162: Chapter 162 Borrowing a Channel, Stellar-level Pulse

The colonel lowered his head, staring fixedly at his numb palm. On the barrel of his Type 92 service pistol, tiny, eerie blue electric arcs were still crackling and dancing. He had been a soldier for twenty years and had never seen such a bizarre thing.

Lu Chen flicked away the remaining half of his cigarette. He stepped his old leather shoe into the dirt, forcefully crushing out the spark.

He turned and stepped out of the command tent, striding toward the military communications array vehicle parked next to the infantry fighting vehicle.

The colonel snapped out of his daze and followed him in a few strides.

Lu Chen stopped in front of the communications console. He extended his right hand, palm upward.

"Colonel. I need to borrow your highest-level military network channel."

Lu Chen's tone was calm and devoid of inflection, yet it carried a crushing, lethal pressure like Mount Tai.

The colonel hesitated for less than a second.

"Damn it. Screw it. If something goes wrong, I'll take the disciplinary action." The colonel gritted his back teeth and violently yanked the top-secret USB drive hanging around his neck. He slammed the drive, marked with a top-secret red stripe, into the communications motherboard slot.

The colonel leaned over, his ten fingers flying across the keyboard. The 24-bit dynamic rolling code was entered instantly.

"Access level maxed out." The colonel stepped aside, his eyes bloodshot. "Factory Director Lu, what are you planning to do? That's a fleet carrying live ammunition on the other side. If they really open fire, the entire Jiangcheng won't be able to bear the responsibility."

Lu Chen stood before the screen, his hands resting on the keyboard.

"No need to open fire," Lu Chen said calmly. "Using shells to kill such tens of thousands of tons of obsolete scrap metal is too beneath me."

The colonel's breathing hitched for a beat. Calling a tens-of-thousands-of-ton nuclear-powered aircraft carrier scrap metal.

In the three-thousand-acre deep pit below, Old Zhou's hoarse, desperate roar could be heard.

"Brother. Old Man Song doesn't dare to push the switch. He says the parameters have exceeded the red line. If we push it, it'll definitely explode." Through the walkie-talkie, Old Zhou's voice was mixed with the deafening roar of machinery.

Da Biao snatched the microphone, his booming voice making the walkie-talkie crackle. "Big Brother. Our lives were all given by you. You say push, and we'll stake our lives to press that lever."

Lu Chen picked up the walkie-talkie and coldly spat out four words.

"You won't die. Push."

At the bottom of the pit, Old Zhou shoved aside the sweating Song Changming. "Move. The boss said push."

Old Zhou pressed his hands firmly onto the heavy physical lever and pulled it all the way down.

A violent humming sound instantly pierced through the ground. Da Biao led hundreds of security guards, scrambling and crawling up the dirt slope.

"Retreat! Retreat quickly! This black iron plate is leaking electricity like crazy!" Da Biao roared as he ran. Several hairs next to the Guan Gong tattoo on his thick arm were instantly scorched by static electricity.

In front of the communications vehicle, Lu Chen's ten fingers were moving so fast they created afterimages.

A radar defense zone topology map of the entire East China Sea instantly popped up on the screen. On the vast green grid lines, a few glaring red dots were crazily probing right along the warning line.

"Factory Director Lu, what kind of code are you typing?" The colonel stared at the cascading English parameters on the screen, sweat beading on his forehead. Even the military information warfare experts he brought didn't have this kind of typing speed.

"Building a bridge," Lu Chen said without blinking. "Forcibly binding the full-load overload terminal of the fusion engine below to the frequency of this chassis."

The colonel was completely confused.

Lu Chen typed the final line of instructions and straightened his back.

He casually picked up the chipped enamel tea mug from the corner of the table and took a sip of warm water.

His free left hand hovered over the red Enter key on the keyboard.

"Colonel." Lu Chen swallowed the water.

"Yes!" The colonel straightened his back.

"Watch closely." Lu Chen's left hand descended lightly.

His fingertip touched the Enter key and pressed it all the way down.

A dragon's roar, low to the extreme, erupted from the bottom of the pit. The sound was incredibly muffled, and the surrounding ten-ton excavators shook violently in response.

On the two-hundred-meter-wide black chassis, the originally dark red patterns instantly turned a glaring, eerie purple.

The miniature fusion engine roared at one hundred percent full load. Massive, pure source energy surged wildly into the chassis along the superconducting cables.

There was no deafening explosion. No flames shot into the sky.

An all-frequency electromagnetic pulse, impossible for the human eye to capture, crossed space at the speed of light with the chassis as its center. This was a true stellar-class EMP.

The perspective cut back to the high altitude over the East China Sea.

Four F-35 stealth fighters were circling arrogantly at an altitude of three hundred meters, skimming the sea surface.

"The yellow-skinned monkeys have chickened out. My radar scan didn't even get a blip." Security Captain Jack laughed wildly on the communications channel. "Major, there's half an hour left on the countdown. Let's drop another hundred meters. Let's shave the top off that broken ship below."

The team leader, a major, chewed on his cigar with a face full of mockery. "Press in according to the original plan. They are weak to the bone. As long as our aircraft carrier drops anchor here, they'll have to obediently hand over the technology. Prepare to descend..."

The major's words stuck in his throat.

An extremely pungent, burnt smell instantly filled the entire sealed cockpit.

"What is that smell?" Security Captain Jack exclaimed loudly. "Major, my screen is glitching."

Before he could finish his sentence, bang, bang, bang.

All the precision electronic instrument panels inside the cockpits of the four F-35s simultaneously burst and exploded. Sparks mixed with shattered glass flew everywhere.

"Fire control radar failure."

"Power system offline."

