The rupture tore through the earth along a near-vertical, north-south striking fault. The motion was primarily strike-slip, with the ground on either side of the fault sliding horizontally past each other. In Ju County, the destruction was absolute: more than 20,000 people died as homes, schools, temples, warehouses, and city walls collapsed. The surrounding hills gave way in landslides at Mashi, Wulugu, Yanjiagu, Shifengdo, Keluodo, and Maqi. Fissures up to one meter wide and hundreds of meters long split the terrain. One crack extended 7.5 kilometers from Guanzhuang to Gehu along a river cliff, ejecting dust, sand, and water as it opened. At three wells, groundwater shot a full meter into the air.

In Linyi, the devastation was equally catastrophic. Not a single home, city wall, or temple survived intact. Over 6,900 people perished. Witnesses reported black water emerging from fissures, a phenomenon likely caused by the violent mixing of subsurface sediments and groundwater forced upward by the intense shaking. Wells erupted, flooding the surrounding area and forming pools across the landscape. In some places, the water and sand expelled from fissures buried homes entirely. Livestock died in large numbers. The zone of severe shaking, rated at seismic intensity VIII or higher, stretched across an elliptical area exceeding 16,800 square kilometers along the fault zone. Nearby cities saw their walls crumble, and rivers overflowed their banks.

The earthquake struck during the reign of the Kangxi Emperor, one of the longest-ruling and most capable emperors of the Qing dynasty. He was only fourteen years old at the time, still in the early years of what would become a sixty-one-year reign. The young emperor ordered his ministry to organize relief for the devastated region. Tax fees were waived across forty prefectures and counties, and the imperial treasury released more than 227,300 taels of silver to aid reconstruction. The response was notable for its scale: the earthquake had struck a region halfway between China's two most important cities, an area that, while seismically quiet, sat directly above a fault system capable of generating enormous destruction.

The Tan-Lu Fault Zone, which produced the 1668 catastrophe, stretches for thousands of kilometers through eastern China. It formed during the Mesozoic era and has a slip rate estimated at less than a few millimeters per year, making it a slow-moving but powerful system. Centuries can pass between its major ruptures. Another destructive earthquake along this same fault zone struck in 1969, a reminder that the system remains active. The 1668 event stands as the most powerful earthquake ever documented in eastern China and one of the largest to occur on land anywhere in the world. The total death toll is estimated between 43,000 and 50,000 people, a staggering loss for a region that had no reason to expect the earth beneath it to move at all.