth-level Grandmaster.
Song Chen had seen him countless times in the news. Seventeen years ago, during the Liangzhou beast tide, he guarded the city alone for three days and three nights. When reinforcements arrived, the corpses of the strange beasts outside the city walls were piled up as high as the city walls themselves.
The second one was in his sixties, with gray hair and wearing round-framed glasses; he looked like a university professor.
He doesn't just look like it; he *is* it.
Gu Qianzhi, ranked seventh in the Great Xia Council, a sixth-level Grandmaster, and the Dean of the Great Xia Martial Arts Research Institute.
He participated in the compilation of half of the existing S-level combat skills in the Great Xia Dynasty.
The third.
Song Chen's gaze lingered on that person, and her pupils contracted slightly.
The man was tall with very broad shoulders, and his hood covered most of his face, revealing only his chin and eyes.
He wasn't wearing a military uniform, had no rank, and no badges indicating his identity on his shoulders, but as he stood there, the auras of the three sixth-level grandmasters around him automatically made way for him.
His name is Qi Shanhe, second in the Great Xia Council, and recognized as the number one person in the Great Xia military.
He holds no official position, does not lead troops, does not reside in command, and is never in the news. He spends most of his time hunting in the Siberian ice fields and the Mongolian plateau, specializing in killing sixth-tier beast kings.
The ranking of the twelve official councilors of the Great Xia Dynasty is extremely strict. The first-ranked person is the speaker who has been in seclusion for many years, the second-ranked person is him, and Zhou Wangyue is the third-ranked person.
"We're here," Qi Shanhe said.
Song Chen bowed slightly: "Councilor Qi."
Qi Shanhe looked at him and said, "Bei Yuan fought well. Zhou Wangyue has taken on a good disciple."
"Still a long way off."
Not far off.
Gu Qianzhi adjusted his glasses and looked Song Chen up and down: "Zhou Wangyue, your apprentice is more valuable than all the doctoral students in my research institute combined. When can I borrow him?"
"No, I won't lend it to you," Zhou Wangyue replied without hesitation.
Qin Zhen chuckled beside him, and Scarface shifted slightly: "Old Gu, every time you say you're borrowing someone, you end up just pinning them down in the lab to have their blood drawn and their genes tested."
"Last time, I borrowed a battalion commander from one of my men and had eight vials of blood drawn from him. After that commander came back, he hid from me for half a month."
Gu Qianzhi paused for a moment as he adjusted his glasses, then said in a serious tone, "That's academic research."
"Your academic research almost made people anemic."
Several sixth-tier grandmasters stood together, their voices not loud, but none of the fifth-tier or fourth-tier masters around them dared to interrupt.
This is the pinnacle of the Great Xia's fighting force: four people, four pillars supporting the Great Xia's defenses.
Song Chen turned his gaze away from Qi Shanhe and scanned the square again.
Three hundred and eighty-four people, each one an elite who had fought his way out of mountains of corpses and seas of blood. Great Xia had really gone all out this time.
Zhou Wangyue seemed to have seen through what he was thinking, and turned his head to say, "The Eagle Country will produce three Tier 6s, the Bear Country two, and the European Union two, making a total of ten Tier 6s from the four countries."
"There are 220 fifth-tier members and 1,200 peak fourth-tier members. If this team is wiped out, humanity's high-end combat power will be reduced by one-third."
"I won't use any lighting." Qi Shanhe's voice came from under the hood.
Song Chen nodded.
In front of the square, a spaceship was quietly parked.
It was larger than any spaceship Song Chen had ever seen, with a hull length of over two hundred meters. It was entirely black, without any portholes, and its surface was covered with a layer of fine, scale-like armor.
Four psionic engines are embedded side by side below the bow, and the diameter of the engine air intake is taller than a person.
The propeller array at the stern is fan-shaped, with twelve nozzles emitting a very low hum when in standby mode.
The entire spaceship lay prone on the ground, like a black dragon that had folded its claws.
S-class battleship Star River.
The Great Xia Dynasty only had five warships of this caliber.
The cost of each ship is equivalent to ten years of fiscal expenditure for a medium-sized base city.
Its armor can withstand frontal attacks from sixth-tier alien beasts, and its ship-mounted psionic cannon has the maximum output power to tear apart a mountain.
This is not a means of transportation; it is a mobile military fortress.
Song Chen pulled up his hood, and the shimmering light on the surface of the cloak slid across his fingertips.
Qi Shanhe waved his hand: "Board the ship."
Three hundred and eighty-four gray-black figures filed toward the spaceship.
Song Chen walked behind Zhou Wangyue. As he stepped onto the gangway, he glanced back. The morning light of Shangjing was filtering through the clouds, shining on the national flag at the command post, which fluttered in the wind.
Then he looked away and stepped into the hatch of the S-class warship.
The hatch closed behind him with a heavy, airtight click.
The spaceship shuddered and flew into the sky.
Song Chen sensed it when the Star River tore through the atmosphere.
My body felt as if it had been gently pressed down by the seat, and then released.
He turned to look out the porthole. The Shangjing base city was shrinking. The giant military fortress with a population of 20 million looked like a square on a gray chessboard from the air, then like a pinhead, and then was obscured by the clouds.
The spaceship continued to ascend, and the clouds transformed into a white velvet blanket beneath its feet. Then, the edges of the white velvet blanket curved.
He saw the curvature of the blue star.
It was an extremely thin and bright blue arc, stretching across the edge of the pitch-black porthole.
The inner side of the arc is the deep blue ocean, and the outer side is endless darkness.
Sunlight streamed in from the side, casting the spaceship's shadow onto the clouds, surrounded by a ring of iridescence.
Stars surged in from all directions at once. As the spaceship broke through the last thin layer of atmosphere, thousands upon thousands of stars, like scattered diamonds, densely filled the entire field of vision.
Song Chen stared at the porthole, his fingers unconsciously tightening around the armrest of the seat.
It's not that he's unsophisticated, but that's when he's looking up from the ground.
Now, standing on the ground and looking out, what we see is not the sky, but the universe itself.
The blue planet lay beneath his feet, floating silently in absolute darkness. The oceans were deep blue, the land was green, the Antarctic ice caps shone white, and clouds clung to the edges of the continents like cotton wool.
For the first time, he truly realized one thing: this planet was alive.
Five billion people, three royal families, sixteen royal families, and fifty years of bloody war, all crammed onto this blue-green sphere.
But from this distance, it appears as quiet as a baby.
"Your first time in space?"
Zhou Wangyue's voice came from beside him.
Song Chen turned her head and saw Zhou Wangyue holding a cup of tea that had been brewed sometime during the day. The surface of the tea rose slightly due to weightlessness, but it did not overflow.
Song Chen looked away from the porthole and nodded: "Yes, it's my first time."
"You'll get used to it. When I first came here, it took me a full twenty minutes to remember that I had a task."
He suddenly remembered something: "Teacher, isn't the battlefield in the Arctic? Why did it fly into space?"