Night had fallen by the time Xuan and WangXia returned to Shanghai. The curfew left the streets quiet and empty. Occasionally a squad of Japanese soldiers walked by. The foreign settlements, the red light district, and gathering sites with people with power were not affected by the curfew. Normal citizens were always the people affected by such rules.
Xuan and WangXia floated in the sky standing on their respective Sky Sticks. Current anti-air systems could not detect this sci-fi item. The night sky further masked them from visible view from the people beneath.
WangXia stared at the lighted city and asked Xuan, “What should we do next? We can we do with just the five of us… excluding Heng’s girlfriend.”
Xuan also stared below quietly. He sighed. “Such a strange and wonder feeling. Emotions or perhaps feelings have been coming closer to me the closer I am near the fourth stage. Yet at the same time, my heart’s devil is surfacing. WangXia, maybe I shouldn’t say this during a mission…
“Somehow I feel like I am stepping on top of the world.”
WangXia’s heart beat heavily from the shock. He raised his head abruptly and saw Xuan looking down with an apathetic expression. His hand reached out as though to grasp the whole world into this hand. This was a Xuan that had never appeared before. WangXia suddenly felt a sense of danger… The same sense of danger Zheng gave off when he used the power of the fourth stage before defeating his heart’s devil, a raw and instinctive sensation.
The sensation lasted for merely an instant. WangXia felt Xuan returned normal as he lightly pulled his hand back.
Xuan calmly said, “This state is not good. I will find a solution in the near future. Back to our mission. Our priority is the bonus mission. What can we do… How much do you think we can do?”
WangXia paused for a moment as though he still hadn’t woken up from the shock. He said, “We… can probably come to a deal with the Kuomintang party and then use technologies or money to trade for their information.”
“Impossible.” Xuan shook his head. “We can use this method if we have several months or half a year. But we only have six and a half days. Do you have an idea how long six and a half days is? Fly around the Earth several times. Six to ten meetings. Or transmit a few messages between hundreds of people. Six and a half days pass in almost a blink of an eye. The Buddha has gone for several months already. It isn’t possible to find it using this method. We must employ a different tactic.” “A different tactic?”
“Brute force.” Xuan slowly said. “Intelligence and strength are relative. The situation determines whether it needs intelligence or strength. However, when intelligence and strength reach a limit, you can brute force through any problem. Our strength is invincible to this world. We have the strength to destroy a country before the atomic weapon is finished because our strength have broken through the limit of this world.”
WangXia asked with curiosity, “Then what’s the limit of intelligence?”
Xuan snapped his fingers. “Intelligence is displayed through deduction, analysis, strategies, etc. The limit of intelligence is foretelling the future. The basis of strength is the individual’s raw power and the basis of intelligence is countless sources of information. We do not possess the condition to reach the limit of intelligence so we can only achieve our goal through strength. Do you see the Japanese army below, WangXia?”
Xuan pointed down at the city. The two people were a thousand meters above the ground but they could see through this distance. WangXia nodded.
“Your task is to destroy all of the Japanese army in Shanghai and nearby but there’s no need to kill every last soldier. The furthest you should go is Nanjin. Don’t doubt your strength. The weapons in this era can not damage you despite the limited quantity of energy in the Dragonshard. The weapons are relatively weaker by far. Go on the Sky Stick and drop plasma bombs. You will soon see your strength, or team China’s strength in this era.”
The night of June 27, 1940. Shanghai reshuffled.
We were strong. Team China was strong. WangXia was aware that they were strong, but this awareness was limited to the teams in the realm. They had been trapped in the realm all this time. Their battles were always against other teams and movie worlds that he had forgotten the end goal of God’s realm, evolution. The gap between the players and the real world gradually widened with their growth. Perhaps they might not be to do everything as they pleased in the real world, they were invincible in an era where the atomic weapon had yet been created.
WangXia entered the unlocked mode as he rode the Sky Stick fifty meters above the ground. Fires engulfed the ground. Explosions and shockwaves echoed nonstop. This was the Japanese army’s settlement in Shanghai with twenty thousand soldiers and thirty thousand personnels. This settlement had became the logistics division given the victories on their frontline. Injured soldiers were transferred to the settlement and new troops received their training here. The Japanese also had soldiers throughout various areas of China. Such an army had the power to repress many incidents… normally.
WangXia’s heart was yelling for him to back out when he first saw the sea of soldiers. But as a soldier himself, the authority of orders were etched into his heart, especially when the order came from Xuan. Xuan’s intelligence and identity as a colonel cut off any path of return with this order. WangXia had no other choice but to move forward, even if it seemed that the road ahead was leading toward hell. He charged into a settlement with tens of thousands.
The realization of his strength sunk in after he finally initiated the attack. His improved Demon Energy increased the mobility of his bombs and could enhance their power. A plasma bomb that had an area of effect of under twenty meters now reached a hundred meters. The first plasma bomb detonated along with the Demon Energy on it. The infrastructures, ground, and everything within its explosion area vaporized in an instant, leaving behind a crater. The heat soon turned the ground into glass and the heatwave blasted out to three times the explosion area. No normal humans could survive such heat. Each plasma bomb seized the lives of up to a thousand when it landed on a crowded area. The settlement soon turned into a ruin after WangXia dropped ten bombs.
Once WangXia learned of the effects of his Demon Energy after ten plasma bombs, he stopped wasting them on non crowded areas. He detonated bombs on the arsenal. A huge explosion devastated an area of a thousand meters. WangXia then seized a heavy machine gun and began shooting from the air. He filled the ground with dead bodies by himself.
While WangXia was in the madness of massacre, Xuan landed on a main street in Shanghai. A group of Japanese soldiers approached him and without a word, the Gauss pistols slipped into his hands. He entered the Gun-kata form.
