70: Chapter 70: Handed Over to the Nation! The Dean of the Dragon Science Academy Suffers Cardiac Arrest on the Spot

Four in the morning; the horizon had just begun to pale with the first light of dawn.

Over the ruins of the Western Suburbs Base No. 3, the dust had finally settled.

The original No. 2 steel-structured warehouse, which had only been half-finished and cost millions to build, had completely vanished, reduced to a pile of flattened scrap metal miserably spread beneath that behemoth.

Jiang Chen stood beside the massive landing gear, appearing smaller than an ant.

He looked up at the silvery-white hull blocking out the sky above him, took out his phone, and dialed that familiar number.

The phone was answered after a single ring; clearly, the person on the other end had been waiting and hadn't slept.

"Hello? Jiang Chen?"

Zhong Guodong's voice sounded very energetic, even carrying a hint of anticipation. "Is the blueprint for that nuclear fusion reactor finished? My people are already on the way; they should be there in about twenty minutes."

"The blueprint isn't the priority right now."

Jiang Chen's tone was calm, even slightly embarrassed. "Old Zhong, let me discuss something with you. Do you have... do you have any quick-acting heart pills in that car of yours?"

"Heart pills?"

Zhong Guodong paused for a moment. "I have them, I carry them with me everywhere. Why? Are you not feeling well? Have you been overworking yourself with research lately?"

"I'm fine, I'm in great shape."

Jiang Chen glanced at the interstellar warship still radiating residual heat and sighed:

"That's good. You'd better put the medicine in your mouth first; I'm not joking. Seriously, put it in your mouth."

"Because I just... received a slightly large package. This thing is too stimulating, and I'm afraid your constitution won't be able to handle it."

Zhong Guodong laughed and scolded on the other end: "You brat, you're looking down on this old man! What kind of storms haven't I seen? Even back in the days of the Two Bombs and One Satellite, I was on the scene! Could I really be scared by a package from you?"

"Alright, stop beating around the bush, we'll talk when we meet!"

Hanging up the phone, Jiang Chen shrugged.

"It's hard to save those determined to die... no, that's not right. It's hard to save a stubborn old man."

Twenty minutes later.

"Thump, thump, thump, thump—"

Several camouflaged armed helicopters tore through the morning mist and roared in.

Before the helicopters had even fully landed, the cabin doors were violently pushed open.

Zhong Guodong was wearing a faded Zhongshan suit; although his hair was gray, he was full of vigor. He jumped down, escorted by a group of guards. Following closely behind him was General Qin Weiguo, his face stern, his hand already resting on his holster.

"Where is he? Where is Jiang Chen?"

Zhong Guodong strode forward, looking around as he walked. "Didn't you say there was a large package? Where is it? It better not be those missile trucks, right? I've seen plenty of those; they're nothing special!"

Company Commander Zhao Gang walked up to meet them, his face ashen.

This man who was usually as tough as iron was now pale, looking as if he had just seen a ghost. He opened his mouth, pointing toward the massive shadow shrouded in the morning mist behind him, unable to utter a single word.

"Ch... Chief... it's behind."

"Why are you stuttering?"

General Qin Weiguo frowned, acutely sensing that something was wrong. The air was filled with a strange smell—the scent of ozone from metal scorched by high-energy particles, mixed with an unsettling sense of oppressive power.

"Old Zhong, be careful."

The two of them skirted around the pile of construction debris that hadn't yet been cleared and turned a corner.

And then.

Their footsteps stopped simultaneously.

It was as if a pause button had been pressed.

The morning breeze dispersed the last wisp of mist.

That five-hundred-twenty-meter-long steel behemoth, silvery-white all over and seemingly from an ancient myth, slammed into their retinas, completely exposed and without any concealment.

The streamlined hull reflected a cold light under the morning sun, and the broken ship wings still bore the traces of smoke from interstellar warfare. Those ferocious secondary gun barrels hung low, like sleeping dragons.

It lay there quietly, yet it seemed to have crushed the entire world beneath it.

"Th... This..."

The cane in Zhong Guodong's hand dropped to the ground with a "clatter."

He widened his eyes, his eyeballs instantly bloodshot, and a sound like a bellows being pulled, "hiss, hiss," came from his throat.

This exceeded his understanding.

It exceeded the limits of Earth's civilization.

This was absolutely not something humans could build!

"Int... Interstellar... war..."

Zhong Guodong tremblingly reached out his hand, wanting to point at that behemoth.

But the next second.

