Chapter 497: The Mission of the Hood

"Other exit!" he turned toward the direction in his memory. The magazine had two exits, one leading to the elevator shaft, the other to the side corridor. They staggered, groping toward the corridor door.

The heat wave grew stronger. Mi Le smelled smoke—not fire smoke, but a sharper, chemically burning odor.

"Corporal, I can't catch my breath…" Tangmu began to cough.

Mi Le himself felt his breathing grow difficult. The air was rapidly thinning and scorching. He reached the corridor door and twisted the handle with force—

The door opened.

But beyond the door was not a corridor.

It was a sea of fire.

Orange‑red flames surged in through the crack, instantly igniting Mi Le's sleeve. He let out a howl and fell backward; Tangmu lunged forward, beating the fire on his arm.

"Close the door! Close the door!" Mi Le roared.

Tangmu strained with all his might to push the door shut, but the flames had already poured in, igniting the canvas cover stacked in the corner. The firelight illuminated a corner of the magazine—Mi Le saw the shell already loaded with propellant, still lying quietly on the elevator tray.

And around the tray, the temperature was rising sharply.

"... No..." Mi Le murmured.

He knew. He knew where the eighth shell had struck. He knew where the heat wave came from. He knew why the air was burning.

The 380mm armor‑piercing shell, having penetrated the relatively thin deck armor of the Hood, traveled downward, breaching multiple decks, and finally came to rest—

in the corridor beside the secondary gun magazine.

The blast ignited the secondary gun's propellant bags. Flames spread along the ventilation ducts and cable passages, now encircling the area around their 15‑inch Main Gun magazine. The high temperature was conducting through the steel hull, heating the silk‑wrapped nitro‑fiber propellant stacked in the corner.

And if the main magazine were to explode…

"Tangmu." Mi Le grabbed the young man's shoulder in the firelight, "Listen. We need to move those propellant bags as far from the shell as possible. Then find something—anything—to block the doorway, so no more fire gets in. Understand?"

Tangmu's face was covered in sweat and ash, his eyes wide, but he nodded.

The two rushed toward the pile of propellant bags in the corner. Each bag weighed a hundred kilograms, normally requiring mechanical aid. But now, the instinct to survive gave them strength. Mi Le dragged one bag toward a corner farther from the shell, and Tangmu followed his lead.

Heat. Too much heat. Mi Le felt his lungs as if seared by a branding iron; every breath burned. Sweat ran into his eyes, blurring his sight. Yet he dared not stop; he could not stop.

A deafening crack rang from overhead again. This time the sound was louder, nearer. The entire hull began to tilt—not the natural roll from waves, but a structural, irreversible lean.

"The ship… the ship is capsizing?" Tangmu's voice trembled with sobs.

Mi Le gave no answer. He could no longer speak. He hauled the second bag, his nails cracking from the strain, leaving bloodstains on the bag's exterior.

Then he heard that sound.

The sound that every sailor feared most.

A low, continuous rumble from deep within the hull. Like magma rushing underground, like a giant beast awakening.

It was the propellant in the main magazine, reaching critical temperature and beginning to self‑ignite.

"No…" Mi Le fell to his knees.

Flames spewed from the ventilation hatch, instantly engulfing half the magazine. Tangmu's wail was drowned by the explosions—not a single blast, but a chain of successive detonations rising layer by layer from deep within the hull.

The last sight Mi Le saw was the 15‑inch shell reddening and deforming in the fire, and then—

the whole world turned white.

On the Hood's bridge, Wei Er Si Li saw a flash of light.

It wasn't muzzle flash, not a fire, but a blinding white light bursting from within the hull, bright enough to cause instant blindness. The white light shot out through the deck fissure between the B Turret and X Turret, like countless suns igniting simultaneously inside the battleship's belly.

Then came the sound.

A sound he had never heard, indescribable. Like an avalanche, like a tsunami, like the world itself shattering. The noise was so immense that his ears went deaf instantly, only feeling his skull vibrate.

The Hood's hull swelled and warped within the white light.

The section near the stern arched upward, the heavy armor plates tearing and flapping like foil. The flames—not orange‑red but white‑hot, blue‑tinged from extreme temperature—spurted from every fissure, forming a fire column hundreds of meters tall.

The fire column pierced the storm clouds, illuminating the sea for dozens of nautical miles around.

Wei Er Si Li saw the Hood, this 41,000‑ton steel leviathan, the pride of the Royal Navy, the flagship he had just taken command of, split apart in the middle.

The splitting proceeded at a terrifyingly slow pace.

The stern was utterly shattered by the blast, and the fore and aft sections began to separate. The forward part—containing the A Turret and B Turret and the bridge—was lifted upward by the explosion, the bow standing nearly vertical, exposing the underwater hull encrusted with barnacles. The aft part—housing the X Turret, Y Turret and the engine rooms—sank rapidly, the propellers still turning in the air.

Seawater gushed in madly from the rupture.

The tilt angle increased rapidly. Wei Er Si Li grabbed a column, to no avail. The bridge had already listed forty‑five degrees, and every unsecured object slid toward the port side: charts, rulers, coffee cups, corpses…

He looked through the shattered porthole, casting one last glance at the world outside.

The storm raged on. Waves rose like mountains. To starboard, the silhouette of the Bismarck was clearly visible in the firelight, its German battleship's muzzle still smoking.

Then seawater surged in.

The cold, dark, briny water burst through the porthole, flooding the bridge. Wei Er Si Li held his breath, but the pressure was immense; his lungs felt as if they would explode. In the final instant before losing consciousness, the thoughts that flashed through his mind were not of family, nor king, nor empire.

But a simple question:

The fifth salvo. Just the fifth salvo.

Why?

Darkness swallowed everything.

On the Bismarck's bridge, She Er lowered his telescope, his hand trembling slightly.

He witnessed the entire sequence: the white flash, the fire column, the massive ship splitting in the middle, the two halves sinking within three minutes. The sea surface was left with a huge vortex, its center churning with bubbles, oil slicks, and scattered burning debris.

Silence enveloped the bridge.

Everyone saw it. Everyone knew what it meant. The Hood, the Royal Navy's most powerful battlecruiser, one of the warships symbolizing the British Empire's maritime supremacy, sank after the five‑round exchange.

"General…" Chief of Staff finally spoke, his voice hoarse.

She Er waved his hand, signaling him to be quiet. He lifted the speaking tube: "Radar, report surface conditions."