Mastering the Sword Manual, sweeping across the globe

The sunlight receded rapidly, visible to the naked eye. The barbed wire fence changed from dazzling silver-white to dark gray, and the parking lot changed from glaring gray-white to deep gray. Shadows spread over the walls, over the rooftops of the dormitory buildings, and over the abandoned suitcases on the main road, darkening the colors of everything.

A few minutes later, the airport was fully revealed.

At least two million square meters of concrete land slowly "drove" to within about three hundred meters of Mengka Town.

Because of its size, it appears to move quite slowly, slowly enough for people on the ground to clearly see the broken asphalt at the edge of the runway, the shattered glass windows of the control tower, and the sheet metal of the terminal roof blown up by the wind.

It was so enormous that when it came to a complete stop, its shadow pinned the town center beneath it. Wherever the shadow fell, the temperature plummeted, the dust that had been rising under the blazing sun suddenly fell silent, and even the wind stopped.

Outside the wall, the crowd that had been desperately squeezing into the intersection quieted down.

A militiaman squatting next to a pickup truck, smoking, had his cigarette butt fall to the ground from between his fingers without him noticing.

On the main road, a middle-aged woman carrying a woven bag stood still with her head tilted back. The bag slipped off her shoulder, and its contents scattered all over the ground.

In the banana grove, several young people who had been crouching under the banana leaves to avoid the sun were now shielded from all sunlight by the shadows, but their faces were even paler than they had been under the scorching sun.

Someone slowly stood up, the banana leaves rustling overhead. He reached out to push the person next to him, his fingers touching the other person's shoulder, which was also trembling.

The cyberspace was also filled with exclamations.

Someone in the live stream did the math: the flight deck area of ​​a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier is less than 20,000 square meters, while the continuous usable area of ​​this abandoned airport exceeds two million square meters.

A line of text flashed in the comments section and was screenshotted and forwarded countless times: Real aircraft carrier.

The aircraft carrier came to a complete stop, and about two minutes later, Zhang Qiliang appeared at the edge of the airport.

Standing on a broken section of asphalt, Zhang Qiliang briefly observed the area below before slowly raising his right hand.

next moment.

An abandoned airport, rusted hangar roofs, exposed steel bars along the runway edges, and half-removed aluminum alloy partitions in the terminal building…

In Mengka Town, there are piles of construction waste accumulated over the years, precast concrete slabs left from collapsed factories, steel pipe scaffolding from abandoned workers' sheds, cement fragments excavated during road widening, and several scrapped trucks reduced to mere skeletons deep in banana groves...

and many more……

All of these were stripped from their original positions by an invisible force, lifted into the air, and quickly converged to form a river of steel, cement, and aluminum plates in mid-air, flowing towards the location beneath Zhang Qiliang's feet.

Discarded building materials are dismantled, reassembled, and welded in mid-air; steel pipes automatically embed themselves into the gaps between cement fragments; aluminum alloy partitions unfold into flat steps; and the chassis of several scrapped trucks are dismantled into steel plates and laid on the stress points of each step.

Soon, a sky ladder, more than ten meters wide and at least two hundred meters high, stretched diagonally from the ground to the edge of the airport.

Standing at the top of the steps, Zhang Qiliang waved down.

Such a globally recognized gesture doesn't need any translation.

After hesitating for a few seconds, a young man who was squatting next to the dormitory building stood up.

The young man walked quickly, but unfortunately, he was too far from the ladder. By the time he arrived, several others had already gotten ahead.

With someone taking the lead, the others became very efficient.

Cyberspace:

"What is this, a rounded-up confession?"

"Based on my understanding of Ming, he doesn't have the concept of 'surrender' here..."

"There's no other way. All the roads are blocked, and now it's been exposed globally. It's obvious that business can't continue. We might as well just go back to China and at least avoid queuing in a detention center in Myanmar..."

"Damn it, the mosquitoes in Southeast Asia are really vicious, you know!"

"That guy upstairs, the fast team needs to investigate him immediately!"

And so, little by little, after about an hour, almost everyone who was willing to climb the stairs by themselves had arrived.

Cyberspace:

"Have you counted the number yet? How many are there now?"

"Someone just used a tidal wave scanner to scan the crowd; there are probably just over three thousand people on the runway."

