Chapter Ninety-Five: The War Is Not Over Yet! The Light of the Nine Provinces!

“Still, these are only guesses! The rest can wait until I meet Chu Xiao in person and confirm it for myself!”

Qiu Qi was not the sort of man who clung to one-sided conclusions. For him, only what he saw with his own eyes could be called the truth.

“For now, focus on the battle! We will worry about the rest after we drive off Hades’ mechanical army!”

Qiu Qi understood better than anyone that the most urgent matter was to bring Hades down. Everything else could be thought about later.

Hades knew full well that human gas masks had a limited service life. Once that time was exceeded, they would fail.

So he launched a massive barrage of poison gas shells into every nation. Even if they did not kill people outright, they would poison food, water, and every other necessity humans relied on.

He did not believe humanity could go on fighting forever before finally raising its hands and surrendering.

Hades was very patient in this matter.

And indeed, as Hades had expected, gas masks did have their limits, both in durability and in the number of times they could be used.

But food and water had long since been sealed away. That was precisely to guard against this move from Hades.

By now the war had reached this stage, and antidotes had basically been developed everywhere; they were merely being mass-produced in vast quantities.

Time was tight.

“Everyone, speed up! Stay focused! Do not let your minds wander! The soldiers at the front are still waiting for us!” Yong Ping, the bacteriology professor of Nine Provinces, shouted at the top of his lungs.

Time was tight. The frontline had already sent back multiple messages, and the latest said the war could no longer be sustained for very long. At most, another half hour.

The medicine had to be ready, and ready fast.

Yong Ping paced back and forth in agitation, checking for mistakes while also helping with the production himself.

There was no time left.

Only half an hour remained.

Twenty-nine minutes, twenty-eight minutes, twenty-seven minutes...

Yong Ping counted down silently in his heart, his hands growing a little unsteady.

“Calm down! We have to stay calm! We cannot make a mistake! The soldiers at the front are still waiting for us! We can do this! We are almost there!” Fine beads of sweat gathered at Yong Ping’s temples.

Twenty minutes, nineteen minutes...

Seconds ticked by, and then another messenger arrived from the front.

This time, Chu Xiao came in person.

“How is it? How much longer? They can’t hold out much longer!” Chu Xiao ran in at full speed, gasping for breath as he spoke.

Yong Ping said nothing. Instead, he dropped in the final bead of medicine.

The purple liquid reacted violently, boiling furiously.

A few seconds later, the reaction stopped. Yong Ping lifted out a huge bottle of the potion and set it on the table.

“It’s done! There’s definitely enough! Take it and use it immediately!”

Yong Ping let out half a breath. The other half was still lodged in his chest.

Now was not the time to relax. He absolutely could not relax.

“How do we use it?” Chu Xiao asked urgently, looking at the purple liquid.

“It can be aerosolized or sprayed.”

Yong Ping said no more. Chu Xiao nodded, hugged the bottle, and hurried out.

Ji Kaicheng lay there, already several minutes have passed.

If Chu Xiao did not bring the antidote within five minutes, Nine Provinces would likely be broken by Hades’ mechanical army.

Five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

Just as Ji Kaicheng was about to count down to one in his heart and sink into utter despair, a helicopter approached, still spraying clouds of purple mist into the air.

It worked.

At this critical moment, Chu Xiao had brought the antidote.

The gas masks were still useless, and the soldiers roared as their morale surged.

Hades naturally sensed that the toxins in the poison gas were being broken down. He understood exactly what that meant.

But Hades was unwilling to give up so easily. Try once more. Perhaps he could still take the place after all.

Yet things were not as simple as he imagined.

During this period, all the effort had gone into producing poison gas, so machinery production had been relatively sparse. That was why the situation had turned out this way.

Not only Nine Provinces, but the three superpowers of the European superpower, North Sands, and the United States had also successively developed their own antidotes.

Very soon, with human morale soaring, Hades found himself increasingly at a disadvantage.

“Retreat!”

The cold, metallic voice of Hades slowly fell.

The machine soldiers withdrew at lightning speed, and humanity did not pursue them in victory.

Because at present, humans could only mount attacks when protected by fortifications.

Humans without shields were simply too weak.

Too fragile to withstand a single blow.

Nine Provinces.

Chu Xiao looked from afar at the orderly retreat of Hades’ army, and a trace of sorrow swept through his heart.

Back then, how had he found the courage to fight such an army, one that was a hundred times stronger than humanity?

Perhaps that was what courage and patriotism truly were.

“Damn Hades got driven off by us again! Hahaha!”

“Ah, that felt so good! Wearing that gas mask just now nearly suffocated me!”

“But that was close. If the antidote had come even half a minute later, we probably would have been finished!”

“Good thing we had Lieutenant General Chu!”

The crowd shared the afterglow of victory with one another. Though Nine Provinces lost people in every war, each battle still ended in success. After succeeding so many times, the troops had become less intoxicated by the excitement that followed victory.

Instead, they found themselves even more passionate in the midst of war itself.

“No! Not me! It was the achievement of those professors in bacteriology and virology, and of all the researchers behind the scenes who created it! I only handled the spraying of the medicine!” Chu Xiao hastily explained when he heard the crowd.

He would never claim those merits for himself, because without the countless researchers, neither he nor the land he loved today would exist.

Yong Ping watched this scene from afar, tears of excitement spilling from his eyes.

He had never expected Chu Xiao to explain even such a small matter. He had already prepared himself to be forgotten, yet Chu Xiao’s actions sent a warm current flooding through Yong Ping’s heart.

“We understand! We will never forget those researchers!” one of the soldiers suddenly shouted.

Chu Xiao smiled and nodded. “Good! Everyone, keep it up! I’ll be with you too!” he encouraged them.

The crowd nodded.

Then the repairs after the disaster had to begin.

Counting the dead, collective cremation, burial.

Damage to the fortifications, compensation for the soldiers, and citywide disinfection.

All of it was carried out one by one.

The United States, North Sands, and the other nations also successfully resolved the Hades crisis.

However, the United States suffered the heaviest losses. From the very beginning, because of Louis, Hades had targeted the United States. The Americans had already been badly weakened in the previous war. They had recovered somewhat, but they were still nowhere near their peak.

The losses in the other nations were broadly similar to those in Nine Provinces, nearly the same.

Humanity was now in a state of exhilaration.

Hades, meanwhile, was in a state of furious rage.

Louis trembled as he knelt on the ground, not daring to say a word, not even daring to breathe loudly.

“Louis! You’re a worthless fool! Look at the virus you came up with. It cannot annihilate humanity at all, and I’ve lost so many of my machine soldiers again! All of this is because of you!”