460: Chapter 460 Crushed Over at 10:03 PM

Rashid walked up to the first person, grabbed his hair, and twisted the words on the cardboard toward the camera.

"These three people—" His voice blasted through the loudspeaker, making the national flag on the iron platform tremble. "The first—Penang businessman Lin Wenqiang. He leaked our troop deployments and weapon quantities to the Myanmar people! The second—Ipoh Chinese school principal Chen Guohua. He taught Chinese children in class to kneel before the Baobab flag! The third—"

He kicked the third person. The man toppled onto the steel plate, the cardboard making a dull thud.

"Kuala Lumpur hardware store owner Huang Zhiwei. His daughter posted photos on social media—saying the Myanmar people are more fit to rule this country than we are!"

Rashid turned around, raising his right hand toward the one hundred thousand people. The short blade reflected the searchlights.

"Tell me—should traitors die?!"

The sound of one hundred thousand people shouting "Die" caused the loudspeaker to emit a piercing electrical screech. He waved his hand.

"Kill."

The three short blades plunged in simultaneously. The camera zoomed in, capturing a close-up of blood seeping from the edges of the cardboard. The words on the cardboard were blurred by the blood, and the character "Hua" in the four words "Chinese Traitor" became a smeared mess.

The one hundred thousand people below shouted "Merdeka."

Rashid let go, stepped back two paces, and raised his blood-stained hand, roaring at the crowd: "This is the fate of traitors! The Myanmar people want to fight—we'll oblige! They want forty-eight hours—we will tell them right here at Merdeka Square: Malaysia will not kneel!"

"Merdeka! Merdeka! Merdeka!"

The underground command center in Naypyidaw. The screen in front of Zhang Cheng was fixed on the live feed of Merdeka Square. Blood dripped through the gaps in the iron platform, splashing onto the faces of the UMNO Youth members holding up their phones in the front row. That person didn't wipe it off, his hand holding the phone trembling—not out of fear, but out of excitement.

Zhang Cheng didn't look at the person's face. He stared at the cardboard. He stared at the "Hua" character blurred by the blood.

Li Lanzhi stood behind him, her fingers gripping the tablet until her knuckles turned white.

The only sound in the command center was the electronic beeping of the countdown timer. Each time it chimed, a green authorization code popped up on the situational map: Kra Isthmus position—authorized. Betong tunnel frontline command post—authorized. Johor Strait infiltration team—authorized. White Elephant amphibious battle group—authorized.

Zhang Cheng raised his right hand, his index finger landing on the location of Alor Setar on the situational map. That light was still blinking—the green identifier for the Northern Malaysian Military Region Command was still transmitting.

On the screen, Rashid was still on the platform. He had just finished shouting "Malaysia will not kneel," and the sound of one hundred thousand people shouting "Merdeka" made the national flag on the iron platform tremble. He spread his arms and roared the final sentence to the camera: "The invaders will surely fail! The Malaysian people will never—"

Then he said two words.

"Roll over them."

10:03 PM. Kra Isthmus rocket artillery preset position.

Zhao Yuxun stood at the edge of the rubber plantation, and the attack authorization code popped up on his tactical tablet. He glanced at the code, handed the tablet to the fire coordinator, and took the encrypted channel microphone from the communications soldier.

"Attention all units of the Titan Division. Phase one of 'Breaking Waves'—execute. According to the predetermined sequence: PHL-191 first strike—radar stations. J-10B suppression of air defense. Titan Division assault. Time interval: forty-five seconds."

He hung up the microphone and turned to the fire coordinator, saying: "You count it yourself."

"Understood." The fire coordinator opened the PHL-191 launch control terminal, his index finger hovering three millimeters above the "Launch" button. His lips were moving—not in prayer, but counting the seconds.

The forty-five-second countdown began.

10:03:38 PM.

Six PHL-191 guided rockets detached from the Kra Isthmus launchers. The moment the solid fuel propellant ignited, the entire rubber plantation was illuminated in orange-red. The rocket exhaust instantly evaporated the rainwater on the leaves, rising into a white mist. Before the mist dispersed, the six warheads had already traced inclined ballistic arcs, crossing the Thai-Malaysian border, targeting a location thirty kilometers outside Alor Setar—three PS-70 long-range air defense radar stations.

The warheads had not yet landed. The manufacturer's nameplates attached to the six missile bodies reflected a faint glint in the moonlight—the factory label from the Naypyidaw Arsenal, with a production date of seventeen days ago.

10:03:42 PM.

Four seconds later, three fireballs rose simultaneously in the northern suburbs of Alor Setar. The three PS-70 radar stations were hit at the same time. The duty operator, Private Azman, was eating instant noodles. The last thing he saw was the radar screen suddenly going black, and then it became bright outside the window—not from lights, but from the radar tower blown off the command building, smashing through the roof. He was slammed into the pantry by the shockwave, his eardrums perforated, and instant noodle soup splattered all over the ceiling.

His commander, Lieutenant Colonel Ahmad, rushed to the rooftop, pulled out his phone, took a photo of the burning sky, and sent a message to Kuala Lumpur: "They are here." The message didn't go through—Vega identified the keywords and automatically intercepted it, replying: "This message has been delivered, but the recipient will delay reading it—expected delay until after the Breaking Waves operation ends."

10:04:00 PM.

The first batch of J-10B "soaring dragon" stealth fighters—sixty aircraft—took off from the field airfield on the Thai-Myanmar border. As they pulled up at the end of the runway, the blue exhaust flames from the engines' afterburners made the sheet metal of the hangars on both sides of the runway hum.

Northern Malaysian airspace. Four F/A-18D "Hornets" from the Royal Malaysian Air Force's Butterworth base received an emergency scramble order. When pilot Lieutenant Hasni ran toward the cockpit, his helmet wasn't even fastened properly, the chin strap dragging against his neck. The control tower duty officer leaned half his body out of the dispatch window and shouted to him: "Northern Air Defense Command has lost contact—use your own judgment after takeoff!"

Hasni fastened his helmet in the cockpit and started the engines. After the F/A-18D's radar powered on, it displayed—there were a few faint echo signals in the northern airspace, at a distance of 120 kilometers, at an altitude of 8,000 meters.

"Four targets—possibly drones." He said to his wingman.

They weren't drones. They were sixty targets. But only four appeared on the radar screen—because the J-10B's active stealth system had compressed the radar cross-section of the sixty aircraft into four false echoes the size of F-16s. Vega-3 simultaneously injected false IFF codes into the Malaysian radar stations, causing those four false echoes to be labeled as "friendly" on the screen—four Hawk trainer jets that had been on a training mission that afternoon and were now on their return flight.

Lieutenant Hasni pressed the missile pre-heat button, framed the targets in the lock-on box, and rested his thumb on the launch button.

"Blue Arrow One, targets locked, requesting launch authorization."

There was no reply on the radio—the Northern Air Defense Command was still burning.

He pressed the launch button himself. Two AIM-120C missiles detached from the pylons, trailing two streams of white smoke as they dove into the clouds. Hasni stared at the tactical screen—according to the range, they should hit within seventy seconds. Seventy seconds passed. The four targets were still on the tactical screen. It wasn't that he missed. It was that the targets didn't exist at all—the four false echoes he had locked onto were electronic phantoms fed to the radar by Vega-3 using algorithms.