Under One Person: The Sea Emperor Who Shattered Heaven and Earth

Chapter 60 Baili Burial (4000)

Purple Mountain, the first line of defense.

Smoke filled the air, almost completely obscuring the midday sun. The air was thick with the smells of gunpowder, burnt earth, and a pungent stench of blood. These three odors mingled together, filling the nostrils and stinging the eyes.

"Beat them! Give them a good beating!"

A blood-soaked company commander lay prone on the edge of a trench half-blown up by bombs, his voice hoarse from screaming. The gun in his hand was scorching hot. His eyes were bloodshot as he stared intently at the approaching tan-colored crowd.

The vanguard of the Japanese army on the opposite side, under the cover of two light tanks, had deployed nearly 10,000 infantrymen in two complete waves of assault.

The first wave consisted of about four thousand men, who charged forward with rifles fixed with bayonets.

The second wave followed closely behind, ready to fill the gap left by the first wave.

The tracks of the two light tanks rolled over the barbed wire and corpses in front of the position, making a screeching sound. The barbed wire was caught in the road wheels, and was shredded along with the mud and scraps of flesh.

The roar of the heavy machine gun never stopped.

"boom--!"

Another loud bang, and a tank shell hit a machine gun bunker precisely. Flying debris and limbs arced through the air in a terrible arc, and a corner of the defensive line collapsed instantly.

"Hold on! Second Platoon Leader, take your men and plug the gap!"

The fierce battle to defend the city continued.

The first wave of the Japanese army's assault was repelled, but the second wave continued to advance, inching closer to the defensive line.

The garrison company commander could even see the faces of the soldiers on the other side. Their faces were painted with yellowish-brown greasepaint, their mouths were wide open, and he couldn't understand what they were shouting.

However, at that moment, a strange sound suddenly drowned out the noise of the battlefield.

It wasn't the whistling of artillery shells, nor the sound of airplane engines, but a piercingly sharp whooshing sound that seemed to tear the air apart.

The sound drowned out all the artillery fire and all the shouts of battle.

Immediately afterwards, a massive, suffocating shadow rapidly spread across the center of the battlefield.

Whether it was the Japanese soldiers who were preparing to charge again or the defenders of Zijin Mountain in the trenches, they all subconsciously raised their heads at this moment.

"What...is that?" A Japanese military officer stood frozen in place, his sword drooping unconsciously in his hand.

In the reflections of everyone's pupils, an extremely bizarre scene was unfolding: in the sky, a huge ship was plummeting vertically, trailing a long plume of black smoke, like an out-of-control meteorite.

The ship had already disintegrated most of its length during its high-speed flight at high altitude. The massive steel plates on its sides trembled in the wind, and the wooden cabins had long since turned into countless fragments, carrying a savage and primal impact straight into the center of the battlefield.

The previously dense hail of bullets strangely and slowly subsided at this moment.

Not only did the gunfire stop, but the shouts of the Japanese army also stopped, as did the roars from the Zijin Mountain defense line. The entire battlefield seemed to have been put on pause.

Both sides of the soldiers stood frozen in place, their hands gripping their guns trembling slightly, looking up at the sky at a scene that was beyond their comprehension of the world.

"The ship... is flying in the sky?" Someone said this first, the voice was very soft, but it carried far in the suddenly quiet battlefield.

As the distance closed, the scene became clearer.

At the very front of that wrecked spaceship stood a man.

……

Jiang Zhen stood on the shattered wreckage of the ship's bow.

His hair was whipped straight back by the gale, his clothes clung tightly to his body, the wind cut across his face like a knife, and the wind pressure from the rapid descent deformed his skin, causing the flesh on his cheeks to tremble. He could only squint his eyes into slits, but he could still clearly see the situation below.

Jiang Zhen looked down at the scene below.

In his eyes, on the left was the glaring Rising Sun Flag, and the dark Japanese army was as dense as an ant colony. From high above, their khaki uniforms stretched out as one, interspersed with the glint of rifles and bayonets.

On the right are soldiers in Chinese military uniforms, holding the line. The trenches have been bombed beyond recognition; some parts have collapsed, and some are still smoking, but the soldiers are still there.

"You flew to the right place."

Jiang Zhen said something in a low voice, but his voice was instantly swept away by the gust of wind.

Looking back, he saw that the hundred or so alien brothers on the deck behind him were desperately grabbing onto anything they could. Some were clinging to the broken mast, while others were desperately trying to pry open the gaps in the ship's planks, but none of them had been thrown overboard.

Feeling the surging power within his body like a river, flowing through his meridians into his legs, the muscles in his legs bulged high, stretching his trousers taut like a drawn bow, and cracks appeared on the plank beneath his feet, with wood chips flying in the air currents.

"Gentlemen, I'll go first!"

He roared at the Inhuman brothers on the deck behind him who were desperately trying to steady themselves.

Then, Jiang Zhen suddenly exerted force with both feet.

"boom!"

The already collapsing bow deck completely shattered, and Jiang Zhen transformed into a streak of black lightning, breaking free from the ship's inertia and diving headfirst towards the center of the Japanese army's position.

……

"He is... that Jiang Zhen!"

Behind the Eastern Vanguard Army, Major Sato, the commander of the vanguard unit, put down his binoculars, his expression instantly turning serious.

As a key target of the military, Jiang Zhen's actions of going north to kill the ninja leader and unifying the canal gang to completely block water transport had long been on the minds of all senior generals.

Sato remembered the contents of that file, every single word, because he had almost completely cut off the Japanese army's supply lines on the water.

The file only states one conclusion about him: extremely dangerous; if encountered, he should be annihilated at any cost.

