The next day, 5:37 AM.
The sea breeze carried a strong smell of the ocean, mixed with aviation fuel, rocket exhaust fumes, gunpowder smoke, and a heavy scent of sea salt, sweeping powerfully across the sea.
The massive combined fleet, like moving islands forged from steel, thoroughly “boiled” a vast expanse of sea.
As far as the eye could see: The Great Dragon Country’s Zhenhai and Dinghai thousand-ton destroyers floated like mountains, with their 130mm main guns at the bow and stern continuously spitting flames.
The Arctic Bear Country’s Dreadnought-class large anti-submarine ships, painted in rugged camouflage, had dense close-in weapon System arrays on their broadsides constantly rotating to point at the sky.
South Korea’s Sejong the Great-class destroyer and several frigates from Southeast Asian countries also cruised in the formation.
The sky was filled with a cacophony of heavy notes: J-15 Flying Shark carrier-based aircraft, loaded with missiles, roared in two-plane formations, skimming the sea at ultra-low altitude, their immense noise tearing through the air.
Higher up, the huge shadow of an H-6K strategic bomber swept past, and the streamlined bodies of the Eagle Strike-12 supersonic anti-ship missiles mounted under its wings reflected a dangerous glint in the morning light.
The deafening roar of engines, the muffled thunder-like boom of ship cannons firing live ammunition, the cracking explosion of fighter jets breaking the sound barrier, the deep roar of destroyers’ massive propellers frantically churning the seawater…
All converged into a war rhapsody that compressed the air to the point of trembling.
“…This is the East Sea Joint Operations Exercise site! Look! Our fleet is conducting high-intensity area air defense and anti-surface assault drills!”
A news helicopter hovered thousands of meters high, the reporter’s voice distorted by excitement through the loudspeaker, “What’s the situation on the surface? Surface situation! Report!”
“Director, cut to the live surface feed! Outside the target area, waves are nearly two meters high… Wait! The Zhenhai’s bow main gun fired again!”
Boom—!!!
The camera shook violently, as the Zhenhai’s bow gun muzzle erupted in an orange-red flame brighter than the dawn.
A massive armor-piercing shell tore through the sky at a speed undetectable by the naked eye.
The camera quickly swung, capturing a huge unmanned target dozens of nautical miles away instantly disintegrating in a sky-shattering explosion.
The rising water column reached a hundred meters high.
“Direct hit!” the reporter screamed, “This is our iron fist!”
The scene on the shore was equally spectacular.
Every beach, cliff, and port platform that could overlook the exercise area was packed with a dense crowd.
Telephoto cameras, professional binoculars, and mobile phone screens were densely clustered, like a thick forest.
“See that? See that, the target that just got blown away, that’s what you call strength!”
An old fisherman, whose skin was tanned and shiny from the sea breeze, excitedly pointed at the sea with his cracked hands, spitting as he spoke to his son beside him, “What kind of damn sea monkeys! Seeing this formation, even the River Earl will have to lie down obediently!”
The young man held up cheap binoculars, but his face showed a hint of hesitation: “Dad, my classmate’s family runs offshore aquaculture, they said they received unknown signal interference last night, and the sonar was full of dense small dots… much more than what Uncle Zhao saw before he fished up that thing last time…”
“Many dots?” The old fisherman stared, “What’s there to be afraid of with many dots? Look at what’s flying in the sky, what’s running in the sea! No matter how many dots, one salvo, and they’ll all be blasted into slag soup for me! Is the Special Administration Bureau and the army just freeloading? Don’t be afraid! Watch the exercise!”
He slapped his son’s back hard, his voice booming, suppressing the surrounding chatter.
However, at the edge of the crowd, several young people in rubber pants with solemn expressions were talking in low voices, carrying fish buckets.
“Dongzi Ge, my uncle came back desperately this morning, all his fishing nets were broken, and the underwater part of the boat was full of scratches… He didn’t dare to speak up, afraid the police would say he was spreading rumors…”
“I know, my second uncle also said he saw it… a huge expanse, terrifyingly dark underwater, and the shadows that shot up were as big as a boat!”
