230: Chapter 230 Fatal Return Gift

It hovered steadily at an altitude of thirty meters; its massive black metal chassis completely displaced gravity, obscuring half the moon.

Lone Wolf stood at the edge of the foundation pit, the cigarette in his mouth dropping onto his foot without him even noticing.

This completely transcended the concept of flight in a physical sense; humanity had never achieved such a feat.

Da Biao waded over through waist-deep water, his mechanical arm pushing aside a massive chunk of concrete.

"Boss, this hunk of iron actually floated up."

Da Biao grinned, muddy water dripping from his chin.

"When are we going to storm up into the sky?"

Lu Chen ignored him, withdrawing his gaze from the sky and returning it to the screen on the master control console.

"Old Wei, report the current load readings."

Lu Chen tapped his fingers on the tabletop.

Wei Jianguo scrambled up from the floor, soaked to the bone, and lunged toward the secondary keyboard, his hands typing rapidly.

"Boss, the chassis energy matrix is full. With those tens of billions of tons of water crashing down just now, the geothermal shockwaves contained within were immense."

Wei Jianguo stared at the flashing red sidebar.

"This thing is stuffed. There's still twenty percent of the nuclear blast shockwave residue stuck in the array buffer zone."

Wu Dong turned his swivel chair, his glasses fogged up with moisture.

"Boss, this twenty percent must be vented. The energy storage limit of the Absolute Defense Array is maxed out. If we force it to hold, the foundation covering thousands of square meters will completely melt."

Lu Chen pulled out a flattened cigarette, bit it in his mouth, and lit it.

"Venting it would be a waste. Let's gift it to those people who like playing with water."

The scene shifted directly to Tokyo, two thousand kilometers away.

The highest-level underground bunker in Sakura Country.

The Minister of Defense's legs went weak as he stared fixedly at the high-precision satellite imagery on the big screen.

Jiangcheng was still there.

The entire eight-thousand-mu foundation pit in the north of the city was intact; the scene of it being flattened by seawater, which they had anticipated, never occurred. That massive inverted triangular metal chassis was emitting a blinding blue light, hovering silently in mid-air.

The Prime Minister grabbed a teacup from the table and smashed it fiercely against the floor tiles, sending shards of porcelain flying everywhere.

"Explain! Someone explain this to me!"

The Prime Minister's eyes were bloodshot, spittle spraying onto the Minister of Defense's face.

"Ten micro-bunker-buster nuclear bombs, triggering a magnitude 10 earthquake, an eighty-meter-high tsunami crashing down—why is that iron plate still floating in the sky?"

The representative of the Mitsui Zaibatsu sat in the corner, clutching his head with both hands.

"It's over. The stock market has been wiped out, and now even physical elimination has failed... We have completely become sinners."

The Minister of Defense rushed to the control console and shoved the technician aside.

"Pull up the data from the East China Sea seabed sensors! Something must have gone wrong; the law of conservation of energy cannot be broken!"

The image on the big screen switched rapidly, and several seafloor geological stress maps popped up.

The technical director stood up, his voice trembling.

"Excellency... the data is abnormal. Extremely strange abnormalities."

The Prime Minister rushed over and grabbed the director by the collar.

"Get to the point!"

"We detonated the nuclear bombs and tore open the seafloor fault, but now... the stress from that fault is flowing back."

The director pointed to a massive red vortex on the screen.

"There is an incomprehensible, violent, one-way absorption source over in Jiangcheng. It swallowed all the energy from the tsunami impact. Now, because the suction over there is too strong, the fault on the East China Sea seabed has even developed a hollow negative pressure zone, and mantle magma is being sucked back."

Just then, the main communication screen in the center of the bunker lit up.

The grim face of The Sixth Elder of Freemasons appeared on the screen.

"Idiots! A bunch of useless idiots who can't do anything right!"

The Sixth Elder slammed the table and roared.

"I told you to create an accidental natural disaster, and this is how you handle it? Lu Chen's chassis has finished charging; he took off using the energy from your nuclear explosions! You're just giving him free power!"

The Prime Minister turned pale and bowed to the screen.

"Excellency Elder, please give us one more chance. We still have remaining strategic reserve weapons. We request authorization to strike again."

The Sixth Elder sneered.

"There are no more chances. You have lost your value. Prepare to face the riots in your country."

Jiangcheng.

The master control room on Underground Level 3 of the Chenguang Factory.

Lu Chen leaned against the control console and exhaled a thick cloud of smoke.

"Old Wu, find their frequency band. Those old geezers must be holding a summary meeting right now."

Wu Dong's fingers flew across the keyboard, and green code scrolled down frantically.

"Boss, the top-secret frequency band used for communication between Freemasons and the Sakura Country military has been locked. They used triple dynamic encryption. Give me ten seconds."

"Nine. Eight. Seven."

The sound of keyboard tapping echoed through the empty basement.

"Three. Two. One."

"Decryption complete. Reverse connection successful."

Wu Dong slammed the Enter key.

Lu Chen grabbed the red communication microphone on the master control console.

Inside the Sakura Country underground bunker.

The Sixth Elder was just preparing to cut off the communication when the high-fidelity military speakers around the bunker suddenly erupted with a harsh, piercing static sound.

Immediately after, a steady, cold, and emotionless voice resounded throughout the entire bunker.

"The charging was not bad."

The Prime Minister shuddered and looked around abruptly.

The Minister of Defense drew his sidearm and pointed it fixedly at the main control console.

"Who is it? Cut the external signal! Cut it now!"

