Chapter 1145
They were all killed.
Chapter 1145 They were all killed.
Under the command of Colonel Charles P. Mason, the massive Atlantos Third Fleet fast strike group is steadily approaching the four towering figures on the sea ahead.
They actually abandoned long-range fire support and sailed the ship directly to the vicinity of Xia Xiu and his group of four, surrounding them in an encirclement.
A series of heavy footsteps echoed on the deck, and several naval officers climbed onto the command platform one after another from the side door of the bridge. Their figures reflected a sticky blue-gray sheen in the sunlight, their dorsal fins trembled slightly, and they wore deep-sea naval officer cloaks. Foamy mist, symbolizing a state of combat, was faintly spewed from their gill openings.
They stood brazenly on the deck, watching the four swordsmen with amusement.
Leading the way was Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Brokenfin Kruze, the fleet assault captain. He was a long-bodied, saw-sharp-faced cartilaginous fish of the genus *Hymenochae*.
"Let me go take a look... Hmm, they're perfect for hanging on a net to dry."
Closely following him was Captain Clarence Skullbiter Jeffrey, a core member of the action team. He was even more robust, a descendant of a heavily armored hammerhead shark, his limbs possessing strength unlike that of a normal shark, his entire body covered in metal plates that gleamed with a dark, iron-like light. He struck his chest with his bone-spiked mallet, the sound echoing like muffled thunder across the bridge.
"These four pieces of top-quality meat... I have to eat them first. The fleet's human meat frogs have already finished eating them..."
Corrosive saliva dripped from the corner of the skull-biter's mouth.
Lieutenant Ryan Slipperyjaw Hodges, a jawless fish of the pedigree standing nearby, let out a soft hiss. He had no jaw and his mouth was surrounded by a ring of sticky, sucker-like tentacles, looking like the wet, soft flesh left after peeling off a face.
"I just want to prick that show-off with the book and see if he'll ooze knowledge."
Several merfolk officers stood in a line on the bridge, their eyes fierce and their tone filled with greed and fanaticism for the new humans. They frequently mentioned the human anatomy charts in the Sealing Army's diet, as if these enemies were not combat units at all, but rather ingredients to be slaughtered.
Captain Charles P. Mason, the Sharkman, stood at the bridge window, looking down at the four towering figures on the sea.
His lips slowly parted to reveal three rows of teeth that gleamed with a cold, eerie light, and saliva, tinged with a metallic taste, dripped silently between his fangs.
“I’ve already said…” He gently swung his fin-like arm, his tone filled with barely suppressed, ferocious joy, “You can play around with it, but… you must be captured alive.”
"Ugh."
Upon hearing this, several eager Sea Si officers revealed expressions of dissatisfaction. Their faces, a mixture of human and sea beast features, twisted into a cruel desire. However, without further ado, they leaped from the sides of the ship, crashing into the sea like boulders thrown into an abyss, creating towering waves that pounded against the shore.
The next second, the seawater boiled.
What rises from the depths is no longer a human-shaped body, but a completely unleashed, mutated shell.
—Giant size.
This is the fundamental reason why Hai Si was able to defeat humanity, and it is also the most iconic basis for class differentiation in the entire Blue Abyss social structure.
In this deep-sea civilization dominated by the Sealings, gigantification is a ritualistic power that binds spirituality and identity—a glorious ideal instilled in every Sealing from birth. Only individuals whose soul, body, and lineage are highly synchronized are qualified to gigantify and transform into the colossal war puppet that symbolizes domination and victory.
For ordinary sea creatures, gigantification symbolizes the critical point between adulthood and enlightenment.
In the Sealing society and orphanage, Sealing boys whose potential for gigantification is not obvious are strictly classified as low-finned species and can only engage in basic labor and low-level duties.
Those that can truly grow to gigantic size are known as Deepfins, the unshakable elite skeletons of the Blue Abyss society, possessing priority in reproduction, priority in food allocation, and priority in battle—this is a genealogical ladder that runs through all levels of society.
Based on the growth age of the Sealing society, they can grow to gigantic size by middle school, and each gigantic Sealing is comparable to a [Measurer] in the first stage of the human lineage.
In high school, the top students went straight to the second stage of the lineage, becoming [Distinguished Ones], and awakened their own deep-sea talents.
Among them, the giantification of military personnel is considered the purest and most symbolic.
They undergo ritual baptism in special altars of the Fish and Flesh Cult, where their spirituality and muscles swell to ten or even a hundred times their normal size, reaching heights of fifteen to sixty meters and weights exceeding ten thousand tons, resembling ancient war gods crawling out of deep-sea myths.
They not only possess close-combat suppression capabilities, but can often receive fleet-level fire support on their own, and undertake missions such as advance, interception, and even urban bombardment.