“This exercise is certainly loud, but… can shells destroy the ghostly things in the water?”
Panic and trust secretly wrestled amidst the crowd’s clamor and silence, fermenting against the backdrop of earth-shattering gunfire.
Inside the Zhenhai Destroyer’s advanced integrated bridge command center, filled with large liquid crystal displays, the atmosphere was utterly cold and grim.
On the main control console’s huge electronic nautical chart, a fan-shaped sea area marked with a striking crimson outline was like a scar on the chart.
Captain Chen Hongyi, a Major General, his general stars on his epaulets cold, his gaze sharp and devoid of any warmth.
He had just concluded an encrypted holographic communication with Chen Feng.
“Exercise Phase Two, Deep Sea Underwater Special Target Clearance Drill, commence execution!”
Chen Hongyi’s voice was clearly transmitted to every battle station through the ship’s internal broadcast System, calm without a trace of fluctuation, “Zhenhai, proceed to coordinate point Trench-7. Aft dock, release final safety lock, enter ready-to-deploy state!”
“Yes!”
The answers from all the officers and soldiers on the bridge were powerful and uniform.
In the eyes of officers at several key battle stations, a fleeting, extremely subtle, non-human heterochromia of the iris, observable only from a specific angle, quickly flashed.
The massive destroyer’s engine output suddenly increased, its bow cutting through the churning, white-foamed dark blue seawater.
Under the tight escort of several high-speed frigates, it was like a sharp sword, precisely piercing towards the center of that area, which had been churned upside down by countless ship cannons and missile fire, but was actually a stage prepared for hunting.
At the stern of the ship, below the waterline, a large area, tightly integrated with the hull, covered with special black sound-absorbing tiles and external armor plates, had its internal hydraulic devices emitting a low working sound.
The huge dock bay outer door, like the lower jaw of a giant beast, slid open silently and slowly to both sides, revealing the deep, giant-mouth-like passage behind it.
The bone-chilling East Sea water, with the unique salinity and pressure of the deep sea, rapidly surged into the Zhenhai’s super-large dock bay at the bottom, which was large enough to accommodate several submersibles.
The murky seawater submerged the complex pipeline tracks and support frames on the bottom of the bay.
The LED work lights on the inner wall of the dock bay lit up, and the pale light penetrated the murky seawater, illuminating the inner dock space.
The sight was enough to make any normal human soldier’s legs go weak: three thousand twelve-stage He Bo Insects had been teleported by Chen Feng using the evolution origin point.
Like terrifying creations stepping out of Hell frescoes, they stood in formation, uniformly, exuding a chilling Killing Intent that made one’s heart palpitate.
Observing their details up close sent shivers down one’s spine:
Their carapaces were not merely thick chitin, but more like deep-blue biological armor forged from high-strength tungsten carbide alloy, their surfaces covered with intricate grooves for drag reduction and impact resistance. At certain joint seams, a faint golden energy glow, like liquid metal, shimmered – that was a localized energy coating from shield generators covering vulnerable areas.
Their three pairs of high-speed vibrating alloy mandibles did not operate independently, but were connected by tough bioactive ligaments into a triangular pyramidal crushing chamber.
The mandibles’ interiors were covered with tiny high-frequency oscillating serrations, which, when operating at high speed, churned out dense, extremely dangerous white bubble vortices in the murky seawater, emitting a sizzling sound like high-voltage electricity passing through water.
Their scythe-like forelimb segments, over a meter long, were fully exposed.
Their edges were as sharp as industrial water-cutting blades, reflecting a ghostly blue metallic gleam under the lights.
The huge hydraulic joints at the articulations were clearly visible, with the surface of the thick piston rods covered in proliferative biological reinforcement spines.
These terrifying scythes were not rigid equipment; their wrist joints possessed extremely flexible turning angles, meaning they could unleash deadly slashes from any angle.