109: Chapter 109 The Heart of the Southern Heavenly Gate is Ignited! Grandpa, this prosperous age is just as you wished!

Taklamakan Desert, Shennong Base, Bunker No. 3.

11:03 PM.

Su Che's ten fingers hovered over the keyboard, frozen.

In the encrypted communication window in the bottom-left corner of the screen, that line of text lay quietly.

[Your grandfather... has woken up.]

The low-frequency pulsation of the "Kuafu" reactor filled the entire underground space, and the air conditioning vents blew dry, hot air.

Su Che stared at the words "has woken up," took a breath, and let it out.

He stood up, pushing his chair half a meter back, where it hit a metal cabinet.

He picked up the encrypted phone and dialed.

It rang once.

"I want to speak with him."

"The video link is being set up. The 'Longmai' medical team confirmed twenty minutes ago that the old man opened his eyes on his own, is conscious, and his vital signs are stable."

Lieutenant General Peng lowered his voice.

"But his body is too weak. The doctors estimate that his window of consciousness won't exceed half an hour."

Su Che gripped the receiver, his knuckles cracking.

"Then make it fast."

"Three minutes."

The call disconnected.

Su Che closed the programming window on the console, and the large screen of the military supercomputer terminal switched to the encrypted communication interface.

He pulled up a folding chair, placed it directly in front of the screen, and sat down.

The blast door of the bunker clanged.

Lin Waner stood at the doorway, wearing his old T-shirt as pajamas, her hair loose, and slippers on her feet.

"I heard the chair," she said, walking over to stand behind him.

Su Che didn't turn around.

"My grandfather woke up."

Lin Waner placed her hand on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze, remaining silent.

On the screen, the progress bar for the encrypted link was moving.

78%... 91%... 100%.

The screen lit up.

The hospital room's lights were dimmed very low.

A bouquet of dried flowers sat on the nightstand next to rows of monitoring equipment, their indicator lights flashing at various heights.

On the hospital bed, an elderly man leaned halfway against a pillow.

Su Changshan.

He was even thinner than when they had last met, the shape of his collarbones clearly visible through his hospital gown. His cheeks were sunken, and the veins on the back of his hand bulged around an indwelling needle.

But his eyes were open.

Cloudy, yet bright.

Two doctors in white coats stood against the wall nearby, while a nurse adjusted the drip rate of the IV tube.

Seeing Su Che on the screen, Su Changshan's lips twitched.

His voice came through the speaker, intermittent.

"...Taller."

Su Che froze for a moment.

"What?"

"You... kid... grew taller."

Su Che leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs, adopting a slouching, nonchalant posture.

"We haven't met in fifteen years, and that's all you have to say?"

Su Changshan grinned, creasing his wrinkled face, but he was indeed smiling.

"What else... say I missed you?"

"A bit too cheesy."

"When you were little... that time you wet the bed..."

"Stop right there." Su Che sat up straight. "Grandpa, don't waste time."

He dropped his playful grin, staring at the face on the screen that was so aged it was almost unrecognizable.

"I saw Backup Plan X."

Su Changshan's expression changed.

The dying spark in his eyes flared up.

"...You understood it?"

"Quantum Predictive Control Architecture," Su Che said. "Using quantum chips instead of traditional PID to achieve millisecond-level flow field prediction for the variable cycle valve group. The sketch you drew—it's the right path."

Su Changshan nodded slowly, an action that took a lot of effort, causing the IV tube to sway slightly.

"It's the right path..." His voice was slightly clearer than before. "But I... deliberately left one thing out."

Su Che leaned forward, his back leaving the chair.

"What?"

Su Changshan raised a hand—withered and thin, with the indwelling needle still in the back of it.

He raised a single finger.

"The resonance frequency of... Kunlun Alloy."

Su Che didn't move.

"In Experiment 812, the valve group response delay was 500 milliseconds. Everyone thought it was a mechanical issue." Su Changshan had to pause for several seconds after every sentence. "It wasn't."

"It was temperature."

"When turbine blades operate at 3200K, the metal crystal lattice undergoes non-linear thermal oscillation. This oscillation interferes with the response precision of the hydraulic cylinder."

Su Che's mind raced.

Thermal oscillation interfering with hydraulic response—when he was analyzing that 17.8 PB of data, he had brushed against the edge of this clue but failed to grasp it.

"Kunlun Alloy..." Su Changshan's voice weakened again. The doctor nearby took half a step forward but was held back by a single glare from him.

