Volume 3: Global Vanguard & The Advanced Pinnacle
Chapter 281
Pacific Cataclysm: Rise of the Sea King Dynasty
Ten thousand zhang deep within the Mariana Trench of the Pacific basin, where eternal darkness had reigned for hundreds of millions of years, an unprecedented, terrifying upheaval in human history was quietly awakening.
The colossal pressure at a depth of ten thousand meters was sufficient to crush any reinforced steel submarine forged by humanity into scrap in the blink of an eye. This place had always been a forbidden zone of life, enveloped solely by blind primordial creatures and icy abyssal silt. Yet at this moment, the lithospheric crust at the ocean floor suddenly ruptured, splitting open ravines hundreds of nautical miles long.
From deep within the Earth’s core, torrents of pitch-black, viscous magical magma surged overwhelmingly, dyeing the freezing waters into a boiling, demonic cauldron of spectral oils. The temperature of an immense expanse of the ocean skyrocketed exponentially. Colossal bubbles of sulfur churned to the surface, carrying the pungent stench of phosphorus and death from a distant primeval era.
“Rumble... RUMBLE... CRASH!”
A muffled ultrasonic roar, carrying a devastating mana oscillation frequency, erupted from the depths of the abyss. That wave of sound was so powerful it tore through the ocean layers, forming shockwaves that swept across thousands of miles of the ocean floor. Millions of ordinary marine creatures that failed to escape in time had their internal organs instantly shattered, transforming into a bloody mist that dissolved into the deep sea.
At the center of the abyssal fissure, a pair of colossal pupils resembling twin blood-red moons slowly opened.
That was the gaze of the supreme ruler belonging to the Sea King Divine Clan—a primeval race that had once ruled this entire planet before humanity emerged, now awakening from a slumber lasting eras. Within those blood-red eyes, there was neither warmth nor mercy, only brutality, frantic fury, and the craving to turn humanity’s fertile surface lands into an underwater palace overflowing with white bones.
The Sea King Dynasty had officially risen!
Following the heaven-shaking heartbeat of the abyssal beast, countless streams of ink-black demonic energy flooded across the coral reefs and underwater trenches. Amidst that devilish dark mist, millions and tens of millions of bizarre phantom monstrosities began to stir, hissing ear-piercing, shrill sounds that tore through eardrums.
That was the vanguard army of the Sea King Dynasty: the mutated marine beast legion!
Tens of thousands of Night Fiend Sharks—shadow sharks possessing sleek black skin capable of swallowing light and sensory magic, with double rows of teeth as sharp as hundreds of miniature chainsaw blades—darted swiftly through the underwater currents. They moved at wind-tearing speeds, their dorsal fins breaking the surface to carve long, churning wakes of white foam.
Beneath them marched dense swarms of colossal Iron-Armored Sea Crabs. Every single crab was the size of a heavy armored battle tank, their ashen carapaces covered in sharp, venom-laced spikes and primitive magical runic patterns capable of withstanding extreme mana loads. Eight razor-sharp legs plunged fiercely into the continental shelf slopes, forming a moving iron wall that crushed every obstacle in their path of devastation.
And reigning over the deepest water layers were the Abyssal Ink Fish Tyrants. Their monstrous bodies stretched up to hundreds of meters in length, pitch-black like floating subterranean mountains. Each of their tentacles was as massive as a millennia-old ancient tree, densely studded with suction cups rimmed in razor-sharp teeth, thrashing wildly to create colossal destructive whirlpools capable of swallowing any human patrol vessel.
Impelled by the frantic mana of the Sea King Divine Clan, an immense mass of ocean water in the Pacific was hoisted far above its normal level.
The sea level surged madly upward!
Three meters... six meters... ten meters... and then shattering the historical high tide threshold by twelve meters!
Simultaneously, out in the distant offshore skies, violently turbulent humid air masses formed a magical super-typhoon of unprecedented scale. Layers of heavy, lead-colored black clouds piled dozens of kilometers thick, completely blotting out the sunlight and plunging the coastal daytime into pitch darkness. Purplish-red lightning jagged across the blackened sky, striking the sea surface with wrathful bolts that mingled with the savage roars of the ocean monster horde surging frantically toward the mainland!
The Eastern coastline, the Modu Coastal Defense Command Station.
“Beep... Beep... BEEEEP——!”
The pressure and sea level warning alarms on the central control console suddenly wailed piercingly, shattering the routine tense working atmosphere.
“Report! Marine Meteorological Satellite Observation Station No. 3 has completely lost signal!”
