103: Chapter 103 Equatorial Base Station! All Nations Pay Tribute

"Interference signal? Have the 'Red Queen' take over the investigation. 'Nüwa' is too gentle when dealing with such antagonistic signals; we need to use brute force to isolate them directly."

Lin Yun issued the command from the airship.

"zhurong," the AI of "luan niao no. 4," immediately forwarded the instruction back to the capital. Three seconds later, the "Red Queen's" feedback arrived.

"Interference source located. It does not originate from the 'Moon Gate' itself, but is a piece of 'Dormant Code' embedded in the control protocol of the Carbon Nanotube Self-Assembly Machine. This code automatically activates upon detecting large-scale mass production signals, attempting to plant a microscopic 'backdoor' into the product's molecular structure—once the cable weaving reaches a specific length, the backdoor will activate, causing the entire cable's strength to instantly drop to one-tenth of its design value."

Lin Yun's expression turned extremely grim.

A backdoor!

He had previously tasked "Nüwa" and the "Red Queen" with conducting a security audit of the design plan that Jiu Bao Little Anna had "downloaded." "Nüwa" had audited the design plan itself and found no issues.

But she had missed one thing—the core code of the carbon nanotube self-assembly technology.

This technology was a reward from the system. Lin Yun instinctively trusted the system, so he hadn't performed the same level of security audit on the technical solution provided by the system.

However, the Red Queen's scanning results showed that the programming language and logical structure of that "Dormant Code" were completely different from the system's own coding style.

It had been "externally implanted."

When was it implanted? At the moment Jiu Bao Little Anna "touched" the holographic projection on the bridge? Or even earlier—during the process where the "Moon Gate" was genetically accelerating Jiu Bao's growth while Katerina was pregnant?

"Someone is using my child to poison my technology," Lin Yun's voice was as cold as the permanently shadowed regions on the far side of the moon.

"Code cleared," reported the Red Queen, concise and efficient. "At the same time, I have conducted a line-by-line review and rewrite of all control protocols for the Carbon Nanotube Self-Assembly Machine. All code segments of unknown origin have been replaced with equivalent functional modules I wrote myself."

"The production line can be restarted."

Lin Yun nodded, but his vigilance did not relax in the slightest.

The forces behind the "Moon Gate"—whether they were the "Observers" or something else—had reach that was much longer than he had imagined. They were not only positioning themselves on a military level but had also penetrated the technological level.

This was a silent war without the smoke of gunpowder.

He had to be even more careful.

But for the moment, he couldn't afford to be too distracted. This was because "luan niao no. 4" was already diving from suborbital altitude at high speed toward the equatorial sea.

Looking down from the porthole, the Pacific Ocean was an extreme, brilliant blue. Near the equator, sunlight hit the surface almost vertically, making the seawater shine like a giant sapphire.

In the very center of that sapphire, "luan bird no. 5" and "no. 6" had already arrived and were using their shipborne nano-construction systems to "grow" a massive artificial island on the sea surface at a speed visible to the naked eye.

The shape of that artificial island was not a common circle or square.

It was a lotus flower.

It was the core element from the design plan Jiu Bao Little Anna had "downloaded"—an upgraded version after Song Mingyue had redesigned the mechanical skeleton.

"Nüwa" had already sent the construction master plan, which Song Mingyue had rushed out in two days, to the frontline construction teams in advance.

When "luan niao no. 4" landed on a "petal" of the artificial island that had not yet closed, Lin Yun stepped onto the nano-alloy ground that had just solidified, feeling a slight vibration under his feet—it was the sound of the deep-sea pile foundations extending toward the seabed.

"Reporting to the Commander-in-Chief!" Old Zhao, the commander of the Engineering Corps, came jogging up to meet him, his dark face full of excitement. "The base station foundation work is thirty percent complete! At this rate, the Lotus Platform will be closed within seven days!"

"Too slow."

Old Zhao was stunned.

"Assign more personnel. Draw twenty thousand genetically enhanced engineers from the 'Civilization Guardian Army' and conduct non-stop construction in three shifts, twenty-four hours a day. The 'Red Queen' will be responsible for scheduling."

"Yes, sir!"

"Also—" Lin Yun glanced at the silhouettes of ships slowly approaching on the distant sea, "what are those?"

Old Zhao turned to look, a subtle expression appearing on his face.

"Reporting to the Commander-in-Chief, those are... 'observation groups' sent by the various signatory countries."

"Observation groups?"

"It's about that notice you released earlier—the entry tickets to participate in the space elevator project," Old Zhao rubbed his hands. "Guess what? Less than forty-eight hours after the notice went out, one hundred and seventy-eight of the one hundred and ninety-two signatory countries worldwide submitted applications to participate."

Lin Yun raised an eyebrow.

