202: Chapter 202 Alien Technology? Give It To Me!

"Zzzzt—"

Moon Base, core sterile laboratory.

A harsh crackling of electricity echoed through the spacious room. The black polyhedron, forcibly gouged out from the "Big Octopus" escape pod, was now being held firmly in the center of the experimental table by several mechanical arms.

Its surface was covered with a nauseating layer of dark green biological mucus. Even though its energy had been cut off, the shell still pulsed weakly and rhythmically, like an aging heart.

"The aesthetics of these aliens are truly hard to compliment."

Jiang Chen pulled over a swivel chair with a look of disdain and sat down, holding a cup of freshly brewed hot tea as he leaned in to take a closer look.

He turned his head to look at the pink-haired girl standing nearby: "Ikaros, can you actually pry this thing open? Just don't let it be some kind of mutual destruction self-destruct program inside that blows up our newly built laboratory."

"Master, please rest assured."

Ikaros's pair of emerald green mechanical eyes were flashing wildly with cascading data streams. Expressionless, she extended her slender, fair right hand. The bionic skin on her fingertips split open instantly, revealing ten extremely sharp metal probes.

"This type of low-end silicon-based firewall that integrates biological characteristics is like a sheet of paper that tears at a touch when faced with the decryption algorithms of a God-level Civilization."

Before she even finished speaking.

Ikaros mercilessly plunged the ten probes deep into the mucus of the black polyhedron.

"Squelch!"

With a dull thud, green liquid splattered everywhere.

The black box seemed to feel intense pain and began to twitch violently, with a layer of highly corrosive defensive acid even appearing on its surface. However, when this acid touched Ikaros's mechanical arms, which were forged from a special alloy, it could only turn into wisps of useless white smoke.

"Brute force decryption progress: 30%... 70%... 100%."

"Underlying logic has been taken over, data extraction in progress."

As Ikaros's calm electronic voice faded, the black polyhedron, which had been struggling, stopped pulsating completely after a whimper, unfolding outward like a withered flower bud.

"Swish—!"

An extremely complex, massive, and exotic, rugged-style holographic projection instantly bloomed above the laboratory.

It was a giant design blueprint pieced together from countless twisted lines, energy conduits, and biomechanical structures.

Dense alien symbols scrolled beside the blueprint, dazzling to the eye.

"What kind of mess is this?"

Jiang Chen frowned. The blueprint looked like a mechanical monster forcibly stitched together from a pile of animal bones and scrap metal, lacking any of the symmetry and rigorous aesthetic beauty of Earth's industry.

However, Academician Chen Shuyin, who was standing nearby, had a completely different reaction.

"Clatter."

The electronic tablet she was using to record data fell straight to the floor.

This youngest female Academician of the Dragon Kingdom stood as if frozen by a binding spell, staring intently at the ugly, chaotic holographic blueprint above her head. Her eyes, hidden behind rimless glasses, dilated and contracted violently, with an unprecedented madness burning in their depths.

"Old Chen? What's wrong with you? Are you possessed?" Jiang Chen reached out and waved his hand in front of her.

"Don't move! Don't block me!"

Academician Chen Shuyin shoved Jiang Chen's hand away, her entire body practically lunging beneath the holographic projection.

She tilted her head back, gazing greedily at the several nested ring structures in the core area of the blueprint, her voice raspy and cracking from extreme excitement: "Jiang Chen... Oh my god... Do you know what this is?!"

"What could it be? The engine of that Big Octopus spaceship, I suppose." Jiang Chen took a sip of tea, unconcerned.

"This is no ordinary engine!"

Academician Chen Shuyin turned her head abruptly, her face flushed red, and grabbed Jiang Chen's arm, her fingernails nearly digging into his flesh: "This is spatial curvature! It's the prototype of a Curvature Engine!"

"Look at this peripheral biological magnetic field generator, and its design of distorting the refractive index of space in front by consuming dark matter! Its principle is not to obtain thrust by ejecting fuel backward, but by compressing space in front of the ship and expanding space behind it, allowing the ship to 'slide' forward as if it were sliding on waves!"

Academician Chen Shuyin was incoherent with excitement, pacing around in circles: "Although... although its design is very crude! It could even be called primitive and barbaric! This method of relying on biological tissue to withstand the pressure of spatial tearing is practically risking one's life to fly the ship!"

"But its underlying logic is correct! Those aliens have truly found the key to deceiving relativity and breaking through the light-speed barrier!"

Jiang Chen understood. He looked at the blueprint, his previously indifferent eyes instantly becoming scorching hot.