Even in the political arena, gigantism is a yardstick for measuring status and legitimacy.
Almost all the Deepfins in the High Council possess advanced gigantification abilities, and the people even worship their gigantic battle forms as totems.
From a religious perspective, the Fish-Flesh Cult within the Sea Seeds views gigantification as a preliminary attempt at the transformation of a god—every inch of increased body size is a response to the blessings bestowed by the erroneous beast, a simulated rehearsal to approach the ultimate predator.
Giant fins slapped the water, and the dragon's tail whipped up waves. The humanoid sea creature, which was originally only three meters tall, was now constantly expanding.
Jonathan Brokenfin Kruze was the first to transform, growing to a height of twenty-five meters, with a spiral spine containing a nerve canal growing from his back.
His arms transformed into double-edged spirit fins, his facial structure underwent a subtle reorganization, and three layers of sharkskin plates were added to the humanoid skeleton, his mouth splitting to the base of his ears, revealing irregular serrations—like an ancient deep-sea war god wearing a human suit.
"Hehehe... I'm going to tear your faces off with my own hands."
Clarence and Hodges behind him also completed the disintegration and dimensional ascension of their own forms. They swam in the water like fierce dragons, dragging huge fleshy fins and carrying suffocating spiritual energy, rushing towards the four figures standing quietly on the water's surface like a deep-sea tsunami.
……
……
At the same time, Xia Xiu casually glanced around the sea, his gaze landing on the three rapidly approaching behemoths, his tone as if he were remarking before a meal:
"The fish has taken the bait, and... it looks very eager."
The second swordsman, Qasim, frowned slightly, sighed, and spoke with a cold and disgusted tone:
"What a disgusting thing."
Xia Xiu glanced at the three seniors and asked very politely, "Who's going up?"
The second swordsman was eager to fight, but before he could make a move, the first swordsman, Saint Valentine, had already raised his right hand—the hand holding the black umbrella trembled slightly, as if something invisible had been awakened.
The sea breeze suddenly stopped, and time seemed to freeze for a moment.
Invisible threads flew out from his palm, so transparent they were almost impossible to catch, as if the very structure of the world had been dissected to reveal a hidden grid.
At that moment, the three giant sea creatures were charging towards them with great joy.
"So soft..." The first thought that popped into Kruze's mind was eerily sudden. He suddenly felt something gently brush against his body, like an invisible hand lightly stroking along his spine.
"What—" Before he could even utter the second word, the next instant, all he saw was light.
No, to be precise, it is a process of the body being suddenly divided and consciousness being forced to disintegrate.
He saw his hands, shoulders, waist, tail... being neatly peeled away piece by piece, the cutting marks like some kind of extremely precise spatial surgery, dividing him into hundreds of neat little squares.
"What...is this...?"
Before he could finish speaking, his consciousness was severed as if peeled away layer by layer, neatly turning into fragments that crashed into the sea, along with his massive severed limbs, turning the entire sea into a malicious palette of blood red and deep blue.
Both the skull biteer and the sliding jaw felt that gentle touch for a fleeting moment, as if someone had tenderly stroked their necks—and then, like Kruze, they were cut into cube-shaped pieces of flesh within half a second, dying instantly before their spirits could even mount a defensive reaction.
The nearby sea creatures were the same, neatly cut into countless tiny pieces of flesh and blood, falling into the sea and staining the water red.
Saint Valentine withdrew his hand, the thin thread between his fingers slowly merging into the air. His expression remained unchanged, and he coldly uttered only one sentence:
"Let's go, let's just kill them all."
……
……
On the Bumblebee.
Colonel Charles P. Mason, the sharkman, leaned back in the deep-sea leather seat in the middle of the bridge, grinning as he chatted idly with the ship girl Tia.
His smile was extremely ugly, his gill slits opening and closing, and the end of his voice had a slight buzzing tremor:
"...The tongues of that batch of humans last time really needed to be soaked in acid overnight before being roasted, otherwise they would be too tough."
In this relaxed atmosphere, a sudden change occurred.
The next second, at the far end of the sea in front of the bridge porthole, a colonel and two lieutenant officers who had jumped into the sea, along with their accompanying sea sergeants, instantly turned into countless crystal-clear fragments, falling like shattered glass. Then, with a splash, they all fell into the blood-stained sea, leaving not even a single bone behind.
"……Varied?"
Mason's pupils dilated, and the excited smile that hadn't yet been swallowed froze on his face. He subconsciously stopped talking to the ship girl and suddenly looked at the big screen.
In the distance, four figures were walking slowly across the sea. Although they were several nautical miles apart, they appeared around the fleet in an instant.