“The sonar sensor submarine buoys two hundred nautical miles offshore just recorded mana tremors exceeding ten thousand units! The impulse graph has surpassed the equipment’s highest measuring limit!”
“The sea level... good heavens, the sea level at Hangzhou Bay and the Huangpu River estuary is rising at a rate of one meter every fifteen minutes! The Zhoushan Island Lighthouse station just transmitted its final image before losing contact... It’s a tsunami! A magical tsunami wall over thirty meters high is approaching!”
A barrage of panicked screams from the on-duty officers echoed continuously inside the underground command room. On the colossal 3D panoramic screen, the entire coastline stretching from the Bohai Sea and Yellow Sea through the East China Sea down to the Southern coast was gradually shifting from warning yellow to a fiery red resembling fresh blood oozing from an open wound.
Major General Lei Zhen—the Commander-in-Chief of the East China regional maritime border defense forces—clutched the steel railing of the observation deck tightly. The bulging veins on the back of his hands throbbed violently, his gaze fixed piercingly on the deadly numbers dancing frantically across the screen.
As a Super-level Wind-element mage who had experienced hundreds of bloody battles across battlefields, Lei Zhen understood the implications of these metrics better than anyone.
This was no ordinary tropical storm. This was an organized, extinction-scale destructive assault commanded by the apex entities of this planet’s food chain!
“Immediately activate the Crimson Alarm Siren across the entire coastline!”
Lei Zhen’s resolute voice rang out, echoing like thunderous explosions inside the chaotic command room:
“Contact the Pearl Tower Magic Association, the Modu Magic Association, and neighboring military districts at once. Order all border defense troops to enter Level One wartime status! Inform the city government: All residents within a thirty-kilometer radius of the coastline must immediately evacuate inland right now!”
“Understood!”
Just seconds after the veteran general’s order, the most terrifying sound that any citizen living in coastal metropolises dreaded echoed across the sky.
“HUUUUUU——! HUUUUUU——!”
The Crimson alarm siren wailed!
It was a desolate, mournful yet breathlessly urgent sound, amplified by magical sound formations, echoing into every corner of the coastal mega-cities: from the bustling Modu with its tens of millions of residents, through Ningbo and Wenzhou, all the way to distant Fuzhou in the South.
On the streets of Modu, millions of citizens busy with their hurried daily lives froze in stunned astonishment.
They raised their heads to look toward the Eastern sky. There, the morning sun had completely vanished, leaving only a fathomless black expanse resembling the gaping maw of a deep abyss swallowing the entire world. Heavy, leaden black clouds hung so low it felt as though one could touch them simply by reaching out. The sea breeze sweeping into the city carried an unusual, salty stench mingled with the rotting smell of kelp and seaweed, cutting straight through to the marrow with bone-chilling cold.
On the colossal LED advertising screens across People’s Square, the Bund, and the summit of the Shanghai Center Tower, all glamorous commercial imagery was forcibly cut short, replaced by a glaring red background and flashing emergency warning text:
【CRIMSON-LEVEL EMERGENCY WARNING!】
【UNPRECEDENTED SEA MONSTER TIDE APPROACHING THE COASTLINE!】
【ALL CITIZENS MUST IMMEDIATELY LEAVE COASTAL ZONES AND BASEMENTS! EVACUATE AT ONCE INTO REINFORCED INLAND MAGIC DEFENSE STRUCTURES!】
“Good lord... Crimson warning! It’s a Sea Monster tide!”
“Run! Run to the underground inland subway station!”
“My child... my child is still at the school on the East bank!”
Utter chaos erupted in the blink of an eye. Panicked screams, the wailing sirens of rescue vehicles and military trucks, mingled with the weeping cries of children and the elderly, forming a terrifying cacophony of sound. Thousands of vehicles jammed bumper-to-bumper across overpasses and highways heading westward. Every escape route out of the coastal zone was packed to absolute capacity.
Amidst that panic, a convoy of armored vehicles from the Border Defense Army and combat mage squads belonging to the Magic Association moved against the tide of humanity. Clad in gleaming magical armor, their expressions resolute yet immensely tense, they charged straight toward the coastline—where the doom of annihilation was descending with every passing second.
Thirty nautical miles East of the Modu coastline, Outpost Lighthouse Number Seven.
This was a premier fortified outpost perched lonely on a solitary underwater reef in the open sea, constructed from high-strength magical alloy and granite reinforced with high-grade defensive spell formations. The lighthouse, standing over fifty meters tall, rose like a steel spear thrust straight into the fierce sea, tasked with navigation and early warning for the entire Modu maritime region.
