234: Chapter 234 Trying to Double-cross me? I'll rip off your whole family.

Gale-force winds and torrential rain lashed against the black hull of the viper no. 3 nuclear submarine. The high-frequency oscillating alloy saber in Da Biao's hand let out a piercing hum, its dark red blade pointing straight at the behemoth at the end of the sea.

Inside the submarine, Zhang Qiang stared fixedly at the radar screen and immediately pressed the transmitter on the communication channel.

"Da Biao, put the blade away. Don't be an idiot."

Zhang Qiang slammed both hands heavily onto the command console.

"The torpedoes on those two Los Angeles-class nuclear submarines underwater are all unlocked. Fifty launch tubes are aimed right at our tail rudder. If you swing that blade, the three thousand tons of gold and those high-dimensional skeletons will all end up feeding the fish."

"Feeding the fish?" Da Biao scoffed in the rain, his electronic eyes glowing scarlet beneath his mask.

"Even if I have to break every bone in my body, I'll drag them down with me. These bandits really think they can swallow the Boss's cargo?"

"Cut the crap. We're piloting a transport sub. High-pressure torpedoes will at best disrupt their formation. Once a firefight starts and the ship sinks into the trench, how are you going to answer to the Boss?"

Zhang Qiang shouted, his eyes bloodshot.

Da Biao clenched his molars; he knew in his heart that everything Zhang Qiang said was the truth.

"Boss, what should we do? Are we really just going to leave like this and take the insult?" Da Biao asked for instructions loudly over the internal channel.

Jiangcheng, the control room on Underground Level 3 of Chenguang Factory.

Lu Chen leaned back in his chair, a squashed double happiness cigarette held between his fingers, and flicked the ash off casually.

"What's there to be insulted about? I sent you to be porters, not a suicide squad. If you want to draw your blades over something this small, what will you do when you face the real deal later?"

Lu Chen bit down on the cigarette butt again, the spark flickering.

"Take the cargo and board the ship safely. I'll handle that pile of junk outside."

"Understood." Da Biao immediately stood at attention and sheathed his saber without hesitation.

"You heard him, the Boss has spoken. All hands, get into the cabin."

Two hundred Exoskeleton mechs formed a neat line, braving the storm as they quickly filed into the submarine's airlock.

Five nautical miles away, on the bridge of the Ticonderoga-class cruiser of the 7th Fleet.

Squadron Commander Smith held a coffee mug emblazoned with the naval emblem, staring intently at the thermal signal gradually disappearing from the radar screen.

"Those yellow-skinned monkeys have chickened out." A sneer of extreme contempt curled the corners of Smith's mouth.

"I thought these heavy-duty mechs had some real skill. But once they saw our gun barrels, they still obediently hid inside their iron shell. A bunch of gutless trash."

The adjutant stood to the side with his hands behind his back.

"Sir, should we continue to close in? They are diving."

"Close in at full speed." Smith set the coffee mug down heavily.

"Use sonar to lock onto their waterline armor. If they don't resurface and surrender within three minutes, immediately order the two Los Angeles-class submarines to open fire and sink them. Even if those gold bricks sink to the bottom of the ocean, we still have the ability to fish them out slowly. We absolutely cannot let the Huaxia people take this wealth away."

"Sir, what if this causes an international defense dispute..."

"Defense dispute?" Smith laughed loudly, his laughter echoing through the bridge, sounding incredibly arrogant.

"In these international waters, our shells are the only rule. Who would dare cause us trouble for sinking an unidentified black-market submarine?"

Jiangcheng, Underground Level 3. Wu Dong pushed up his slipping glasses, sweat dripping down his chin. His ten fingers hovered over the keyboard, unable to strike a single key.

"Boss, they are only three nautical miles away. We can't go head-to-head. I just tried a dozen common deep-layer backdoors, but I can't break into their core weapon system at all. The 7th Fleet is using a bottom-layer military intranet with a physical air-gap; the signal isolation is too thorough."

Wu Dong rubbed his hands in anxiety; this was truly an unsolvable deadlock.

