The wastelands of Afghanistan were not the bleak, romantic landscapes poets described.
Especially not after SAAC had turned it into an impenetrable forbidden zone.
When Jiang Jian Yue crossed the last ridgeline of the Hindu Kush Mountains, what greeted her eyes was not a vista of yellow sand, but a deathly curtain of light woven from high-energy lasers and electromagnetic railguns.
That was SAAC’s pride and joy, their defense system.
Originally built to prevent whatever might be lurking beneath the Crimson Project site from escaping beyond Afghanistan’s borders, it now served as the first threshold to block her.
“Warning! Unauthorized intruder! This is a Pacific Treaty Supreme Military Exclusion Zone!”
The grating broadcast, amplified by directional sonic weapons, hammered directly against Jiang Jian Yue’s eardrums.
“Final warning. Land immediately and submit to containment, or—”
“Or what?”
Jiang Jian Yue’s voice was light and casual, yet it pierced through the howling wind, reaching the ears of every soldier on the ground with perfect clarity.
She hovered ten thousand meters in the air, her black skirt flaring and rippling in the roaring wind, like a lycoris radiata blooming at the edge of purgatory.
“Fire!”
At the ground commander’s order, hundreds of light beams instantly illuminated the dusky sky.
Simultaneously, dozens of tactical missiles, trailing long plumes of exhaust, converged on that tiny figure from every direction.
But an attack of this caliber wasn’t worth her effort to dodge.
She merely lifted her eyelids slightly. In those crimson pupils, the brilliant, dazzling fireworks of destruction were reflected.
A line came to mind: The fireworks that soar into the sky—should you watch them from below, or from the side?
Of course, you watch them from the inside!
BOOM—
A violent explosion blossomed in the sky. A colossal fireball instantly swallowed her figure.
The shockwave swept through the clouds, tearing the already gloomy sky to shreds.
Inside the ground command center, everyone held their breath, staring at the monitors.
The smoke cleared.
The unharmed girl still hovered in the void.
Around her floated a faint, golden film.
Jiang Jian Yue raised her right hand and gently pressed her index finger downward.
“That was beautiful. Fine, let me return the favor.”
HUM—
An immense gravitational field descended instantly.
The high-tech defensive line, stretching for kilometers on the ground, let out a cacophony of groaning, grinding noises in that single instant.
Turrets collapsed. Bunkers were pulverized. The still-charging laser emitters exploded into scrap metal.
SAAC’s vaunted first line of defense had been reduced to a pile of ruins.
Just as Jiang Jian Yue prepared to move on, a sharp pang of crisis stabbed her senses.
This feeling… was from above.
Very high. Extremely high.
She snapped her head up.
Beyond the atmosphere, a quietly orbiting military satellite slowly adjusted its posture.
A massive lens array aimed down at the Afghan wasteland below.
No countdown. No warning.
A pure white pillar of light, over ten meters in diameter, pierced through heaven and earth.
It wasn’t a laser. It was a hybrid of tungsten rods accelerated to near light speed and a high-energy particle stream.
The kinetic energy it carried was enough to instantly vaporize any carbon-based life form.
“Shit… a steel nail.” That was the only complaint Jiang Jian Yue had time to utter.
BOOM—
The world lost its color.
The entire southern region of Afghanistan seemed to suffer a magnitude-ten earthquake.
A mushroom cloud soared into the sky, and the terrifying shockwave flattened sand dunes for dozens of kilometers in every direction.
Jiang Jian Yue, at the epicenter of the strike, along with her combat suit, was completely vaporized the instant she touched the light pillar.
Was it over?
Had the legendary Pale Gray Witch finally fallen before the pinnacle of human technology?
But before they could pop the champagne to celebrate…
In the center of the massive crater, still glowing with magma-like heat, a plume of white mist began to gather eerily.
Amid the frantic alarms of every monitoring instrument, the white mist quickly sketched out bones, wove muscles, and covered the form with skin.
In just three seconds.
A flawless figure slowly rose from the magma.
Ash-gray long hair danced in the scorching thermal waves. Newly formed skin was as pure white as the first snow, exuding a suffocating aura of divinity.
Jiang Jian Yue twisted her neck, producing a crisp, satisfying crack.
The residual black matter quickly materialized into her familiar combat suit.
‘That hurt like hell, dammit.’
After resurrecting, Jiang Jian Yue didn’t immediately rush towards Kandahar.
She hovered above the great crater. Deep within her pupils, a strange golden symbol blazed to life.
It was the Insect God’s Divine Spark, seized from Pu Er.
“Alright, folks. Let me count again.”
*HUM—
The originally dusky sky changed color in an instant.
It wasn’t the orange-red of sunset. It was a sickly, viscous crimson, like fresh blood.
It was as if the entire world had been submerged in a sea of blood.
A colossal spatial rift tore open behind her, like a gaping abyss-mouth in the vault of heaven.
Then, a sound that made one’s scalp crawl echoed from within the rift.
At first, it was one or two…
Then, it was tens of thousands, numberless and endless.
They were Aliens.
Not the inferior breeds summoned by the Insect God’s remnant.
These were from Abo’s home planet—true killing machines, born for war.
Some resembled mantises, their forelimbs being high-frequency vibrating bone blades.
Others were heavily armored, moving like living tanks.
Still others bore wings on their backs, spewing corrosive acid.
They surged out like a tidal wave, instantly blotting out the sky.
