224: Chapter 224 Man-made Disaster

Three hundred meters underground, in a top-secret air-raid shelter.

The air filtration system emitted a dull, droning hum.

The Prime Minister of Sakura Country slumped in his leather chair. His hair was as messy as a bird's nest, and his tie had been ripped off and lay on the floor at his feet.

Bang!

The Minister of Defense slammed his fist onto the solid wood conference table.

"The gates of the National Diet Building have been flattened by the mob! The police department refuses to respond! They can't even get their own salaries, so they've all resigned and run off to line up in front of the Chinese Consulate, filling out job applications for Chenguang Electronics!"

The Minister of Defense roared at the top of his lungs, spitting onto the table.

The new representative of the Mitsui Zaibatsu sat in the corner, his face deathly pale.

"The stock market is finished. The yen's exchange rate has fallen seven times today. The central bank prepared to intervene, but as soon as they opened the system, they found that foreign exchange reserves had been completely drained by international short-sellers." The Mitsui representative's voice trembled. "The refugees outside the headquarters have already set up gallows. We can't get out."

The cabinet officials were collectively silent.

The entire state apparatus had ground to a halt because of a recruitment drive by a Chinese electronics factory. The base labor force had been drained, and the remaining living people had all gone mad.

"What about the consulate?" The Prime Minister stared fixedly at the Minister of Defense, his eyes bloodshot.

"The Consul's lumbar spine was broken. Foreign media are all reporting like crazy that we sent spies to attack a private enterprise. More than a dozen countries at the United Nations have already submitted a joint proposal, preparing to impose comprehensive economic sanctions on us."

The Prime Minister clutched his head in his hands.

It was a dead end. Lu Chen didn't even bother to use a single soldier; he had crushed them to death simply by using money.

"How about... we surrender?" a cabinet vice-minister muttered, shrinking into his chair.

"Do you think that mad dog will accept? He said he wouldn't even let us be his dogs!" The Minister of Defense rushed over and grabbed the vice-minister by the collar.

Zzzzt.

The giant screen in front of the conference table suddenly flickered. Red alarm lights spun wildly on the walls.

An external signal was forcibly connected.

The screen lit up. An old man in a black robe wearing a pure white mask appeared in the center of the image. The mask was engraved with the symbols of an inverted triangle and the All-Seeing Eye.

The Sixth Elder of Freemasons.

The officials in the bunker immediately stood straight. The Prime Minister swallowed hard.

"My Lord. We..."

"Shut up." The Sixth Elder interrupted the Prime Minister. His voice, processed through an electronic voice changer, sounded mechanically cold. "Trash. Decades of invested resources have only raised a bunch of idiots who can only whine."

The Prime Minister lowered his head. No one dared to make a sound.

"Lu Chen just destroyed our orbital weapon."

As soon as these words were spoken, the sound of gasps echoed throughout the air-raid shelter.

The Rod of God was destroyed? This was completely beyond their understanding of human technology.

"He not only destroyed the Rod of God, he also sent the video to the internal email of the Round Table Conference." The Sixth Elder's speaking speed noticeably increased, revealing irrepressible anxiety. "His anti-gravity chassis has already taken shape. Once that thing takes off, China's technological power will cross into an interstellar dimension. We will be liquidated by him one by one within three days."

The Sixth Elder stared at everyone outside the screen.

"Lu Chen has backed you into a corner. Your country has collapsed. If you don't want to be hanged on the street by the mob tomorrow, use the final resort. Destroy the foundation pit in Jiangcheng."

The Minister of Defense gritted his teeth and looked up.

"My Lord. The fifty top agents we sent there are all dead. The northern part of Jiangcheng is now an iron bucket. Not even a fly can get in. Conventional strikes simply cannot penetrate the electromagnetic defense grid there."

"Conventional strikes won't work. Then use a natural disaster." The Sixth Elder sneered.

The Prime Minister looked up abruptly, his face full of astonishment.

"A natural disaster?"

"No existing human defense system can block the power of nature." The Sixth Elder dropped this statement. "I remember ten years ago, you mothballed a geothermal experimental project."

The Minister of Defense's pupils instantly contracted.

"The Fuji Deep-Sea Fault Geothermal Nuclear Test Project!" the Minister of Defense exclaimed.

The cabinet officials' faces turned even paler than before.

"That's a mutually assured destruction plan! It was stopped back then!" the Prime Minister shouted. "That's a crazy scheme that would destroy the entire East Asian economic circle!"

"Tell me the details of the plan." The Sixth Elder's order was irresistible.

The Minister of Defense glanced at the Prime Minister, his hands braced on the table, his knuckles turning ghastly white from the exertion.

"That plan... was originally the ultimate deterrent created by the Ministry of Defense to cope with the rise of the East Asian power. We secretly planted ten micro-bunker-buster nuclear bombs on the active submarine fault near the edge of the East China Sea."

The Minister of Defense's voice was dry.

"The yield of these nuclear bombs is not large. Each one is only thirty kilotons. The power generated by the explosion won't even produce a nuclear mushroom cloud on the sea surface."

"But the location of these ten bunker-buster nuclear bombs happens to be the fault zone where the crustal stress is most fragile. They don't need to kill the enemy directly."

The Minister of Defense operated his fingers quickly, calling up a 3D map of the seabed on the console. Ten red light spots were distributed deep in the submarine canyon.

"Once detonated, the high temperature and shockwave of the nuclear bombs will instantly tear apart the submarine fault, prying loose the crustal stress that has accumulated for thousands of years. It will trigger a magnitude 10 submarine earthquake."