"Calling mothership. My control panel is totaled. Requesting backup guidance." Security Captain Jack screamed into the walkie-talkie.

All that came back from the aircraft carrier channel was a burst of harsh static.

The arrogant confidence of capital completely turned into a pile of useless scrap metal at this moment. The fifth-generation fighters' electronic flight control systems were instantly burned to ashes by the stellar-class EMP pulse.

The thirty-ton fighter jets instantly lost all lift.

"Pull up! Pull up quickly! The thrust lever isn't responding! Help!" Security Captain Jack pulled desperately on the control stick, the arrogance on his face completely replaced by a twisted mask of extreme terror.

"Eject! Pull the ejection ring immediately!" The major roared in despair from his cockpit.

"It won't pull! The electronic lock is jammed!"

The electronic ignition devices for the ejection seats had long since been burned through by the pulse. They didn't even have a chance to parachute.

The four Stars and Stripes fighter jets, costing hundreds of millions of dollars each, were like four heavy, solid iron lumps. Accompanied by the pilots' desperate, shrill screams, they plunged headlong into the turbulent sea.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

Four towering water columns smashed up from the sea surface. White spray, carrying wing fragments, was instantly swallowed by the deep sea.

Ten nautical miles away, the 7th Fleet aircraft carrier command center.

In the spacious combat hall, frantic red alarm lights flashed, blinding everyone. The piercing buzzing sound was enough to pierce eardrums.

"Report, Captain. Signals from all four fighters of the Flying Eagle squadron have vanished simultaneously." The radar operator was drenched in sweat, his hands hammering the keyboard loudly. "Even the black box signals have been cut off."

The fleet commander grabbed the radar operator by the collar. "Nonsense! How could four F-35s crash simultaneously in one second? Did the yellow people on the other side fire anti-aircraft missiles? Retrieve the interception footage immediately!"

"There is no interception footage. Our anti-missile system didn't even capture a shell casing." The radar operator's voice trembled with a thick, crying tone. "Captain. Something even more terrifying has happened. The Aegis radar matrix on our aircraft carrier... has completely crashed."

The commander threw the radar operator to the ground. He rushed to the main console and stared fixedly at the huge main screen.

The screen was full of static.

The entire nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, along with the five escort destroyers beside it, turned blind in this instant. All-frequency communications were firmly suppressed by an unknown, terrifying force.

"What the hell." The commander's legs went weak. "This level of electromagnetic suppression—even if you brought the sun down and detonated it, you couldn't achieve this. What kind of weapon did the Chinese use? Start the backup generator sets immediately. Send an emergency distress code to The Pentagon."

Jiangcheng. The 3,000-acre construction site of Chenguang Factory.

In front of the military communications array vehicle.

The radar map on the screen had returned to calm. Those four glaring red dots that were hugging the edge of the warning line had completely vanished without a trace.

The colonel stared fixedly at the screen. His eyes were about to pop out of his head.

He looked at the screen, then turned to look at the black chassis at the bottom of the pit that was slowly cooling down.

"It's... it's gone." The colonel swallowed a mouthful of saliva. His Adam's apple bobbed with difficulty. "Factory Director Lu. Those four American fifth-generation fighters. They just evaporated like that."

In all his years as a soldier, this was the first time he felt that the modern warfare tactics he had studied were a joke. The other party didn't even reveal a gun barrel; they just pressed the Enter key once.

Lu Chen set down the enamel tea mug in his hand.

"They all fell into the sea to feed the fish." Lu Chen's tone was calm, without the slightest excitement about taking down four of the most advanced fighter jets. "It's their electronic defense, which they are so proud of, that is too trashy. An aircraft carrier strike group built with hundreds of billions of dollars can't even withstand a surge of overloaded civilian AC power."

The colonel snapped to attention. With a sharp snap, he gave a fierce military salute.

His eye sockets were completely red. The stifled frustration he had been holding in for so many days was completely released at this moment.

"Factory Director Lu. That was a beautiful move." The colonel's voice was completely hoarse. "Those bastards must be blind now. Our warships can just counter-flank them."

Lu Chen fished out a pack of double happiness cigarettes from his jacket pocket. He shook one out. He clicked a transparent plastic lighter to light it.

He exhaled a puff of blue smoke.

"You think that's beautiful?" Lu Chen narrowed his eyes, looking at the excavator fleet still roaring in the distance.

"What do you mean?" The colonel was stunned.

"This is just an appetizer." Lu Chen flicked the cigarette ash. "I haven't finished using the channel I borrowed from you."

Below, Old Zhou ran up the dirt slope, holding the walkie-talkie.

"Brother. The machine parameters have stabilized. Old Man Song is asking what to do next. The thing at the bottom of the pit is scorching hot; the guys can't get down there." Old Zhou was drenched in sweat.

Da Biao followed behind, shouting at the top of his lungs. "Big Brother. The brothers are full of energy. Show us the way. We must flatten this eight-thousand-acre plot today."

Lu Chen picked up the walkie-talkie. "Have everyone rest in place for five minutes."

Lu Chen turned around. His fingers tapped on the keyboard again.

He brought up the underlying vulnerability port he had just used to connect to the fleet.

"Colonel." Lu Chen said, with the cigarette dangling from his mouth.

"Yes!" The colonel puffed out his chest.

"Notify the other side. The countdown is void." Lu Chen took his hands off the keyboard, his eyes as cold as ice. "Now, I set the rules. You tell them personally into the microphone."

The colonel grabbed the black microphone on the communications console. The veins on the back of his hand bulged.

Lu Chen raised his right hand. He rested his index finger against his chin. His wrist lifted slightly, ready to press another command key.