A swarm of balloons rose slowly from behind the formation, not drifting like harmless festival lanterns, but ascending with a deliberate, mechanical calm that carried the weight of intent. Heat shimmered beneath each envelope, the controlled burn of fuel lifting them skyward, turning air itself into a weaponized domain.
The Gao Family Village militia did not even bother to look surprised. To them, this was already folded into routine, another extension of the system's invisible hand. Even if some of them did not fully understand the bombing capability yet, they had long accepted one fundamental truth: anything that rose under the system's design was never for show. If it flew, it observed. If it observed, it would eventually kill.
But the troops under Lu Xiangsheng and Gao Qiqian were another matter entirely.
They stared upward, eyes stretched wide, expressions frozen somewhere between awe and unease, as if witnessing a myth being assembled in real time. The massive "sky lanterns" floated above them, yet these were no ceremonial lights drifting for wishes. Each bamboo basket carried a soldier. Each soldier stood inside with purpose. Each unit was controlled, measured, deliberate.
Lu Xiangsheng flipped through the magazines in his hands so fast the pages nearly tore apart, his brows tightening with each useless turn.
Nothing.
Not a single mention.
Not a single diagram.
His breath grew sharper, urgency creeping into his voice as he strode toward Cao Wenzhao.
"What exactly are those?" he demanded, lifting the worn publications like evidence. "Why is there nothing about them in here?"
Cao Wenzhao took the magazines, glanced at them briefly, then shook his head with something that resembled pity.
"Lu-daren, these are outdated."
"Outdated?" Lu Xiangsheng repeated, the word landing awkwardly, as if it belonged to a different era entirely.
Cao Wenzhao tapped the corner of a page. "Look closely. Every issue has a date. Year. Month. Issue number."
Lu Xiangsheng narrowed his eyes and examined it carefully.
Half a year old.
The realization did not arrive gently. It hit with the slow, grinding pressure of a system revealing its layers.
"So this means…" he muttered, "…everything I know is already six months behind?"
Cao Wenzhao smiled faintly, though there was no warmth in it.
"Not just six months. The magazine does not publish cutting-edge military technology immediately. Anything with strategic value is delayed, filtered, or withheld entirely. What you are holding is already at least a year behind reality."
A full year.
Lu Xiangsheng did not speak for a moment. In that silence, the battlefield shifted from a place of war into a place of realization. Information itself had become stratified. Knowledge was no longer shared equally. It was controlled, distributed, weaponized.
"I want the latest version," he said finally.
Cao Wenzhao did not even hesitate.
"Internal circulation only. Restricted to high-ranking officers."
The answer was clean. Absolute. Closed.
Lu Xiangsheng understood immediately.
He was outside the system.
Cao Wenzhao chuckled lightly, breaking the tension with a casual ease that felt almost cruel.
"Why bother reading at all? The battle is about to begin. Watching it unfold will teach you far more than any magazine ever could."
That… was undeniably true.
Lu Xiangsheng lifted his gaze again, locking onto the rising fleet of balloons. This time, he did not look confused.
He looked like a man bracing himself to understand something dangerous.
Above, the pilots began their reports.
"Sky Battalion Three, flight balloon, ready!"
"Sky Battalion Four, ready!"
"Sky Battalion Six, ready!"
"Sky Battalion Eight, heating malfunction, requesting withdrawal!"
"Sky Battalion Ten, all systems normal, ready!"
Voices echoed through the air, sharp, disciplined, each report snapping into place like components in a machine. This was no improvised force. This was the first mass-produced aerial unit of Gao Family Village, the first Air Battalion shaped not by tradition, but by selection criteria that bordered on ruthless.
Height controlled.
Weight optimized.
Psychological stability mandatory.
Fear of heights, absolute disqualification.
Survival capability, extreme.
Loyalty, beyond question.
Each soldier was not merely trained. They were filtered. Refined. Forged into something that could operate above the battlefield, isolated from support, fully aware that if they fell into enemy territory, they would be expected to survive, fight, and, if necessary, die without compromise.
Their value exceeded the balloons they rode by several hundred times.
"Upper air, no wind!"
