247: Chapter 247 I Only Talk About Absolute Quantities

In the Underground Level 3 command center, Wu Dong's hands were flying across the keyboard, hitting the Enter key hard.

The holographic projection wall on the wall changed instantly. The screen full of red enemy ship icons disappeared, replaced by an anatomy diagram of a weapon.

Wei Jianguo rushed to the screen in a few steps, his nose almost touching the holographic projection, and he pushed up his glasses that had slid down.

"Boss, this blueprint doesn't look right."

Wei Jianguo pointed at the data box in the top right corner of the screen.

"The blueprint shows an exterior that is just a flat disc thirty centimeters wide. There is no explosive filling chamber inside, no high-energy battery pack, not even a basic underwater thruster installed. You call this a depth charge?"

Old Zhou poked his head from behind.

"Old Wei, this disc just looks like a plain, solid black iron puck."

Lu Chen threw the plastic lighter in his hand onto the console with a click.

"Why would I need to load explosives?"

Lu Chen said, his tone calm.

"At a depth of 11,000 meters underwater, conventional gunpowder wouldn't even ignite. Hundreds of atmospheres of pressure would crush the explosive force within ten meters."

"Then what does this thing use to cause damage? The enemy fleet uses ultra-high-power sonic wave generators."

Wu Dong turned his head to ask.

Lu Chen pointed to a silver module the size of a fingernail in the center of the anatomy diagram.

"There is only one module installed inside: a miniature high-frequency infrasonic generator."

Lu Chen relit a double happiness cigarette.

"This thing doesn't need to carry internal energy at all. Its shell uses a cheap piezoelectric ceramic composite coating. You just throw it down. The deeper the seawater, the greater the water pressure. The piezoelectric ceramic is forcibly squeezed by the water pressure, constantly generating strong electric currents, which are fed directly to the infrasonic generator inside."

Wei Jianguo was stunned after hearing this.

"That's brilliant."

Wei Jianguo slapped his thigh hard.

"Using the high pressure of the seabed to directly convert into electrical energy for power. The deeper it dives, the greater the water pressure, and the higher the frequency of the infrasonic waves it releases. That bunch from Freemasons uses sonic waves to attack our submarines, so we'll use infrasonic waves to blast through their sonar cores in return."

Wei Jianguo carefully scanned the cost estimation data in the bottom right corner of the blueprint, and his face changed.

"The production cost is way too cheap."

Wei Jianguo pointed at the screen and shouted.

"The shell uses the most common cast iron, and the electronic components inside can be pressed out by the millions in our factory's No. 1 workshop in a single day. This has absolutely no technical difficulty; it's all a disposable consumable."

"Cheap is exactly what I want. The blueprint can be directly disassembled into twelve completely independent assembly modules."

Lu Chen exhaled a puff of smoke.

"Old Wei, stop all civil electronic component production lines in the surface factory immediately, and get all one million employees who have eaten the high-energy nutrition bars onto the assembly lines."

"Understood."

Wei Jianguo immediately turned to grab his tablet.

"Even a fool could assemble this blueprint. With the assembly lines running at full capacity and one million people working in shifts, give me twenty-four hours, and I can buy out all the cast iron in Jiangcheng's steel market."

Da Biao rubbed his bald head on the side.

"Boss, once Old Wei builds these iron pucks, how are we going to get them over there? The submarine cargo hold is only so big, and this thing doesn't have a thruster, so it can't swim over on its own."

"Who said we were using submarines to transport them?"

Lu Chen turned to look at Old Zhou.

Old Zhou hurriedly straightened his back.

"Boss, please give your orders."

"Contact the port authorities in Jiangcheng and the three surrounding provinces. Buy as many of those bulk carriers that are about to be scrapped and dismantled—the beat-up ships that just haul coal and sand, without radar or fire control—as you can. Tow them directly to the deep-water berths at our No. 0 Military Port."

Lu Chen spoke quickly.

Old Zhou was stunned for a moment.

"Boss, how broken should they be? Should we buy the ones that aren't even operable?"

"As long as they haven't sunk yet, buy them all. After buying them, find a few welders to weld the autopilot navigators directly onto the rudders, and just lock in the GPS coordinates of the Mariana Trench."

Lu Chen's eyes were cold.

"The ships just need to drift to the area directly above it; there's no need for anyone to go with them."

Da Biao swallowed hard after hearing this.

"Boss, are you planning to go fish bombing with this setup? A full load of scrap ships, and you're just going to dump them all on their heads?"