"Fire! All men, fire upwards! Kill him! Smash that guy in mid-air!" Sato roared almost frantically. As he shouted, he raised his command sword, the tip pointing at the black dot in the sky.

In an instant, dozens of machine guns simultaneously turned their muzzles and spat fire at the dark figure in mid-air.

Bullets ripped through the sky, weaving a tight, impenetrable net of death.

Jiang Zhen's eyes were extremely cold as he plummeted downwards.

He didn't hide, nor did he need to hide.

As he fell, the dense, almost solidified, white, translucent sphere of light reappeared around his right fist. The sphere started as small as a fist, then rapidly expanded, enveloping his entire right arm.

The light was blinding and grew brighter and brighter until Jiang Zhen's figure was no longer visible. All that could be seen was a beam of light as dazzling as the sun flashing in the sky.

All the bullets that could possibly hit it disappeared once they entered that ball of light.

"You..." Jiang Zhen exhaled and spoke, and his voice, amplified by the shockwave, spread like thunder in all directions.

Jiang Zhen, standing more than ten meters above the ground, looked down at the dark mass of Japanese troops below, his eyes blazing with murderous intent, and let out a deep, angry roar.

"...Does he even deserve to invade this land?!"

"Earthquake and Mass Funeral Across a Hundred Miles!"

"Snap—!"

That was a sound that every living person present would never forget for the rest of their lives.

In that instant, the air in front of Jiang Zhen's fist began to crack as if a giant glass curtain wall had been struck by a sledgehammer.

The cracks started spreading from the point where the fists made contact. First there was one, then ten, then countless, as if someone had drawn countless intersecting wounds in the sky with a white pen. The cracks spread incredibly rapidly, stretching for hundreds of meters in the blink of an eye.

The sky seemed to shatter at that moment.

Immediately afterwards, under the influence of the oscillation force, the atmosphere transformed into a substantial, massive hammer, pressing down relentlessly from top to bottom without any blind spots.

The two light tanks leading the charge were the first to be hit.

The moment the shockwave touched the armor plate, the hard steel twisted and shrank instantly, like a paper model soaked in water.

With a "click".

The tank's gun barrel was snapped, the tracks broke, and the road wheels were thrown off the axle only to be pressed firmly back to the ground.

Before the Japanese armored soldiers inside could even freeze in their terror, they were instantly turned into a bloody pulp by the terrifying shockwave and atmospheric pressure. Dark red blood mixed with fragments of internal organs gushed out from every crevice of the tank—firing ports, observation windows, hatch seams—blood and foam were seeping out everywhere.

Next came the Japanese soldiers who were at the center of the upheaval.

They gaped in terror, only to find the air had solidified into a wall; they couldn't scream, they couldn't run. Along the path of that punch, everyone's eardrums ruptured instantly.

Blood flowed from their ears, then their noses, then their eyes. The high-frequency vibrations combined with atmospheric pressure caused every bone and organ in their bodies to shatter into powder in an instant.

The Japanese soldiers who were just standing there turned into a cloud of red mist in the blink of an eye, then were swept away by the blast wave and merged into the soil. Their uniforms, rifles, canteens, bayonets, and everything else were crushed and then exploded.

The Japanese troops at the center instantly turned into puddles of viscous blood mist in that single second.

Then an even more horrific scene unfolded on the ground.

The moment the shockwave struck the ground, it felt as if the ground had been hammered down by some invisible force, producing a dull, deafening sound.

"Boom!"

A huge circular crater instantly formed on the Japanese army's position, with soil and rocks churning and the once flat ground appearing as if it had been hammered down by some enormous force.

The nearly 10,000-strong vanguard of the Japanese troops, who were originally well-organized and aggressive, and had attempted to break through the defense line in one fell swoop, were actually wiped out by this one punch.

The moment Jiang Zhen landed, his feet slamming heavily into the scorched earth of Zijin Mountain, the ground resounded with a dull thud. The soil within a ten-meter radius sank again, becoming completely compacted.

Another small ripple spread out, forcefully pushing away the surrounding smoke. Centered on him, the smoke, dust, and gunpowder smell were pushed into an ever-expanding circle, within which everything was clean and the air became transparent.

Jiang Zhen stood in the center of the giant crater, radiating an overwhelming pressure that was impossible to look directly at. His right hand remained in a punching stance, white smoke rising from his fist. His clothes had been torn in several places by the air currents during the dive, revealing his well-defined muscles.

He took a couple of breaths, rubbed his aching bellows cover, then suddenly turned around and looked up at the spaceship that was crashing down with tremendous inertia.

If the ship is allowed to crash onto the battlefield at this speed, few of the hundred extraordinary brothers on board will survive.

"Don't use too much force...be gentle...be soft..."

Jiang Zhen muttered something under his breath, took a deep breath, and clenched his right fist again.

This time, the white light on the fist was much softer, not as dazzling as before.

"Stop right there!"

Jiang Zhen roared and threw a punch at the sky!

A gentle yet powerful shockwave swept in a fan shape toward the falling giant ship.

After the shockwave left the fist, it began to spread, becoming wider as it went higher. By the time it reached the spaceship, it had formed a transparent, cushion-like buffer zone that could cover the entire ship.

The spaceship, which was originally falling at high speed with destructive kinetic energy, was as if it had been placed on an invisible sponge the moment it came into contact with this shock wave.

The giant ship's descent speed was reduced by 70-80% due to the shockwave, and it eventually came to rest heavily in front of the Zijin Mountain defense line at a relatively gentle speed, transforming into a massive steel bunker.

Although the strange people on the ship were shaken and some were even thrown off and unable to walk straight, they were basically unharmed.