63: Chapter 63 The Wind Whisperer of the Future

Report! The 'Eye of the Storm' is here! We have a 3.7-second stable window!

The young expert's voice was still echoing through the command hall.

The Elder Long had already grabbed the microphone, his eyes bloodshot, a single word bursting from his throat.

"Transmit!"

This word, transmitted via the highest-level encrypted line, spanned eighty-nine years of time and space.

It reached Chen Xi's ears.

No passionate slogans.

No rousing encouragement.

Only a cold, emotionless electronic synthesized voice.

[Instruction received.]

[Countdown 3.7 seconds. Initiating 'Windtalker' protocol.]

Chen Xi's mind went blank.

He abandoned thought, abandoned struggle, abandoned all his instincts and pride as a top player.

He surrendered his body completely to that cold voice from the future.

His world, in that moment, split into two.

One was the howling wind in his ears, the dizzying, spinning view from the Drone's camera, the overwhelming tide of despairing comments in the Livestream room.

The other was absolute, deathly silence.

Within this silence, there was only that electronic voice, and his finger, poised and ready on the virtual controller.

[Issuing instruction.]

[Bank left 3.7 degrees.]

The voice sounded.

Chen Xi's finger moved.

"Execute!"

In the Livestream room, hundreds of millions of viewers witnessed a scene they would never forget.

The Drone, on the verge of being shredded by the gale and crashing into the river, made no attempt to climb, no attempt to fight.

In a posture that defied all aerodynamic common sense, it tilted its nose.

And actively flew towards the center of that spinning, deadly vortex!

[Holy shit! It's crashing into it!]

[It's over! The streamer has given up!]

[No! Wait! Look!]

The Drone was not torn apart.

Like a nimble fish, it precisely found the narrowest, most stable gap between the two violent air currents.

It slipped through!

Gale-force winds howled past its sides like two high-speed rotating walls.

And it, right in the center of this wall of death, flew steadily onward!

Year 2026, Great Wall Command Center.

The atmosphere was tense to the point of freezing.

"Wind speed is changing! The stable window is shrinking!"

"'Tianhe' is recalculating! Results in three seconds!"

Elder Long's clenched fist had nails digging deep into his palm.

Sweat trickled down his temple, but he didn't notice.

His eyes were fixed on the dizzyingly complex 3D airflow model composed of countless lines on the screen.

And, within that model, the flashing light representing the Drone.

[Issuing instruction.]

[Climb 0.5 meters.]

[Execute!]

Chen Xi's finger twitched again.

The Drone abruptly raised its nose.

The instant it pulled up, a stronger turbulent current grazed its belly, missing it by a hair's breadth!

If it had been 0.1 seconds later.

Or if the climb hadn't been high enough.

The Drone would have been slammed into the river by that turbulence!

After a brief, dead silence, the livestream comments exploded.

This time, it wasn't despair and shock.

But pure, incomprehensible, worldview-shattering awe!

[??????????]

[I'm kneeling. I'm fucking kneeling right now! Is this a play a human can make?]

[Illusion! This must be an illusion! I think I'm still asleep!]

[Streamer, take my kneecaps! From today on, you're my dad!]

But soon, some technically-minded viewers noticed something was off.

[No! Something's wrong! Don't you see? Every move the streamer makes is too perfect! Perfect like a program executing!]

[This isn't reaction! This is prediction! No! It's beyond prediction! This is... omniscience! He seems to know exactly how the wind will blow next!]

[I have a terrifying guess... I suspect another 'person' is helping him! This coordination absolutely requires two people with four hands! He's just the executor!]

Year 1937, warehouse rooftop.

Shangguan, Xie Jinyuan, and the others were completely dumbfounded.

They didn't understand aerodynamics.

They only saw that "kite" about to fall in the wind, come to life.

It was no longer a plaything for the wind to toy with.

It became the master of the wind.

It danced in the wind.

Diving, climbing, sliding sideways, hovering.

Every movement was elegant, precise, filled with unbelievable beauty.

As if it wasn't fighting the wind.

But dancing with it.

Chen Xi couldn't hear anything.

He blocked out his comrades' exclamations, the livestream's noise, everything from the outside world.

His world was pure, clean.

Only that continuously sounding, cold voice.

He seemed to have entered a mysterious state of "Flow."

Becoming part of the wind.

And also becoming the furthest nerve ending of that massive state apparatus spanning eighty-nine years.

[Issuing instruction.]

[Hard right rudder.]

[Execute!]

[Issuing instruction.]

[Dive. Enter C-7 Turbulence Zone.]

[Execute!]

[Issuing instruction.]

[Utilize updraft. Gain thirty meters altitude.]

[Execute!]

Chen Xi didn't know what he was doing.

He only knew that every twitch of his finger was accompanied by a brush with death.

Every execution represented a blatant defiance of the laws of physics.

This was no longer operation.

This was a miracle.

A symphony of victory, composed for him alone by a nation's strength and its most powerful supercomputer from another time.

He wasn't fighting the wind.

He was merely executing everything that the future had already calculated.

On the battlefield, Chen Xi, in this moment, possessed the perspective of God.

He didn't hear the wind.

But the "divine secrets" from the future, precise to the millisecond.

He was not fighting alone.

But at this moment, he felt an unprecedented loneliness unique to masters.

Everyone is drunk, I alone am sober.

[Through the vortex!]

"Execute!"

With the completion of the final instruction.

The Drone surged out from a massive downdraft.

Ahead, the view suddenly opened up.

All the gales, all the turbulence, vanished without a trace in an instant.

Below, Suzhou Creek flowed quietly.

Ahead was the predetermined building, their destination.

The Drone, like a ballet dancer who had completed her mission, traced an incredibly elegant arc through the air.

Then, steadily, it hovered over the target building.

Motionless.

Steady as a rock.

It was done.

On the warehouse side, earth-shaking cheers erupted.

In the Livestream room, after a dead silence lasting over ten seconds, it was flooded by a tsunami of "Niubi!"

In the "Great Wall" Command Center, that white-haired, eminent meteorologist's legs gave way, and he slumped into his chair.

Elder Long's clenched fist finally relaxed.

Everyone was immersed in the wild joy of having survived a disaster.

Only Chen Xi.

He still maintained his posture, fingers hovering above the controller.

The electronic voice in his ear fell silent.

It was a long, century-long silence.

Three seconds.

Five seconds.

Ten seconds.

Just as Chen Xi thought it was all over.

That cold voice sounded again.

This time, its tone seemed to carry a barely perceptible, human-like fluctuation.

No longer a purely mechanical synthesized sound.

[Guide Rope deployment program initiated.]

[Good luck, Comrade Chen Xi.]

Comrade.

The moment these two words, carried by electric current, gently struck Chen Xi's eardrum.

Chen Xi's entire body jolted violently.

The feeling was more shocking than being hit by a hundred artillery shells at once.

A scalding, indescribable warmth surged from the depths of his heart, instantly flooding his entire body.

He was no longer that outsider, doubted, scrutinized, seen as a "god" or a "monster."

Nor was he that lonely game streamer, relied upon by everyone yet understood by no one.

At this moment.

He was accepted.

Accepted by that great collective spanning time and space.

He was not fighting alone.

He had comrades.