Someone Was Flying in the Sky

Wushen, Puhai—Kaitai Wharf.

A thunderbolt came hurtling from the west, a streak of light spanning a thousand miles. With one strike, it shattered ships, annihilated enemies, and exterminated demons!!

The Steel Armor Divine Thunder blasted out at ten times the speed of sound.

The sonic boom and shockwave roared through the air like an invisible heavy hammer slamming viciously into a wall, shaking the people kneeling and kowtowing until their vision went black. Their noses filled with a thick metallic tang, as though their throats had been gripped, leaving them barely able to breathe.

Quite a few laborers, already frail and suffering from hidden ailments, simply spat out mouthfuls of blood.

Compared with the ironclad ships that had suffered catastrophic misfortune, coughing up a little blood was nothing at all.

Above the mighty river.

In an instant, dozens of water columns nearly three hundred meters high shot up! At the bottom of each water column were clearly visible channels shaped like waves. These channels, which nearly exposed the riverbed, were generally more than ten meters deep. They split apart and surrounded the ironclads, punching through the hulls of most of them!

Some of the smaller, narrower ships were struck cleanly in half at the waist!

The river erupted in screams and wails.

The foreign soldiers aboard the ships endured the violent bombardment before being blasted straight into the water. Countless corpses were torn to pieces, while bodies pierced by shrapnel from the ruptured steel and transformed into blood-spurting water gourds were everywhere!

Yet for the ironclads that had been wounded but not destroyed, what came next was the real disaster. The riverbed blasted bare by the Steel Armor Divine Thunder remained exposed for several seconds under inertia. Then the mighty river water began to flow back!

The returning water instantly created a terrifying pressure differential against the damaged ironclads. Before that pressure, the ironclads of this era were no different from the softest, smoothest egg custard. Under the horrifying pressure, the river water became as rigid as solid steel, effortlessly ripping apart iron armor and tearing human bodies to shreds!

It was as though the river god had flown into a rage.

Steel wailed, and the raging current roared.

Dozens of warships vanished into ashes in the blink of an eye before Lan Yi, all sunk to the riverbed along with the soldiers aboard them. The distant passenger liners and cargo ships fled the area over one another!

From this moment onward.

Lan Yi had proven one thing to every onlooker: alone, he possessed Daoist arts capable of annihilating the military might upon which the empires of this era relied. In other words, Lan Yi, who possessed such power, would naturally become the Divine Emperor of this rotten, declining empire.

Everyone would revere him as they revered a god.

When immortals fought, mortals suffered.

Although Lan Yi had not deliberately done anything to the people at the wharf, when the Steel Armor Divine Thunder was fired, most of them still suffered injuries of varying degrees. Aside from a tiny number of fanatics, most had already fled far away on instinct.

Seeing that the foreign powers' ironclads, which had once flaunted their might and fired their cannons for amusement, now lay buried beneath the river, quite a few people immediately wept tears of joy.

What a thrill!

They wanted to scream at the top of their lungs, roar their hearts out, and pound their chests to vent their feelings!

Lan Yi slowly descended from midair.

Bang!

Several bullets, their tips faintly red and spinning without pause, were stopped in front of him by the powerful magnetic field woven by Cang Hua. Lan Yi raised an eyebrow at the sight.

He was in an exceptionally good mood now—better than he had been in ages. Could there actually be an expert here?

The shooters were a squad of foreign patrol officers.

Whether they were too stupid or too brave, after Lan Yi had obliterated dozens of warships, they saw him drifting down and thought they had a chance. Remembering the many wandering priests and spirit mediums once shot dead by foreign guns, they actually took aim and pulled the triggers at Lan Yi as he slowly descended.

They immediately sensed a surging malice coming from every direction.

Whoosh!!

Cang Hua instantly extended and swept across the air!

The distance was no more than two hundred meters, yet the white hair arrived in an instant. Before the patrol officers from the concession could react, the rifles in their hands had been sliced into fragments.

After landing, Lan Yi maintained the glittering energy-gathering ring behind him and strode toward the urban district without looking back.

"They're yours now."

Lan Yi left them with those words.

This group of foreign patrol officers had thrown their weight around in the concession, and even outside it they had committed every manner of abuse—rape, looting, and more. Now their guns were gone, and the Immortal Master had just spoken personally. With the Immortal Master who had sunk the ironclads backing them, what else needed to be said?

Lan Yi advanced with flickering steps, his entire body moving as though he could Shrink Ground into Inches. From far away, he could still hear the faint roars of vented fury and the screams behind him.

When you relied on violence to vent your bestial lust,

you had to remember that one day you might lose that violence and become the target of someone else's venting.

The fleets of every empire that had protected their expatriates and property on the Yangtze and carried out punitive actions were wiped out in a single day.

This incident was like a stone hurled into a pond. After raising a spray of ripples, its later disturbances, like waves roaring away, began brewing and fermenting throughout the lands north and south of the great river, both at home and abroad.

Puhai International Journalists' Club.

"The rise and fall of the world concerns every common man."

"Today, all my fellow martial artists have answered my invitation and taken part in the Jingwu Gymnastics Association. I cannot thank you enough. We must promote the cultivation of our people's bodies, minds, and morals. Only when all our countrymen advance together in physical, intellectual, and moral development can our vast China once more take its place among the nations of the world."

"Only with confidence in our people can China have confidence in itself!"

On the stage stood Huo Yuanjia, every inch the grandmaster. Recently, he had become a symbol of Chinese integrity and dignity, and he was delivering a speech. His words stirred a powerful resonance among the many invited martial artists from across the jianghu.

While they had been training their fists and legs, foreign guns and cannons had bent the backs of the Chinese people.

Clinging to the martial arts schools passed down by their ancestors, they could only practice fists and feet. Possessing a chest full of fervor yet unable to accomplish anything—what desolation was that? Having defeated the strongman Obion, Huo Yuanjia's words today had, in essence, told every martial artist,

Compared with the impassioned martial artists,

the foreign reporters beneath the stage, who had come to attend the founding of the Jingwu Gymnastics Association and interview this newsworthy figure, felt that although the ancient Eastern lion, an old empire, had declined, some embers of its spirit still remained to burn.

As for whether those embers could awaken its enormous, decaying body, that was still unknown. After all, plenty of ants were eyeing the sleeping elephant, eager to devour it.

The feast of partition would not wait for you to wake up and finish preparing before the knives fell.

Nong Jinsun listened to the undisguised, superior comments of the foreign reporters beside him. His expression remained calm, but his heart was shrouded in gloom.

Yes, his childhood friend was working hard.

He was working hard too.

But it was still too slow. They had stood still for far too long and fallen too far behind. Catching up now would be no simple matter. Yet no matter how difficult it was, they had to do it. If they did not, their country and race would perish!

Just as Nong Jinsun silently clenched his fists, a series of rumbling sounds came from the distance.

"Hm? What was that sound? Where did they fire the cannons?"

The distant rumbling brought the speech to a halt.

Nong Jinsun frowned and called Huo Yuanjia's disciple, Lu Bing, to go outside and see what was happening. Lu Bing was quick-witted and knew how to act according to circumstances. If something truly major had happened, he would not make a mistake.

Lu Bing had been gone less than fifteen minutes when he came gasping into the club. He did not even have time to catch his breath before crying out in shock.

"In the sky! Someone is flying in the sky!"

"He's coming straight toward us!"

"Master, what should we do?!"