"No wind confirmed!"
"Conditions stable, ready for ascent!"
"Release the ropes!"
Ground crews began loosening the tethers, their movements controlled and methodical. The balloons rose steadily, the ropes sliding free as the pilots hauled them up into their baskets, coiling them neatly.
Cao Wenzhao tilted his head back, lifted a metal megaphone, and called upward.
"Advance. We await your results."
He expected the battalion commander to respond immediately, to take command, to direct the formation forward.
Instead, the commander hesitated.
His gaze shifted.
Not forward.
Not downward.
But sideways.
Toward a nearby balloon.
A head suddenly popped up from its basket.
Li DaoXuan.
The reaction below was instantaneous, though silent. Shock rippled through the ranks like an invisible wave.
The Dao Xuan Tianzun himself… in the air?
Li DaoXuan leaned casually against the edge of the basket, grinning as if this were a leisure outing rather than the opening of an aerial bombardment doctrine.
"The pilot of Sky Battalion Seven fell sick," he called down cheerfully. "So I borrowed his balloon for a bit of fun."
Fun.
The word hung in the air, completely out of place, yet somehow perfectly aligned with his nature.
No one responded.
No one dared.
Li DaoXuan waved impatiently at the commander.
"Go on. Give the order. Ignore me. Right now, I am just Sky Battalion Seven. One of your soldiers."
No one believed that.
No one could.
But the command had been given.
And in this system, commands, once issued, were absolute.
The commander swallowed hard, lifted his megaphone, and forced his voice into steadiness.
"All units. Advance. Proceed toward the airspace above Dalinhe City."
Sky Battalion One began drifting forward.
Then the others followed, a slow-moving aerial formation crossing into enemy territory.
Except one.
Sky Battalion Seven wobbled.
It swayed left, then right, its movement lacking the clean precision of the others. It looked less like a weapon and more like a drunk trying to walk a straight line.
Li DaoXuan, quite obviously, had no formal training in piloting.
He was still figuring out which mechanism controlled altitude, which adjusted direction, and which one probably should not be touched too aggressively.
Fortunately, the system did not require perfection.
Hot air balloons were forgiving.
Had this been a high-speed jet, the Dao Xuan Tianzun might have reduced himself to a crater within seconds.
Below, the Qing Army looked up.
And fear took hold.
No command was needed.
No explanation required.
The moment those balloons filled the sky, instinct took over. Soldiers rushed into their prepared shelters, diving into trenches, squeezing into crude anti-air bunkers built from stone and packed earth.
Some were dug into trench walls.
Some were stacked from heavy rocks.
Crude, but not foolish.
Human ingenuity did not belong to one side alone.
Above them, the battalion commander's voice cut through the air.
"Position reached. Begin bombardment."
He lit the fuse.
And dropped the first bomb.
This was no longer the era of hand-thrown grenades. Those had been transitional tools. What fell now were purpose-built aerial munitions, designed specifically for vertical deployment.
Handles removed.
Explosive yield increased.
Casing enlarged.
These bombs could not be thrown far by hand, but from the sky, range was irrelevant.
The moment the first one fell, the rest followed.
Bombs poured downward in waves.
Before releasing them, the soldiers spoke, their voices carrying a strange mix of anger and memory.
"No civilians left in Daling River City."
"Zu Dashou already consumed them."
"I remember that story. Nearly broke me."
"Filth."
"Kill them all."
Then the sky answered.
Explosions detonated one after another, overlapping into a continuous roar that erased distinction between individual blasts. Fire, shockwaves, and debris merged into a single expanding field of destruction.
The trench network outside the city vanished into smoke.
Earth erupted.
Stone shattered.
Air itself seemed to tear apart under the repeated impacts.
From above, visibility collapsed. Thick black smoke rolled upward, swallowing the battlefield, turning the ground into an indistinct mass of darkness.
The pilots did not hesitate.
They did not pause.
They lit the fuses.
And dropped blindly into the smoke.
Precision was no longer required.
The system had already reached the stage where volume replaced accuracy.
Down below, fate decided the rest.
Whoever got hit died.
And whoever died… simply proved they had been standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.