The spiritual radar is flashing red alarm lights.
The ship girl said urgently to the shark-man colonel:
"High-threat target identified. We recommend immediately activating fleet fire coverage mode and conducting the highest level of suppressive fire!"
"Yes, yes, yes—fuck you, fire at full speed!!!" Colonel Sharkman immediately realized.
His three rows of sharp fangs clenched together with a grinding sound in his panic.
"USS Hornet enters high-pressure strike mode! Activate torpedo arrays, cruise missiles, and main guns—all activated!!!"
"Order received." Ship girl Tia quickly stood at attention, and the mental connection pod in the metal panel opened, causing the entire ship to resonate at a low frequency.
"Task force enters – combat deployment."
"Long-range guided torpedoes, electromagnetic railguns, high-speed missiles, full-band jamming barrage...fire!"
boom--!
The next moment, the ships in the strike group were like awakened deep-sea behemoths, spewing out massive amounts of flames from their bows, their rocket launchers tearing through the clouds, and hundreds and thousands of missiles, trailing red flames, soaring into the sky. Under the joint command of the ship girls and the sea monster operators, they drew deadly arcs and bombarded the four enemy figures like a tidal wave.
The seawater boiled, and the sky trembled violently.
But just as this decisive blow was about to land, Xia Xiu, standing before the sea, remained unmoved, his golden pupils reflecting a trajectory. He simply raised his left hand, extended his index finger, and then pointed it downwards. "—Down."
buzzing...
An invisible law of gravity descended, and the entire sea area seemed to be suddenly distorted by some absolute rule. All missiles, shells, orbital rays, and even radar waves were instantly pulled into an unfathomable sinkhole, sinking into the sea in a deathly silence before they even touched three feet around them.
There was no explosion.
There were no waves.
Firepower seemed to be swallowed up by time.
The battlefield was eerily quiet—except for the blaring alarms in Colonel Sharkman's ears, there was no other sound.
Just as Xia Xiu raised his finger to suppress the entire fleet's firepower, Saint Valentine, the first swordsman of Heaven standing to his right, slightly tilted his shoulder. He gently flicked the black umbrella that had been used to shield him from the rain all year round, and the umbrella surface seemed to expand into a faint, ethereal arc in an instant.
—The next moment, hell descended.
Before the opposing sea monsters could react, all the ships of the Atlantos Third Fleet, except for the flagship "Hornet," were cleanly and neatly sliced apart from bow to stern like tofu by countless perfect horizontal cuts.
"Deploy the defensive barrier! Quickly—!!"
"The ship has broken apart! We're being—!"
"Steering system - servo motor disconnected!!"
Before the crew could even respond, they could only watch helplessly as the deck beneath their feet was slowly separated. Some officers remained seated, not even having time to utter a single alarm, before they were already tilting and falling into the deep sea along with the broken hull, sinking into the screams and flames along with the high-temperature steam, the tearing metal, and the twisted bodies.
A young, bony, fish-like communications officer stared wide-eyed as he watched his ship's hull being cleaved into several pieces on the screen, before neatly sliding off and separating the pieces the next second.
He could even hear the heart-wrenching screams and prayers of his comrades inside the lower half of the ship's hull. The next moment, the signal was cut off, and their vital signs dropped to zero.
"Damn it... what is this?!"
These were his last words before he died.
Some ships even attempted to activate spiritual defense isolation devices and deploy shipboard spiritual membranes for protection, but whether it was energy shields, rune barriers, or underwater high-frequency vibration interference systems, they were utterly vulnerable to the rain lines gently flicked out by that black umbrella.
Apart from the Hornet, all the other ships were as if they had been lightly brushed by invisible nanoblades, and all their defense mechanisms collapsed instantly like paper, without even giving them time to react.
Seconds later, only the wrecked Hornet remained, drifting alone on the sea.
On the Bumblebee.
Colonel Charles P. Mason stood frozen in place, his shark-like face, known for its arrogance and voracious appetite, now completely stiff, his teeth trembling slightly at the corners of his mouth.
His ship girl, Tia, anxiously reminded him:
"...Commander...they...they've vanished. Neither radar nor spiritual probes can detect them."
Mason opened his mouth, trembling, his throat feeling like it was being scraped by a razor blade: "Where...are they...?"
Before the words were finished—
Are you looking for us?
A gentle and restrained voice, like a dead wind blowing past your ear, or a divine judgment whispered in your ear, quietly rang out.
Colonel Sharkman whirled around, his pupils contracting like pinholes. He saw four familiar figures standing on the bridge, less than three meters in front of him. One of them, a handsome blond youth, was looking down at him. His amber eyes held no mercy, only cold indifference and condescending disdain.
