98: The Grim Reaper at Mach 3! A suicidal dive—turn the sea into aluminum foil soup for me!

The clouds were torn asunder.

Two burning meteors pierced through the dark clouds.

With a shrill, piercing shriek, they instantly dropped to an extreme altitude of less than five meters above the sea surface.

At this moment, they were no longer missiles flying in the sky.

They had become two light-speed death scythes skimming the sea.

What does a speed of Mach 3 even mean?

It is one kilometer per second.

It is three times the speed of sound.

By the time everyone inside the Command cabin heard the scalp-tingling roar of the sonic boom,

those two missiles had already covered most of the distance; the face of death was clearly visible.

"Too fast... there's no way to dodge this!"

Su Qingyu looked at the two red dots on the screen, moving so fast they were mere afterimages, her face as pale as paper.

With the subsonic torpedoes or rockets they had encountered before, there were at least dozens of seconds of reaction time to maneuver and evade.

But with these things, from ignition to impact, there wasn't even enough time to write a suicide note.

"10 seconds!"

The countdown on the screen felt like a death knell.

The two missiles wove nimbly between the giant waves, the shockwaves on their surfaces instantly evaporating the torrential rain into white, conical mist.

No matter how the black iron turned, they remained locked onto its fatal V-shaped wake.

The pressure was like being targeted by two Tyrannosaurs sprinting at full speed; there seemed to be no choice but to wait for death.

"Who said anything about dodging?"

At the moment everyone fell into despair, Jiang Ran suddenly let out a roar.

He slammed the joystick forward—not to the left, nor to the right.

But downward!

"Since we can't outrun them on the surface..."

A mad light erupted in Jiang Ran's deep blue eyes as his hands slammed down on the weapon release button:

"Then sink for me!

Fire all the decoys! Turn this patch of sea into a pot of chaff soup for me!"

"Pfft! Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!"

Accompanied by a series of bangs as the air valves opened,

dozens of burning infrared flares and high-density chaff strips erupted from both sides of the black iron's hull.

They weren't fireworks for show.

Countless tiny metal foils exploded in the gale.

Instantly, a massive metal cloud formed over the patch of sea where the black iron had just been, appearing incredibly brilliant on radar returns.

Simultaneously, all of the black iron's ballast tank valves swung wide open, the sound of water rushing in like a whale's gulp.

Under Jiang Ran's forceful control, this several-thousand-ton steel behemoth no longer maintained a level course.

Instead, like a stone hurled into a well, it plummeted headfirst toward the dark seabed in a nearly suicidal descent.

"Hold on!!! Brace for impact!!!"

Before Jiang Ran's roar could fade, the sound of destruction arrived.

"BOOM—!!!"

It wasn't the sound of vibrating air; it was the thunderous knock of death at the door.

The two "eagle strike" missiles, sprinting at Mach 3, were confused by that brilliant metal cloud for less than 0.1 seconds at the final moment.

But that 0.1-second deviation decided life and death.

The first missile slammed straight into the chaff cloud and detonated in mid-air, its shrapnel sweeping across the sea like a torrential rain.

The second missile grazed the stern of the black iron as it submerged and plunged into the churning sea.

It didn't score a direct hit on the hull, but it exploded underwater—less than fifty meters from the stern.

"THUD!!!"

Water is incompressible.

Compared to an explosion in the air,

an underwater shockwave is like a physical hydraulic hammer, capable of transmitting energy with almost no loss.

The rapidly diving black iron was like a soda can struck by a naughty child with a sledgehammer.

"CLANG—SCREECH—!!!"

In an instant, the entire ship emitted a shrill sound of twisting metal.

Everyone inside the Command cabin felt as if they had been stuffed into a tumbling washing machine.

Massive centrifugal and impact forces hit them instantly.

"Ah!!"

Old Chen didn't have time to grab onto anything before he was flung from his chair.

He slammed into the instrument wall like a ragdoll, his head bleeding instantly.

Su Qingyu clung desperately to the sonar station's pillar, her face deathly pale.

She could clearly hear the deck beneath her feet groaning—the sound of the keel enduring extreme torque.

But this wasn't the end.

