Chapter 1046 - 379: Some People’s Blood Still Runs Hot, Great Sun Golden Bowl!!

The leaden gray firmament hung low.

Pressing heavily on the edge of the Ice Sea that had just undergone the baptism of Purgatory.

The wind churned the acrid reek of gunpowder, the thick stench of blood, and the foul, rotten odor unique to Life Ghosts.

It wailed through the unfinished steel skeletons of the City of Dawn.

Beams of searchlights pierced the thickening dusk, bleaching this ravaged battlefield into a ghastly white.

Dark red, filthy purple, inky green...

Blood of every color and shattered tissue had seeped deep into every inch of frozen earth.

Congealing in the cold into a slick, viscous shell of ice.

Within this hellish tableau, human shapes loomed and moved.

No one spoke.

There were only harsh, heavy breaths, muffled sobs, and the screech of metal dragging and grinding over ice.

And the heavy footfalls of stretchers rushing past.

"Easy... watch his arm..."

"Over here! There’s still breath here! Medical Team! Move!!!"

"Clear out! Clear out! Stretcher lane!"

Wei Banmeng’s cool voice carried a hint of hoarseness, yet cut clearly through the noise.

She wove among the wounded and the busy throng, the scarlet twin blades already sheathed.

Her combat suit was crusted with clotted blood and shards of ice.

The long hair she always kept meticulously bound had come partly loose, a few strands trailing by her cheeks.

She commanded without haste, and wherever her gaze swept.

The chaos snapped back into order.

Chu Kuanglan stood at a slightly higher spot, atop a small hill piled up from shattered Life Ghost Shells.

His trademark heavy combat suit had been torn open in several places.

Knotted muscle lay exposed, crisscrossed with scorched burns and claw marks deep enough to show bone.

Dark red blood mixed with sweat.

Slowly tracing down along the grooves of his muscles.

He seemed not to notice, his bell-like eyes shot through with blood.

Locked on the people below who labored in silence like an ant colony.

Watching comrade after comrade, carefully gathered up and shrouded in white cloth, borne away toward the temporary Resting Zone at the rear.

Watching the engineering staff and key technicians, led by the backbone of Deep Blue Heavy Industries.

Braving the bitter cold and the acrid stench.

Racing against time to inspect whether those priceless large-scale engineering machines had taken damage.

Watching the warriors of the Cyan Dragon Gang and the reinforcements from the City of Injustice.

Working like tireless worker ants, in squads of three and teams of five.

Using specially made metal hooks and carts.

To drag the Life Ghost remains, piled like mountains, by category toward the huge temporary materials depot.

Qi Hao’s face was still streaked with drying tears, his throat completely gone.

Yet he still swung his arms.

Organizing manpower to clear the outermost edge of the battlefield.

Old Qin, Lv Chen and the others, all of them wounded.

Silently hauling the heavy corpses.

Liu San led his quick-witted brothers, darting through this Corpse Mountain and blood ocean like hounds, keen-eyed as they pawed through every Life Ghost’s body, prying out each Life Pearl, stained with foul blood and glimmering faintly in different colors, carefully cleaning them, then swiftly stowing them into specially made sealed cases.

Every soft clink of a Life Pearl dropping into a case.

Meant one more share of compensation for the dead.

The casualty figures, in a kind of brutally efficient process, were rapidly tallied and compiled.

And delivered into the hands of Chu Kuanglan and Wei Banmeng, who had just walked over.

"Seven hundred and sixty-two dead. Severely wounded, one thousand one hundred and thirty. The rest lightly wounded, three thousand seven hundred and fifty-five."

Wei Banmeng’s voice was quiet.

Yet it made the veins on Chu Kuanglan’s forehead bulge.

He gripped that thin slip of paper, his knuckles turning white from the pressure, the thick edge of the sheet almost crushed in his hand.

Seven hundred and sixty-two lives.

People who were still alive yesterday.

Yesterday they were sweating on the construction site, dreaming of the future of the City of Dawn.

In less than an hour...

They were gone.

This was the first time Chu Kuanglan had personally led a large-scale war...

And the first time he had felt so directly just how viciously casualty numbers could stab at the heart.

Even though... this time, the Life Ghosts’ dead and wounded far outnumbered the humans.

He still could not stop the ache.

Chu Kuanglan’s gaze drifted to those few "capital mounds" at the edge of the battlefield, built from piled Life Ghost corpses.

They had just done a rough count.

Over fifty thousand Life Ghosts were slain in this battle!

Fifty thousand to seven hundred and sixty-two!

One to sixty-six!

Across the entire Arctic Front—no, across the whole chronicle of the war between the Human Race and the Life Ghosts—this was enough to be called a world-shaking miracle.

An epic, monumental victory!

So right now, Chu Kuanglan could not afford to wallow.

The City of Dawn was still in its infancy, the fighting was not over.

The brothers who died had traded their lives for this victory; those who survived had to carry their share as well, and keep moving forward.

Chu Kuanglan drew in a sharp breath.

Forcing the heartache down.

He took a step forward, his burly frame standing like bedrock atop the little hill of corpses.

Facing the countless gazes below—tired, grieving, or dazed—he gathered every ounce of strength in his body, and turned all the pent-up emotion in his chest into a single roar:

"Brothers——"

The roar cracked like thunder, in an instant drowning out all the clamor on the battlefield.

Everyone instinctively halted what they were doing.

And looked up at that towering figure, drenched in blood yet still standing as straight as a mountain.

"Today! Is our City of Dawn’s first battle!!!"

Chu Kuanglan’s voice boomed like a great bell, rolling across the ice fields.

"We won!!!"

"We won fair and square! Won so goddamn bright!!!"

"Seven hundred and sixty-two brothers... are gone! For Dawn, for this ground beneath our feet where we can finally stand tall and fight the Life Ghosts to the bitter end, they spilled their last drop of blood! They are heroes! The backbone of the City of Dawn that will never fall!!!"

He paused, his gaze sweeping across faces stained with blood and grime, where a fire was slowly kindling.