Lu Chen completely ignored Wu Dong's anxiety. He pulled up the system panel in his mind and directly accessed the hidden attribute that had been unlocked shortly before.

[Hidden Highest Authority: Absolute Defense Mechanism Reverse Intrusion (Single-Use Enhancement). Duration: Ten minutes. Ignores any physical isolation and network firewalls. Automatically seizes highest command authority.]

Extract, use. Lu Chen opened his eyes.

"Old Wu, put your hands on it."

Wu Dong was confused, but he had absolute obedience toward Lu Chen, so his hands instinctively pressed onto the mechanical keyboard.

Just as he typed the first meaningless blind-typing code, the data stream on the main control screen suddenly rolled wildly. The originally green conventional characters instantly turned into a glaring dark red.

A torrent of code that completely defied computer common sense was generated out of thin air. It followed the abandoned fiber optic cables laid along the bottom of the East China Sea and slammed directly into the network ports of the 7th Fleet with brutal force.

Over thirty layers of top-tier military-grade firewalls didn't even last a millisecond before instantly vanishing into dust.

"Holy shit." Wu Dong's voice cracked.

"Boss, I didn't even hit enter. This code is running on its own. This is ridiculous; their firewalls were pierced instantly by this string of code."

"Shut up. Connect to the fire control system." Lu Chen issued the order.

On the cruiser's bridge, a piercing, top-level combat alarm suddenly resounded throughout the cabin, and red warning lights flashed frantically.

"Warning, main control system completely offline."

"Warning, fire control radar has been overwritten by unknown commands. Highest command authority has been revoked."

The coffee mug in Smith's hand jerked violently, spilling scalding coffee onto his expensive military uniform. He didn't care about the heat and strode toward the console.

"What's going on? Radar operator, report the situation immediately."

The radar operator frantically tapped the control panel, his face as pale as a dead man's.

"Sir, all buttons are locked. We've lost control of the ship-borne weapons. Someone is forcibly rewriting our underlying combat logic."

"Physical disconnect! Go pull the server power!" Smith roared, throwing himself at the main control console.

No sooner had he finished speaking than the image on the bridge's massive main control screen distorted violently, and the radar array map instantly vanished.

In its place was a crude, aesthetically devoid animation.

A transparent plastic lighter appeared, clicked, and lit a double happiness cigarette. The cigarette tip glowed with a piercing red light, flickering with each breath.

Along with this crude animation, a monotonous Chinese voice directly took over the ship's public address system.

"I said it before: make way, or die. Since you don't understand human language, let's try a different way of communicating."

Every hair on Smith's body stood on end; an extreme chill surged from the soles of his feet straight to the back of his head.

"Fire! Order the submarines to open fire immediately! Sink them!"

The communications officer tore off his headset with a look of utter despair.

"Sir, the underwater communication channel is completely paralyzed. We can't send any commands."

Jiangcheng, Underground Level 3. Wu Dong's face flushed red with excitement, his veins bulging.

"Boss, I've taken full authority. That cruiser is now just a target in our hands."

"Turn the gun barrels." Lu Chen said calmly.

Wu Dong hammered the Enter key.

On the cruiser's forward deck, the massive MK45 127mm main gun, without any human operation, emitted a dull metallic grinding sound as its gears turned. The long barrel slowly elevated and aimed directly at the port side.

There, a Perry-class frigate was anchored, having moved extremely close to provide cover for them. The distance between the two warships was less than five hundred meters.

Through the bulletproof glass of the bridge, Smith stared fixedly at the main gun barrel that had turned toward them; his eyes were widened to the point of bleeding.

"Stop, stop! That thing is loaded with high-explosive armor-piercing shells!"

Smith smashed his fists against the console like a madman.

There was no response. The double happiness cigarette tip on the main control screen suddenly glowed to the extreme.

Boom. An ear-shattering explosion erupted on the sea surface.

The 127mm high-explosive armor-piercing shell burst out of the barrel with enough kinetic energy to destroy everything.

At this point-blank range, there was no need for any ballistic calculations.

