105: Chapter 105 Construction Begins on the Heavenly Ladder! The Miracle of the Tower of Babel Piercing the Clouds

"'She's crying'? Who's crying?"

Lin Yun stood in the command tent of the Equatorial Base Station, staring at Professor Fang's old face, distorted by horror on the screen via encrypted quantum communication.

In the scene behind Professor Fang, in the center of the living room of the Beijing villa, the fifth baby, Wu Bao Lin Xi, sat in Ye Linger's arms, as quiet as no infant should be.

His eyes were open—a pair of pupils as black as ink, so deep they seemed to reflect the flow of time itself.

In those eyes, there was none of the ignorance or curiosity an infant should possess.

Instead, there was a sense of... compassion, far transcending his age.

"After he said that, he didn't speak again." Professor Fang's voice was tight. "No matter how we try, he remains silent. But his brainwave activity is exceptionally intense—Nuwa's analysis shows his brain is processing an extremely complex stream of timeline information."

"He seems to... have seen something."

"Seen some images of the future."

Lin Yun's knuckles cracked as he clenched his fists.

the fifth baby's talent was "Time Perception"—the ability to perceive things that were "about to happen." However, in previous tests, his perception range was limited to the short-term future, within a few seconds to a few minutes.

Now, for him to suddenly say things like "They are coming" and "She's crying" meant what he perceived was no longer just something "about to happen."

It was a much more distant future.

And that "she"—the "she" behind the fourth door—who was she?

The fourth channel of the "Moon Gate" emitted an orange-yellow light. Wu Bao perceived that behind that door, there was a female existence who was "crying."

This information was too vague. But it formed a faint causal chain with the "invitation" signal received by Jiu Bao Little Anna earlier and the "The Builder has arrived" message repeatedly broadcast by the fourth channel—

Something was trying to establish contact with Earth through the fourth channel of the Moon Gate.

And this "something" seemed related to "construction" and was currently in some kind of predicament.

"Have Ye Linger stay by Wu Bao's side twenty-four hours a day. Any reaction from him—even a change in expression—must be recorded and reported in real-time."

"Understood."

Lin Yun cut the communication and stood in the tent in silence for a full minute.

Then, he made a decision.

He couldn't wait any longer.

The construction of the space elevator had to be accelerated.

He had to erect this "Heavenly Ladder" before the fourth channel of the Moon Gate fully opened.

Because whether the entity behind the fourth door was friend or foe, a passage connecting the ground to space would provide him with a crucial strategic option when facing the unknown.

"Attention everyone!" Lin Yun stepped out of the tent and shouted into the all-channel broadcast at the construction site.

"Increase the carbon nanotube cable weaving speed by fifty percent!"

"Compress the closing schedule for the final two petals of the Lotus Base Station to forty-eight hours!"

"Prefabricated parts for the geostationary orbit platform will be assembled synchronously in orbit by Luan Bird 5 and 6!"

"The first trial run of the space elevator—"

Lin Yun's voice carried far in the sea breeze of the equator.

"Is moved forward to thirty days from now!"

As soon as this order was given, the entire construction site exploded with activity.

"Thirty days?"

According to the original plan, the full construction cycle for the space elevator was four and a half months. It had been less than two weeks, the cable weaving had just begun, and the geostationary orbit platform was nowhere to be seen—complete it in thirty days?

"That's impossible!" Old Zhao was the first to cry out. "Commander-in-Chief, even if the workers don't eat, drink, or sleep—build a thirty-seven thousand kilometer cable and a space platform in thirty days?"

"It doesn't need to be thirty-seven thousand kilometers," Lin Yun said. "In the first phase, we only need to pull the cable from the ground to an altitude of one hundred kilometers—the edge of the atmosphere. This height is enough for the first load test."

"But even one hundred kilometers is—"

"Red Queen."

"Present."

"Calculating based on the full power capacity of the carbon nanotube self-assembly machines, is it feasible to weave a hundred-kilometer cable bundle within thirty days?"

"Feasible," the Red Queen's answer was crisp and direct. "The self-assembly machines produce ten kilometers of fiber per hour. With one hundred million fibers being woven in parallel, the weaving, twisting, and stress pre-processing of a hundred-kilometer cable bundle can be completed within thirty days."

"However, the prerequisite is that the weaving factory must maintain zero-interruption operation, and there must be no fluctuations in the energy supply to all self-assembly machines."

"I have already allocated the entire output power of two Controlled Nuclear Fusion reactors specifically for the carbon nanotube weaving factory."

