As the golden light faded, the Yongle Talisman flew back into Wan Hu's hand. Looking at this torn page of the Yongle Encyclopedia, which he had only ever seen in photographs, Wan Hu took a deep breath and tucked it safely against his body.
A veteran from the Celestial Empire swallowed.
"Our ancestors were... this badass?"
Another veteran looked solemn. "I thought you guys had been hyping up the Ming Dynasty all this time. Turns out you were underselling it. You're way too modest."
Wan Hu, Zheng He, and Lin Gong exchanged looks without a word.
The Ming Dynasty had not actually been that badass.
At least, the Ming Dynasty they remembered had been nowhere near this outrageous. Great Ming's technology had been advanced, but only to a post-Industrial Revolution level. It certainly had not possessed these immortal spells. Yet none of the three would say anything to crush morale at a time like this, so they tacitly accepted it instead.
Seeing their silent agreement, the surviving fighters were instantly heartened.
The flames gradually died down. Without the powerful spotlights of the wheeled infantry fighting vehicles and helicopters, the deep night swallowed Sea City once more.
The rain had stopped, but the wind blew harder. The cold, damp sea breeze carried a burnt smell straight into their nostrils. The area seemed to have fallen quiet. Wreckage lay strewn everywhere, and the occasional groans of the badly wounded sounded especially piercing in the silence. On the Pu Clan's side, someone tried to check the wheeled infantry fighting vehicles, only to discover that their roofs looked as though they had been bombarded with thermite. They were riddled with damage. Inside, the Chinese American and other American soldiers, along with the foreign mercenaries, had been twisted by the intense heat into shapes like