70: Chapter 70: Thank you, boss, for the rocket fuel.
One ten-thousandth of a second.
This was the time from when the bomb received the signal to when it detonated.
In the minds of Snake Eye and his crew, that brief moment would mark the beginning of a cataclysm—the moment the entire city's power cut out.
As it turned out, reality played a massive joke on them.
Snake Eye had pressed the button all the way down, but over in Donghai City, there wasn't even a peep.
No explosion, no sparks, not even a sound.
On the yacht, the members of the "Ghost" team were all dumbfounded.
"What the hell?" Rhino was the first to lose his patience. "Is it a dud? The thing we spent hundreds of millions of dollars on is a dud?"
The "Witch's" face went pale instantly. She stared fixedly at the computer, her fingers flying across the keyboard.
"No... it's not a dud!" Her voice trembled. "My god... this... how is this possible!"
"What the hell is going on?!" Snake Eye's heart skipped a beat as a sickening sense of foreboding rose within him.
"Boss... look..." The "Witch" projected the data from her computer onto the big screen.
On the screen, the red line representing the bomb's energy shot straight to the top. This indicated that the bomb had indeed detonated, and its power was exactly as designed—terrifyingly potent.
But another line, a blue one representing environmental energy, had plummeted at that exact same instant, creating a deep trough.
It felt as if all the energy released by the bomb had been instantly swallowed whole by an invisible black hole!
"It... it was absorbed..." The "Witch" could barely speak, looking as if she'd seen a ghost. "The energy pulse we released didn't destroy anything; instead... it became the other side's... supplement!"
Snake Eye stared fixedly at the screen. After the blue line swallowed all that energy, it didn't stop; instead, it spiked upward at an even more exaggerated angle, going completely wild!
At the same time, at the Donghai City command center.
Just at the moment Snake Eye pressed the button, the massive sand table in front of Jiang Ning lit up entirely!
The light point representing the core of the array had originally been glowing with a soft white light. But just now, it suddenly erupted with a dazzling gold, so bright it was blinding!
An indescribable, massive surge of energy exploded from that point, racing along the countless golden lines already connected across the sand table, instantly flooding the entire city!
A resonance, grander than any before, echoed through the command center.
One hundred and eight basic array points were all illuminated at that moment!
The entire city sand table suddenly came alive, with golden energy flowing endlessly through it.
"It worked! It's activated!" Chief Engineer Wang Jianguo was so overcome with emotion that tears streamed down his face. He hugged Director Zhao Lixin, who was standing next to him, laughing and crying all at once. "We did it! Engineer Jiang, we did it!"
Director Zhao Lixin was also left speechless by the sight before him. He could feel a warm current rising from the soles of his feet, enveloping his entire body, and even the exhaustion from pulling several all-nighters began to dissipate.
Only Jiang Ning remained calm.
She had foreseen all of this long ago.
That EMP bomb was indeed powerful. Had it detonated in an ordinary location, it would have easily destroyed an entire city block.
But it shouldn't have—it really shouldn't have—detonated inside the core of an already established Spirit Gathering Array.
To an array, any form of energy can be converted and absorbed, provided it doesn't exceed the capacity limit.
When Jiang Ning designed the array, she had anticipated that someone might try this. So, she had left a small "backdoor" at the core—an energy trap.
Its purpose was simple: it wouldn't actively attack, but once any external energy intruded, it would latch onto that energy and siphon it into the array's entire circulation system.
The "Trojan horse" that Snake Eye and his team had gone to such great lengths to plant hadn't blown up the temple; instead, it had become the "kindling" that lit the first fire.
And it was a high-quality kindling with terrifyingly abundant energy at that.
"Thanks." In her heart, Jiang Ning offered a word of thanks to those "enemies" thirty kilometers away.
This single move had saved her at least half a month of work and several hundred million in startup energy costs.
She raised her hand and made a light sweeping motion in the air.
On the sand table, the golden torrent, which had been somewhat volatile from absorbing too much energy, immediately grew docile. It began to circulate methodically throughout the entire city array, following the pre-set routes.
The first stage of the Spirit Induction Array was completely finished!
The atmosphere on the yacht was chillingly cold.
Snake Eye's expression was worse than a corpse's.
They had lost.
They had been utterly defeated in a way he couldn't even begin to comprehend.
Their proudest technological weapon had become someone else's power bank.
This wasn't a tactical error; it was being crushed by someone from an entirely different dimension.
"Boss... it's... it's even worse..." The "Witch's" voice was thick with tears.
"Speak." Snake Eye forced the word out through gritted teeth.
"That bomb used a one-time channel to prevent tracking. Theoretically, once the signal was sent, the channel would be destroyed, making reverse tracking impossible."
"But... but..." The "Witch" pointed at a red dot flashing crazily on the screen. "They... they followed that vanished signal and locked directly onto our position! We've been exposed!"
On the screen, the green dot representing their yacht was being tightly ensnared by a red arrow that was rapidly extending from the direction of Donghai City.
Snake Eye felt a chill run through his entire body; his blood ran cold.
Physical tracking based on a signal that had already vanished?
What kind of hellish technology was this?!
This was beyond his comprehension; it simply wasn't scientific!
"Retreat! Retreat immediately! Get out of these waters at full speed!" Snake Eye finally snapped out of his shock and roared.
He finally realized that they weren't facing some new technology at all, but a monstrous opponent they couldn't even begin to understand!
However, it was too late.
Just as the yacht's engines roared to life, a thick white fog suddenly rose up over the sea.
The fog was incredibly eerie. One second it was clear skies, and the next, the surrounding few kilometers of sea were instantly swallowed by a dense, impenetrable mist.
The yacht's radar and GPS failed simultaneously, leaving nothing but static on the screens.
"What's going on?!"
"Report, boss! We... we've lost our bearings!"
"Bullshit! We're only thirty kilometers offshore! How could we lose our bearings!"
The cabin descended into chaos.
Snake Eye rushed to the deck, looking at the vast expanse of white surrounding them, like walls of cotton. For the first time in his life, a fear he had never known gripped his heart.
He felt as if he weren't at sea, but had fallen into some isolated, malicious, hellish place.
He suddenly looked up, gazing in the direction of Donghai City.
He couldn't see a thing.
Yet, he could clearly feel that in the city he had intended to destroy, a pair of cold eyes had pierced through space, staring coldly at him—staring at them, just a few bugs trapped in a spider's web.