The shell smashed through the fragile side armor of the Perry-class frigate and plunged straight into their main ammunition magazine, which was packed with high explosives.

After a brief, split-second of silence.

A massive fireball, brighter than the sun, rose into the air above the sea. The violent shockwave of the explosion brutally pushed the seawater away, kicking up terrifying waves over ten meters high.

The frigate, with a displacement of several thousand tons, was torn in half right down the middle by this terrifying chain reaction explosion. Countless burning steel fragments, accompanied by rolling black smoke, rained down like a storm onto the cruiser's deck, instantly wiping out a large group of sailors who were still scrambling to escape.

Shrieking screams instantly filled the sea area.

Smith's legs went weak, and he collapsed onto the coffee-stained metal floor. He watched the burning, sinking allied warship, clutching his head tightly with both hands and emitting unconscious wails.

"This completely transcends the logic of modern warfare. This is the devil. That guy hiding behind the scenes is a complete madman."

The remaining U.S. warships were completely terrified. None of the captains cared about so-called formations or command sequences; they desperately ordered full rudder, trying to escape that godforsaken cruiser. The entire fleet formation collapsed instantly.

The two Los Angeles-class submarines underwater lost their surface command network, and their sonar screens were left with nothing but glaring white noise. The submarine commanders were covered in cold sweat, terrified that their own torpedo tubes would be the next to be hacked, and they didn't even dare to turn their propellers at full speed.

Zhang Qiang watched the red dots scattering and fleeing on the radar and let out a long breath of relief.

"The Boss is awesome! The brothers in the cabin are all stunned." Zhang Qiang laughed loudly over the channel.

"All hands, full power. Deep dive mode."

The viper no. 3 nuclear submarine, carrying three thousand tons of real gold and silver, brazenly dove into the deep-sea fault right under the noses of the remnants of the 7th Fleet, disappearing completely from the tracking network.

Jiangcheng, Underground Level 3 of Chenguang Factory.

Lu Chen casually cut the communication connection and stubbed out the cigarette butt that had burned to the end in the ashtray on the table.

Wu Dong slumped in his swivel chair, panting heavily, his clothes completely soaked through with cold sweat. Those few short minutes just now were more thrilling than everything he had experienced in the past half of his life combined.

The aftershocks of the tsunami outside were still surging and flooding in, while the massive chassis of the Aerospace Carrier remained quietly suspended thirty meters above the ground, emitting an eerie blue light.

Bang. The heavy metal door of the control room was suddenly slammed open.

Old Zhou scrambled into the basement, one of his black leather shoes having fallen off during his run. His sparse hair was plastered to his forehead by the rain, and he clutched a stack of crumpled documents tightly in his hand.

"Factory Manager, something big has happened." Old Zhou's voice was completely hoarse, making the sound he shouted harsh.

Lu Chen turned his head to look at him. "If the sky falls, the chassis will hold it up. What are you panicking about?"

"The food supply is cut off." Old Zhou collapsed in front of the console, his chest heaving violently.

"Our factory now has 1.05 million registered employees. Just the rice for daily meals consumes over three thousand tons. I had already signed the contract, and this afternoon, three hundred train cars were supposed to be transferred from other provinces to fill the warehouses."

Old Zhou looked up, his eyes bloodshot, his expression one of extreme despair.

"Ten minutes ago, the top suppliers from the three major grain-producing provinces—Zhongzhou, Jiangbei, and Nanling—unilaterally breached their contracts all at once. They even transferred the huge penalty fees directly to our account. Someone is colluding in the shadows, choking off all cross-province logistics channels. Jiangcheng's land transport network has been completely cut off; not a single grain of rice can get in."

Old Zhou slammed the stack of breach-of-contract documents onto the table, his fingers trembling uncontrollably.

"That's one million people, Factory Manager! These people are all currently gathered in the plaza, taking paid shelter. The rice, flour, and oil in our reserve warehouses can only last for three days at most. If the cafeteria can't put food on the table in three days, and that panic spreads, our whole operation will likely collapse from the inside."