203: Chapter 203 Analyzing the Alien Engine, Spaceship Speed ​​Breaks the Speed ​​of Light

West Suburb Base, underground super shipyard.

The pungent smell of electric welding mixed with the burnt odor of melting metal permeated this massive underground space, which was large enough to house two aircraft carriers. The deafening sound of metal cutting and dull thuds rang out one after another, weaving together into a violent symphony of heavy industry.

Jiang Chen, wearing anti-static work clothes, stood on the command platform suspended in mid-air, holding a megaphone in his hand, supervising the work with reckless abandon.

Beneath him, the 500-meter-long luan niao starship was currently undergoing a brutal "dismemberment." Over a hundred gray-skinned alien laborers were clinging to the tail of the warship. They didn't need scaffolding; their thick, sharp claws were locked tightly into the armor seams, and their bodies were erupting with terrifying strength comparable to heavy hydraulic presses.

"Clang!"

A tail armor plate weighing over ten tons was forcibly ripped off by the joint effort of three gray-skinned monsters and tossed onto the ground like garbage, shaking the floor of the entire shipyard.

Zhao Gang stood beside Jiang Chen, sucking in his breath in pain. Watching the rough actions of those alien "beasts of burden," he was almost in tears: "Boss, my dear boss! This is our national treasure! Even if you want to modify it, can't you let our Dragon Country engineers do the delicate work? These monsters are practically demolishing it! If the main keel gets damaged, this spaceship will be completely scrapped!"

"You don't know a damn thing. This is called breaking to build." Jiang Chen smacked Zhao Gang's helmet impatiently and pointed to the huge tail cavity below that had been completely gutted. "If we don't dismantle the old, obsolete plasma thruster, how are we supposed to install the god-tier upgrade we just finished?"

Following the direction of Jiang Chen's finger, Zhao Gang gasped.

With the cooperation of a dozen heavy gantry cranes, a pure gold ring device, so massive it was breathtaking, was being slowly lowered into the cavity at the tail of the warship. The object had no traditional mechanical gears or jet pipes; its entire body was as smooth as a mirror, with a layer of deep, eerie blue light circuits flowing across its surface. Even just hanging there quietly, the air around it presented a strange sense of distortion, as if even light were being forcibly bent as it passed by.

This was the ultimate creation that Academician Chen Shuyin and her entire research team had produced by combining the perfect blueprint provided by the system and exhausting the last batch of rare metals in the base—the [First Generation Curvature Engine].

"Port side tilted two degrees! Liquid metal neurons ready for docking!" Academician Chen Shuyin had completely transformed into a research maniac. Wearing a white lab coat and holding a holographic data pad, she stood directly on a suspended walkway less than ten meters from the Curvature Engine, her voice even hoarser than Jiang Chen's. "Third engineering group! Push that Hafnium-178 isotope reactor in! Move steadily, or I'll stew you all if you break it!"

Although those alien laborers couldn't understand such complex instructions, they had extremely deep muscle memory regarding the high-voltage electric baton in Academician Chen Shuyin's hand and the megaphone in Jiang Chen's hand. Driven by biological instinct, this group of immensely strong monsters displayed incredibly precise micro-manipulation skills, steadily locking the reactor, which looked like a heart, into the center lock of the Curvature Engine.

"Click—"

As the final sound of the magnetic lock engaging rang out, the entire Curvature Engine completed a deep, physical-level connection with the energy control system of the luan niao starship.

The originally gruesome hole at the tail of the warship was completely filled by this perfect ring emitting a deep blue light. An ultimate sci-fi aesthetic that transcended technological gaps left all the Dragon Country engineers present mesmerized.

"It's done!" Academician Chen Shuyin ripped off the protective mask on her head, and her pretty face, which looked somewhat pale from continuous all-nighters, was now surging with irrepressible ecstasy. She turned her head, staring fixedly at the readings on the control panel, her voice trembling slightly from extreme excitement. "Jiang Chen! The energy circuit continuity rate is one hundred percent! Isotope catalytic reaction is stable! The system has no rejection!"

Jiang Chen immediately dropped the megaphone and rushed into the adjacent explosion-proof control room in two strides.

He sat in the captain's chair that represented the highest authority, pressed his hands on the holographic console, and swept his burning gaze over the green data streams refreshing like waterfalls. At this moment, he was no longer the glib, unscrupulous merchant, but an interstellar pioneer about to push open the gates to a new era.

"Old Zhao, have everyone evacuate the shipyard! Activate the highest-level energy shield!" Jiang Chen's voice was low and extremely oppressive. "Prepare for the first ignition test."

