I raised stunning young ladies, but they all wanted to possess me.

Skeleton warhorses and skeletal riders charged silently, their bone hooves crushing corpses amidst the smoke and fire.

In the air were skeletal dragons and humanoid monsters with bat wings, their dragon breath and humanoid claws tearing at the fleet's defenses.

Further away, several enormous silhouettes are slowly emerging from the depths of the rift.

The Titan-class, even larger than the three that were killed on the Moscow front, had its outer shell glowing eerily in the morning light.

The main guns of the air battleships fired in unison above the fortress, while the rotary cannons of the heavy mechs formed a continuous line of fire in front of the pass.

But the Kuroshio Current did not stop.

They continued to surge forward, stepping over the remains of their companions, piling up layer upon layer, turning the basin in front of the pass into a mountain of corpses.

Pei Youyi stood at the highest point of the northern suburban pass, his plain white trench coat fluttering in the strong wind.

She slowly raised her hands, her fingers spread wide, and a pale blue wind barrier extended from her feet to both sides, enveloping the entire pass.

The wind wall grew thicker at a visible rate. Fangs bounced off mid-air when they hit it, and acid splashed on it was cut into harmless water mist by the wind blades. The skeletal knights' charge crashed into the wind wall like a row of eggs hitting an iron plate.

The dragon's breath engulfed the entire outer wall of the pass, and the stone bricks of the outer wall were burned into lava, but the wind wall remained unmoved.

The surface of the wind wall didn't even ripple.

"Ancient Martial Arts SS Rank"

Standing below the pass, Gu Yan looked up at her backlit figure and suddenly understood what it must have been like for her to guard the entire flank defense line alone for six hours in the South China Sea Secret Realm back then.

The battle lasted for nearly four hours.

The Titan-class wreckage piled up in front of the pass, and the blue light on the wind wall never dimmed.

The final rift slowly closed under the combined fire of the fleet's salvo and the ground artillery barrage. The dark red lightning flickered a few times unwillingly before going out.

There was no cheering on the battlefield.

The fleet's wreckage was still burning in the harbor, and the remains of mechs were piled up like mountains.

The stretcher team moved through the ruins, and the young faces they carried out were all paler than the last.

On the land in front of the pass, which had been bombed countless times, stood a Japanese flag, burned to half its original size.

A severely wounded soldier with no legs lay on the edge of a shell crater, saluting the flag with his remaining right arm.

His lips were moving, and the people next to him couldn't hear what he was saying, but he was singing the national anthem.

At this moment, at the Supreme Command of the Middle East Theater.

The holographic screen is simultaneously broadcasting live footage of the Battle of Kyoto.

All senior officers and top combatants are present.

Xu was still standing at the end of the long table, his plain white robe had been changed, and his shoulder injury had been bandaged.

The clan elder sat next to Pei Yuran, taking notes on the casualty figures on the screen for her.

Several staff officers from the Great Xia Expeditionary Force and military advisors from the Russian Federation crowded in front of the screen, while senior commanders from the Middle East theater all stood, watching the pale blue wind wall at the northern pass remain unmoved by the impact of the Titan-class attack.

They were watching the Battle of Kyoto, because the Kuroshio had just launched a simultaneous global offensive.

The alert in the Middle East theater was lifted in less than half an hour.

Those attacks were more like feints, but they were so realistic that the opponent was testing them.

The Kyoto defense line held, and so did the other war zones.

So they want to see which side's defenses will be breached first.

Pei Yuran sat at the end of the long table, her icy pupils fixed on the screen.

She saw her mother.

Standing at the highest point of the northern suburban pass, a plain white trench coat fluttered in the gale, while the pale blue wind wall remained unmoved despite being battered by countless calamities.

She saw Lin Jinyu, and a sea of ​​golden fire burned through the bone wings of the skeletal dragon in mid-air.

She saw Chiyomiya Hanyu, whose pheasant-sword flashed and sliced ​​a miniature Titan-class creature in half at the waist.

Then she saw him.

In the bottom right corner of the screen, a young man stands below the pass.

He was surrounded by mountains of corpses of bone-eating worms and still-burning mech wreckage. Seven-colored light surged from the depths of his pupils, transforming into an overwhelming mental storm.

She couldn't see his face clearly.

The spiritual energy disguised his features, but her eyes were highly discerning of spiritual energy.

Spiritual power can disguise one's appearance, but it cannot disguise the vibrational frequency of a person's spiritual power.

Her pupils contracted sharply.

This frequency is exactly the same as the frequency of the boy deep in her memory.

Gentle, clean, like the first ripples on a lake when a spring breeze sweeps across it.

Her fingers clenched tightly on the scabbard, her knuckles turning white.

She stared at the figure on the screen, who was using his mental power to heal Yuzuru's wounds, and something in those icy pupils was quietly shattering.

Pei Yuran stared at that gesture, and tears suddenly fell from her eyes.

It's not the kind that slides down silently.

It was dripping onto the back of her hand, which was resting on her knee, drop by drop, scalding hot.

She instinctively reached out to wipe it, and only when her fingertips touched her cheek did she realize that it was soaked.

She thought her eyes were just sore from staring at the screen for too long, but that person's actions reminded her of a boy who had bandaged her up like that a long time ago.

She was injured in the secret realm at that time, and he said, "You're a girl, don't leave scars." She held her sword to his neck and said, "If you dare to tell anyone, I'll kill you." He smiled and said, "Okay."

She never saw him smile at anyone like that again.

But the tears wouldn't stop.

Tears welled up in those icy pupils, as if an invisible crack had appeared in the deepest part of the ice, and the undercurrent that had been suppressed for three years had finally found an outlet.

She tried to keep her eyes wide open and stare at the screen, wanting to see that blurry figure one more time, but tears blurred her vision again and again. She could only blink hard once, then blink again, letting the newly welling tears slide down her already soaked eyelashes.

The clan elder next to them was the first to notice.

Pei Yuran's shoulders were trembling slightly.

This swordswoman has been stationed at the command post for three years, watching the list of those killed on the front lines turn page by page, and seeing the soldiers she led die one by one, without ever showing any sign of remorse.

But now she's crying.

"Miss?"

"What's wrong?"

"Are you feeling unwell anywhere?"

"Is the injury not yet healed, or is it due to overexertion of spiritual energy?"

The elder bent down, his voice low, afraid that the staff officer next to him would hear him.

Several high-ranking officers nearby also noticed, as they had never seen Pei Yuran like this before, and were momentarily at a loss for what to do.

Some people put down their tactical boards, while others took out their handkerchiefs from their pockets but hesitated to offer them. Several staff officers from Daxia exchanged glances, all looking bewildered and shocked.

The Sword Fairy actually cried.

Pei Yuran wiped away her tears with the back of her hand.

My hands were wet, but new tears welled up again.

She looked down at the patch of her skirt above her knee that was already damp with tears, her voice very soft.

"I'm fine...it's probably just sandstorm..."

The air purification system in the command center was operating quietly, and the indoor PM2.5 index was close to zero.

The clan elders did not press the matter further, and the senior officers pretended not to have seen anything, turning their attention back to the tactical screen.

But everyone knows the truth in their hearts.

What could possibly make Pei Yuran cry was not sandstorms.