200: Chapter 200: The Shadow Mech Appears!

Lin Yuan looked at Shen Changhe's excited appearance and gave a light laugh.

The original three-day cycle for component preparation had been compressed to two days under the near-crazed, desperate efforts of these veteran military industry workers.

This was not only a miracle of production capacity, but also the backbone unique to the nation's scientific researchers.

He tilted his head, his gaze passing over Shen Changhe's shoulder to scan the figures working hard deep in the workshop.

Under the cold white shadowless lamps, every face bore heavy dark circles under the eyes.

But those pairs of eyes were as bright as hungry wolves in the dark night, showing a ruthlessness to tear apart all the shackles of the old era.

"Everyone has worked hard these past few days."

Lin Yuan withdrew his gaze and nodded slightly to Shen Changhe, his tone sincere.

When Shen Changhe heard this, he waved his hand dismissively and laughed loudly.

"Hard work? What hard work!"

He patted his chest, his voice so loud it shook the ears.

"You have no idea, everyone in the entire base right now is like they've been wound up, wishing they could treat one day as three!"

"You've already handled nuclear fusion. If we drop the ball at a time like this, wouldn't that be a disgrace!"

Speaking to this point, Shen Changhe clenched his fist tightly, his voice deepening slightly, carrying the iron-blooded flavor of a military pledge on the battlefield.

"Tonight, even if we don't sleep or rest, we will definitely rush out those last few components for you without leaving a single one behind!"

"Tomorrow morning, we go straight to final assembly!"

Lin Yuan looked at his posture of wishing he could weld himself into the workshop, smiled, and nodded without saying anything more.

...

The next morning.

The sky had just begun to turn fish-belly white as a biting mountain wind, wrapped in the chill of early winter, poured into Xishan Base from between the peaks.

Xishan Base, Heavy Final Assembly Workshop.

The specifications of this workshop were several orders of magnitude higher than a regular preparation workshop.

Under the high-pitched dome, the steel rails of heavy gantry cranes crisscrossed, and dozens of giant mechanical arms hung like sleeping steel pythons on the lifting stations on both sides.

The floor was covered with a special epoxy resin coating, bright as a mirror.

At this time, within the massive final assembly workshop, hundreds of top experts and engineers had already lined up in position.

Everyone stood straight beside their respective stations, their gazes collectively locked on the direction of the workshop entrance.

The air was filled with the pungent smell of metal coolant and the extreme sense of pressure from the heavy breathing of hundreds of people intertwined.

"Da. Da. Da."

Steady footsteps came from the end of the passage.

Lin Yuan, wearing a deep gray Mao suit with his hands hanging naturally at his sides, stepped into the gates of the final assembly workshop with a calm expression.

Swish!

Hundreds of pairs of eyes lit up at the same moment.

Shen Changhe rushed out from the front of the crowd with great strides.

The bloodshot lines in his eyes were thirty percent heavier than yesterday, and his eye sockets were sunken, but his entire person was in a state of near-manic excitement.

"Academician Lin!"

Shen Changhe's voice trembled slightly due to extreme excitement. He stood still in front of Lin Yuan, took a deep breath, and straightened his back.

"The full set of components for the Chengying Mecha has been 100% prepared!"

"All components have been sorted and categorized according to the final assembly drawing sequence, and pre-installed at each station!"

"Just waiting for your command to start the final assembly!"

Listening to Shen Changhe's powerful report, Lin Yuan smiled and nodded, just about to say something.

From the direction of the workshop entrance, a steady set of footsteps suddenly sounded again.

Arriving along with those footsteps were several silent but extremely oppressive figures.

Yang Tongan, dressed in deep gray casual clothes with his back held perfectly straight, entered the final assembly workshop under the escort of two guards.

"Elder Yang!"

Hundreds of people straightened their backs in unison, the sound wave nearly flipping the dome.

Yang Tongan slightly raised his hand to press down the noise. His half-closed sharp eyes slowly scanned the field, finally landing steadily on Lin Yuan.

