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

Pei Yuran and Lin Jinyu had already joined the battle. Frosty sword energy and golden flames each tore a gash in the black sea tide, but no matter how fiercely they fought, they could not fill this boundless sea.

Chiyomiya Hanyu's sealing array is the last barrier of the fifth line of defense.

She plunged the pheasant sword into the deck and used all her spiritual power to maintain the pale blue barrier that covered several kilometers of sea around the flagship.

Her kimono was soaked in blood, and blood kept seeping from the corners of her mouth, but she did not stop.

Gu Yan saw her back.

The plain white kimono, so thin it was heartbreaking, made her stand at the center of the barrier, like a string that could snap at any moment.

"Retreat! All units retreat to the sixth line of defense!"

Yuzuru's voice was broadcast throughout the entire fleet.

That was the first time she used the word "retreat" on the battlefield.

The sixth line of defense.

West of the East China Sea, along the coast of the Great Xia mainland.

That was humanity's last intact line of defense on the western shore of the Pacific Ocean.

Taking another step back, there is the land of Great Xia, the capital city, the capital city, and all the cities where he had once lived.

The remaining fleet began an orderly retreat.

Transport ships and hospital ships were evacuated first, followed by frigates and destroyers, and finally the battleships that had run out of ammunition.

They formed a steel barrier with their wrecked hulls, blocking the evacuation fleet from the Kuroshio Current.

Since the main guns were no longer firing, they used the ship itself to ram the enemy ships.

One ship after another, like a group of silent steel behemoths, paved a path for the fleet behind them with their own corpses.

Pei Yuran and Lin Jinyu were still suspended in mid-air.

The frost-covered sword energy tore open slit after slit in the black tide, and the golden flames burned the surging worms to ashes.

Neither of them looked back, and neither of them retreated first.

Gu Yan stood on the bridge, watching them fight further and further away in the boundless black tide, like two stars about to be swallowed by the night.

His fingers, which were pressing on the porthole, trembled slightly from the pressure.

"Yu Ran".

"Jinyu".

"Withdraw."

"Retreat immediately."

He shouted into the communication channel, his voice so hoarse that he couldn't even recognize himself.

There was no response.

The sea was too noisy; the sounds of gunfire, explosions, the roar of disaster, and the churning of the sea disrupted all communications.

Pei Youyi appeared behind him.

Her trench coat was stained with black blood and seawater, and her face was also splattered with blood. Her moon-white cheongsam was already a mess.

She walked to his side, touched his clenched, white fingers very lightly with the back of her hand, then covered them and slowly pried his hand off the porthole.

"They will come back."

Both of them.

"They promised you they wouldn't die."

Gu Yan did not turn her head.

He simply stared out the window at the black tsunami slowly pressing towards the sixth line of defense, remained silent for a long time, and then nodded very slightly.

"I know."

He said.

But there was a tremor in the last syllable that he himself was unaware of.

Time passed by, second by second.

Gu Yan stood on the deck of the evacuation ship, watching the sky over the East China Sea being torn apart by two colors at the same time.

Blue and red, ice and fire, like two giant swords piercing the sky from the ground.

Pei Yuran's frost sword energy rose from the sea surface.

She hovered in mid-air, her longsword held horizontally in front of her, the ice crystals condensed on the blade thicker than ever before.

The ice crystals spread from the sword to her entire arm, and then from her arm to her shoulder, as if she were wearing a layer of ice armor.

Her pupils turned an intense ice-blue, and the entire sea began to freeze beneath her feet.

The ice sheet spread outwards from her, and the sea surface, stretching for several kilometers, froze into a vast ice field in seconds.

The swarm of bone-eating insects at the forefront were frozen in the ice, maintaining their menacing posture, like a piece of black amber.

Then she swung her sword.

The sword cleaved from the sky to the sea, its icy blue aura splitting the entire ice field in two.

The icy air gushing from the cracks shot skyward, freezing tens of thousands of bone-eating worms, along with the entire row of steel colossi behind them, into ice sculptures.

Before the waves could even break the ice sculptures, they were sealed by an even thicker layer of ice.

Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth, but she did not sheathe her sword; the second strike had already been delivered.

Lin Jinyu stood on the other side of the sky.

Golden flames surged from every pore of her body, turning her into a human torch.

She spread her arms wide, and the flames spread outward from her, forming an endless sea of ​​fire behind her.

Those flames were not ordinary fire; they were the fire elemental essence she had honed over three years in the Nordic war zone through hundreds of battles.

The flames landed on the sea surface, instantly vaporizing the seawater and sending white steam billowing into the sky.

She slammed her fist into the sea, and a golden pillar of fire exploded from the point of impact, burning the swarm of worms that were approaching the evacuation formation from underwater to ashes.

Then she raised her head, and the golden light in her pupils shone brightest.

She crashed down like a meteorite towards the densest part of the black tide. The moment she landed, golden flames exploded, vaporizing all the calamities within a radius of several kilometers.

Blue and red light filled the sky at the same time.

From the evacuation ship, the sky appeared to be split in two.

Half of it is an extreme icy blue, and the other half is a burning golden red.

Two beams of light intertwined, firmly blocking the Black Tide's pursuit line behind the retreating formation.

Gu Yan stood on the deck, his hair flying wildly in the sea breeze.

He couldn't see anything; all he could see were those two colors.

Blue represents Yu Ran, and red represents Jin Yu.

They were using their last bit of strength to shield him from the black sea.

That's enough.

"Withdraw."

His voice was torn apart by the sea breeze and the sound of gunfire, and no one heard it.

Pei Yuran's third sword strike failed to land.

Her spiritual power was depleted after the second sword strike, and the ice crystals on her arm began to shatter.

She looked down at the ice field beneath her feet. The cracks in the ice were widening, and the frozen bone-eating worms began to struggle.

She gripped the sword hilt tightly, preparing to pour in the last bit of spiritual power.

Just then, a golden figure swept past her.

Lin Jinyu grabbed her wrist and pulled her backward.

"withdraw."

"If you don't leave now, you really won't be able to go back."

Pei Yuran opened her mouth, as if to say something, but instead spat out a mouthful of blood.

Her body plummeted like a kite with a broken string, but Lin Jinyu caught her around the waist.

Lin Jinyu's flames had mostly died down, leaving only a very thin golden shield around her.

She carried Pei Yuran and flew towards the evacuation ship, her speed gradually decreasing.

Her own blood flowed from the corners of her mouth, her nose, and her ears, forming a thin red line as the sea breeze blew it.

Gu Yan caught them at the edge of the deck.

To be precise, all three of them fell onto the deck together.

Lin Jinyu held Pei Yuran in his arms, his arms encircling both of them.

The deck of the evacuation ship was covered in blood.

Theirs, and the stains on their clothes that were indistinguishable from whose.