Revisit Azur Lane

Despite her injury, Kaga's eyes grew even more piercing. Her gaze flickered slightly as she leaned closer to Akagi and lowered her voice: "This testing ground overlaps with the coordinates of other worlds. Bismarck's team and Hood's team are from the same port."

"what?"

Akagi remained outwardly calm: "Were there any other discoveries?"

"The backer of this group is very mysterious. The girl I fought was me from the time of the battleship. If what she said is true, then the memories we obtained may have been tampered with."

Kaga's eyes flickered: "That guy mentioned 'Amagi'. Judging from his tone, it seems that we lived with Amagi during the battleship era."

"What did you say?"

Upon hearing this, Akagi's eyes changed, and his sharp teeth clenched tightly together: "I had considered that the Sirens had ulterior motives for cooperating with us. Now it seems that our cooperation with them, and even this experiment, was all part of their calculations. Heh, heh heh..."

As she spoke, Akagi suddenly laughed, a very bright laugh, and her gaze fell on Kaga: "You did very well. In this game, we ultimately came out slightly ahead."

"However, the point of contact with them is here. If the Sirens close this point, the same thing may not happen again."

Kaga swayed slightly and released his arm, revealing bloodstains, but upon closer inspection, there were no wounds.

"No, I remember that Ironblood has been secretly doing something lately. Find an excuse to go there and take a look. We're sure to find something."

Akagi composed herself and gently patted Kaga's shoulder: "Let's go, let me meet the younger generation in 'this world' and build some rapport beforehand."

"..."

Kaga didn't understand Akagi's confidence, but she didn't mind going back and sparring with her battleship form from a distance.

Chapter 71 What if it works?

When the Akagi sisters returned to the battlefield, which had been taken over by the Purifiers, the battle was nearing its end.

The Purifier, who had come with a formidable force, was now being chased and attacked by the aircraft. Although it seemed to be very interested in this game of cat and mouse, its Executor team had been wiped out, and defeat was inevitable.

"This guy is doing something stupid again."

Akagi observed the laughing Purifiers below through the carrier-based aircraft in the clouds, waved to Kaga, and launched the linked aircraft group hidden in the clouds in advance to directly meet Zuikaku and Shokaku's pursuit group. The pursuit battle instantly turned into an encounter battle, and during the fierce battle, carrier-based aircraft fell into the sea from time to time.

Bang!

The wreckage of the plane landed beside the running Purifier. The enormous impact gave her a feeling of flying. She leaped across the sea, spun several times, and rushed to the feet of Akagi and the other person who were coming towards her.

"Purifier, with your combat abilities, you shouldn't have been beaten to this state, right?"

Akagi stopped beside it and kicked its ship rigging, telling it to stop pretending to be dead and get up quickly. When Purification saw that its act of pretending to be dead had been discovered, it also used the shark ship rigging to pull itself up from the water. With hair stuck to its face wet with seawater, it touched its chin and revealed a rather unusual smile: "It's really strange. I should have been the one to repel them, but I didn't expect to be defeated by them instead. It's really unexpected."

"We're preparing to retreat. Go find some more cannon fodder. I don't want to be followed."

Akagi glanced at it, having no intention of arguing with the Purifier. This guy had been failing for a long time, and she had basically never seen it win a fight.

"Oh? You don't have to die this time? Thank you so much, I'll be right back."

Purification was surprised by Akagi's sudden friendliness, but it was in a good mood, so it didn't pursue what Akagi was up to. It gave Kaga a strange look, waved to the two sisters, and ran off happily.

"Although the Purifier's motives were impure, the Executors it brought with it were truly formidable in combat power. The fact that they were all wiped out in such a short time shows that the commander on the other side was not weak either."

Akagi narrowed his long eyes and took advantage of the opportunity to scout and reconnoiter the enemy while entangled with the enemy's carrier-based aircraft. He determined the number and configuration of the enemy, and after his gaze swept over Bismarck and the others, he locked onto Zuikaku, Shokaku, and the battleship Kaga.

After two consecutive battles, the two members of the Fifth Carrier Division were still able to maintain such a high-quality fleet, which surprised even her, but it didn't matter: "Kaga, do you still have enough aircraft in reserve?"

"There's no problem with getting out unscathed."

Kaga looked up at the sky. With their exceptional eyesight, they could vaguely see the planes clashing in the sky from the water. Without the intervention of the executors and pawns, the sky seemed to have become even purer.

