71: Chapter 71 To house the warships, the nation hollowed out that mountain.

The nights at West Suburb Base had always been tranquil; apart from the occasional chirping of insects, there was only the steady footsteps of the patrolling sentries.

But tonight, this tranquility was thoroughly torn apart by a near-violent mechanical roar. The earth trembled, as if a giant beast deep within the crust was waking up and rolling over.

Jiang Chen held half a freshly cut watermelon in his hands, standing on the roof of the base's office building, watching the scene before him—a sight worthy of being recorded in the history of human engineering—with his jaw dropped.

The beams of searchlights sliced the night sky for a radius of ten miles into pieces, making it as bright as day.

The nameless barren mountain that originally stood on the west side of the base was now surrounded by countless steel behemoths.

It wasn't just a few dozen excavators, but ten entire engineering corps! Thousands of pieces of heavy machinery were operating simultaneously, their excavator buckets flying up and down like a swarm of tireless steel ants, gnawing away at the mountain at a speed visible to the naked eye.

The convoy of concrete mixer trucks formed a long line, their red taillights drawing a flowing river of fire along the winding mountain road.

Dust filled the air, blotting out the sky.

"This... isn't this a bit too exaggerated?"

Jiang Chen scooped a spoonful of watermelon into his mouth and chewed twice, but found he couldn't swallow it. "I only wanted to deliver a package and modified a drone on the side. Was it necessary to dig up an entire mountain for that?"

Commander Li Zhenhua, standing beside him, was filled with heroic spirit at this moment. The old general held a walkie-talkie, listening to the reports coming from various units, his face beaming with the satisfaction of "finally having a mine at home."

"Exaggerated? Not at all!"

Commander Li Zhenhua turned his head, looking at Jiang Chen as if he were staring at some rare treasure. "Little Jiang, you don't know the cost of living until you're the one in charge. Do you know what that is? That is the luan bird! That is an aerospace carrier! That is the backbone of our Long Country for the next hundred years!"

"Such a big treasure, and you'd let it sit out in the open getting rained on? What if the paint chips? What if it gets caught on satellite?"

Commander Li Zhenhua grew more excited as he spoke, waving his hand to point at the mountain that was currently disappearing. "Never mind one mountain; even if it were ten, if it meant giving it a home, we would level them all! This is the gold standard of being a construction maniac!"

Jiang Chen's mouth twitched.

Paint chips? That was a special alloy coating capable of withstanding a nuclear explosion. Did the old man have some misunderstanding about what "paint chipping" meant?

"Report, Commander! The first demolition team is ready!"

The rough roar of the engineering corps commander came through the walkie-talkie. "Directional blasting is scheduled for three minutes from now. Please instruct!"

"Blow it up!" Commander Li Zhenhua replied with just one word, crisp and decisive.

Three minutes later.

"Boom—!" A dull, massive sound came from inside the mountain—not the sharp crack of an explosion, but like muffled thunder rolling through one's chest.

The entire office building shook three times, and Jiang Chen nearly dropped the watermelon in his hands.

The mountainside of the barren mountain, originally a hard rock face, looked as if it had been ripped open by an invisible giant hand. As the dust settled, a massive, bottomless opening, a hundred meters high, appeared before everyone's eyes.

Immediately after, dozens of heavy towing vehicles that had been waiting roared and charged forward. The steel cables pulled taut, emitting a teeth-grinding "creak" sound.

That black warship, as massive as a mountain, slowly moved under the focus of countless lights.

It was so enormous that when half of it had entered the mountain, the other half was still reflecting a cold metallic luster under the moonlight. Its massive shadow was cast upon the ground, completely covering the engineering vehicles that were as busy as ants.

Watching this scene, a surge of unspeakable shock welled up in Jiang Chen's heart.

This was not just the black technology he had conjured up with the system's help, but the astonishing power unleashed by the nation's state-led system. As long as the nation needed it, moving mountains and filling seas could be done overnight.

"Chief, isn't this commotion a bit too big?" Jiang Chen couldn't help but remind him. "The satellites from the Eagle side are probably watching us right now. How do we explain such a massive project in the middle of the night?"