"I'm not talking about tactical duels; I only care about absolute quantity."

Lu Chen crushed his cigarette butt in the ashtray.

"Freemasons' fleet has laid a high-tech defensive net down there. They are waiting for us to send our elite forces to their deaths. I'm just going to bring down an iron rain on them and use scrap metal to blow up all their radar and sonar."

One day later, at the No. 6 giant workshop of Chenguang Electronics Factory.

One million workers on paid leave for safety were all engaged in crazy manual modular assembly.

Li Tie sat next to the assembly line, his hands flying. In less than five seconds, he snapped six black cast iron plates over a core module and hammered them shut with a pneumatic rivet gun.

A complete black iron puck rolled down the conveyor belt into the large shipping container behind him.

"Brother Zhang, move a bit faster."

Li Tie turned his head to urge Zhang Daqiang next to him.

"This is already the third container."

Zhang Daqiang wiped the sweat from his forehead and chuckled.

"Tie, this high-energy nutrition bar is truly divine. After eating two yesterday, I've worked for twenty hours straight without even yawning, and my wrists still have raw strength."

Li Tie picked up a new core component.

"Isn't that right? The factory director gave us the blueprint modules directly, and we can assemble them with our eyes closed. This money is earned way too easily."

Zhang Daqiang lowered his voice and leaned in.

"What do you think the director wants with so many iron pucks? In one day and night, the million of us have stacked up a full hundred thousand. The logistics department's forklifts are about to crush the workshop doors."

"Who cares what he wants? We get high pay and eat magic medicine. Even if the director asked us to build iron bricks to fill the Pacific Ocean, we'd still do it."

Li Tie replied loudly.

Outside the workshop gates, dozens of heavy trucks lined up in a long dragon, and forklifts operated frantically, hauling the containers filled with black depth charges to the No. 0 Military Port.

No. 0 Military Port, at the edge of the pier.

Old Zhou stood in the wind with a thick stack of documents, panting heavily.

Lu Chen walked to the pier wearing a black jacket, looking at the fleet of ships docked before him.

On the sea surface floated forty-five rusty large bulk carriers. The red paint on the hulls was peeling off, several cargo ships had large holes above the waterline, and the edges of the hulls were covered in barnacles.

"Boss, they've all been brought here."

Old Zhou hurriedly handed over the documents.

"All the scrap ships from the surrounding three provinces that were headed for the scrapyards have been towed here. The package price was cheap; we got them all for fifty million."

"Are the navigators installed?"

Lu Chen glanced at the broken ships.

Wei Jianguo jumped down from the deck of a nearby cargo ship, holding a welding torch.

"Boss, they're all welded shut. Even the backup lines for manual override have been cut. The GPS is directly linked to that trench; no one can pull them back."

Da Biao led hundreds of genetic Death Squad Soldiers, operating dozens of heavy cranes, dumping dozens of containers directly into the bottom holds of these bulk carriers.

One hundred thousand black infrasonic depth charges, without any protection or packaging, were piled up in the cargo holds, packed completely full.

"Boss, the cargo is all loaded. Each ship took in an average of over two thousand iron pucks, overloading them by twenty percent."

Da Biao ran over to report.

"Are we really not sending anyone to go with them? Even sending two frigates to watch from the side would be fine."

"Watch what? Do you need someone to stare at the trash when you dump it into the trash can?"

Lu Chen turned his head to look at the sky.

"Weigh anchor, let the ships leave the port."

Wei Jianguo pressed the master control remote in his hand.

Forty-five dilapidated bulk carriers simultaneously erupted with harsh, unpleasant engine roars, the exhaust pipes spewing thick black smoke as they zig-zagged out of the No. 0 Military Port.

Seven hours later, Mariana Trench, directly above the trench.

Three thousand meters deep in the deep sea.

This is the shallow buffer layer of the Mariana Trench. The command center cruiser of Freemasons' Poseidon Fleet was not lurking in the extreme pressure abyss of 11,000 meters, but was staying at the 3,000-meter alert water layer. Deeper below that were the thirty-five fully automated unmanned defense warships.

In the spacious command room of the cruiser, the lights were dim, and the holographic tactical board emitted a ghostly blue light.

Commander Andrei held a glass of red wine in his hand, sitting leisurely in a high-backed leather chair, watching the calm sonar spectrum on the screen.

"Sir, for the past ten hours, no submarines from the Chinese military or Chenguang Electronics Factory have approached the surrounding waters."