"Is that so? Then follow me closely and teach these younger generations how to respect their elders."

Akagi knew Kaga's strength all too well. He raised his hand and drew a light path on the deck runway. Dense red lights rose from them, intertwining and dancing with Kaga's blue lights beside him. As they increased in altitude, they transformed into huge fighter jets, roaring into the sky and joining the battle.

However, Akagi quickly discovered the anomaly—among the aircraft group that Zuikaku and Shokaku were mixed together, some of the fighters had extremely advanced performance. They could penetrate the external armor of her carrier-based aircraft just by exchanging bullets. After being hit many times, the performance of the aircraft was directly affected.

Simply put, Akagi and Kaga were completely outmatched by Zuikaku's superior performance. The seemingly evenly matched battle was actually a result of the two senior members of the First Carrier Division suffering repeated defeats, and the battle location gradually shifted from the central sea area between the two sides to Akagi's side.

"Is this the power of the new era? It is indeed not to be underestimated."

Akagi's expression changed slightly, her gaze hardening, while Kaga beside her shifted her gaze to the side: in their world, there were also Zuikaku and Shoukaku, and Akagi never said such things when sparring with those two.

There are so many people watching the show on the other side; if they had joined the battle, they would have been down long ago.

Despite his thoughts, Kaga still dutifully asked, "What's the next step? Should we just retreat?"

"It's still not working. Is there any way to talk to them?"

Akagi frowned slightly. She did want to give the Shoukaku sisters a hard time, but her more important goal was to obtain the coordinates of the world in which these ship girls were located. Since they were able to cross worlds to enter her test site, it meant that they had a device that anchored their world coordinates, which she needed to understand more about.

"Theoretically it's possible, but I don't recommend you do that."

Kaga thought of Battleship Kaga's radiant demeanor and outspoken personality. She didn't care much, but Akagi would probably be ignited by a few words and then go up and fight Battleship Kaga in a physical battle—although she had never seen such a scene, she could just sense that future.

Akagi pondered silently for a while, then gave up. Approaching the Sakura Empire fleet from another world rashly was indeed very dangerous, especially now that they had no help.

She might not have the same good luck as Kaga, whose injuries appeared severe with massive bleeding, but in reality, it was just a minor abrasion.

Minor abrasion?

Akagi suddenly realized what was happening, turned to Kaga's side, grabbed the torn clothes on her right arm and ripped them open with a 'ripping' sound. The bloodstains were evenly stained red by the speed of the movement, but under the red light, there was no injury at all.

"What happened? You should have been 'injured' when the Purifier took over from you."

Akagi tossed aside the rag in her hand and scrutinized Kaga in front of her.

"Ah."

Kaga nodded calmly, then looked in the direction of the battleship Kaga: "I told you, these people have a mysterious backer. During her battle with my past self, her injuries suddenly healed, and I was affected by that power."

"?"

Akagi raised an eyebrow slightly. If they weren't on the battlefield, she really wanted to touch Kaga's forehead to see if she was delirious from the fever, since she was saying things she couldn't understand.

"In short, without overwhelming force, it will be difficult to completely kill these guys in front of us."

Kaga pretended not to see Akagi's strange expression—half of what she said was true; she was indeed affected by the mysterious force, but not during the time when Battle Kaga's wounds were healing, but rather during the period before she was severely injured by Battle Kaga and retreated, before meeting Akagi.

She was curious about the power possessed by the battleship Kaga and developed an expectation and ambition to possess that power.

Then, she appeared in Zhou He's shipyard and became his second wild ship girl for a limited time.

Zhou He took the possibility of a ship girl joining his port very seriously. He manually repaired and replenished Kaga's injuries and ammunition, and tentatively issued an order. It wasn't anything special; he just wanted her to persuade Akagi to become one of his limited-time ship girls.

"Are you telling the truth?"

After a brief silence, Akagi stared at Kaga with a serious expression, and the latter nodded calmly.

"Really? You did a great job."

A smile appeared on Akagi's face, and a glint of light flickered in his narrow eyes: "If that's the case, I think I know why these guys were able to get into our testing grounds."

Kaga has been by her side since birth, and she believes that Kaga would never betray her for any reason, so she believes that what Kaga says must be true.

Through Kaga's strange words, she thought of something. It seemed that the Eagle Union fleets had initially chased after a few mass-produced transport ships. At the time, she tried to issue commands to them using the permissions given to her by the Observer, but failed. She thought it was the Observer and others who did it, but now she thought there might be another reason.

