Chapter 258: Steel Torrent Landing

At 4:00 AM, East Sea.

The Penglai hovered at an altitude of fifty kilometers from the coastline of Kyushu Island. Below the hull, three hundred mechs were lined up neatly in the deck catapult area, like a swarm of bees waiting to strike.

Li Yang stood at the bridge command platform, checking the parameters one last time.

"Weather: Wind speed level 3, visibility good."

"Tide: Ebb tide period, beach exposure area expanded by 40%."

"Enemy defense: Coastal defense line confirmed paralyzed, radar station thermal signals disappeared."

"Good," Li Yang pressed the all-channel communication, "Attention all units, this is landing operation general commander Li Yang."

His voice was transmitted through the encrypted network to every mech pilot's cockpit, every landing ship's command room, and every escort fighter's cockpit.

"Operation codename: 'Treading Waves'."

"Objective: Control the entire territory of Foot-Basin-Chicken within 72 hours."

"Now—"

He took a deep breath:

"Start!"

Vroom—

A roar of mechanical operation came from the Penglai deck.

The first group of catapults activated.

Twelve Yinglong heavy mechs were accelerated to three hundred kilometers per hour by the electromagnetic catapult, shooting out from the deck like cannonballs, drawing parabolas in the air, and diving straight toward the Kyushu Island coast.

"Yinglong 01, airborne posture good!" the voice of the first Yinglong pilot came through the squad channel.

Li Yang stared at the monitoring screen: "Activate buffer thrusters, prepare for landing."

"Understood!"

At a distance of five hundred meters from the ground, the vector thrusters on the back of the Yinglong ignited, spewing light blue flames to offset the impact of the fall.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Twelve dull, loud noises, and twelve fifteen-meter-tall steel giants landed steadily on the Xuanhai Beach in the northern part of Kyushu Island.

The beach was smashed into twelve large craters, and seawater backflowed.

But the mechs were unscathed, and their optical sensors quickly scanned the surrounding environment.

"Safe!"

"No resistance forces!"

"Control the beachhead!"

Li Yang nodded: "Establish a landing site. Group Two, follow up!"

The second batch was Jigan mechs, not airborne, but jumping directly into the sea.

Thirty Jigan mechs leaped out from the launch ports on the side of the Penglai, splashing into the sea like dolphins, then sneaking underwater relying on vector thrusters to rush toward the coast at high speed.

Their mission was: clear underwater obstacles, exclude potential sea mines, and open up shipping lanes for subsequent landing ships.

"Underwater detection: no abnormalities."

"Sonar scan: no lurking submarines."

"Shipping lane cleared!"

Almost simultaneously, on the sea surface, Longguo Navy's landing fleet appeared.

Fifty Type 071 dock landing ships approached the coast slowly like moving islands.

The dock cabins of each ship opened, and inside were not traditional amphibious tanks, but...

"Holy crap!" Wang Hao, who was watching the battle through drone footage, shouted in the Longyin control room, "The army brothers are... sitting in a convertible?"

In the footage, the heavy troop carriers driving out of the landing ships were modified.

There was no roof, and behind each vehicle were twenty fully armed soldiers sitting on special exoskeleton racks.

"That's called 'Mobile Cover Array'," Chen Guang pushed up his glasses.

"Soldiers wear light exoskeletons, locked to the vehicle, saving space while being able to disembark and fight at any time."

"The vehicle itself has a light energy shield, capable of resisting small-caliber weapon fire."

"Who designed this?"

"This was a plan submitted by Li Yang three months ago, saying it was a rapid deployment vehicle optimized for urban street fighting."

Wang Hao grinned: "Old Li is applying mech thinking to infantry!"

Indeed.

When the first batch of troop carriers rushed onto the beach, the scene was quite sci-fi:

The vehicles rushed to the predetermined position and braked automatically.