Their roars shook the heavens as they transformed into a black-red torrent, madly descending upon the SAAC defensive line that was frantically trying to regroup.
At this moment, Afghanistan had become a star battlefields.
Auto-cannon barrels glowed red-hot. Laser arrays overloaded. But the insect swarm continued, endless.
They trampled over their fallen comrades. They pushed through the dense network of fire.
They used their teeth and claws to tear open tank armor, dragging out the drivers inside to feast.
Jiang Jian Yue coldly observed the hellish tableau below.
Only after the first defensive line was completely devoid of life did Jiang Jian Yue casually will the Aliens to die, as coldly and dismissively as a heartless woman leaving after a one-night stand.
Kandahar. The Crimson Project Site. Just a hundred kilometers ahead.
But the path to the destination was not smooth.
As Jiang Jian Yue flew over a dried-up riverbed, her body suddenly stiffened.
There was no warning.
No trace of any attack.
Pfft.
Her head burst like an overripe watermelon.
Her headless body, propelled by inertia, flew forward for several dozen meters before beginning to fall.
But during the fall, white mist surged, and a perfectly intact head regrew.
Jiang Jian Yue steadied herself, touching her newly formed nose. Her gaze turned incredibly dark.
‘A concept-type… over-the-horizon strike?’
Before she could fully analyze the situation.
Pfft.
This time, it was her heart.
A clean, front-to-back hole appeared in her chest. The heart had simply vanished.
Jiang Jian Yue grunted in pain. Her body fell again, only to be repaired mid-air.
The third time, it was her spine.
The fourth time, both lungs.
The fifth time, the cerebral cortex was directly erased.
……
Inside SAAC’s special operations room, a frail man with thick gauze over his eyes and tubes covering his body sat in a wheelchair.
His fingers trembled slightly. With each tremor, Jiang Jian Yue on the screen suffered another fatal blow.
Code name: Mo Yan. SAAC’s only causal-sniper currently in Afghanistan.
His ability was a variation of [Direct Death Gaze].
By observing a target through a medium—such as satellite footage—and paying the corresponding price, he could directly erase a specific organ of that target from the world.
Ignoring distance. Ignoring defense.
“Why… won’t she die…”
Blood dripped from the corner of Mo Yan’s mouth. His life force was draining away rapidly.
His once jet-black hair had turned stark white.
He had killed that woman ten times.
For any other esper, even one with powerful regeneration, suffering this kind of conceptual-level erasure would have caused them to break down long ago.
But that woman…
On the screen, the gray figure only paused briefly before accelerating again.
She even started flipping off the satellite camera.
Eleventh time… Thirteenth time…
Jian Jiang Yue had gone numb.
Each death was real. The pain of having her life ripped from her body was real.
But she couldn’t stop.
She knew that this kind of BUG-level ability must have a price.
She was gambling that the enemy’s life wasn’t tough enough.
The sixteenth time, both of her eyes were obliterated.
She flew in darkness for five seconds until her optic nerves regenerated.
The seventeenth time, all the blood in her body was instantly drained.
Her skin became shriveled and ashen, like a mummy dried for a millennium.
But in the next second, a surge of immense vitality exploded again, refilling her blood vessels.
Finally, the eighteenth attack never came.
In the operations room, Mo Yan’s fingers drooped.
He hung his head, black bloody tears streaming from behind the gauze over his eyes.
His body had completely lost its life force—he had died of old age.
He had exhausted his entire lifespan to trade for Jiang Jian Yue’s seventeen deaths.
But Jiang Jian Yue was still alive.
“Monster…” The commander slumped in his chair, muttering to himself as he stared at the figure growing closer on the screen.
……
South of Kandahar.
Jiang Jian Yue finally stopped.
Her skirt had been torn and repaired countless times by her endlessly regenerating flesh.
It was stained with her own blood.
Although her body had recovered, the mental exhaustion was almost enough to make her lose consciousness.
Experiencing the feeling of death seventeen times in a row was not a pleasant experience.
But she had arrived.
Below, the massive crater lay like a scar on the earth’s surface, silently resting there.
Around the great pit, the remnants of the SAAC forces were despairingly raising their weapons.
But to Jiang Jian Yue at this moment, it was meaningless.
WHOOSH—
“Jiang Jian Yue! What exactly are you trying to do!” A furious roar came from a distance.
Jiang Jian Yue looked up at the man hovering in the air.
“Who are you?”
Stunned by her indifferent tone, the man snorted coldly. “My name is Li Yue!”
“Never heard of you.” Jiang Jian Yue didn’t give him time to get angry, continuing, “I’m just here to say hello. Long time no see, friends from SAAC.”
“Say hello? After killing this many people, you call it saying hello?” Li Yue was furious, looking as if he was about to unleash a line like ‘What do you take life for?’
“I didn’t kill that many people, did I?” Jiang Jian Yue shrugged innocently.
Li Yue was about to explode. Just as he was about to speak, a voice suddenly came through his earpiece—it was Tie Bi.
“Uh… sir. Word from the defensive perimeter. Everyone… has been resurrected. Over at EDD, except for two espers, they’ve all been resurrected too.”
“Huh? Resurrected?” Li Yue was instantly dumbfounded.
He turned his head to look at Jiang Jian Yue not far away.
“Professional resurrection match substitute. Yeah.”
Jiang Jian Yue’s face was expressionless. She made a peace sign in front of her cheek.
‘…A bit cute,’ Li Yue thought.