He walked forward, extended a calloused hand, and heavily patted Lin Yuan's shoulder.

"I've come; I want to see it with my own eyes."

Yang Tongan's voice was low and raspy, extremely brief, but the expectation in his eyes that had been suppressed for who knows how long was undisguised at this moment.

Lin Yuan met Yang Tongan's gaze and nodded with a smile.

Then.

He turned around.

Facing the hundreds of engineers and experts waiting with bated breath.

He slightly raised his chin, his gaze calm and sharp, as he uttered two words.

"Begin."

Shen Changhe's whole body jolted.

He suddenly raised the walkie-talkie in his hand, veins bulging on his forehead, his raspy voice exploding outward.

"Final assembly start!!! Everyone to your positions!!!"

Rumble!!

In an instant, the heavy gantry crane overhead moved first.

Steel cables tightened, pulleys rotated at high speed, and the dull roar of machinery echoed through the dome.

Immediately after, the giant mechanical arms on both sides were activated simultaneously. Hydraulic rods extended, and joints turned, emitting the "hiss~ hiss~" sound of air pressure release.

The smoothness of the entire assembly process made the scalps of all the onlookers present go numb.

There were no technical bottlenecks.

No tolerance error reports.

Not a single step required rework or temporary adjustment.

Every component was taken from the material rack, sent to the assembly position via conveyor belt, and then accurately positioned by mechanical arms and manually locked by engineers...

The entire process was done in one go.

The first to take shape was a pair of thick and powerful bionic leg chassis.

The alloy-cast skeleton was steadily placed on the ground mounting base by the crane arm, its rugged metal lines exuding a sense of primal power.

Twelve large load-bearing joints out of the sixty-four precision joints were the first to complete servo motor embedding, drive shaft locking, and hydraulic pipeline connection.

Immediately after, the humanoid skeleton began to grow upward section by section.

The waist torque-bearing structure, the modular thoracic chamber frame, the dual-arm servo skeleton...

The second every module was hoisted into place, it was accompanied by a dull sound of metal biting.

"Click."

"Click."

"Click!"

Only about ten minutes later.

The steel cable of a heavy gantry crane was stretched to its limit.

Hanging below the hook was the final piece of lightweight high-strength composite armor plate, shimmering with a dark, eerie light.

That armor plate was a full two meters square, its edges cut extremely sharp, and its surface faintly shimmering with a nearly invisible matte coating.

Under the bated-breath gaze of everyone, the gantry crane slowly descended.

The armor plate was aligned with the last remaining empty spot on the mecha's broad chest and dropped precisely into place.

"Clack!"

An extremely dull, heavy sound of metal locking exploded in the workshop.

The echo vibrated.

The entire field was dead silent.

The main framework of the first Chengying Mecha was officially assembled.

It stood right there in the center of the final assembly workshop.

The massive five-to-six-meter-tall body, with its armor surfaces of intertwined streamlined and angular curves, shimmered with a heart-palpitating cold metallic light under the pour of the cold white shadowless lamps from the dome.

The broad shoulder armor flared slightly outward to both sides, sketching an extremely oppressive silhouette.

On the chest armor plate, a circular indentation was reserved; that was the installation site for the Cold Fusion Core.

Every person standing at its feet had no choice but to look up.

That kind of industrial violent aesthetic that did not belong to this era, and the suffocating pressure like Mount Tai pressing down, caused the hundreds of battle-hardened military industry elites to collectively lose their ability to speak.

Yang Tongan walked step by step to the front of the mecha and looked up.

His gaze slowly moved up along those thick metal legs, past the sharp-edged waist and abdominal armor, over the broad chest, until it reached the top.

His Adam's apple bobbed.

He didn't say a word.

But deep in those half-closed eyes, something was surging violently.

In the long silence.

A light laugh rang out at the right time.

"Everyone, don't be in a hurry to get excited."

Lin Yuan spoke with a light laugh, his tone revealing composure.

"What is currently placed before you is still just an empty shell that can be looked at but cannot move."

"The true core..."

...hasn't been installed yet."