Xia Xiu slowly raised his left hand and made only a very simple downward pressing motion.
"He's holding his head too high."
—BOOM!!!
An invisible gravity suddenly descended, as if tens of millions of tons of steel components were falling from the sky and pressing down on Mason.
Colonel Sharkman bent his knees, and his entire shark was pressed against the steel plate. Spiderweb-like cracks appeared on the metal deck of the bridge, and his bones began to twist and deform inch by inch. His spine made painful cracking sounds as it bent unnaturally.
He opened his mouth, only to find that his tongue was trembling and unable to form any complete sentence, and his lungs felt like a deflated sac.
Even the thick scales of a shark-like species cannot stop the spiritual gravity from squeezing and crushing the bone marrow and even the soul.
"Ugh... Ugh... Ugh—!!"
"That's disgusting."
Xia Xiu frowned, took a half-step back in disdain, extended his right hand, and gently poked the center of the shark's forehead with his silver cane. He then turned to the other three sword-wielders and said calmly:
"The smell was very strong; he had eaten many people."
After saying that, Xia Xiu's gaze finally fell on the ship girls on the other side of the bridge.
That was originally just a ship spirit with the functions of intelligence processing and tactical coordination, and should not have had such a redundant emotion as fear. But the moment Xia Xiu looked up at her, she instinctively took half a step back. The blue projection outline fluctuated violently, and an unresolved abnormal feedback suddenly flooded into the core database.
The machine spirit was terrified!
With just one glance, she sensed something forcibly reaching into her deepest logical structure through the sensory interface, like a cold and heavy hand brutally tearing open the permission hierarchy, firewall, and self-checking protocol, directly reaching the core index she used to maintain her existence.
"All intelligence can be obtained from this ship's soul."
He paused, his gaze sweeping lightly over the entire warship: "This fleet could disappear at any moment."
The second swordsman's voice was almost uttered with suppressed killing intent: "Kill them all."
Xia Xiu nodded, simply confirming a pre-established procedure: "Okay."
The silver cane tapped lightly on the steel floor of the bridge, producing a crisp yet restrained sound.
next second.
Great spirituality, expand.
It only takes a second, but it can instantly kill all the Sea Crews on the Hornet.
Throughout the ship, the Sea Siege soldiers, who were originally fully prepared and still reeling from the massacre, suddenly felt an indescribable sense of oppression—not from external impact, but from the absolute weight "above," as if the center of gravity of the entire world had been forcibly shifted to their heads at this moment.
The first Haisi didn't even have time to scream.
His body froze abruptly before his companions' eyes, then, as if gripped by an invisible hand, began to collapse from the inside. Scales, muscles, and internal organs simultaneously lost their structural support, and in a very short time, his entire body was compressed into a bloody, mangled mass. Then—
BOOM !!!
It exploded.
Blood and bits of flesh splattered all over the metal walls of the tunnel, still warm from the body.
Then came the second, the third, and the fourth.
They didn't happen simultaneously, but one after another, as if deliberately designed to instill fear in them.
BOOM !!!
BOOM !!!
BOOM !!!
The sea creatures watched in horror as their companions were crushed by an unseen force before their very eyes. Their bodies swelled, deformed, and cracked, the muffled thuds of breaking bones and the heavy, wet sounds of shattering internal organs echoing continuously. The entire interior of the ship was soon completely overwhelmed by the stench of blood.
Only Colonel Charles P. Mason, in the center of the bridge, was not crushed.
It's not because he's stronger.
Rather, it was because—he was looking directly at Xia Xiu.
In that instant, his vision completely lost its color.
All the light, shadow, outlines, and sense of space were swallowed up in the depths of those golden pupils, leaving only a slowly rising, indescribable existence.
It was a huge, black sun.
Mason felt as if his consciousness was being forcibly dragged into the gravitational field of that black sun. His thoughts were screaming, his nerves were burning, and his memories, beliefs, name, and identity were all stripped away into meaningless fragments in that instant.
He tried to understand, only to find that understanding itself was being burned.
He opened his mouth and let out a nearly incoherent scream. The next moment, black flames erupted from his eye sockets, mouth, and gill slits, spreading wildly along his bones and blood vessels, completely igniting the shark-man's body from the inside out.
In the end, all that remained was a charred silhouette that twisted violently on the deck, rapidly carbonized, and finally turned to ashes.
When the great spirituality receded and the entire ship returned to deathly silence, only the smell of blood, burnt flesh, and lingering warmth remained in the air.
Xia Xiu put away his cane, his tone as calm as ever:
"Cleanup complete."
The entire third sequence of the Atlantos fast carrier task force has been wiped out.
Less than five minutes had passed since they encountered the four sword-wielding men from Heaven.
And this is just the beginning.