He felt his heart contract violently, as if someone had squeezed it hard. The massive lack of blood supply caused his mind to go blank instantly, and his vision went black.

"Thud!"

This titan of the Long Country's scientific world really did fall straight backward, just as Jiang Chen had predicted.

"Old Zhong!!!"

General Qin Weiguo, standing beside him, was scared out of his wits and grabbed Zhong Guodong. "Military doctor! Call the military doctor! Old Zhong, don't scare me like this!"

The scene instantly descended into chaos.

The guards swarmed around like madmen, some pinching his philtrum, others performing CPR.

"Move aside!"

Jiang Chen rushed over from the side and shoved away the military doctor who was performing chest compressions.

In his hand, he held a capsule emitting a faint blue glow—the very same [Nano-Targeted Repair Capsule] (one remaining) that had saved his mother earlier.

"Open your mouth!"

Jiang Chen pried open Zhong Guodong's tightly clenched teeth and, without hesitation, stuffed the priceless life-saving medicine inside.

"Gulp."

The capsule dissolved the moment it touched his mouth.

A few seconds later.

Zhong Guodong, who had been deathly pale and had stopped breathing, suddenly gasped for air, like a drowning person surfacing from the water.

"Cough, cough, cough! Cough, cough, cough!"

He coughed violently and sat up abruptly from General Qin Weiguo's embrace.

"Old Zhong! Are you okay?!" General Qin Weiguo's eyes were almost tearing up from anxiety. "You scared me to death!"

Zhong Guodong ignored General Qin Weiguo and ignored Jiang Chen.

He didn't even pay attention to whether he had just walked through the gates of hell.

He shoved away the people supporting him, scrambled up unsteadily, not even bothering to pick up his cane, and rushed a few steps toward the warship like a madman before dropping to his knees with a "thud."

He grabbed the soil on the ground with both hands, tears streaming down his old face, and roared hoarsely at the warship:

"Seal it off! Seal it off immediately!"

"Level One... No! Top Secret!"

"Fifty kilometers radius... No! One hundred kilometers! Impose martial law on the whole area!"

"Whoever dares to leak a single word, I, Zhong Guodong, will execute them myself!"

He turned his head and stared fixedly at Jiang Chen. In his eyes, there was no blame, only a fervor and gratitude born from seeing hope:

"Jiang Chen! This is a national treasure!"

"This is the wings for our Long Country... to take flight!"

General Qin Weiguo stood where he was.

He watched his old partner kneeling on the ground, weeping bitterly, and then looked up at the steel behemoth that blocked out half the sky.

As a soldier, he understood what this thing meant better than Zhong Guodong.

That was not a ship.

That was absolute truth.

It was the fist that would make those great powers shut up.

With it, what are the aircraft carriers of the Eagle Country? What is the F-22?

In front of this big guy, all the weapons on Earth are nothing more than children's firecrackers.

General Qin Weiguo slowly walked to the warship's landing gear.

He extended his hands, calloused from touching gun barrels his entire life, and tremblingly stroked the cold, rough, yet incomparably hard alloy armor.

That icy sensation traveled from his fingertips through his entire body, making him shiver involuntarily.

It was real.

It wasn't a dream.

"Good... good..."

This iron-blooded general, who had shed blood but not tears on the battlefield, now had red-rimmed eyes, and two lines of murky tears flowed down his wrinkled cheeks.

He leaned his back against the massive landing gear and slowly slid down to sit on the ground, looking up at the ship's bow that towered into the clouds, laughing and crying like a child:

"A hundred years..."

"We've been bullied for a hundred years..."

"Strong ships and powerful guns... this is the true meaning of strong ships and powerful guns!"

He turned his head abruptly and looked at Jiang Chen, his voice choked with sobs but filled with endless heroic spirit:

"Mr. Jiang!"

"Thank you! Really, thank you!"

"With this big guy..."

"From now on, I'd like to see who on this Blue Planet dares to bully our Long Country?!"

"Who else dares to say our backbone isn't strong?!"

Jiang Chen stood in the morning breeze, watching these two old men who had dedicated their lives to the country, and the annoyance he had felt because the "garage was too small" instantly vanished into thin air.

He walked forward, handed General Qin Weiguo a cigarette, and lit one for himself.

"Old Qin, don't cry."

Jiang Chen exhaled a ring of smoke, looked at the warship from the stars, and said softly:

"This is just the beginning."

"This is only a frigate."

"In the future... we will have destroyers, cruisers, and even... a real mother ship."

"Our journey has never been just this small Earth."

"Our goal is the sea of stars."