Volume 2 Chapter 71: Impact, Descent, and Dispersal (Part 2)
The earth's crust resounded like the tolling of a bell, and the violent earthquake wiped out all buildings over 300 meters tall in Yanjing, while nearly half of those over 100 meters crumbled.
This was already remarkable, considering that even skyscrapers exceeding 100 meters in height survived in an area merely 100 kilometers away from the epicenter of a 9.5 magnitude earthquake.
It's worth noting that previous 9-magnitude earthquakes typically resulted from ruptures across hundreds of kilometers of fault lines. While they released immense energy overall, the spread-out rupture zones meant the energy density was not concentrated.
This time, however, the quake was purely localized—an extreme and concentrated event with seismic wave density pushed to its limit.
The tolling of the earth's crust resonated across regions far beyond Yanjing. Within minutes, tremors would ripple across all of East Asia. In some shelters, the quakes would reach magnitudes of 7 or higher, threatening to collapse these underground sanctuaries.
Shelters, with their thin underground layers, were inherently less resistant to seismic activity. However, due to modern materials and construction techniques, even hastily constructed and untested shelters were barely able to withstand 7-8 magnitude aftershocks.
But this resilience only applied to the aftershocks.
"It's an earthquake! Run!"
"What's happening?! Someone tell me!"
Crack…
Crack…
Crack!
Boom!
In several shelters near Yanjing, the seismic waves' impact was far beyond just 8.0.
Less than 300 kilometers from the impact zone, the waves swept through the area like the tolling of a colossal bell. What followed was both expected and unforeseen:
The shelters collapsed.
Under relentless tremors, the hastily constructed shelters ultimately failed to withstand the devastating force. In a cacophony of collapsing sounds, over 20 out of 80 layers crumbled under the seismic onslaught.
These 20 collapsed layers triggered cascading destruction, compromising over 60 additional layers.
The ceiling above split open, and those inside the shelters had nowhere to hide.
There were no beds, no tables, no corners to take cover in. People could only watch helplessly as the cracks in the ceiling widened.
Then, under the crushing force of hundreds of thousands of tons of falling rock, they were reduced to nothing but flesh and blood.
Children, the elderly, men, women—
No one survived in the shelters.
Some of these people had only just entered the shelters, getting accustomed to the underground environment and feeling a fleeting sense of relief at their luck.
But disaster struck in an instant.
In the case of 20-layer collapses, some sections pancaked together. This initiated a chain reaction: falling debris crushed the next layer, destabilizing it and causing it to collapse onto the layer below.
Once more than three layers failed, the rest below were doomed to the same fate. Even if the seismic waves had passed, the cascading weight of collapsing ceilings would ensure total destruction.
This was the death domino effect.
Those who had survived underground could do nothing but endure the relentless impacts above, awaiting their inevitable doom.
Ultimately, the entire underground structure was flattened, leaving millions of people to perish inside the shelters.
The machinery still functioning in the underground facilities faithfully transmitted this scene of hellish devastation to computers and screens monitored by the commanders.
But all they could do was remain silent.
They hadn't anticipated that the shelters would collapse under the seismic waves triggered by the impact. Or, if they had, they considered it such a low-probability event that no evacuation orders had been issued.
If they had to evacuate shelters over every minor potential threat, they would have needed to relocate all of East Asia's shelter populations. That was clearly impossible.
Even so, the sheer impossibility of such a large-scale evacuation wasn't the only reason for inaction. These shelters weren't cities—they had no direct high-speed rail connections between zones. Moreover, there were still millions of people outside waiting to enter the shelters, and temporary roads on the surface had been rendered impassable.
Evacuating those inside the shelters was simply not feasible.
Moreover, such an evacuation could spark chaos across all East Asian shelters. In the end, everyone had ignored this possibility.
After all, no one had anticipated that the Ghidorah's Wings would link their bodies together, forming a single sphere to descend and collide.
At the time, it was believed that they would fall in pairs, which would have significantly reduced the intensity of the seismic waves.
Seismic waves, after all, are still waves, subject to both constructive and destructive interference.
Under the original expectations, the Ghidorah's Wings's descent wouldn't have caused such catastrophic collapses in the shelters.
But this was no longer a scenario anyone had predicted.
There had been no forecast for the fall of the sun.
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The seismic waves passed, leaving behind the advancing shockwave.
This shockwave, surpassing the speed of sound, swept outward in all directions, carrying with it superheated steam, rubble, and fragments of the earth's crust.
For humanity, this shockwave wasn't the gravest disaster. It wouldn't penetrate underground shelters; compared to the earlier seismic waves, it was relatively manageable.
But for the satellites in low Earth orbit, the story was different.
A blast on the scale of tens of billions of tons of TNT created shockwaves that extended hundreds of kilometers. While they might not devastate cities at that distance, they could easily destroy precision-engineered satellites.
As a result, within a few moments, all satellites within a few hundred kilometers of the impact zone lost contact with the ground.
The shockwave raced outward, its path illuminated by the gargantuan fireball that dominated the heavens.
At its apex, this fireball, with a diameter of 50 kilometers, began to touch the sky itself.
After minutes of expansion, it reached its limit. Then, as expected, it began to contract, forming into a towering mushroom-shaped cloud.
It was at this moment that the remaining image-capturing satellites captured their last glimpses.
In the lower regions of the mushroom cloud, there were glimpses of the Ghidorah's Wings—still intact amidst the chaos.
And then, suddenly—
Thousands of miniature suns appeared in their place.
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