"Furthermore, for the assembly of the geostationary orbit platform's prefabricated parts, I suggest it be carried out in orbit by the Luan Bird fleet. There is no need to transport prefabricated parts from the ground—utilize the Luan Bird's shipboard factories to produce and assemble them on-site at geostationary orbit altitude."

Lin Yun nodded.

"Then do it."

Once the news spread, the atmosphere of the entire Equatorial Base Station changed instantly.

It shifted from "orderly advancement" to an "all-out sprint."

Tens of thousands of engineering soldiers and engineers from various countries were pushed to their limits by this insane deadline. But strangely, not a single person complained.

Because they knew that what they were participating in was the greatest project in human history.

Bar none.

Space Elevator—Heavenly Tower—Tower of Babel.

These terms that once only existed in myth and science fiction were now becoming reality under their hands, brick by brick.

Song Mingyue was even more driven.

She practically lived in the weaving factory, sleeping only three hours a day and spending all other time testing cable quality and optimizing construction plans. Her hard hat was never taken off, and the cement dust and carbon nanotube powder on her cargo pants mixed together to form a unique "gray-silver" color.

But her eyes were always bright.

"Her work efficiency is thirty-four percent higher than my expectations," the Red Queen gave a rare positive evaluation. "In the partner candidate database of the Hundred Sons Plan, Song Mingyue's comprehensive value ranking has risen from third place to... first."

Lin Yun pretended not to hear that.

Day fifteen.

The woven length of the cable broke through fifty kilometers.

All eight "petals" of the Lotus Base Station closed, and the circular artificial island with a diameter of five kilometers was officially formed, like a steel lotus blooming on the equatorial sea surface.

Overlooking it from satellite orbit, its beauty seemed beyond human creation.

Day twenty.

The cable length broke through seventy-five kilometers.

Luan Bird 5 and 6 completed the assembly of the first module of the space platform "Tiangong" at geostationary orbit altitude. Although it was far from a complete platform, it could already serve as the anchor point and traction base for the top of the cable.

Day twenty-five.

The cable length broke through ninety kilometers.

During a routine inspection, Song Mingyue discovered a slight resonance frequency shift in the seventy to eighty-kilometer section of the cable. She immediately halted the weaving and spent six full hours recalibrating the parameters of the weaving machine, eliminating that hidden danger.

"If you hadn't discovered it, this section of the cable might have suffered a resonant fracture at seventy-five kilometers when bearing a full load," Lin Yun said to Song Mingyue while looking at the corrected stress data.

"I said, every centimeter must be watched," Song Mingyue's reply was brief and firm, and then she dove back into the weaving factory.

Lin Yun watched her back, and that complex emotion in his heart grew stronger and stronger.

This woman, with her rigor and persistence, might have saved the lives of thousands of people who would ride the space elevator in the future.

She deserved to be remembered.

Day twenty-eight.

Late at night.

The Equatorial Base Station construction site was brightly lit, and the hum of the carbon nanotube weaving factory was like a tireless industrial symphony.

Cable length—ninety-seven kilometers.

Three kilometers to go.

Lin Yun stood beside the "stamen" in the center of the Lotus Base Station—the cable anchor point—looking up at that pitch-black "thread" extending vertically from the ground into the sky.

To the naked eye, that cable was so thin it was almost invisible. But Lin Yun knew that the "thread" had a diameter of three meters and could withstand hundreds of thousands of tons of tension.

Its top was currently passing through the troposphere, stratosphere, and mesosphere, pointing directly to the edge of space.

Against the backdrop of the night sky, it was like a black spear thrusting from the earth toward the stars.

"Spectacular," Song Mingyue's voice came from beside him.

She stood next to Lin Yun, also looking up at the "Heavenly Ladder" piercing the clouds.

Moonlight spilled onto her face, her phoenix eyes reflecting the light of the stars and the slightly flickering navigation light at the top of the cable.

"You know?" Song Mingyue said suddenly. "I've always had an impractical dream."

"What?"

"To build a structure that goes from the ground all the way to heaven."

Song Mingyue smiled, and that smile was so beautiful under the moonlight it didn't seem real.

"When I was a child reading the story of the Tower of Babel in the Bible, humans wanted to build a tower to heaven, so God confused their languages so they could no longer cooperate."

"I always felt the moral of that story was that human 'disunity' is the greatest obstacle to reaching the sky."

"But now—"

She reached out, pointing at the pitch-black cable overhead.

"We did it."

"People from all over the world, using the same language—the language of carbon atoms—have built a true Tower of Babel."