The main screen flickered twice, and The Sixth Elder's image was forcibly pushed to the corner.

There was no image in the center of the screen, only that icy, cold voice continuing.

"As a return gift, I'm sending you a big one."

The Sixth Elder's eyes widened on the small screen; he recognized this voice.

"Lu Chen! How could you possibly hack into our top-secret physical dedicated line?"

The Sixth Elder roared.

Lu Chen ignored him.

In the Chenguang Factory master control room, Lu Chen dropped the microphone and looked at Wei Jianguo.

"Get ready to work."

Wei Jianguo wiped the sweat from his forehead.

"Boss, give your orders."

"Switch the Absolute Defense Array to attack mode."

Lu Chen stared at the massive red bar chart on the screen representing the remaining nuclear blast energy.

"Physically compress that twenty percent of the nuclear blast shockwave."

Wu Dong's hands followed suit, and a new progress bar popped up on the control console.

"Compression starting. High-dimensional dissolving fluid providing external high pressure."

Song Changming reported the data loudly.

"Compression ratio at three hundred percent."

"Five hundred percent."

"Eight hundred percent. Boss, we've reached the limit! Any more compression and it'll blow the chamber!"

Wei Jianguo roared.

Lu Chen extinguished his cigarette.

"Condense it into a high-frequency physical resonance wave and lock onto that negative pressure reflux channel on the East China Sea seabed."

Wu Dong's fingers operated rapidly, and the screen immediately locked onto a massive red tectonic route extending from directly beneath Jiangcheng. This route traversed the East China Sea, and its endpoint was precisely the most fragile geological zone of the Sakura Country mainland.

"Target coordinates locked: Tokyo Bay seabed fault."

Wu Dong shouted through gritted teeth.

"They splashed water over here through this pipe, and now we're stuffing the shockwave back through it."

Lu Chen pressed his hands against the edge of the control console.

Da Biao laughed heartily on the side, holding his war blade.

"This move is absolutely brilliant—a taste of their own medicine."

Sakura Country underground bunker.

The Minister of Defense was still frantically ordering the technicians to cut off Lu Chen's signal.

"Pull the power! Pull out all the physical network cables!"

The technician scrambled under the server racks, ripping out a bunch of cables, but the white noise from the speakers continued, completely unaffected by the physical power cut.

"Excellency, we can't cut it. The other party has directly hijacked our low-level firmware chips. The entire bunker's amplification equipment has been taken over."

The Prime Minister collapsed into his chair.

"What is he trying to do... He just said he was sending a big one. What weapon could he possibly have that can reach us here?"

The Minister of Defense wiped away cold sweat.

"Bluffing. It's over two thousand kilometers away. Our atmospheric missile defense network is active twenty-four hours a day; he couldn't even fly a single plane over here."

The words had barely left his lips.

Lu Chen's final command came through the bunker's speakers.

"Return along the original path. Launch."

Chenguang Factory Underground Level 3.

Lu Chen personally pressed the physical execution button marked with a red skull.

A dull, muffled roar exploded from eight thousand meters deep underground.

The ground where the Chenguang Factory stood didn't even feel a tremor.

That shockwave, compressed to the extreme by the Absolute Defense Array, was precisely injected into the rock fissures of the mantle layer. Following the reflux negative pressure zone created by the earlier micro-nuclear bombs, it surged forward at ten times the speed of the tsunami.

This was a pure, high-frequency physical resonance; no interception network could stop a piercing attack coming from deep underground.

The data transmitted back by the deep-sea sensors made the technical director in the Sakura Country bunker wet his pants.

"Report—"

The director's voice cracked completely.

"A destructive geological shockwave is advancing across the East China Sea seabed at one hundred kilometers per second. It's in the mantle layer!"

The Prime Minister stood up abruptly, knocking his chair over.

"Where is the target?"

"Direction locked... directly beneath Tokyo Bay."

The director zoomed in on the screen; that deep red shockwave route was pointing straight at the ground beneath their feet.

"Contact countdown!"

The Minister of Defense rushed over and grabbed the director by the hair.

"Fifteen seconds."

The entire underground bunker instantly fell into dead silence.

Everyone froze in place, having lost even the strength to run.

Above them, along the coast of Tokyo Bay, the bustling metropolis with a population of tens of millions continued to operate under the neon lights. No one had any idea that a plate rupture capable of destroying the entire country was already at their doorstep.

The Sixth Elder witnessed it all on the small screen and smashed the keyboard in front of him.

"A madman... This madman who ignores all the rules of the game!"

Chenguang Factory.

Master Control Room.

Lu Chen lit another cigarette and took a deep drag.

He looked up at the rapidly moving red dot on the screen.

"Old Wei, have the first batch of finished Genetic Enhancement Fluid products come out yet?"

Lu Chen asked casually, not caring at all about the hundreds of thousands of people about to die over there.

"They're out, Boss. Two thousand units. The main force can be injected at any time."

Wei Jianguo swallowed hard.

Lu Chen nodded and turned to walk toward the exit of the cleanroom.

"Da Biao, have the Death Squad Soldiers line up."

Da Biao stood at attention, holding his blade.

"Boss, where are we going?"

Lu Chen pushed open the heavy metal door. The night wind blew in, carrying the pungent, salty, and fishy smell left by the tsunami.

"The terrain of Tokyo Bay is about to be rewritten. Take advantage of the chaos and go retrieve all the gold the Mitsui Zaibatsu has hidden in their vault. Don't leave a single gram for me."