Atop the lighthouse summit, Captain Tan Kai—the outpost commander—stood amidst Category 15 gale-force winds. Rain lashed fiercely against his face like piercing needles. His military magic cloak whipped violently in the fierce wind.
Around him, thirty border defense mage soldiers clung tightly to magical gun emplacements and defensive spell arrays, their eyes locked onto the pitch-black horizon in the distance.
Not a soul spoke a word. The atmosphere was so tense that only the howling wind whistling through iron crevices and the thumping of heartbeats in everyone’s chests could be heard.
Because right before their eyes, a scene of supreme horror was unfolding.
The sea surface was no longer the horizontal plane they were accustomed to. On the distant horizon, a colossal, pitch-black wall of water towering over thirty meters high surged turbulently like a towering mountain range of water collapsing toward the mainland!
That tsunami wall carried millions of tons of seafloor silt, churning white foam roaring like ten thousand wild horses charging furiously across a plain. But what froze the blood in the border defense soldiers’ veins was not the power of the waves, but the entities lurking within those dark waters!
Thousands upon thousands of pairs of glowing eyes, burning with blood-red and spectral green, shifted densely within the heart of the waves.
Those were the pitch-black shark heads of Night Fiend Sharks baring razor-sharp saw-tooth jaws, gaping their foul mouths in anticipation of tearing prey apart. Those were the colossal carapaces covered in sharp spikes of Iron-Armored Sea Crabs emerging from the water, their steel pincers clashing together to emit bone-chilling metallic screeches.
And right behind the tsunami wall, a gigantic shadow far surpassing human imagination slowly rose.
That was an Abyssal Ink Fish Tyrant of Monarch rank!
Its massive, floating island-like body distorted the surrounding space. More than a dozen colossal tentacles stretching a hundred meters long, thick as temple pillars, thrust straight into the overcast sky, thrashing just once to generate devastating windstorms that tore through the cloud cover!
“Station Commander... they... there are too many of them... The entire sea is monsters!” A young soldier in charge of the Lightning-element magic array trembled as he spoke, his teeth chattering uncontrollably.
Tan Kai stared fixedly at the incoming wall of turbulent waves racing at wind-tearing speed, now less than five hundred meters away. The veteran captain’s weather-beaten face inexplicably grew serene. He knew full well that given the scale of this tide and monster horde, this tiny lighthouse could absolutely not hold out for more than three minutes.
Yet they were the first line of defense. Behind their backs were their families, their friends, and tens of millions of compatriots panicking as they evacuated the mainland!
“Entire squad, hear my order!”
Tan Kai drew the magic sword at his waist, channeling blazing Fire-element mana into the blade, his roar overriding the howling sea winds:
“Activate all ultimate defense arrays! Prepare long-range magic! Even if we die, we must drag these beasts down to hell with us, buying every single second we can for our compatriots inland!”
“Understood!”
The resounding reply of thirty soldiers erupted amidst the storm. Fear and hesitation were gone, replaced solely by the suicidal resolve of magical border defense soldiers!
“Whoosh... WHOOSH——!”
Tier upon tier of magical runes across the lighthouse body flared brilliantly. A pale-blue hemispherical energy barrier enveloped the entire rocky outcrop. Simultaneously, the mages on the observation deck simultaneously traced brilliant star orbits and star patterns in midair.
“Fierce Fist—Nine Palaces!”
“Violent Wave—Raging Rolling!”
“Solitary Lightning—Purple Firmament Strike!”
Dozens of Mid-level and High-level magic spells descended in unison! Blazing flames tore through the rain curtain, and purplish-blue lightning bolts roared down straight onto the pitch-black tsunami wall.
“CRASH! BOOM BOOM!”
The terrifying magical explosions caused the leading hundreds of Night Fiend Sharks to burst into shreds of flesh, bluish-black beast blood spraying to dye the churning foam crimson. One corner of the water wall was scorched by fire, sending up billowing columns of white smoke.
Yet that desperate attack was like a grain of sand cast into a desert against the millions-strong sea monster army out in the open ocean!
The Night Fiend Sharks behind did not falter in the slightest; instead, they were driven even more frantic by the scent of fresh blood. They trampled over the corpses of their comrades, swinging razor-sharp fins to charge straight into the lighthouse’s magical barrier!
“CLANG! SHATTER!”
The energy barrier shook violently under the impact of thousands of armored beasts. Fine cracks began appearing across the surface of the barrier.
At that exact moment, the Monarch-rank Abyssal Ink Fish Tyrant in the rear closed in on the lighthouse. Its colossal, turbid yellow eyes coldly gazed down upon the tiny soldiers no bigger than grass ants.