"No God came to disrupt it."

"Because we are our own God."

Lin Yun looked at her, at those eyes sparkling in the moonlight, at that face slightly haggard from continuous work yet still moving, at those gray cargo pants and the crooked hard hat.

His heart skipped a beat.

Not because of a system "favorability prompt."

But because he saw something in this woman that was the same as himself—

Love for all life on this planet.

[part:gemini-3.1-flash-lite]

And that stubbornness—the kind that, to protect this love, would not hesitate to fight against the heavens, the earth, and the entire universe to the bitter end.

"Song Mingyue."

"Hmm?"

"When the day the space elevator is built—"

Before Lin Yun could finish his sentence, the construction site's alarm suddenly blared piercingly!

"Emergency report!" Xiao Zhang's voice exploded from the communicator, "At the top of the cable—at an altitude of ninety-seven kilometers—an unknown energy reaction has been detected!"

"What?"

"The top of the cable seems to be... absorbing some kind of energy from outer space! 'Nuwa' has determined the source of that energy is—"

Xiao Zhang's voice began to tremble.

"The fourth channel of the 'Moon Gate'!"

"The fourth channel... opened completely thirty seconds ago!"

"And—something has come out of the gate!"

"What thing?"

"It's not a spaceship, not a living creature—"

"It is a... light."

"A pillar of orange light."

"It shot out from the far side of the moon, crossed 380,000 kilometers of space, and hit directly—"

"Our cable!"

Lin Yun looked up abruptly.

He saw it.

At an altitude of ninety-seven kilometers, the top of that originally pitch-black carbon nanotube cable was now shrouded in a brilliant, descending pillar of orange light!

That pillar of light was not attacking the cable—the cable showed no signs of any damage.

It was—'pouring into' the cable.

That orange energy from the fourth channel of the 'Moon Gate' was flowing down from the top to the bottom, following the molecular structure of the carbon nanotubes in an incredible way.

Just like blood flowing into a newborn blood vessel.

The cable began to glow.

From top to bottom, that orange radiance spread down the cable at a speed of tens of kilometers per second.

Ten seconds later, the light reached the ground.

The entire cable—ninety-seven kilometers in length—had turned into a pillar of light that radiated a warm orange glow, resembling the 'World Tree' from mythology.

Everyone was stunned.

Tens of thousands of engineers and soldiers at the construction site all looked up in unison, staring at the orange pillar of light that stretched from the earth to the sky, their mouths agape.

In the global live broadcast, countless viewers also witnessed this... miracle at the same moment.

"What is this..." Song Mingyue's voice was trembling, but not from fear; it was an engineer's instinctive reaction when facing an unknown phenomenon.

Lin Yun stared fixedly at the glowing cable.

On his system panel, a series of notifications popped up frantically—

[External energy injection detected!]

[The molecular structure of the carbon nanotube cable is undergoing unknown mutation!]

[Mutation direction: Positive! The tensile strength of the cable is increasing at an exponential rate!]

[Current strength: 300GPa... 500GPa... 1000GPa... Data overflow!]

[Cable material has surpassed the definition of carbon nanotubes. It is entering a brand-new state of matter—]

[System temporarily naming it: 'Star Bridge Matter.']

[Warning: The external energy carries an encrypted data packet. The data packet is being automatically decrypted by Jiu Bao Little Anna's 'Absolute Hacker' talent—]

[Decryption progress: 12%... 35%... 67%... 91%—]

In the villa in the capital, Jiu Bao Little Anna suddenly woke up from her sleep.

Golden data streams gushed out from her ice-blue eyes, projecting a huge, dizzyingly complex 3D holographic image into the air before her.

It was a face. A woman's face.

She had a face extremely similar to a human's—high cheekbones, deep eye sockets, and a head of long hair like orange flames. Her skin had a faint metallic luster, like copper illuminated by sunlight.

In her eyes, there were no pupils.

Only two burning, orange energy vortices.

Those eyes were weeping.

Orange, magma-like teardrops slid down her metallic cheeks.

She opened her mouth and emitted a sound.

That sound appeared simultaneously in Jiu Bao Little Anna's mind, on Lin Yun's system panel, and in the molecular vibration frequency of the glowing cable.

It was a sentence.

In a language so ancient it was almost forgotten.

But Lin Yun understood it.

Everyone present understood it.

Because that voice bypassed the barrier of language directly, injecting itself into everyone's consciousness in the form of pure 'information.'

"I am the builder of the 'Moon Gate'."

"My name, in your language, is closest translated as—"

"Tia."