"Resonating Kunlun Alloy at a frequency of 0.73 Hz... will produce a localized thermal suppression field."

"Within a half-meter radius... the temperature gradient drops to zero."

Su Che sat frozen in his chair.

"The temperature gradient drops to zero."

"If Kunlun Alloy was used as a turbine blade coating and kept in continuous resonance at 0.73 Hz, the blades would not produce thermal oscillation, and the hydraulic cylinder's response precision would remain undisturbed."

"The deadlock of Experiment 812 was completely broken from its root."

"You knew back then," Su Che said, his throat feeling dry.

"I knew."

"Why didn't you write it into the plan?"

Su Changshan looked at him, a complex emotion swirling in his cloudy eyes.

"In an era without quantum chips... even if we knew about the 0.73 Hz frequency... there was no control system... that could maintain this frequency in real-time... inside a 3200K combustion chamber."

"Writing it would have been pointless."

"It would have only caused those who followed... to take unnecessary detours."

Su Che closed his eyes for a moment.

"Fifteen years."

"The old man had kept the answer to himself, locked underground for fifteen years. He couldn't say it, and even if he did, it would have been useless."

"He had been waiting."

"Waiting for a descendant who could build a quantum chip, waiting for a descendant who could write 0.73 Hz into the flight control code and execute it precisely within the 3200K purgatory."

"Grandpa."

"Yeah."

"I've filled in that parameter."

The corner of Su Changshan's mouth twitched again.

"I know," he said softly. "Otherwise... I wouldn't have woken up."

These words made no sense.

Su Che didn't press further.

"There is... one more thing." Su Changshan's voice suddenly grew much weaker, and the beeping of the monitor beside him sped up.

The doctor took another step forward, and this time Su Changshan didn't stop him.

"L2."

Su Che leaned forward.

"The thing at the L2 point... is not just an observation station."

Su Changshan's focus began to drift, but his lips were still moving.

"Fifteen years ago... we placed a... there..."

"Placed what?"

"...seed."

"What seed?"

Su Changshan did not answer.

His eyes slowly closed.

The heart rate on the monitor dropped from 72 to 58.

The doctor stepped forward quickly.

"Chief Engineer Su, the old man's window of consciousness has ended. He needs to rest."

On the screen, Su Changshan lay quietly, his breathing steady as if he had fallen asleep.

Su Che sat on the folding chair, staring at that face, motionless.

Lin Waner's hand remained on his shoulder. She didn't speak, only stood there.

The bunker remained silent for a long time.

Su Che picked up the silver-white portable milk tea machine on the table, unscrewed the lid, and took a large gulp of the completely cold tea.

"0.73."

He put the cup down and turned back to the console.

The programming interface was still lit up, with four hours of code filling the entire screen.

In the parameter table of the core module, he found the resonance frequency input box marked "TBD."

His fingers hit the keys.

0.73.

Enter.

The compiler began to run, and streams of green code flashed past.

He stared at the screen, his mind filled only with his grandfather's last word.

Seed.

They had placed a seed in space, 380,000 kilometers away.

What kind of seed?

The sound of Zhou Qihang's military boots echoed from the bunker entrance, urgent yet steady.

"Chief Engineer Su, an urgent telegram from Lieutenant General Peng."

A slip of paper was handed to him.

Su Che took it and glanced at it.

A single line of text.

["Judgment Day" Agreement has been signed. The forty-six-nation coalition forces will formally implement a full military blockade against the Dragon Nation in forty-eight hours.]

Su Che flipped the slip of paper over, placed it on the table, and set the milk tea machine on top of it.

"Forty-eight hours."

He glanced at the compiler's progress. There were still two sets of parameters left to tune, followed by material processing, the "growth" of core components, final assembly, and ignition.

"Forty-eight hours."

"It's enough."

"Colonel Zhou."

"Here."

"Notify Lieutenant General Peng to air-drop the niobium-tungsten alloy to the entrance of Bunker No. 3, along with the remote control terminal for 'Zhulong'."

"Also—"

Su Che stood up and rolled up the sleeves of his faded hoodie.

"Help me contact someone."

"Who?"

"The Political Commissar of the Southern Theater Command, Commander-in-Chief Wang Xueshan," Su Che said. "The one who ate stir-fried pork in our village."

Zhou Qihang froze for a moment.

"Tell him that in forty-eight hours, I will deliver the goods for the first phase of the Nantianmen Project."