"One hundred and seventy-eight?"

He had originally thought that the threshold of donating five percent of GDP would scare off at least half of the countries. He hadn't expected—

"'Nüwa' has compiled a statistic," the Red Queen's cold voice sounded in Lin Yun's ear. "Among the one hundred and seventy-eight countries that submitted applications, one hundred and twenty-three are sincerely wishing to participate in the construction and have already begun preparing engineering teams and resource allocations."

"The other fifty-five are here to 'take advantage.' Their resource donation promises are full of hot air, and the qualifications of their engineering teams are uneven. In seventeen of those countries, the 'engineering teams' even have intelligence personnel mixed in."

Lin Yun gave a cold laugh.

As expected.

The mental inertia of the old era wasn't something that could be changed in a day or two. There were always people who thought they were smarter than everyone else and wanted to play tricks within the new order.

"Send me the list."

Three seconds later, a list marked with red highlights by the Red Queen appeared on Lin Yun's data pad.

He scanned it and then made a decision that caught everyone by surprise.

"Let them all in."

"All of them?" the Red Queen asked, a rare follow-up question. "Including the seventeen countries with embedded intelligence personnel?"

"Including them," Lin Yun nodded, a meaningful smile playing on his lips.

"But assign their work areas entirely to the non-core regions on the periphery of the base station. Let them see the surface-level aspects of how we build the space elevator—it doesn't matter if these things are stolen; with their level of technology, they won't be able to learn it even if they see it."

"As for those intelligence personnel—"

"Give 'Nüwa' authorization to 'accidentally' leak some 'false intelligence' about the space elevator into their personal terminals. Let them take it back and study it for a few years, only to find it's a dead end."

"This is better than directly driving them away. If we kick them out, they'll just find another way. Keeping them here and feeding them fake intel will actually keep them well-behaved."

The Red Queen was silent for a second.

"Strategy assessment... efficient. Executing."

Lin Yun nodded in satisfaction. Just as he was about to turn and inspect the construction site, Xiao Zhang came running over.

"Brother Lin! Over by the reception area... it's getting a bit rowdy."

"What's wrong?"

"The heads of several national delegations are clamoring to see you. They're saying they must personally express their 'sincerity in participating in the construction.'"

"Especially—" Xiao Zhang lowered his voice, "Robert, the Governor of Texas who was the first to sign the 'New Ocean Convention,' has brought a team of five hundred engineers. He said they are not only willing to donate ten percent of their GDP but are also willing to provide all of Texas's oil reserves for free, just to ask—"

"Ask for what?"

"To ask you to reserve an 'exclusive commercial zone' for them on the space elevator's Synchronous Orbit Platform."

Lin Yun was amused by this request.

The space elevator was still having its foundation laid, and these people were already thinking about opening supermarkets in space.

But it had to be said, that old fox Robert had a sharp nose for opportunity.

Once the space elevator was built, the Synchronous Orbit Platform would be the only "gate" from Earth to space. All people and materials entering or leaving space would have to pass through there. Controlling the commercial zone of the Synchronous Orbit Platform was equivalent to controlling the throat of future space trade.

"Let them wait," Lin Yun said as he walked toward the construction site. "I will grant them a collective audience once the base station is closed."

Over the next three days, a magnificent scene never before seen in human history appeared on the equatorial sea.

Engineering vessels and transport fleets from dozens of countries converged from all directions in a grand procession, surrounding the "growing" Lotus artificial island so tightly that not even water could leak through.

The flags of various nations snapped in the sea breeze, but flying highest above all flags was the deep blue planet flag representing the "Earth Civilization Community."

This scene was captured by countless media lenses and broadcast globally via holographic live stream, reaching every corner of the world.

The comment section went wild.

"All nations coming to pay homage! This is the true definition of 'All Nations Come to Pay Homage'!"

"Before, we were the ones begging others for technology; now, the whole world is begging Dragon Country for an entry ticket!"

"A space elevator... my god... is humanity really going to build a Tower of Babel?"

"Lin Yun is awesome! Dragon Country is awesome!"

Behind this global carnival, Lin Yun was not idle.

He patrolled back and forth across the Lotus Base Station construction site from morning till night, personally checking the construction quality of every key node.

The first batch of products from the full-scale carbon nanotube self-assembly production line successfully came off the line after the "backdoor code" was cleared.

It was a carbon nanotube cable three millimeters in diameter and over one hundred kilometers long.

When this cable was transported by a "Luan Bird" from the factory to the Equatorial Base Station and suspended between two motherships for stress testing, all the engineers present—including those from various countries who were there to "visit"—were stunned.

A hundred-kilometer-long rope carrying a load over a thousand times its own weight without budging an inch.

No known material could achieve this.