"Kaga, we should go."

Akagi, whose mind was instantly quickened, stopped worrying about interacting with the people opposite her and turned to leave. Kaga, not understanding why, followed Akagi's footsteps.

"..."

"We're about to win, why did they leave? Should we give chase?"

On the opposite side of the battlefield, Zuikaku, who was fighting with great enthusiasm, suddenly noticed that Akagi and Kaga had turned and left. She immediately made a strange sound, which made Shoukaku roll her eyes at her: "Didn't the Commander tell you what to do?"

"Ah, yes."

Zuikaku suddenly remembered that when they were fighting the Purifiers, Zhou He had given the order that Akagi and Kaga would return and that they should entertain them: if Akagi and Kaga wanted to fight, they could fight; if they got close, they should see what the other side said; if they left, they should head north to meet up with Hu De and the others.

"Wow, that's amazing. Does the Commander even have the power to command the ship girls fighting alongside us?"

Zuikaku suddenly became clever, and then received a few looks of disbelief. She scratched her head and felt that her idea was indeed a bit outrageous. If Zhou He could command the ship girls they were fighting, why would the other side attack them at the slightest disagreement?

After resting for a while, Bismarck opened her eyes: "The obstacle has been removed. We will continue north. Shoukaku and Zuikaku, you two be on guard. The Siren that the Commander called 'The Purifier' has not been sunk yet. Its strength is not as simple as it seems."

"It's your order~"

Zuikaku responded loudly, controlling the ship's equipment to launch new reconnaissance aircraft, and then recovering the fighter jets circling in the sky one by one.

After a long stalemate, the formation finally began to move. However, an unusual atmosphere arose within the formation. For instance, the battleship Kaga, which had displayed its might by giving the aircraft carrier Kaga a sound beating, was now circling around the indifferent Tosa, its face radiating obvious anticipation: "Tosa, Tosa~ Did you see that just now? Your powerful older sister is here!"

"..."

Battleship Kaga's overly familiar personality made Tosa's eyebrows twitch. When she saw that Zuikaku's older sister was indeed gentle and virtuous, she sensed something was wrong. She never expected that a single shot from her would expose her true, nominal sister. She was indeed strong, and her personality was better than the aircraft carrier Kaga's, but—

This guy seemed to have some inexplicable fantasy about her. After the battle, he came over with his face practically screaming "Call me sister!" His tone changed from his initial feigned toughness to a coaxing tone, as if he were talking to a child.

"Kaga-senpai, I heard from the Commander that you seemed to have lived with Akagi-senpai in battlecruiser form and Amagi-senpai."

Zuikaku, seeing Tosa's hands trembling as if he were about to draw his sword, rushed over to help him out: "Can you tell us about your stories from that era?"

"Hmm? Our era."

Battleship Kaga glanced sideways, recalling for a moment: "From today's perspective, it should be the last glimmer of the era of big battleships and heavy guns. For the sake of the Sakura Empire's strength, new comrades were constantly born. Of course, the strongest was me. Back then, Akagi was just Amagi's lackey, not worth mentioning..."

Unlike Zuikaku and others, the ship girls in the world of Battleship Kaga are pure ship girls, without any extra memories. Even in battle, they rely on self-learning and the guidance of their seniors. This Kaga who joined the Zhouhe Port was born in battleship form, grew naturally, and witnessed the transition between the old and new Sakura Empire, which can be called the most twisted period. As a result, her old battleship form came to an end, and when she reappeared, she had become a different person.

However, the story told by Battleship Kaga herself is very subjective. For example, her formidable rival Akagi is described as a useless follower, while Akagi's older sister, the respected Amagi, is her true rival, and the two of them once competed for the position of the Sakura Empire's flagship.

She didn't say anything about the outcome of the contest, only revealing a lonely expression.

"I really want to see that wonderful era."

Zuikaku clenched his fist and threw a punch. In Kaga's words, that era of Sakura Empire was full of strong warriors, a golden age that Zuikaku and Shoukaku, living in the later, declining Sakura Empire, could never have dreamed of.

However, she quickly realized that Zhou He had even summoned Battleship Kaga, so wouldn't all the people Battleship Kaga mentioned have a chance to join the port?

"Ugh."

She exclaimed in amazement, finding it hard to imagine what a behemoth her own port area would become in the future.

"Enough with the small talk, the Purifiers are here again, prepare to fight."