436: Chapter 436 Three Ships Moored Together at Longcheng Port

After finishing his last sentence, he put on his glasses and nodded to the Speaker.

In the parliament hall, two hundred and thirty-seven members simultaneously lowered their heads to look at the voting devices in their hands—the green button still retained the warmth of their fingers.

That same afternoon, at Changi Naval Base.

The scorch marks on the supply pier were still there.

The wreckage of the U.S. Navy's littoral combat ship "Omaha" had been cut into twenty-three pieces, with the largest chunk—the stern—propped diagonally against a concrete pier on the east side.

Of the seven letters on the hull that spelled "USS OMAHA," only the last two remained—M and A.

As the cutters used an oxy-acetylene torch to melt away even these two letters, the Myanmar naval engineers standing on the pier were already repainting the pier number in white: Longcheng-01 Berth.

Longcheng.

This name was chosen by Old K last night from three options handwritten by Zhang Cheng.

When Zhang Cheng wrote these three options, the view outside his window was exactly in the direction of the Andaman Sea.

He picked up his pen, crossed out the two options "Zhaonan" and "Zhennan," drew a line under "Longcheng," and added a note on the side—South of this line, everything from now on will be the waters of the Dragon Flag.

At this moment, at the deep-water pier of the Longcheng Naval Base, three nuclear-powered aircraft carriers were docking simultaneously.

The first to enter the port was the "Shuguang"—the black coating below its waterline reflected the tropical sun of 2:00 PM.

Its deck was packed with J-10B stealth carrier-based aircraft; with their wings folded, they looked like a row of eagles with their wings tucked in, and the anti-ship missiles hanging from their wingtips still bore the factory-applied rust-preventive oil.

The second ship, the "Hope," cut in from the port's northeast channel.

A massive Baobab flag hung from the mast of its island; the flag snapped loudly in the sea breeze, and every time its corner whipped up, it nearly touched the island's radar dome.

The third ship, the "Freedom," was anchored three nautical miles offshore, where carrier-based helicopters were conducting deck landing and takeoff training.

The wind and waves whipped up by the rotors pushed several nearby fishing boats, causing them to rock back and forth.

The captains stood on their decks, looking up at this thing they had never seen before—its flight deck was larger than the salt-drying fields of their entire village.

The docking of the three aircraft carriers at the Longcheng base was the first public display of military force since the opening of the Kra Canal, and it was also the largest concentration of surface vessels for the entire South China Sea Fleet since its establishment.

At this moment, within the airspace identification zone of the Longcheng base, twenty-four J-10B fighters were flying in formation, spelling out the characters for "Victory."

Using four-plane diamond echelons as the base, the fleet precisely arranged themselves into a Chinese character that occupied the entire sky above the port.

On the oscilloscopes of the ground-based air defense radar station, the twenty-four light spots maintained an error range of no more than two meters between each other; the formation altitude was precisely stabilized at two thousand meters, and the speed was constant at four hundred knots.

This formation precision was not flown by pilots—the pilots were Death Soldiers.

This precision was programmed in.

On the north side of the pier, Li Lanzhi's motorcade stopped in front of a row of makeshift construction site prefab houses.

She had just gotten off the ferry, holding a survey map from the Singapore Urban Redevelopment Authority.

The map marked six plots of land circled in red—these plots had originally belonged to two real estate development subsidiaries under Temasek Holdings, but after being legally requisitioned by the Federal Government, they were allocated for public housing construction.

"The batch of 'waterfront mansions' that Temasek previously built in Punggol—the average price was 3.8 million Singapore dollars per unit, 120 square meters, with a 25 percent down payment and a 30-year mortgage.

The residents were mainly executives from OCBC Bank, partners from Gore's Asia region, and CEOs of two tech companies."

As she walked, she said to the Director of the Housing and Development Board beside her, "Now, this batch of houses will all be transferred to the Federal Housing Ministry's public housing reserve.

Do not change the layouts, do not change the renovations, and do not fill in the swimming pools—if the owners do not return them, the houses will be confiscated.

The rent will be calculated in the new Myanmar Kyat, at 1.5 per square meter per month.

The commercial land next to it will be converted into a new energy component factory, and when hiring, priority will be given to the property cleaners and gardeners who originally lived here."

"Prime Minister, their property and gardening workers—many are foreign laborers from Bangladesh."

"Then give them Federation of Myanmar citizenship."

Li Lanzhi rolled up the blueprints, stuffed them into her bag, and before entering the prefab house, she turned back and added, "In Singapore, foreign laborers have no social security, no pension, live in converted shipping containers, and their wages are 30 percent lower than the market rate.

In this city, from today on—there is only labor law, no foreign labor law."

Inside the prefab house, seventeen old alumni from the Nanyang University Alumni Association were already waiting for her.

The oldest among them was eighty-four, sitting in a wheelchair with the last issue of the university magazine before Nanyang University closed in 1980 resting on his knees.

The cover featured the school emblem—three concentric circles, with an open book at the center.

He tapped his finger on the cover and said to Li Lanzhi, "Nanyang University has been closed for forty-eight years.

That plot of land at 93 Nanyang West—it is now the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum and the Nanyang Technological University Business School.

The school sign was dismantled, the bronze bell was melted down, and the Ministry of Education declared that the diplomas were no longer recognized.

That year, I was thirty-five, and my students called me Teacher Chen.

Last year, I lived in an HDB flat in Ang Mo Kio; downstairs was a McDonald's, and across the street was a tuition center—not a single person knew that the land they were stepping on was once the largest Chinese-language university in Southeast Asia."

Li Lanzhi crouched down and held his hand.

"Teacher Chen.

At four o'clock this afternoon, the Federal Ministry of Education officially issued a document: the existing buildings on the original site of Nanyang University will not be demolished, but the Business School will be moved to the city center, and that building will be converted into the Nanyang University Memorial Hall.

A monument will be erected on the adjacent green space—the lawn that has been fenced off by Nanyang Technological University for twenty years.

The monument is named 'Backbone of the Nation,' and it will be engraved with the names of all the faculty and students who were at Nanyang University when it closed in 1980.

Your name is in the third row, seventeenth position—Chen Wenqing."

The old man's hand began to tremble.

"You, how do you know?"

"Before President Zhang signed the decree to reopen the university, he pulled your teaching records from your last three years at Nanyang University, verified your name, your department, and that photo taken when you sent off the last batch of students at the school gate—in the photo, you are wearing a white shirt and holding a roll book."

She zoomed in on the photo on her phone and handed it to him, "He printed the photo out and wrote four characters on the back—'Teaching is not a crime.'

The original is now in the Presidential Palace archives.

Teacher Chen, that monument is not just for names; it is for an inscription.

The inscription is the piece you wrote in 1984, published in Lianhe Zaobao, titled 'Please Remember, This Land Once Grew with Chinese Language'—the full text will be carved into granite.

Your name will be signed at the bottom."

Behind her, the Director of the Housing and Development Board turned around, pretending to look at the construction schedule on the wall.

An accompanying official from the Singapore Land Authority took off his glasses and wiped the lenses with his sleeve, but the lenses only became blurrier the more he wiped them.

Teacher Chen's students—who were themselves already sixty or seventy years old—walked over one by one and placed their hands on the old man's shoulders.

The old man did not speak; he simply opened the university magazine, turned to a page, and pointed to a poem printed in lead type.

The title of the poem consisted of only two words: "Waiting for the Monument."