Chapter 329 - 230: Wildlife Park Escape Incident
Chapter 329: Chapter 230: Wildlife Park Escape Incident
Just a meteor. A common enough sight on Earth.
He wasn’t some girl who needed to hurry up and make a wish.
So he didn’t pay it much mind and went back to get some more sleep.
But as he lay in bed, tossing and turning, he felt a growing sense of unease. He couldn’t quite put his finger on why.
’A meteor? ...A meteor! Holy crap, it couldn’t be *that* much of a coincidence, could it?’ Li Xiang sat bolt upright in shock. He remembered that during the Apocalypse, massive meteor showers had appeared.
At first, everyone had just thought they were ordinary meteors, but they were later horrified to discover the immense danger lurking within them.
’Could a meteor appearing nine years before the Apocalypse be one of *those* terrifying things?’ Li Xiang finally understood the source of his anxiety.
Whether it was or not, he had to go see it for himself.
He got out of bed, threw on his clothes, and went outside. He glanced toward the northwest, and his Giant Whale Saint Armor enveloped him. Under the cover of the pre-dawn darkness, he shot off in the direction the meteor had fallen.
...
About ten or so minutes earlier, a meteor from outer space had plummeted at an extreme speed of at least two to three hundred Mach, smashing into Earth from orbit in what felt like an instant.
Fortunately, this meteor was small.
With Earth’s current technology, it’s impossible to intercept a falling meteor.
According to estimates by American NASA, a meteor’s speed upon entering the atmosphere ranges from 11 km/s to 72 km/s, which is equivalent to 216,000 to 1,440,000 kilometers per hour.
Converted to Mach, that’s between 118.67 Mach and 778.74 Mach.
For a ballistic missile descending from space, the interception rate is very low once it exceeds 5 Mach. Take the YJ-21, for example: it flies at 6 Mach for its entire trajectory and reaches a terminal velocity of 10 Mach, or 3,400 meters per second. No current anti-missile system can intercept it.
If that’s the case for 10 Mach, let alone a meteor traveling at over one hundred Mach at a minimum.
At such speeds, even humanity’s most advanced weapons can’t stop it.
Moreover, a meteor’s trajectory is complex and difficult to predict. The only way to intercept it would be to have anti-air missiles already deployed in its path, launched head-on to let the meteor crash into them.
But even with such a coincidence, the time between detection and impact is too short for any human defense system to react.
Fortunately, this type of "Fire Meteor" is too small to be worth intercepting. It "burns up" in the atmosphere, so by the time it lands, it poses virtually no threat.
Therefore, although many people and research institutions in Sichuan Province had detected and observed this meteor, no one paid it much mind.
Who doesn’t see a few meteors over the course of a year? Meteor showers are so romantic. Young couples in love would see one, hug each other close, and wish with all their might.
Li Xiang remembered back in college when experts would predict a meteor shower at a certain time, and everyone would get up in the middle of the night to watch. Some people even climbed mountains at night, waiting for hours in the cold wind just for that single moment of splendor.
This time, however, this "Fire Meteor" was different. It slammed violently into an electric fence at the Rongcheng Wildlife World.
The immense impact blasted a large crater in the ground, destroying a section of the fenced perimeter.
But this type of electric fence was extremely resilient. A couple of wires hadn’t snapped; they were just pulled askew, creating a gap in the fence and wall.
CRACKLE! POP! The fence discharged powerful Electric Energy, and bright arcs of light flickered.
The meteor wasn’t large. It was entirely black and oval-shaped, no more than twenty-something centimeters long and about fifteen centimeters wide, resembling an ostrich egg.
Perhaps from the fall from space, or perhaps from the jolt of Electric Energy, the "egg’s" shell suddenly cracked. An indescribably ugly creature covered in slime and armed with sharp fangs and teeth crawled out.
"SQUEAK~" The creature made a mouse-like sound. Its gaze fell upon the electric wires still sparking with "fire," and its eyes lit up as it lunged forward.
In an instant, a massive amount of Electric Energy from the perimeter fence converged and was completely devoured by the utterly hideous creature.
Then, the creature grew visibly larger by a fraction, though it was still very small. With a faint sonic boom, it vanished. If Li Xiang had been there, he would have discovered that this little thing could already move at Mach 1 right after being born.
The entire wildlife park’s power grid was briefly overloaded, and with a SNAP, the electric fence went dead.
A snowy night. The wildlife park. A power outage!
The animals, already on high alert after being startled by the meteor falling from the sky, were stunned to see the electric fence suddenly spark and then go dark.
Suddenly, a mischievous chimpanzee had an idea. It grabbed a smaller chimp next to it and hurled it at the fence.
The small chimp shrieked, its fur standing on end in terror. It slammed hard into the fence. To its surprise, it wasn’t electrocuted. It grabbed the wires, twisted its body, and squeezed through to the other side.
Seeing this, the larger chimpanzee let out a triumphant hoot, waved its arms, and also ran toward the fence. It quickly and safely scrambled over.
Nearby, several cheetahs in their enclosure saw this and also leaped out. A cheetah’s jumping ability is astonishing.
In an instant, the entire wildlife park burst into chaos. Scores of tigers, lions, wolves, brown bears, black bears... all began to escape.
But many animals remained, obediently staying inside their enclosures.
For example, some of the smaller monkeys were quite docile. They watched the other animals flee as if they were watching a bunch of idiots.
Their expressions seemed to say, ’Why run out in this cold? You’ll just have to struggle to find food out there.’
Some of the larger, more docile animals, like the elephants and rhinos, also didn’t flee. Instead, they protectively huddled with their young in the corners.
The zoo’s on-duty staff were alerted and were stunned by the scene. They immediately reported it up the chain of command.
The report went up level by level. About half an hour later, numerous special police units were dispatched. Sirens wailed, waking people from their sleep, completely unaware of what was happening.
"Did something big happen?" A resident pulled back their curtains to investigate, only to be horrified to see a tiger in their yard.
A real tiger, two to three meters long, radiating an overwhelming presence.
Holy crap. The person was so scared they slowly closed the curtains, furtively turned off the lights, and crouched down, not daring to move or even breathe too loudly.
If the tiger decided to pounce, the window wouldn’t stop it.
Meanwhile, when Li Xiang arrived in Rongcheng, special police units were deployed all over the city. After a bit of discreet inquiry, he naturally learned what was going on.
’So it was the wildlife park.’
Li Xiang didn’t dare turn on his phone. He had it stored in his system inventory and hadn’t taken it out.
Being unfamiliar with the area, it took him some extra time to reach the wildlife park and find the spot where the meteorite had fallen.
Luckily, with the entire zoo in chaos, the staff was busy restoring the electric fence, calming the remaining animals, and protecting themselves. No one had come to inspect the deep crater.
Even if someone had been there, they probably hadn’t looked closely. So, when Li Xiang arrived, the scene was unchanged: the "eggshell" was still in the crater.
Li Xiang jumped down and dug out the eggshell, his expression turning grim.
He had guessed right. It really was one of those evil things. ’But... weren’t they supposed to appear when the Apocalypse began nine years from now? Why is one here already?’
In his past life, around this time, he was still working in a big city in the east, struggling to make a living. He really hadn’t paid any attention. Besides, a single meteor was a common occurrence and didn’t cause much of a stir.
Also, the officials in Sichuan Province might have done a better job of keeping it under wraps back then.