Red warning lights lit up instantly, and the shrill evacuation siren echoed in the underground space. The alien laborers and human engineers quickly retreated behind the thick explosion-proof walls, and everyone's gaze was locked through the explosion-proof glass onto the brand-new, silver giant ship.

"Three."

"Two."

"One. Ignition!"

Jiang Chen pressed the golden start button in the center of the main control panel without hesitation.

There was no deafening roar, no soaring tail flame. At the moment of ignition, the entire underground shipyard fell into an eerily dead silence.

Then, everyone saw a scene they would never forget.

The golden Curvature Engine at the tail of the luan niao starship suddenly burst into a deep blue halo brighter than the sun. This halo did not diffuse outward but, like a giant elastic membrane, instantly curled back, completely enveloping the entire 500-meter-long warship!

Inside this blue "bubble," the outline of the spaceship began to blur, as if it had detached from this space and become an unreal mirage. At the edge of the "bubble," the surrounding light, air, and even gravity were forcibly pulled and folded by a terrifying force, forming a circle of visible transparent ripples.

"Is... is this a curvature bubble?" Zhao Gang's eyes widened, his palms covered in cold sweat. He couldn't feel any vibration from the spaceship, but he could clearly feel that the space where the ship was located was being crazily "cut" and "spliced" by some incomprehensible power.

"Look at the data! Look at the data!"

Academician Chen Shuyin pointed to the needle on the main screen representing relative speed, so excited she was about to jump up.

The moment it started, that needle bypassed the pathetic Mach numbers of traditional aviation engines and skyrocketed at a heart-stopping speed!

[Current Curvature Engine output power: 5%...]

[Space folding rate: 0.01...]

[Relative cruising speed: 10,000 km/s... 100,000 km/s... 250,000 km/s!]

"It's still rising! My God, it's still rising!" Academician Chen Shuyin stared fixedly at the crazily jumping numbers, tears streaming down her face uncontrollably. "Jiang Chen, you did it! We actually did it!"

When the output power of the Curvature Engine was pushed to just 15%, the speed reading on the screen finally broke through the absolute forbidden zone that had plagued the human physics community for over a century—

[Relative cruising speed: 300,000 km/s!]

[Light speed limit reached! Curvature bubble stability maintained!]

"It broke through..." Zhao Gang muttered to himself. Although he was a rough man, he knew what light speed meant. He turned to look at Academician Chen Shuyin, his face full of disbelief. "Academician Chen, we're faster than light now? Can Einstein's coffin lid still hold him down?"

"It holds!" Academician Chen Shuyin turned her head. Although her face was covered in tears, her eyes, belonging to a top-tier scholar, were shining with the arrogance of having seen through the truth. "This doesn't violate the theory of relativity! Because inside the curvature bubble, the spaceship itself is stationary! We aren't moving through space; we are 'sliding' space!"

She used her hands to gesture a surfing motion in the air: "The engine compresses the space in front of the ship and expands the space behind it. It's like creating an artificial wave on the ocean; the spaceship is standing on the crest of the wave, being pushed by space! Although we haven't reached the speed of light, within the curvature bubble, our relative speed has already exceeded the limit of the speed of light!"

This hardcore physics explanation left Zhao Gang stunned, but he only understood one thing—we are now the fastest kids in the entire universe.

In the control room, Jiang Chen sat quietly in the captain's chair, watching the light-speed reading that was stabilizing, and slowly exhaled a long breath.

He didn't cheer, nor was he as excited as Academician Chen Shuyin, crying and laughing. He just silently closed the test program, watching the deep blue curvature bubble around the warship slowly dissipate, and the spaceship returned to the physical dimension of reality.

But Jiang Chen's eyes had undergone a earth-shattering change.

The laziness and philistinism he usually pretended to have had completely faded, replaced by a vast ambition capable of swallowing the entire galaxy.

He stood up, walked to the explosion-proof glass, clasped his hands behind his back, and tilted his head slightly. His gaze penetrated the thick underground rock layers, penetrated the Earth's atmosphere, as if he had already seen that vast, boundless starry sky hiding countless dangers and treasures.

"Old Chen, Old Zhao."

Jiang Chen's voice was very soft, yet it carried a magic that made people's blood boil, echoing in the quiet control room:

"Since we've already paved the way, these petty squabbles on Earth are no longer interesting."

He turned his head, a wild smile curling at the corner of his mouth, pointing to the red dot on the star map 4.2 light-years away from Earth:

"Get ready."

"It's time to go and visit our interstellar neighbors..."

"...and pay them a proper visit."