105: Chapter 105 Those who offend my Dragon Kingdom will suffer utter devastation! Nuclear-powered water pump activated!
Three days later, 9:00 AM.
Forty kilometers west of the Dragon Kingdom's western border.
This was a temporary military zone leased by a certain country to the Eagle Nation.
On a barren Gobi desert, a sprawling, semi-transparent domed structure stood abruptly.
Inside the dome, the temperature reached forty degrees Celsius, and the air was filled with a pungent, sour, and rotten smell.
Smith, wearing a fully enclosed protective suit, stood on a metal walkway, looking down at the sandy ground below.
On the surface of the sand, countless thick, dark green vines were writhing crazily.
They had no leaves, and their surfaces were covered in barbs, like a swarm of hungry giant pythons, driving their roots deep into the ground.
Accompanied by a teeth-gritting friction sound, the volume of the vines expanded at a speed visible to the naked eye.
The holographic projection screen in mid-air was lit up; Adam sat in the intelligence center on the other side of the ocean, holding a coffee cup.
"Smith, how is the growth data for the 'Eden' No. 1 crop?" Adam's arrogant voice came through the loudspeaker.
Smith swiped a few times on his tablet, pulling up a set of charts.
"The growth is perfect, sir. This batch of gene-edited 'Glutton' vines is executing its mission according to the pre-set program. Their roots have already penetrated the rock layer and are spreading eastward at a speed of ten kilometers per hour."
Smith pointed to the red dotted line on the screen, which pointed directly at the Dragon Kingdom's Tarim Basin.
"They don't need photosynthesis; they only plunder water and minerals. It is estimated that within forty-eight hours, the groundwater veins at the Dragon Kingdom's western border will be completely drained. By then, the lower reaches of their Tarim River will face permanent water cutoff, and that desert will truly become a dead zone."
Adam took a sip of coffee and put down the cup.
"Very good. Cutting off the maritime grain transport route is just the surface of the 'Scorched Earth Protocol.' I want the people of the Dragon Kingdom to understand that modern warfare doesn't require firing guns. Drain their water, destroy their ecology, and they won't even have a chance to save themselves."
Adam cut the communication.
Inside the dome, the vines churned even more violently, and deep, bottomless cracks began to appear on the withered sandy surface.
The next day at 10:00 AM, Taklamakan Desert, Bunker No. 3.
Inside the massive explosion-proof door, it was brightly lit.
A silver-gray metal capsule, twenty meters long and ten meters high, lay across the center of the vast underground space.
The surface of the capsule was as smooth as a mirror, without any welding seams, exuding a cold metallic texture.
Academician Li Zhengyang squatted in front of the capsule, holding a high-precision vernier caliper, clamping it onto a beryllium-copper alloy diversion channel.
He checked the caliper's scale, took off his reading glasses, wiped the lenses with the corner of his clothes, put them back on, and stared intently at the numbers.
Academician Wen Bo was holding a portable spectrometer, scanning the inner wall of the capsule back and forth; the data on the instrument's screen made him shake his head repeatedly.
Su Che walked into the bunker holding Lin Waner's hand, with Colonel Zhou Qihang half a step behind, his military boots making steady sounds on the concrete floor.
"You two elders, have you figured anything out yet?" Su Che let go of Lin Waner's hand, walked to the metal capsule, and casually patted the outer shell.
Academician Li Zhengyang stood up, still clutching the caliper, and pointed at the diversion channel.
"Chief Engineer Su, the tolerance of this component is zero! Zero! I've been working in nuclear physics engineering my whole life, and I've never seen something with absolute zero tolerance. Are you sure this wasn't sent by aliens?"
Su Che pulled over a folding chair, sat down, and took a lollipop out of his pocket to unwrap it.
"It's a local specialty grown in our own factory, guaranteed ripe. Wen Bo, the material purity is fine, right?"
Wen Bo put away the spectrometer, walked over, and said in a complicated tone, "The purity is ridiculously high. The lattice arrangement of the tungsten-rhenium alloy is as perfect as a model in a textbook."
"But, Chief Engineer Su, are you sure this thing is a Controlled Nuclear Fusion reactor? It doesn't even have an external cooling tower; how will the energy be diverted? Once ignited, at tens of millions of degrees, this capsule will melt instantly."
Su Che popped the lollipop into his mouth and pulled the white "Earth Mother Box" out of his backpack.
"It doesn't need a cooling tower. The heat and electrical energy it generates will be 100% absorbed by this little thing."
He walked to the rear of the metal capsule, where there was a reserved rectangular groove, and embedded the "Earth Mother Box" perfectly into it.