“SWISH——!”
A colossal, ink-black tentacle covered in sharp spikes and foul mucus tore the air, lashing down from the zenith of the sky! The strike carried the force of hundreds of thousands of tons, resembling a divine whip from a primeval giant god slamming straight into the lighthouse!
“CRACK... SHATTER!”
The sturdy defensive barrier shattered into countless sparkling fragments of light in the blink of an eye. The colossal tentacle did not slow down in the slightest, smashing directly into the upper half of the magical alloy tower!
“BOOM CRASH——!”
The fifty-meter-tall sturdy lighthouse shook violently before snapping in half like a dry tree branch caught in a tempest. All defensive runic systems exploded in blinding sparks of electricity. Boulders and magical steel shattered and cascaded into the deep sea.
Amidst the collapsing ruins, Tan Kai was soaked in blood, his left arm severed entirely, yet his right hand still clutched the emergency military communicator. He saw the thirty-meter tsunami wall and countless pairs of red-glowing eyes descending upon him, but a proud, unyielding soldier’s smile bloomed on his lips.
Exhausting the last remnants of his life force, Tan Kai shouted directly into the transmitter:
“Command center... Outpost Number Seven final report... The defense station has fallen... A primeval-scale Sea King Dynasty... with a Monarch-rank commander present... Prepare yourselves... FIGHT TO THE DEATH FOR HUMANITY!”
“BOOM——!”
The pitch-black tsunami wall crashed down, completely swallowing the lighthouse and thirty steadfast soldiers into the chilling deep sea. On the sea surface, nothing remained save roiling black whirlpools and the savage roars of millions of monsters continuing their surge toward the Modu coastline!
At the heart of Modu, atop the Shanghai Apex Tower—a skyscraper standing over six hundred meters tall amidst the clouds.
Raging magical stormwinds howled outside the thick tempered glass, creating terrifying sounds akin to wailing ghosts and shrieking spirits. The entire colossal skyscraper seemed to tremble slightly under the boundless pressure of nature and oceanic mana.
On the highest outdoor observation deck of the tower, a slender figure in deep-blue mage robes stood unyielding against the stormy gale.
It was Lin Feng!
He had just completed the consummate consolidation of the Advanced Level Tier Three realm for both his Lightning and Fire elements following his earth-shattering breakthrough under the assistance of the Primeval Dragon Amulet. At this moment, not a single trace of abrasive mana fluctuation radiated from his body, yet an invisible, ancient, and majestic aura enveloped his frame, causing driving storm raindrops within three paces of him to automatically vaporize into nothingness.
Lin Feng’s eyes were as fathomless as an ancient lake, casting his gaze through the dense storm curtain toward the Eastern coastline.
Out there, the horizon had completely vanished. A towering black water wall reaching up to the clouds, carrying the pungent stench of death and the gloomy mana of the Sea King Divine Clan, was pressing forward turbulently. That suffocating feeling of oppression was enough to crush the mental fortitude of any ordinary mage.
Yet deep within Lin Feng’s eyes, instead of fear, a roaring fire of battle-intent blazed to the heavens!
“Tremble... TREMBLE——!”
Within his chest, the primeval dragon-shaped jade pendant—the Primeval Dragon Amulet—suddenly grew scorching hot like a glowing coal. A deep, resonant dragon roar carrying the absolute majesty of the ancestor of ten thousand dragons from primeval times echoed within the depths of his soul.
The aura of the Sea King Divine Clan... that evil race that had once been the mortal enemy of the primeval Divine Dragons in the legendary ancient God-Conferencing battle, seemed to have completely awakened the proud bones and battle instinct of the Dragon God bloodline within Lin Feng’s body!
The Lightning Star Sea in his spiritual domain began to boil, hundreds of dark purple star nodes emitting thunderous rumbles that shook the void. The Fire Star Sea likewise surged with crimson, gold-rimmed Primeval Dragon Flames, ready to incinerate any dark forces daring to profane the mortal world.
Lin Feng slowly raised his hand, gripping the hilt of the sword at his back, his robes snapping in the coastal tempest.
The world-destroying great calamity had arrived at their doorstep.
Behind him were tens of millions of innocent citizens, an ancient prosperous metropolis, and humanity’s final survival boundary before the abyssal ocean.
There was no retreat left. Only a single path remained: Engage in battle!
His eyes flared with a brilliant, imposing purple-gold radiance, his low voice echoing across the summit of the high skyscraper:
“The Sea King Dynasty? You want to drown Modu in a sea of blood... you must first ask whether the Lightning and Fire in my hands agree!”