Chapter 48 One Hundred Units in Harmony? Just a Small Scale

Li Jiajun's righteous "How is this not a toy?" struck the chest of every technical Expert present like a silent, muffled blow.

The atmosphere in the open space outside the office fell into an extremely bizarre silence.

The wind blew by, rustling a few fallen leaves with a "swish," but other than that, there was no other sound.

Sun Danian and the Experts behind him stared blankly at Li Jiajun. Their mouths were agape, their throats feeling as if they were stuffed with a wad of cotton made from industrial waste; they were choked up and couldn't utter a single word.

They had seen stubborn people, but never anyone this stubborn.

They had also seen people who twisted facts, but never anyone who, after twisting black into white, would turn around and question why you didn't think it was white.

Sun Danian felt his blood pressure rising at a dangerous speed. He took a deep breath, finally allowing his brain, which had almost gone on strike due to shock, to start functioning again.

He really wanted to point at Li Jiajun's nose and roar from the bottom of his heart: "You call something that can fly at three hundred kilometers per hour and hover so stably that you can stand a coin on its rotor a toy? Then what are those treasures in our national key laboratory that wobble when they fly and have a top speed of less than one hundred and fifty? Kindergarten craft projects?"

But in the end, he suppressed that urge to retort.

He finally understood. Engaging in any form of debate based on normal logic with the young man in front of him was meaningless. The structure of the other party's brain was clearly on a different dimension from normal humans. You talk science to him, he talks metaphysics to you. You talk standards to him, he talks art to you.

It was like playing the lute to a cow.

Having realized this, Sun Danian actually calmed down.

He expressionlessly pushed up his thick glasses, the lenses reflecting the afternoon sun. He decided not to get entangled in philosophical questions like "Does this count as a toy," and instead went straight to the point.

"Mr. Li." Sun Danian's voice sounded again.

"I have watched your live stream recordings. I know that besides superior individual performance, your 'toy' also possesses a core capability."

He paused, his gaze like a torch, locking onto Li Jiajun's eyes, and said word by word: "Swarm coordination capability. Now, please demonstrate it for us."

As soon as these words were spoken, the atmosphere at the scene became a few degrees more tense.

If the previous individual performance test was just an appetizer, then now, the main course had finally been served.

The nerves of all the technical Experts present tightened involuntarily. Although they had already learned of the existence of this technology from Sun Danian's report, the text in the report was far less shocking than seeing it with their own eyes.

Li Jiajun's heart skipped a beat.

He had originally wanted to struggle a bit, for example, by making excuses like "Oh, leaders, that feature is optional, it costs extra," or "The weather is bad today, there's signal interference, let's do it another day," and other such nonsense.

But seeing Sun Danian's indisputable gaze, and the Old General not far away who, although not speaking, had "You're not leaving today unless you explain this clearly" written all over his face, he knew he couldn't dodge this one.

'Sigh, you have to force me.' A thought surfaced in Li Jiajun's mind, 'I just want to be a quiet toy factory manager and earn a little money, why is it so hard?'

He showed an extremely reluctant expression, as if his exclusive collection was about to be revealed to the public, and muttered: "Fine, I'll demonstrate, but let's be clear, the coordination function of our toy isn't very stable, it malfunctions sometimes. If it crashes and breaks, you have to compensate me at the full price." This was, of course, him talking nonsense.

Sun Danian nodded expressionlessly: "That's fine."

Having received the guarantee, Li Jiajun slowly took out the controller that looked like a game joystick from his pocket.

This time, he didn't pull any fancy stunts.

He just operated the controller a few times and then pressed another button.

"Bzzzz—" A buzzing sound, a hundred times more intense than during the single-unit test, sounded simultaneously from several opened packing boxes not far away.

The next second, one hundred black drones, like black swifts imbued with life, rose vertically in unison and quickly assembled in the air about ten meters above the ground.

There was not a shred of chaos, and not a single drone showed even a moment of hesitation. The distance between them was as if measured by the most precise ruler, without the slightest deviation.

Just this process of takeoff and assembly made the flight control Experts present twitch their eyelids.

"Alright, one hundred, no more, any more than that and it will cost extra." Li Jiajun curled his lip and began his "performance."

He casually flicked the joystick on the controller. In mid-air, the formation composed of one hundred drones began to move.

Sometimes they formed a long "one"-shaped snake formation, moving at high speeds in the air; sometimes they instantly contracted into a dense cube, hovering steadily in the air.

Immediately after, Li Jiajun entered a new command.

The cube composed of one hundred drones suddenly seemed to "breathe" like a living thing. It split into two in the middle, becoming two small formations each consisting of fifty drones, and then, at a speed difficult for the naked eye to discern, completed a breathtaking crossing maneuver!

At the moment of crossing, the distance between the two drone groups was so terrifyingly close that it seemed as if they would crash into a pile of scrap metal the next second.

Several Experts present had their hearts in their throats and subconsciously closed their eyes.

However, the expected collision sound did not occur.

When they opened their eyes again, the two drone groups had perfectly swapped positions and re-formed into two stable, motionless cubes in the air.

The whole process was smooth as silk, filled with breathtaking, violent aesthetics.

If the previous individual performance test had left the Experts feeling shocked, then at this moment, having witnessed this perfectly executed coordination of one hundred drones, what they felt was a trembling from the depths of their souls.

In the temporarily set up mobile command vehicle, several Experts responsible for data monitoring stared fixedly at the constantly refreshing data stream on the screen, their mouths opening wider and wider, until they were finally completely speechless.

"Command latency... is... is zero..." A young researcher looked at the screen and muttered in a dreamlike tone, "From the moment the command is issued to the fleet completing the action, there is no latency... How is this possible..."

"Command execution success rate... one hundred percent..." Another older Expert took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes hard, seemingly unable to believe the data he was seeing. "One hundred drones, tens of thousands of coordination command actions, not a single error, not a single deviation... This algorithm... it... it is perfect..."

Previously, when they saw the report submitted by Sun Danian, although they didn't say it out loud, they all harbored more or less some skepticism in their hearts.

In the report, Sun Danian used a series of nearly exaggerated terms rarely used in internal assessments, such as "comprehensive transcendence," "disruptive," and "dimensional strike," to describe a "toy" created by a civilian Streamer.

Many people felt, was Teacher Sun too excited? Was it because the pressure from the bottlenecked project was too great, and he was exaggerating a bit after seeing a glimmer of hope?

However, now, the cruel, cold reality was laid out before them. They knew that Sun Danian's report did not contain a single shred of exaggeration. In fact, it was too conservative!

Where is this "transcendence"? This is simply... simply... They struggled to find a word in their hearts to describe it.

They, backed by the country's cost-no-object investment, using the world's top supercomputers, leading thousands of top scientific researchers, having spent years of time and tens of billions in funding to create that "swarm" project, compared to this one right in front of them...

It was simply a bunch of drunken, headless flies!

The scene fell into a deathly silence.

Liu Jianguo stood behind the Old General, the appreciation on his face having turned into undisguised fanaticism. The way he looked at Li Jiajun was like Columbus seeing the New World.

And those few technical Experts who had previously held a scrutinizing attitude were now all standing there blankly, like wooden carvings that had had their souls sucked out. The professional knowledge system and scientific faith they had built up over their entire lives were, at this moment, shaken to the point of collapse by a toy factory manager using one hundred "toys."