"I have been imprisoned by the 'Observers' in the void behind the fourth gate for... 370,000 years."

"I saw this rope you built."

"Its material—what you call carbon nanotubes—belongs to the same lineage as the basic material I used when I built the 'Moon Gate'."

"You have reached the most critical step."

"Therefore, I have injected my power into your rope. Let it no longer be just ordinary material. Let it become a true 'Star Bridge'."

"In exchange—"

Those pupil-less eyes, through Jiu Bao Little Anna's 'Absolute Hacker' talent, crossed the 380,000-kilometer distance and met... Lin Yun's gaze.

"Find me."

"Rescue me."

"Then, I will help you—"

"Open the door to home."

The signal was interrupted.

That pillar of orange light vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.

But the cable did not return to its original state.

It retained that faint orange glow. Like an incense stick that had been lit—quietly, continuously, burning from the earth to the sky.

The equatorial base was deathly silent.

No one could digest what had just happened.

Lin Yun gripped the communicator tightly, his knuckles white.

370,000 years.

An existence that had built a 'Star Gate' connecting the universe had been imprisoned in her own creation for a full 370,000 years.

And she chose this moment, when humanity was building a space elevator, to expose her existence and ask humanity for help.

Why this moment?

Because the carbon nanotubes—the material of that cable—were a 'kin' signal she could recognize.

Humanity had inadvertently used a material homologous to the builder of the 'Moon Gate' to build a rope that reached the heavens.

This rope was like a 'signal flare,' illuminating her 370,000 years of darkness in the void.

"Daddy."

On the system panel, Wu Bao Lin Xi's voice came through. That previously silent infant spoke again.

"What she said is true."

"She is crying."

"She has waited for a very, very long time."

Although the fifth baby's voice was childish, the sense of age and certainty in his tone made all the hairs on Lin Yun's body stand up.

He looked at the 'Star Bridge' that stretched from the ground to the sky, emitting a faint orange glow.

"Tia"—the builder of the 'Moon Gate'—an ancient existence imprisoned for 370,000 years.

She had given humanity a gift—upgrading the ordinary carbon nanotube cable into 'Star Bridge Matter.'

In exchange, she wanted humanity to save her.

Was this a trap? Or an opportunity?

Lin Yun did not know.

But he knew one thing—

That cable, after the injection of 'Tia's' power, had seen its strength surpass all limits of physics.

It was no longer a 'rope.'

It was a true 'space elevator.'

A 'Star Bridge' that could bear the weight of an entire civilization, leading from the earth to the stars.

And the first official test run of this 'Star Bridge'—

"Song Mingyue." Lin Yun turned his head.

Song Mingyue was staring fixedly at the glowing cable, her entire body frozen in place.

Her engineer's brain was processing everything that had just happened at maximum speed.

"What did you say?" She came back to her senses.

"The thirty-day deadline has two days left."

"The cable is finished."

In Lin Yun's eyes flickered a complex light, a mix of caution and determination.

"Are you ready?"

Song Mingyue looked at the pillar of light reaching the sky and took a deep breath.

"Give me twelve hours."

"I want to conduct a complete set of safety tests on the mechanical properties of the 'Star Bridge Matter.'"

"If it passes the test—"

She adjusted her crooked hard hat, and a smile appeared at the corners of her mouth—the kind of smile only an architect would show when seeing their life's work about to be completed, an almost devout smile.

"The day after tomorrow, I will personally take the first elevator ride up."

Lin Yun looked into her eyes.

"No. The first ride is too dangerous."

"The building I designed, I go up first." Song Mingyue's tone allowed no room for negotiation, "This is my rule."

Two equally stubborn people looked at each other under the moonlight.

The 'Red Queen's' voice cut in coldly at this moment.

"Reminder to Commander, the system's 'Partner Matching Algorithm' has detected that the genetic compatibility between the host and the target 'Song Mingyue' has increased from S-rank... to SS-rank after the 'Tia' energy event."

"The reason is unknown. But it is speculated to be related to the energy field radiation of the 'Star Bridge Matter.'"

"It is suggested that the host seize the time—"

"Shut up." Lin Yun roared in his heart.

The 'Red Queen' fell silent.

But on the system panel, the phantom icon representing the 'tenth potential offspring' had quietly lit up.

And on the far side of the moon, 380,000 kilometers away.

On the ancient stone frame of the 'Moon Gate,' the orange light of the fourth channel slowly extinguished after being fully released.

But the very moment it extinguished.

The fifth channel—lit up.