The massive shockwave pushed the black iron into an accelerated descent, causing it to lose all attitude control.

"Thump—"

A dull thud echoed.

The black iron slammed heavily into the silt of the seabed.

This impact sent another violent shudder through the already overburdened hull.

"Sizzle—"

The lights in the Command cabin cut out instantly, replaced by the red glow of emergency lights as sparks showered from ruptured wiring.

"Warning! Starboard armor severely damaged!"

"Large-scale peeling of the outer biological cuticle... Cracks in the inner metal structure... Flooding in Compartment 3!"

Through the porthole, the off-white "dead skin"—a layer grown not long ago to resist radiation and strong acids—could be seen on the starboard side.

Under the massive impact, it was peeling off in large chunks like wall plaster.

It exposed the blood-drenched biological muscle layer and the twisted metal skeleton beneath.

Seawater mixed with silt, quickly clouding the view.

Although it hadn't been sunk outright,

this once-arrogant ghost ship now lay slumped in the dark seabed mire like a dead dog with a broken back.

This was a truly devastating blow.

It was also the first time since Jiang Ran's rebirth that he had been so thoroughly suppressed in a direct confrontation.

"Bzzzt—"

Inside the Command cabin, a severed cable hung like a venomous snake, spitting blue sparks that flickered in the dim space.

"How are we supposed to fight this... how the hell are we supposed to fight this?!"

Old Chen clutched his bleeding forehead and scrambled up from the floor in a mess.

He looked at the damage reports flashing red across the screens, his voice bordering on tears:

"The moment we move, we're spotted.

"The moment we're spotted, a missile hits us within ten seconds.

"This isn't a war; we're practically streaking right under their noses! This is a dead end!"

Su Qingyu silently leaned against the wall to steady herself, using a medical spray to quickly treat the abrasions on her arm.

She didn't argue with Old Chen because the data didn't lie—in the face of an absolute technological gap, courage was meaningless.

"Shut up."

A cold voice rang out from the darkness.

Jiang Ran slowly rose from his tilted command chair.

He wiped a smear of blood from the corner of his mouth.

His deep blue eyes appeared even more profound and chilling than usual under the red emergency lights.

The violent impact was felt keenly through the nerve interface.

Yet he wasn't broken by the pain; instead, it was as if he'd been injected with a stimulant, his mind clearer than ever before.

"Who says it's a dead end?"

Jiang Ran walked over to the still-active holographic sea chart and looked at the red marker representing the Zhenhai.

It remained high and mighty, arrogantly hovering at the edge of the storm like a god looking down on all living things.

"The reason we're in such a mess is that we're playing by their rules."

Jiang Ran poked his finger forcefully at the warship's model:

"They have phased array radar, synthetic aperture imaging, and beyond-visual-range strikes.

"In open waters with good visibility, they are God."

"But..."

Jiang Ran turned his head and looked through the cracked porthole at the even more violent darkness outside.

The roar from the outside grew louder; even at the bottom of the deep sea, the world-shaking force could be felt approaching.

"Even God fears the storm."

"Dr. Su, you were right. Typhoon 'Poseidon' is here." A cruel arc curled at the corner of Jiang Ran's mouth.

"When the wind speed exceeds sixty meters per second, when the waves reach thirty meters high, and when the air is filled with charged salt spray and walls of water,"

"then those four 'Eye of God' radars they're so proud of will turn into four pieces of scrap metal.

"Its helicopters won't be able to take off, and its missile seekers will be nothing but noise."

Old Chen was stunned, looking at the madman-like Commander. "What... what are you planning to do?"

"Since we can't hide, we won't."

Jiang Ran stared at the arrogant warship, murderous intent boiling in his eyes:

"If its eyes are too sharp, we'll poke them out.

"If its hands are too long, we'll chop them off."

"All hands, hear my command! Shut down all non-essential systems and conduct deep-sea silent repairs!"

"We'll lie here like mud until the moment the eye of the typhoon truly passes over."

Jiang Ran's voice was low, yet it struck their hearts like a heavy hammer:

"When the storm drags everyone back to the same starting line... I'll let them know what real deep-sea melee combat is."