The total elapsed time from the moment the Nine-Fold Annihilation Array charged its solar cannon to the hoisting of the final surrender flag was exactly eighteen minutes and forty-two seconds.
Across the five hundred golden war galleons hovering above the Grand Desolate Spirit Forest, weapons were cast aside with wild haste. Gold-trimmed spears clattered across polished decks. Solar bows were unstrung and laid neatly upon timber hatches. And sky ensigns scrambled to lower the proud royal sun-crests. It replaced them with whatever white fabric could be scavenged from bedrolls, table runners, or torn undershirts.
Down on the Great Basalt Flats at the base of the Floating Mountain, the massive fleet began to settle.
Guided by Da Peng’s aerial signaling and escorted by thousands of circling shadow wolves, the golden vessels touched down in orderly rows upon the dark fiery stone. Four hundred and seventy-six warships landed under their own backup thrusters, joining the twenty-four galleons that Tie Shan had earlier reeled in with his giant crossbow harpoons.
The scene looked less like the aftermath of a world-ending sky invasion and more like a huge maritime regatta docking at a peaceful trade harbor.
“Form single files! Step down onto the ramps slowly!” shouted Patriarch Lu Feng of the Hundred Treasures Pavilion, his sleeves pinned back as he directed logistics with brisk merchant smooth speed. Behind him, three hundred junior accountants sat at folding wooden tables with abacuses clicking furiously, cataloging captured assets: “Vessel number forty-eight: three hundred suits of sun-bronze chainmail…