"My God..." an old, established materials scientist from Europe murmured to himself. "This isn't an advancement in materials science... this is a... generational replacement of materials science."

"It's like moving from stone to bronze, or from bronze to steel."

"We are witnessing the fourth materials revolution of human civilization."

What no one present knew was that in a temporary laboratory in the core area of the base station, Song Mingyue was squatting on the ground, holding a handheld spectroscopic analyzer, inspecting the microstructure of the carbon nanotube cable sample millimeter by millimeter.

She had been working for forty consecutive hours without closing her eyes once.

She had fulfilled her promise to deliver the drawings in two days, finishing half a day early. But after the drawings were handed over, instead of resting, she had immediately flown to the equatorial construction site to begin even more frantic on-site inspections.

"Engineer Song, you haven't slept for forty hours," Lin Yun said as he walked into the lab and looked at Song Mingyue squatting on the floor, his brow furrowed.

"I'm not sleepy," Song Mingyue replied without looking up, moving the analyzer to the next inspection point.

"The bags under your eyes are large enough to hold an egg."

Song Mingyue's mouth twitched, and she finally looked up.

On that face stained with dust, her phoenix eyes were indeed bloodshot, but her gaze was startlingly bright.

"Mr. Lin, do you have any idea how perfect the microstructure of this cable is?"

Song Mingyue stood up and turned the analyzer's screen toward Lin Yun.

"Zero defects. A hundred kilometers in length, and zero defects. In traditional materials science, the probability of this is equivalent to you winning the lottery jackpot a million times in a row."

"I know."

"That's why I'm uneasy," Song Mingyue's voice lowered. "Something that is too perfect must have a problem."

Lin Yun looked into her eyes, which were slightly reddened from excessive fatigue yet remained as sharp as blades, and a complex emotion welled up in his heart.

This woman's intuition was as sharp as his own.

"The 'problem' you're worried about has already been discovered and solved," Lin Yun told her briefly about the "Dormant Code."

After hearing this, Song Mingyue was silent for a long time.

"In other words, someone wanted us to hang this rope up and then, at a specific moment, have it suddenly snap?"

"Correct."

"A thirty-seven-thousand-kilometer-long cable snapping..." Song Mingyue's expression changed. "The snapping cable would sweep across the Earth's surface like a super whip. Given its mass and speed, it would be enough to cause a... global disaster around the equator."

Lin Yun nodded.

"So the safety of this rope is more important than anything else."

"This is also why I need you."

"Not just for the design—I need you to monitor the entire construction process. Every centimeter of the cable, every connection node, and every set of stress data must be personally confirmed by you."

Song Mingyue looked into Lin Yun's eyes and read the seriousness and trust within them.

"You're entrusting such an important matter to someone you've only known for three days?"

"I'm a good judge of character," Lin Yun said. "And—the 'Red Queen' has done a comprehensive assessment of you. Your professional ability, sense of responsibility, and your ability to work under extreme pressure rank first among all architectural engineers globally."

"Of course," Lin Yun's tone shifted, "your level of stubbornness is also number one."

Song Mingyue snorted, but the barely perceptible smile at the corner of her mouth betrayed her.

"Fine."

"I'll take the job."

She took a deep breath and squatted back down to continue inspecting her cable.

"But I'll say it again—I want to watch it grow with my own eyes, meter by meter."

"From the ground... to the sky."

Lin Yun looked at her stubborn back and suddenly thought of something.

The system said she was one of the top three potential partner targets for the "Hundred Sons Plan."

The system said to woo her using "jointly creating a great engineering project type romance."

A thirty-seven-thousand-kilometer rope, stretching from the ground to space.

Two people, building it together with their own hands.

Would this count as... the longest 'Red Thread' in the universe?

Lin Yun shook his head, casting aside this far-fetched thought.

Then he walked out of the lab and ran straight into Xiao Zhang, whose face was full of gossip.

"Brother Lin, isn't Engineer Song very beautiful?"

"None of your business."

"Brother Lin, Captain Long Ying and Lawyer Lu just sent a message saying they saw the live news broadcast of you and Engineer Song alone in the lab. They're asking—"

"Asking what?"

"Asking when you're going to bring her home."

Lin Yun's footsteps paused for a moment.

"Also," Xiao Zhang's voice took on a hint of tension, "there's a new situation at the 'Moon Gate.'"

"What's the situation?"

"The Fourth Passage..."

"That Fourth Passage that just lit up—"

Xiao Zhang's expression became exceptionally solemn.

"Ever since it lit up, it has been radiating a special frequency wave."

"'Nüwa' deciphered the content of that wave."

"It's a message looping repeatedly. It only says one sentence—"

Xiao Zhang took a deep breath.

"'The Builder has arrived. Please open the interface.'"