114: Terrifying thermobaric weapons

Lujiang Base

Inside Lujiang Base, every public square was packed with people. Before the massive screens, the residents held their breath in rapt attention, followed by an earth-shattering cheer!

"My God! Mechs! It's a mech unit! Laser swords! That's so cool!"

"Look at Officer Blaze Ash! That bright yellow one! With one swing, the zombies fall like grass!"

"Officer Yang's electricity... it's too powerful! The zombies are being electrocuted straight into charcoal!"

"What kind of bullshit Zombie Tide is this? In front of our Red Alert Legion, they're just fodder! They're trash!"

Watching destroyer mech squad brandish their laser swords, slaughtering zombies like chopping melons and vegetables, and seeing the two Rank 2 mechs rampaging through the horde, the residents' blood boiled with a rising sense of pride. The fear they previously felt for the Zombie Tide was now completely dispelled by the sense of security brought by this overwhelming military force.

Official Bases Nationwide

In other official bases where the broadcast could be seen, whether it was military officers, government personnel, or the civilians permitted to watch, everyone's long-lost passion was ignited by this crushing battle! The thunder of artillery and the iron torrent grinding flesh and blood—this was a romance unique to the men of China, played out in the most shocking way during the apocalypse!

Seeing those once-terrifying zombies fall like stalks of wheat before absolute firepower, and watching those sci-fi-like weapons display their divine might, a powerful surge of confidence was rekindled in the hearts of survivors across the country! Humanity was not without hope!

The mech unit acted like efficient harvesters, repeatedly charging and slaughtering through the Zombie Tide, leaving behind charred remains everywhere. Soon...

All soldiers of the mech unit successfully promoted to three-star!

Yang Yi and Blaze Ash had also exhausted their physical strength and decisively ordered a retreat.

"Mech unit mission complete! Board the aircraft and evacuate! Air Force Battalion, empty your magazines! Blanket strike!" The order was issued through the communicators.

Over twenty helicopters that had been circling on standby dove down like hungry vultures! Rocket pods spat out dense tongues of fire, air-to-ground missiles precisely picked off high-rank targets, and autocannons wove a lethal net of fire! After the mech unit evacuated, the zombie horde that had just surged forward to fill the gap was once again enveloped in a devastating saturation strike!

Flames soared into the sky! The explosions were deafening! Flesh and blood flew everywhere! The highway turned into a literal meat grinder! When the last batch of helicopters ran out of ammunition and pulled up their noses to return, the entire vanguard of the Zombie Tide had been completely crippled! At least two to three hundred thousand zombies had been turned into charred, broken corpses and viscous, disgusting pulp covering kilometers of road!

Just as the air force evacuated, the dazed vanguard of the Zombie Tide, forcibly driven by the will of the Corpse King, began to gather and surge again like a turgid tide, flowing along the blood-soaked highway toward Lujiang Base!

Lujiang Base, v3 rocket launcher vehicle position. The atmosphere was heavy and filled with killing intent.

"Report! The zombie vanguard is 9 kilometers from the base!"

"Report! 8 kilometers!"

"Report! 7.5 kilometers! The main force has completely entered the open highway area!"

Captain Zhao Gang stood by the command vehicle, his eyes like a frozen lake, devoid of any ripples. He stared intently at the real-time trajectories and distance parameters on the tactical tablet, speaking into the communicator with a voice as steady as iron that reached every launch unit:

"All units! Target area locked! Loading confirmed: Large thermobaric warheads!"

"Target: Main vanguard cluster of the Zombie Tide! Coordinates xxx, yyy!"

"Prepare for countdown—"

Zhao Gang's voice echoed through the silent position, every word carrying the weight of a thousand catties:

"Three—"

"Two—"

"One—"

"Launch!"

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom—!!!

Twenty V3 launcher vehicles simultaneously erupted with an earth-shaking roar! The thick missiles, like spears of vengeance breaking free from their shackles, spat out dazzling orange-red flames from their tails, tearing through the night sky with ear-piercing shrieks as they pounced toward the predetermined coordinates of death!

Before every screen watching the broadcast across the nation, people's hearts leaped into their throats!

Only a few seconds later!

Twenty blinding points of light exploded almost simultaneously high in the air! It wasn't a violent shockwave that came first, but rather the instantaneous formation of twenty rapidly expanding, merging white fireballs with diameters exceeding a hundred meters! It was as if twenty miniature suns had suddenly lit up the night sky!

And then!

Rumble—!!!!!

A terrifying roar far exceeding the sum of all previous explosions, as if the heavens and earth were being torn apart, reached them! That was the secondary detonation of the thermobaric bombs! The flammable dust clouds dispersed by the first explosion were instantly ignited by high temperature and pressure, producing destructive energy far beyond that of conventional high-explosive shells!

The screen was completely occupied by a blinding white light and rolling flames! The massive fireballs swallowed several thousand square meters below! The ultra-high-pressure shockwave expanded in a perfect sphere; wherever it passed, the air was instantly sucked dry! Zombies at the epicenter didn't even leave ashes behind, being vaporized instantly! Those slightly further out were torn into the finest fragments by the shockwave! Those even further away were ignited by the instantaneous ultra-high temperature of several thousand degrees Celsius, turning into countless running torches before quickly carbonizing!

The combined effect of the twenty thermobaric bombs created an absolute life-exclusion zone on the highway! A death purgatory consisting of flames, shockwaves, and a vacuum nearly a kilometer in diameter!

When the fire slightly subsided and the thick smoke was somewhat dispersed by the night wind, the images sent back to the screens plunged all viewers into a deathly silence, followed by an eruption of mountain-shaking cheers of ecstasy and shock!

In the area where the main force of the densely packed Zombie Tide had been surging, a massive, charred 'blank space' appeared! A full hundred thousand or more zombies, along with a large number of unranked special zombies mixed among them, had been completely erased in these few short seconds! All that remained was a massive, terrifying crater on the ground emitting wisps of blue smoke and a pungent burnt smell, covered in a thick layer of black ash! Even the surface of the highway showed obvious melting and cracking!

Hiss... In the Kyoto Meeting Room, the Rongcheng Command Center, and every corner of the country where the images could be seen, the sound of people drawing in sharp breaths rose one after another!

Commander Qin Guoqiang muttered to himself as he watched the broadcast, his eyes filled with a complex light—there was shock, and there was envy. It wasn't that they hadn't thought of using heavy firepower, but the preciousness of ammunition and concerns about urban destruction had never allowed them to be so 'extravagant'!

"Just... twenty non-nuclear missiles..." Governor Zheng Xiu Far of Lingnan Province looked at the shocking charred crater on the screen, his voice dry, "and... and over a hundred thousand were wiped out..."

After a brief period of deathly silence, a wave of excitement swept across the country!

The Red Alert Legion had used the crudest, most direct, and most shocking method to declare to the nation and the world: before the peak of modern human firepower, even a million-strong Zombie Tide was nothing more than clay chickens and pottery dogs! The Great Wall forged of steel and will was enough to crush any enemy that dared to invade! The flame of hope was rekindled in the heart of every survivor by this sky-piercing artillery fire!