The island of New Guinea had reached its end.
Bardi stepped down.
The silence was absolute. There was no sound.
But in the next instant, a violent reaction erupted.
Several kilometers beneath the island, the mantle connecting Earth's continental plates experienced a severe shock and vibration. The force passed through the upper crust, through layers of sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rocks. These rock layers, the foundation of the continent, transmitted a devastating seismic shock.
Since the mantle took the impact, the upper mantle—composed of olivine, amphibole, low-aluminum pyroxene, plagioclase, and other crystalline minerals—began to compress, grind, and fracture. The massive mantle layer began to shift and sink.
The entire island of New Guinea suddenly froze.
It dropped dozens of meters from the horizontal plane, and the coastal seawater surged outward violently. When it returned, it would reverberate, forming an immense tsunami.
As the massive mantle began to drift and collapse, the island of New Guinea started to fracture from beneath Bardi's feet. A massive crack spread outward, like an abyssal rift, splitting the roughly 780,000 square kilometer island.
The entire island fractured like porcelain. Cracks rapidly spread through Chimbu, East New Britain, East Sepik, Eastern Highlands, Enga, Milne Bay, Madang, Manus, Central Province, Morobe, New Ireland, North Solomon, Southern Highlands, West New Britain, West Sepik, Western Province, Western Highlands, Hela, Jiwaka—every single province and city.
From a distance, the massive rift looked like doomsday lightning. It erupted from the ground and instantly consumed those who had been peacefully living, working, or enjoying their lives.
On the highway, an enormous fissure suddenly tore open. With no warning, cars were flung weightlessly into the air. They soared tens of meters before crashing down. With piercing horn blasts, they plunged directly into the pitch-black abyss.
Office workers in tall buildings were flung weightless into the air, clinging to ceilings, their internal organs rolling, vision spinning. Suddenly, the buildings split down the middle. A massive rift opened, and the structures collapsed into the dark void, echoing with panicked screams as they vanished into the chasm.
A woman at home fell into a crack. The tectonic plate below shifted and began to sink. Seawater surged onto the land. In the city, between the high-rises, floodwaters suddenly rose, sweeping the entire city away.
"Help…"
"My son… my son!!"
"Ah… my legs! My legs!"
"The end is here!"
"Save me… help me!"
In an instant, the sky was torn, the ground shook, the cities collapsed, the seas surged, and the island's 12 million inhabitants screamed in agony. Their cries echoed with the rumbling and splitting of the tectonic plates, a wail that engulfed the entire Atlantic.
And not just that—the rupture of the mantle, the collapse of the New Guinea plate, triggered global effects: minor earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, melting glaciers, and rising sea levels. The entire planet experienced abnormal reactions.
"My God, how could this cause a global seismic event?"
"What the hell is going on?!"
"The mantle beneath New Guinea has fractured! More than 12 million people will be swallowed up!"
"What's happening?!"
"Has the world gone mad?!"
"Apocalypse came out of nowhere! Why?!"
"There were no warning signs!"
The United States.
The United Kingdom.
Russia.
Major powers across Asia.
All countries with satellite capabilities observed the seismic wave simultaneously and witnessed the scene through satellite imagery.
The sinking of the world's second-largest island triggered a global chain reaction, striking fear and dread across the Earth.
A massive tsunami, over 700 meters high, began forming. It surged toward Indonesia, Australia, the New Hebrides, the Solomon Islands, the Philippines, the Hawaiian Islands, and all surrounding areas. Anywhere near a coastline now faced an apocalyptic disaster, with expected deaths ranging between 50 and 100 million people.
The entire Pacific Ocean would become a sea of terror, and everything near it would face destruction.
"Barmulodi!!"
Barry's face twisted. He glared at Bardi with fury and hatred, his heart pounding with rage. Blood surged through every vein and artery. The yellow electric arcs crackled wildly around him, even spreading along the veins of his distorted face.
He was consumed with fury. It was precisely because he knew that Bardi's single step had brought a cataclysmic disaster and tens of millions of deaths that his blood boiled in rage.
The yellow arcs surged around his body. As the ground's cracks worsened and the earth tilted, his fury intensified. His face had become fully contorted in the electric glow.
But he did not strike Bardi. Instead, in a flash of light, he raced along the fractures in the ground, heading toward the nearest city. The wind from his movement created a massive shockwave as he sped off from Bardi's location.
Bardi's face remained indifferent. There was no fluctuation in his heart.
He lifted his feet off the ground and rose into the sky. From a distance, he watched the golden light streak away, blasting forward with immense speed and force.
"Hera, begin calculating the Flash's speed. Model his behavioral patterns. Predict his action model."
Bardi's imposing figure floated in the air.
Below him, a golden light flickered and darted across the fractured island. With each pass, several people were clinging to his body. He was running toward the Australian outback, dropping off civilians, then rushing back.
The continuous golden streak painted glowing lines of light across Bardi's vision.
In his peripheral sight, across the ruined, sunken island of New Guinea, golden lines of hope surged back and forth.
Through his super-vision and internal computational speculation, Bardi could already tell that at this moment, the Flash's speed had surpassed Mach 1200.
A terrifying speed.
After becoming the Flash and gaining the Speed Force, Barry had, in just over a day, reached Mach 1200. As his steps grew faster, his speed climbed in a straight line.
This kind of speed transcended time, transcended worlds. It was the power of true super speed.
And once caught in the pursuit of the Flash, there would be no escape.
"Seventy trillion teraflops of calculations complete. Current speed is Mach 1724… Behavior modeling complete. Action pattern established!"
Floating in the sky like a god, Bardi coldly watched the apocalypse unfold. His windbreaker flapped in the air.
His eyes flashed with icy light.
Flash, you're done.
(To be continued.)
***
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