The fight between the two death-eater groups erupted without any elegance — no spectacle, no tactical coordination, just individual combat across a broad front, everyone trading ranged fire.

Zhao Zilong's firearms were the biggest threat her group could bring to bear.

When people started getting hit and dying, Shen Cong's remaining doubts cleared considerably. These two groups weren't performing for him. He'd been wanting to dismount for a while — staying inside Great Vajra constrained him to whatever ranged options he could manage through the firing ports, which was far below what he could actually do.

Snap.

A crossbow bolt from the vehicle caught a death-eater in the arm. He'd aimed for the chest; the man had read it and moved his body just enough.

Shen Cong shook his head, set down the crossbow, and opened the roof hatch.

"Then — let's begin."

He bounced twice to build stored energy, then drove off the roof with full force. The blade tips of the bouncing stilts hit the ground — each one studded with a row of grip spikes along the contact plate — and the surface compressed several centimeters under the impact, hairline cracks radiating out. But the contact time was too brief to register as ground failure; instead the force reflected back clean, the blade geometry converting it into a forward diagonal launch.

CRACK.

He was at maximum speed inside three seconds, running through the outer edge of the formation, then angling in.

"That's Colonel Chen!" Lu Hang, fighting shoulder to shoulder with Zhao Zilong, saw the full picture for the first time — silver armor blazing in the light. "That is an entrance."

Zhao Zilong spared a glance at the silver streak cutting through the formation. "Fast. Very fast. No wonder he said he'd take apart the Black Blood Group and Lost Paradise." She turned back to her own front. "Stop watching. Stay focused. Find the Fireworks carriers."

"On it."

The entrance was, objectively, dramatic.

190cm of person, 200-plus cm of silver armor, moving at speeds that made tracking difficult — the effect on the death-eater formation was…