With a click, all soldiers' exoskeletons unlocked from the vehicles, and twenty people jumped off the vehicle simultaneously, forming a tactical formation the moment they landed.

The whole process took no more than three seconds.

And the landing ships behind them were already unloading the second vehicle, the third vehicle...

"Landing efficiency increased by 300% compared to the traditional mode," Chen Guang looked at the data.

"At this speed, all twenty thousand ground troops can land in... forty minutes."

"So fast?!"

"Because there's no need to wait for heavy equipment, heavy firepower is all on the mechs."

As if to confirm this, on the beachhead, Yinglong mechs had already formed a vanguard array.

Twelve Yinglongs, each loaded with "urban combat modules," shoulder-mounted micro-missile hives, drone mother nests on their backs, and hydraulic pliers and engineering shovels on their arms for demolition.

"Advance route planning completed," Li Yang marked three main attack directions on the map.

"Route A: Along the national highway to the north, straight to Fukuoka. Route B: To the east, control Kumamoto. Route C: Clear remaining strongholds in Saga Prefecture."

"Remember, if you encounter resistance, allow the use of non-lethal weapons first. But if you encounter lethal attacks—"

He paused: "Lethal force is permitted."

"Understood!"

At 4:40 AM, the landing site was fully established.

All twenty thousand ground troops were safely ashore.

And Foot-Basin-Chicken's resistance was even weaker than expected.

The largest military base on Kyushu Island, Kumamoto Base, fell into paralysis after the EMP strike.

When the Longguo ground troops rushed into the base gate, they saw this scene:

On the playground, hundreds of Foot-Basin-Chicken soldiers were squatting on the ground, hands on their heads.

Dozens of tanks and armored vehicles were parked nearby, but they were all stalled—not broken, but the soldiers themselves had removed the batteries to show "harmlessness."

The leading Longguo company commander was a bit confused: "You... aren't you going to resist?"

A Foot-Basin-Chicken major smiled bitterly and replied in broken Chinese: "Sir, the equipment in this base... is all antiques from thirty years ago. If we fight, besides dying, what's the point?"

"What about your commander?"

"Ran away by helicopter last night, said he was going to Tokyo to discuss countermeasures," the major paused, "Actually, we all know, he just ran."

The company commander nodded, letting the soldiers confiscate weapons and register prisoners.

The whole process was so smooth it didn't feel like a battle, more like a reception.

But there were some hard bones.

Fukuoka suburbs, a right-wing militia stronghold.

More than thirty extremists occupied an abandoned factory, built fortifications with sandbags, and had shotguns, homemade explosives, and a few old-fashioned rifles bought on the black market.

They shouted to the outside through the factory loudspeaker: "Fight to the death! Jade shatter!"

The person responsible for this area was a Yinglong mech, and the pilot was Second Lieutenant Xiao Liu, who had just graduated from military academy.

Xiao Liu looked at the thirty-plus heat sources in the thermal imaging and asked for instructions in the channel: "Target refuses to surrender, should we storm?"

Li Yang's voice came: "Use non-lethal means first."

"Understood."

The Yinglong raised its right arm and fired three shock grenades.

Bang bang bang!

Low-frequency sound waves penetrated the walls, and the rioters inside the factory suddenly felt the world spinning, nauseous and vomiting.

"What... what is this?!"

"Ears... so painful!"

"Can't see clearly!"

Thirty seconds later, most of them had lost their combat effectiveness.

But there were three die-hards who actually ignored the influence of the sound waves, slipped out the back door, and climbed onto a modified pickup truck.

The truck bed was welded with steel plates, and an old-fashioned machine gun was mounted on top.

"For the Heaven-Emperor—!" the driver stepped on the gas with red eyes, driving the pickup toward the Yinglong.

Xiao Liu sighed.

He didn't want to kill anyone.

The Yinglong's left arm laser turret rotated, aimed, and fired.

Zzz—

A slender red beam flashed by. ===== CHAPTER 259 =====