Huaxia launched the largest strategic evacuation in its history within seventy-two hours.
From Yicheng to the eastern coast, a corridor six hundred kilometers wide was designated the "Absolute Clearance Zone." It spanned seven provinces and affected 120 million people.
The high-speed rail network suspended all commercial services and was requisitioned entirely for military use. Every train was packed with people, its seats and luggage racks removed, its carriages crammed so tightly there was no room to move. Intervals between trains were squeezed to the absolute minimum-one every three minutes, day and night.
To the northwest, along the red line running from Gansu through Qinghai toward the Kunlun Mountains, military trucks stretched bumper to bumper, their headlights forming a river of light hundreds of kilometers long.
No one knew exactly what had happened.
But everyone had seen that video-the footage of the colossal beast in the East China Sea devouring everything had already been played tens of billions of times online.
The official announcement contained only one sentence: the migration route of the supernatural creature had been confirmed, and all residents along its path had to evacuate within seventy-two hours.
There was no panic.
Or rather, something deeper had already suppressed it.
A Huaxia whose 1.4 billion people practiced the Taiyin Breathing Technique was no longer the same species as the Huaxia of six months ago, which had descended into chaos at the first sign of an earthquake.
On every platform, order was maintained not only by the People's Armed Police, but also by civilian Martial Cultivators in plain clothes, their blood energy rising like smoke. These self-organized volunteers wore stern expressions as they methodically guided the crowds onto the trains.
Yicheng High-Speed Rail Station.
A young mother carrying a child on her back was knocked down by the crowd. A