"The earthquake will immediately create a super directional tsunami."

"According to supercomputer simulations, when the first wave of the tsunami reaches the Jiangcheng coastline, the wave height will reach eighty meters. Tens of millions of tons of water pressure will be enough to flatten any reinforced concrete building. Tens of billions of tons of seawater will flood into the interior."

The Minister of Defense pointed to the Chengbei High-Tech Zone in Jiangcheng on the map.

"Lu Chen's eight-thousand-mu foundation pit is right there. It will be completely buried by hundreds of meters of seawater and seabed silt."

The basement was so quiet that one could hear their own heartbeat.

Borrowing a knife to kill.

Using the nuclear bombs as a fuse, borrowing this most terrifying knife of nature to wipe everything clean directly.

No electromagnetic light net could intercept a tsunami. And no anti-aircraft missile could repel the flooding seawater.

This is a natural disaster. A dimensionality reduction strike from nature.

"The international community will investigate! There will be residual nuclear radiation in the seawater!" The Prime Minister was still struggling.

The Sixth Elder let out a harsh, mocking laugh.

"When you dumped nuclear-contaminated water into the sea back then, the whole world scolded you for years, but did you lose a single piece of flesh in the end?"

"Moreover, the eruption of the submarine fault is accompanied by a large amount of geothermal radiation. You have ten thousand excuses to disguise the tiny nuclear residue as a mantle material leak."

"Even if they guess it was you, who has the evidence?"

"There are no launch pads to find, no ballistic trajectories to find. It's just a super tsunami triggered by a magnitude 10 earthquake. China will only be able to pour all its national power into post-disaster reconstruction. Lu Chen's technological miracle will just become a shipwreck on the seabed."

The Sixth Elder crossed his hands on the table.

"Press the button. Freemasons will help you reorganize the state power. We will provide interest-free loans to restore the stock market. You will still be the high and mighty big shots."

"If you don't press it, three hours from now, I will cut off all financial aid to you. You can prepare to face the wrath of China and the mob outside."

The screen went black. The signal was cut.

A forced abdication.

This was a naked, open conspiracy to force their hand.

The overhead lights in the air-raid shelter were somewhat blinding.

The representative of the Mitsui Zaibatsu suddenly stood up from his chair and strode to the main console.

He quickly entered a password. An interface covered in yellow and black warning stripes popped up on the screen.

"What are you doing!" The Prime Minister stared at him with wide eyes.

"I don't want to be hanged." The Mitsui representative bit his lip, and blood flowed into his mouth. "Lu Chen stripped away the foundation our Mitsui family built over hundreds of years. I even had my ancestral home mortgaged and liquidated. He must die."

The Minister of Defense also walked over.

He pulled a physical encryption key from his inner pocket and inserted it into the keyhole on the left side of the console.

"Prime Minister. The country is already paralyzed. We have no way out. Destroy Jiangcheng. Destroy Chenguang Electronics. Only then can we survive." The Minister of Defense turned the key with force.

The sound of the mechanical lock popping open was particularly crisp in the secret room.

Everyone turned and stared fixedly at the Prime Minister.

The nuclear bomb plan required simultaneous confirmation from three holders of the highest authority. Now, only the last person was missing.

The Prime Minister slumped in his chair, panting heavily.

In his mind flashed Lu Chen's cold, indifferent look during the livestream as if he were looking at trash. That light, airy remark about not even letting them be his dogs.

The national dignity was being trampled into the mud and rubbed hard by one person.

The wealth accumulated over generations had been drained clean by a Chinese factory that had only existed for a few dozen days.

Yokohama Port was empty, and the gates of the National Diet Building had been flattened.

"Baka..."

The Prime Minister let out a low growl like a desperate beast.

He braced himself on the armrests of the chair and stood up. He stumbled to the console.

His palm trembled as he pressed it onto the highest authority palmprint recognition area.

A beep sounded.

Identity confirmed.

"Fuji Deep-Sea Fault Geothermal Nuclear Test Project initiation confirmed." The system's cold, synthesized voice echoed in the bunker.

The Minister of Defense suddenly pushed open a red flip-top protective cover in the center of the console.

A physical red button the size of an adult's fist was exposed to the air.

The Minister of Defense glanced at the Prime Minister. Both of them reached out at the same time and slammed it down hard.

The giant screen image instantly switched to the monitoring network transmitted back by the deep-sea probes.

In the pitch-black submarine canyon, the ten light spots that had originally been silent suddenly turned a glaring scarlet.

A red countdown popped up at the very top of the screen.

Three hours, zero zero minutes.

"It's started." The Minister of Defense collapsed onto the cold floor as if he were exhausted. "The nuclear bomb drills have already started to advance into the deepest part of the fault."

The Prime Minister watched the countdown decrease second by second.

The corners of his mouth pulled into an extremely twisted arc.

"The Great Flood is coming." The Prime Minister laughed crazily. "An eighty-meter tsunami. Go ahead and try to intercept nature. Lu Chen. We're sending you to reclaim land from the sea right now!"

...

Two thousand meters deep in the ocean.

In the endless water pressure and darkness.

Ten five-meter-long conical bunker-buster nuclear bombs simultaneously erupted with ghostly blue high-frequency jet flames from their tails.

Like ten giant steel nails pinning the Earth, they drove into the rock layers of the fragile crustal fault zone at a violent speed.

The seabed began to tremble violently. Countless huge bubbles mixed with silt rolled upward.

The Grim Reaper of the tsunami.

It had completely torn open the cage at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. It was now hurtling toward the Jiangcheng coastline, carrying the power to destroy the world.