"Three thousand? A park of this caliber, just the operators and middle management alone would cost more than four or five thousand, right?"

"Nonsense, they're just bad, not blind. Those who were prepared would have already hidden and run away! Those who were even more prepared probably slipped away even earlier!"

"Damn it, wouldn't that just be a freebie for those two thousand bastards?"

"These people are nothing, just the lowest-level lackeys! Where are their protectors? Where are the local warlords? Where are the higher-ups providing political asylum?"

"Brother Ming, could you please spare these old men a little favor?"

"What's the rush... Are you doubting Doflamingo's intelligence, or his personality?"

Given Zhang Qiliang's personality, he would naturally implicate others...

Having confirmed that everyone who wanted to come had arrived, Zhang Qiliang turned around to face the densely packed crowd on the airport runway.

Raise your right hand again, with your five fingers slightly spread.

On the track, a very faint gray halo began to appear on everyone.

A halo of light emanated from everyone's shoulders, backs, and palms, forming wisps of smoke that gathered in Zhang Qiliang's palm, coalescing into a slowly rotating sphere.

Inside the sphere, countless fine lines can be vaguely seen, connected to each other. Even the fewest lines are connected to several others, and many lines intersect, some even forming a tangled mess.

All the halos converged, Zhang Qiliang clenched his five fingers, and the sphere suddenly contracted.

The next moment, an invisible ripple suddenly spread outwards from the spot where Zhang Qiliang was standing, silently piercing through the distance.

……

Mengka Town Industrial Park.

In a corner of the kitchen's cold storage, a junior manager in charge of logistics was squatting behind a freezer, holding a laptop.

His gaze suddenly sharpened. He stood up, put the computer in the freezer, walked around the scattered compressed biscuits and mineral water bottles, pushed open the cold storage door, and walked to the loading and unloading passage outside the kitchen.

The metal cover of the septic tank inspection port behind the office building was pushed open from the inside, and two people covered in filth crawled out, stood up one after the other, and walked to the open space next to the inspection port.

In a mezzanine of a dormitory building, two people sitting side by side on cots, scrolling through their phones, suddenly stopped typing at the same time.

Their eyes suddenly widened for a moment, and they stood up almost simultaneously, pushed aside the wardrobe blocking the entrance to the mezzanine, walked out of the room one after the other, went down the stairs, and crossed the corridor.

In the corridor, several people were already walking out. Everyone was walking quietly, no one spoke, and no one looked at the people next to them, as if they were queuing up and waiting for something that should have come a long time ago.

Walking to the open space outside the dormitory building, the group stood still at the same time, and one by one their bodies took off into the air, flying towards the airport in the sky.

……

About two kilometers to the east.

The militia leader, who had been squatting and smoking in the back of the pickup truck, suddenly stood up.

The deputy asked him where he was going, but the leader didn't answer. He just stubbed out his cigarette, placed it on the side panel of the truck bed, and got out of the truck.

The deputy paused for a moment, then suddenly stood up and got out of the car as well.

Two or three seconds later, the other militiamen in the truck bed got up one after another, put their rifles away from their hands and placed them in the truck bed.

Several people walked to the open space next to the roadblock, stood still, and one by one took off into the air.

……

Fifty kilometers away.

In a villa deep in the rubber plantation, a fat man in silk pajamas stands in front of the fireplace, holding a glass of whiskey.

His wrist suddenly loosened, and the wine glass fell onto the carpet. The amber liquid and ice cubes seeped into the carpet fibers. He didn't pick it up, but turned and walked towards the terrace outside the living room.

The men who were burning documents in front of the fireplace also put down their iron bars and papers and followed behind.

The stone slabs on the terrace were half-wet from the garden's automatic sprinkler. The fat man stood in the center of the terrace, and the others behind him also stood in their places.

As the group ascended into the air, the fire in the living room fireplace was still burning, and the ashes from the paper were lifted up by the heat and stuck to the crystal chandelier.

……

More than a thousand kilometers away.

In a hotel suite in Yangon, a middleman in a suit is throwing a SIM card into an ashtray.

His hand suddenly stopped, and the SIM card slipped from his fingers.

Then, the middle-aged man turned around, walked towards the door, walked down the corridor, and entered the elevator.

As the elevator descended, the middle-aged man looked up at the floor numbers changing one by one, his expression as if he were reading a recently pronounced verdict.