"'Kuafu' is only responsible for power supply, and the 'Earth Mother Box' is responsible for conversion; this is a closed loop."
Su Che turned around and pulled open an operation panel on the side of the metal capsule, revealing rows of complex interfaces.
"Two Academicians, please make way; I need to connect the wires."
For the next half hour, Academician Li Zhengyang and Wen Bo became mere spectators.
They watched as Su Che used an extremely skilled yet rough method to plug superconducting cables into the reactor's core control hub.
There were no blueprints, no instrument calibration, yet every connection was precise and error-free.
Lin Waner stood to the side, took a bottle of mineral water from her bag, opened it, and handed it to Su Che.
Su Che took the water, gulped down a large mouthful, threw the empty bottle into the trash can, and patted the dust off his hands.
"Hardware done."
Just then, the encrypted communicator on Zhou Qihang's waist vibrated.
He answered it, listened for a few seconds, and his expression changed drastically.
He strode over to Su Che and handed him a tactical tablet.
"Chief Engineer Su, an emergency alert has been sent from the border radar station and the hydrological monitoring station."
On the screen was a high-resolution satellite cloud map and a groundwater vein distribution map.
Outside the border, a strange dark green patch was rapidly expanding in the desert.
Correspondingly, on the groundwater vein map, the blue area representing water volume was shrinking westward at a speed visible to the naked eye.
"Base intelligence confirms that the Eagle Nation has planted a large scale of an unknown genetically modified plant forty kilometers outside the border. This plant has an extremely developed root system and is crossing the national border, crazily extracting our groundwater veins."
Zhou Qihang's voice was steady but laced with suppressed anger.
"The expert group estimates that within twenty-four hours at most, the upper reaches of the Tarim River will be completely cut off, and the surrounding oases will all turn into desert."
When Academician Li Zhengyang and Wen Bo heard this, they both clenched their fists; Academician Li Zhengyang was so angry that he punched the metal cabin wall.
"Bandits! This is blatant plunder! They are trying to destroy our great Northwest!"
Su Che looked at the data on the tablet without speaking; he bit the half-eaten lollipop, crushed it, and swallowed.
Then he handed the tablet back to Zhou Qihang, turned around, walked to the "Kuafu" console, and pulled open the hidden keyboard.
"Colonel Zhou Qihang, notify the engineering troops outside."
Su Che's hands tapped rapidly on the keyboard, and lines of green code popped up on the screen.
"Take all the seeds in the base's inventory, no matter the variety—rice, wheat, even poplar tree seeds—and scatter them all for me using helicopters. Scatter them as far as they can fly."
Zhou Qihang stood at attention. "Yes! How large an area?"
Su Che glanced at the energy threshold of the "Earth Mother Box" on the screen and held up one finger.
"Scatter ten thousand square kilometers first."
Academician Li Zhengyang was stunned.
"Ten thousand square kilometers? Chief Engineer Su, the groundwater is currently being drained; without water, the seeds will die even if we scatter them!"
Su Che's finger hovered over the Enter key, and he turned his head to look at Academician Li Zhengyang.
"Elder Li, who said we don't have water?"
He pointed at the red dot on the screen representing the Eagle Nation base.
"If they can cross the border to extract our water, can't we snatch the water back?"
"Not only will I snatch the water back, but I will also drain all the water on their side, along with the moisture in their wretched grass, until not a single drop remains."
Su Che pressed the Enter key. The command was issued.
"Boom—"
An extremely low, muffled sound came from the depths of Bunker No. 3, and the entire metal capsule instantly lit up with dazzling blue light.
"Kuafu" ignition successful.
The massive energy flowed along the diversion channel and surged crazily into the "Earth Mother Box" at the rear.
Dense green patterns appeared on the surface of the white square box, and an invisible bio-electric field, centered on Bunker No. 3, swept out in all directions in a radial pattern.
Outside the bunker, in the sky above the Taklamakan Desert.
Dozens of military helicopters were flying low over the sand dunes, with their cabin doors wide open, and tons of seeds poured down like a rainstorm onto the scorching yellow sand.
Deep underground, an invisible war officially began.
The groundwater veins, which were originally flowing westward frantically, suddenly stalled the moment they touched that domineering bio-electric field.
Immediately after, the water flow reversed.
A more massive, more violent suction force, along the underground rock layers, rushed in reverse toward the Eagle Nation's border base.
Su Che leaned against the console, watching the hydrological data on the screen reverse instantly, his tone flat.
"Let's see if their genetically modified grass absorbs faster, or if my Nuclear-Powered Pump sucks harder."