"Explain? What is there to explain?" Commander Li Zhenhua snorted, straightened his uniform, and a cunning smile appeared on his face. "We are carrying out agricultural infrastructure construction, expanding a sweet potato storage facility. Isn't that reasonable?"

"Sweet... sweet potato storage facility?" Jiang Chen almost spat out a mouthful of blood. "Whose sweet potato storage facility has a hundred-meter-tall door? Have these sweet potatoes turned into demons?"

"Ah, that's where you don't understand." Commander Li Zhenhua patted Jiang Chen on the shoulder, saying earnestly, "Strategic deception is all about mixing truth and falsehood. Whether they believe it or not is their business; we believe it. As long as the warship hasn't flown into their faces, this is a sweet potato storage facility."

While they were talking, the warship's tail thrusters finally fully disappeared into the mountain.

The engineering soldiers immediately rushed up with camouflage vehicles, as if performing magic. Huge camouflage nets were instantly spread out, and combined with the newly transplanted trees and sod, the giant opening vanished without a trace in just half an hour.

Looking down from high altitude, it was still a tranquil, barren mountain, with perhaps slightly sparser vegetation.

Meanwhile, in synchronous orbit tens of thousands of kilometers away, one of the Eagle's high-precision optical reconnaissance satellites had just swept across this airspace.

The Pentagon, Intelligence Analysis Center. A group of intelligence analysts with worrying hairlines were scratching their heads at the satellite photos that had just been transmitted back.

"Sir, this isn't right!" An analyst pointed at an anomalous thermal imaging area on the screen and said in a breakdown, "Half an hour ago, there was an extremely high heat source reaction and large-scale mechanical activity here. How did it all disappear after one orbit?"

"Could it be that the Long Country is conducting underground nuclear tests?"

"Impossible, there are no anomalies in the seismic wave monitoring."

The supervisor in charge of intelligence frowned, staring fixedly at the seemingly ordinary barren mountain. He picked up the phone and dialed an encrypted line, his voice low and solemn. "Activate the 'Deep Sea' informant. I need to know exactly what the West Suburb Base is doing tonight."

"I have a premonition that the Long Country people are definitely brewing up some trouble again."

"Also..." The supervisor paused, looking at the long convoy of concrete trucks in the photo, and added with some hesitation, "Check if the Long Country has had a bumper harvest of sweet potatoes recently. For infrastructure of this scale, I can't think of any reason other than a granary."

West Suburb Base, underground hangar.

This place was originally a few abandoned air-raid shelters, but it had now been opened up overnight and expanded into an underground space capable of housing a small city. The air was still filled with the heavy scent of gunpowder and the dampness of concrete.

The luan niao starship was parked quietly on a massive steel frame, surrounded by dense scaffolding and busy research personnel. Although the environment was crude, the presence of this warship itself made the simple cavern feel sacred.

Jiang Chen followed Commander Li Zhenhua along a temporarily constructed walkway, the steel plates beneath his feet emitting hollow echoes.

"Little Jiang, we've built the house for you." Commander Li Zhenhua stopped and looked up at the sci-fi-looking warship, a near-fanatical gleam in his eyes. "Now, it's time to talk about serious business."

"This ship... when you were building it, what exactly did you intend to use it for?"

Jiang Chen was stunned for a moment. What for? He scratched his head, looking innocent: "Deliver packages. Chief, look how big this cargo hold is; it can deliver Double Eleven packages for several residential communities at once."

Commander Li Zhenhua's mouth twitched twice, and he resisted the urge to kick someone.

"Deliver packages?" The old general pointed at the plasma main cannon on the belly of the warship that hadn't even been unpacked yet, his voice rising an octave. "You call that thing a package sorter?"

"Or are you planning to use that cannon to blast the packages directly onto the customers' balconies?"

Jiang Chen smiled awkwardly: "Well... it's about improving delivery efficiency. Customers these days are impatient; they value immediate delivery."

"Stop talking nonsense with me!" Commander Li Zhenhua glared at him, then his expression became extremely serious, even carrying a hint of pleading. "Little Jiang, since this thing has been built, it cannot just be a decoration. You know the current situation of the country; the surroundings are not peaceful."

He took a deep breath, his voice low: "I'll ask you one question: can this ship fight?"