Curvature Engine! The ultimate cheat that allows a spaceship to break the light-speed limit and conduct interstellar travel in the true sense! No wonder that Octopus spaceship could instantly escape from the edge of the Solar System; it relied on this thing.

"It's a good thing, but even you say this blueprint is crude. Can we actually build it?" Jiang Chen rubbed his chin.

"It's very difficult."

Academician Chen Shuyin calmed down a bit, staring at the blueprint with furrowed brows. "There are many materials on here that are a mixture of carbon-based and silicon-based life, which don't exist on Earth at all. If we want to convert it into a purely mechanical structure, it would take at least two or three teams working day and night to reverse-engineer it for ten years."

"Ten years? The food would be cold by then."

Jiang Chen curled his lip. He couldn't wait ten years. Jiang Wanqiu had even prepared her dowry over there; if he didn't hurry up and pilot the spaceship to bring back those fifty billion tons of gold, he wouldn't even be able to sleep soundly at night.

"Ikaros, transmit the blueprint data to me."

Jiang Chen took a deep breath and pulled out his phone. Since Earth technology couldn't handle it, he could only call in the cheat.

As the data synchronization completed, a glittering gold notification box immediately popped up on the system interface that only Jiang Chen could see: [Detected incomplete/inefficient alien technology blueprint: Biological Fusion Curvature Engine (Primitive Version).]

[This technology has serious safety hazards, an energy conversion rate of only 12%, and is extremely prone to causing spatial genetic mutation in the pilot.]

[Do you wish to consume energy points for the system to perform comprehensive logical deduction and localized completion optimization?]

Jiang Chen glanced at his balance. The deposit from scamming the Eagle Sauce with the Photonic Chip earlier, plus the huge amount of funds harvested from the Mars real estate pre-sales—although he had squandered quite a bit on building the Space Elevator, the foundation was still there.

"Problems that can be solved with money are not problems."

Jiang Chen sneered and decisively issued the command in his mind. "Optimize! Optimize it to death! Use the highest standards!"

[Command confirmed.]

[Deducting 10,000,000 energy points.]

[Perfect-level deduction starting...]

"Hum—!"

Without any warning, the originally chaotic, ugly, and crude green holographic blueprint in the center of the laboratory suddenly shattered into a sky full of data streams!

Academician Chen Shuyin was startled, thinking the file had been formatted: "Jiang Chen! What did you do?!"

"Don't rush, let the bullets fly for a while."

Jiang Chen stood with his hands behind his back, a mysterious smile playing on his lips.

The next second.

Those scattered data streams re-converged in mid-air.

This time, there were no disgusting biological tissues, no chaotic pipelines.

A pure gold blueprint, radiating nobility, coldness, and the ultimate aesthetic beauty of mechanical geometry, slowly unfolded before the two of them.

It was the result of countless iterations by the system's computing power, discarding all redundancy, and perfectly fitting the Earth's industrial system and the hull structure of the luan niao starship— [First Generation Curvature Drive Engine (Perfect Industrial Version)]!

"This... how is this possible?!"

Academician Chen Shuyin looked at the golden blueprint, which could be called a work of art, her legs going weak, and she collapsed directly into the chair. She even forgot to breathe.

Those materials science problems that had originally puzzled her were perfectly replaced on the blueprint by exquisite magnetic confinement force fields; the extremely dangerous spatial folding area was designed into an extremely stable double-cyclone energy ring.

"You... you just looked at it for a while..."

Academician Chen Shuyin raised her head, looking at Jiang Chen as if looking at God, her voice trembling, "You just optimized the problem that has plagued the human physics community for a hundred years to this level of perfection?"

"Did your brain mutate, or were you possessed by some high-dimensional being?"

Jiang Chen walked over and patted the shoulder of this female Academician who was on the verge of doubting her life, smiling as nonchalantly as could be.

"Old Chen, don't obsess over me; I'm just a cheater... ahem, I'm just a genius good at thinking."

He turned around.

Looking through the laboratory's huge glass window at the colossal object docked in the lunar crater, Jiang Chen clenched his fists, his eyes flashing with an ambitious, fanatical light, wanting to conquer this sea of stars.

"With this thing."

"Our luan niao starship will finally not have to crawl slowly in the Solar System like a turtle."

He turned to look at Ikaros, his tone decisive: "Notify the alien engineering team on the second underground level to put down the work in their hands!"

"Bring the blueprints, and have everyone enter the dock!"

"Within three days, I want to make this warship..."

"Possess wings that can cross the galaxy!"