The adjutant stood by and reported, his tone relaxed.

"Our deep-sea physical resonance generator has been in the highest pre-heating standby state."

Andrei swirled his wine glass and took a sip of red wine.

"Lu Chen doesn't dare to come. Those piles of scrap metal under his command will be instantly shaken into scrap metal fragments by sonic waves as soon as they enter our range."

"He thinks he can solve the crisis of that broken plate under Jiangcheng with brute force; he's too naive."

Andrei leaned back in his chair and sneered.

"In the deep sea, we Freemasons possess absolute technological crushing power. He can't even touch the threshold of 11,000 meters."

The adjutant laughed along.

"Just now, the surface radar captured some abnormal movements. I thought they had come for a strong assault, but the whole screen was full of civil shipping signals without encrypted communication bands."

"Civil ships?"

Andrei frowned.

"Bring up the footage."

The holographic screen instantly switched to the reconnaissance footage from the surface optical periscope.

The moment Andrei saw the screen clearly, he spat a mouthful of red wine onto the floor.

The sea was rough, and forty-five rusty bulk carriers that were about to rot were swaying and stopping in the waters directly above the trench. There were no escort warships around, and no fire control radar locks.

These dozens of ships all exuded a rotten smell of impending sinking.

"What is this?"

Andrei hurriedly put down his wine glass and pointed at the screen.

"Are the Chinese crazy? Sending a pile of broken ships from a scrap yard here. What can this do? A protest march?"

The several staff officers in the command room also gathered around. After seeing those broken ships clearly, they all burst into a burst of wanton mocking laughter.

"Sir, this might be the 'donkey running out of tricks' from the Chinese idiom. Lu Chen has no deep-sea weapons worth showing off, so he's specifically using this industrial trash to disgust us."

The adjutant's shoulders shook with laughter.

"The radar shows there isn't even the heat source of a living person on them. It's absolutely an empty fleet."

Andrei wiped the wine stains from the corner of his mouth and looked at the screen coldly.

"Turn on the defensive sonic wave net in the shallow water layer. Just shake it a couple of times to tear the bottom plates of these broken iron sheets and let them sink to the bottom to feed the fish."

Andrei gave the order.

"Stopping above is an eyesore."

The adjutant immediately turned to operate the console.

"Yes, sir. Starting the area clearing resonance immediately."

Just as the adjutant's finger was about to press the red launch button, the bottoms of the forty-five bulk carriers on the surface suddenly made a series of dull explosions. Before leaving the port, the bottom holds of these cargo ships had been welded with miniature directional blasting modules by Old Zhou, and they detonated on time at this moment.

The huge bottom breakwater plates of the cargo ships were forcibly blown open on the sea surface.

Forty-five huge gaps were aimed directly at the pitch-black Pacific abyss.

Andrei stared at the holographic screen, the sneer on his face instantly solidified, and his eyes widened bit by bit.

The radar alarm erupted with ear-piercing screams without warning, and the entire command room was tightly shrouded in frantically flashing red light.

"Sir."

The adjutant was so scared that he took a sudden step back, pointing at the main radar screen, his voice completely out of tune.

"Something is coming down, and the quantity is huge."

On the screen, the originally empty shallow water layer suddenly erupted with dense red signal dots.

There were no conventional torpedo propulsion trajectories, nor was there any feedback from the pressure-resistant shells of deep-sea submersibles.

One hundred thousand pure black disc-shaped iron pucks, without any formation, covered the sky and the earth, passing directly through the sea surface and sinking frantically downward.

They had no noise from any power propulsion, relying entirely on their own cast iron weight to free-fall in the seawater.

Thousands upon thousands of black iron pucks were falling silently in the deep sea.

Andrei's face pressed against the screen, his hands gripping the armrests of the leather chair tightly.

"Sonar detection has no reaction. They don't even have a gunpowder reaction; they are all dead objects."

The radar operator roared in horror.

"Sir, the defense system doesn't know which one to lock onto. There are too many targets; the radar processing core is fully loaded and frozen."

One hundred thousand iron pucks penetrated to a depth of 3,000 meters, and the water pressure instantly reached three hundred atmospheres.

The piezoelectric ceramics inside the iron pucks, which were cheap to the extreme, were instantly squeezed to their physical limit by the extremely high pressure, and the continuous high-strength electric current instantly lit up the miniature high-frequency infrasonic generators inside.

The silently falling black iron pucks were activated at this moment.