Stepping out of the hotel lobby, the middle-aged man stopped at the drop-off area outside the porch.

The next moment, his body was lifted off the red floor tiles in front of the revolving door by an invisible force and flew into the afternoon sunlight of Yangon.

……

Further and further away.

At Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport, a young woman suddenly stepped out of the queue at the international departures area.

At the immigration queue in Changi Airport, Singapore, a middle-aged man suddenly turned around, walked through the automatic doors of the arrival hall, and stood by the roadside in the drop-off area.

In Baiyun District, Guangzhou, a middle-aged woman who had just ordered food and was having dinner with her blind date suddenly pushed open the shop door and walked to the sidewalk.

In an open-plan office of a tech company in Shenzhen, a programmer suddenly stood up, walked around the trash can next to his workstation, pushed open the door to the fire escape, walked down the stairs step by step, opened the emergency exit on the first floor, and walked to the loading and unloading area at the back of the office building.

In a branch office of a special task force in Shanghai, the branch chief was presiding over a routine meeting. As he spoke with great enthusiasm, his subordinates applauded and cheered him on. Before the applause had even stopped, a task force member in the third row suddenly stood up, pushed back his chair, walked directly past the branch chief, and opened the window.

In a telecommunications branch in Beijing, the lobby was packed with customers conducting business. Temporary workers were answering phones and typing on keyboards behind the counters. The branch manager, holding a cup of coffee, patrolled the workstations. A teller looked up and said, "Manager, this form needs your signature." The manager didn't turn around, but simply pushed open the glass door of the lobby and walked to the door.

……

On the Andaman Sea, dilapidated fishing boats are gently rocking in the waves.

Lou Zhipeng leaned back in a chair made of hardwood planks, earnestly reciting "Ideological and Moral Education." Opposite him, the woman's textbook remained on the first page, and her phone battery had only one bar left.

Suddenly, Lou Zhipeng closed the book and stood up.

The woman looked up, about to ask something, when she suddenly stood up as well.

The two men walked around the cables piled up at the bottom of the hold, pushed open the hatch, and went up onto the deck.

A sea breeze blew, making the woman's hair a mess. She tried to reach out and tidy it up, but an invisible force came from her.

The two of them took to the air.

Damn it... This damned, despicable monster actually chased me all the way to international waters?

……

This completely misunderstands Zhang Qiliang.

What caught up with Lou Zhipeng was not Zhang Qiliang's will, but Lou Zhipeng's own output.

In layman's terms, it's called accumulation.

In academic terms, this is called achievement or merit.

……

The wondrous method of the Heavenly Demon Sect is the Merit Banner.

173 Love life

3:22 PM.

At the moment Zhang Qiliang clasped his five fingers together, the number of people counted by the tidal equipment was approximately 3000.

One minute later: 3100 people; Two minutes later: 3300 people; Three minutes later: 3500 people...

The rapid fluctuation of the numbers fully demonstrates how strong the human instinct to hide is when facing a ferocious beast, and how brilliant the creativity can be.

Those who were first exposed mostly used conventional methods of concealment.

Crouching under the bed, squatting in the closet, huddled behind the water tank—these are all overdone scenes from action movies.

Those that were carefully hidden were more elaborate.

Four were crammed behind the false wall of the power distribution room, one was pulled out from a hidden compartment welded under the chassis of a minibus, and one was tucked horizontally into the bottom empty space of the server rack in the computer room: less than forty centimeters high. The viewers in the live chat who were doing system maintenance were dumbfounded.

It's worth mentioning that one of the guys crawled into the ventilation duct, which isn't unusual. What is unusual is that when the merit banner was activated, this guy happened to be turning a corner and was suddenly unable to move forward or backward.

The merit banner was pulled twice but couldn't be moved, so the organizers kindly made an exception and allowed the guy to bring his luggage. So, when he landed at the airport, the guy was in a U-shape, covered from head to toe by the aluminum tube he had just crawled into.

Several others were particularly creative.

A mid-level manager dug a hole in the canna lily bushes in the green belt, lay down in it, covered himself with a plastic sheet and sprinkled soil on it, and breathed through a hollow bamboo tube in his mouth.

When one of them flew into the air, two wolfhounds were hanging from each of its two legs, presumably because the three parties had been fighting over the doghouse.