110: Chapter 110 Forty-Eight Hours! I'm Going to "Grow" a Heart in the Desert!

Taklamakan Desert, Shennong Base, Bunker No. 3.

1:17 AM.

The compiler's progress bar was stuck at 97%.

Su Che stared at the screen, his right hand unconsciously twirling a gel pen.

After injecting the 0.73 Hz resonance parameter into the core control module, the architectural logic of the entire quantum prediction algorithm underwent a fundamental change.

The computational model, which originally needed to process hundreds of millions of flow field variables in real-time, directly cut out 40% of thermal oscillation interference data thanks to the local thermal suppression field effect of the Kunlun Alloy.

The computing power requirement plummeted, and control precision skyrocketed.

97%.

98%.

99%—

*Beep.*

[Compilation complete. Errors: 0. Warnings: 0.]

[Quantum Prediction Control Kernel V1.0, all modules have passed static verification.]

Su Che threw the gel pen onto the desk, picked up the silver-white milk tea maker, and took a few large gulps.

It was cold.

He didn't mind. Wiping his mouth, he typed a line of command on the keyboard.

[Loading 17.8 PB failure database, initiating full regression verification.]

The military supercomputing terminal began running the data.

Fifteen years, 999 experiments, and tens of thousands of failure records were all poured into this brand-new control algorithm as test cases.

If the algorithm could provide the correct control commands in all failure scenarios and avoid every pitfall their predecessors had stepped into, it would mean this "brain" was usable.

Su Che leaned back against his chair, pulling the quilt over to cover his legs.

The air blowing from the bunker's air conditioner was dry and cold. The military quilt Lin Waner had brought over had already been crumpled into a wrinkled mess by him.

The verification would take time.

He closed his eyes, but his mind refused to stop.

The seed.

Grandpa said they had placed a seed at the L2 point.

What kind of seed could stay in space for fifteen years?

Forget it. There was no point in dwelling on what he couldn't figure out. He needed to finish the work at hand first.

He set an alarm for half an hour and buried his face in the quilt.

...

1:40 AM.

The alarm hadn't gone off yet.

What woke him up was a muffled thud coming from outside the bunker.

Su Che threw off the quilt and sat up. The screen on the console was still running the verification, with the progress already at 78%.

Zhou Qihang pushed open the explosion-proof door and walked in, his military boots covered in sand and dust.

"Chief Engineer Su, the first batch of materials has arrived."

Su Che slipped on his shoes and went out with him.

Outside the bunker, the night sky was pitch black. The wind and sand were not heavy, and faint starlight could be seen on the distant horizon.

The silhouettes of two Y-20s parked on the temporary runway, their rear cargo doors wide open, and searchlights illuminating the sandy ground in bright white.

Combat engineers were using military forklifts to unload dark green metal crates stamped with "Top Secret" labels from the planes' bellies.

Su Che walked to the nearest crate, unlatched it, and lifted the lid.

Inside was a row of silver-gray metal ingots, their cut surfaces gleaming with a cold blue light under the searchlights.

Niobium-tungsten alloy, Model NbW-7.

He picked one up and hefted it; it was about seven kilograms.

It was dense and heavy, with a very rough surface. This was a raw ingot directly transferred from the strategic reserve warehouse of the Dragon Country Western Mining Group, without any precision machining.

Precision machining wasn't needed.

The Candle Dragon didn't eat precision-machined parts; it ate atoms.

Su Che put the metal ingot back and checked several other crates.

Carbon fiber-silicon carbide preforms, high-temperature superconducting magnetic bearing blanks, hafnium-based ceramic powder for the ablation-resistant layer of the thrust vectoring nozzle...

Everything on the list was there.

"Where is the Candle Dragon's remote control terminal?"

Zhou Qihang pointed toward the second Y-20. "Over there. It's packed in a separate reinforced crate and is being unloaded."

Su Che nodded and turned to head back to the bunker.

He paused at the entrance and looked back.

A window in the distant barracks area glowed with a warm yellow light—it was the room where Lin Waner was staying.

He didn't go over.

...

2:20 AM.

Bunker No. 3.

By the time Su Che returned, the verification was complete.

The results on the screen were clean and clear.

[Full regression verification complete.]

[Total test cases: 11,847,293.]

[Pass rate: 100%.]

[In all historical failure scenarios, the Quantum Prediction Control Kernel V1.0 provided the correct control commands. Prediction latency: 0.07 milliseconds.]

0.07 milliseconds.

In his grandfather's Experiment 812 back then, the valve group response latency was 500 milliseconds.

Now, it was over seven thousand times faster.

Su Che didn't cheer, nor did he get excited.

He simply archived the verification report, then opened the complete engine blueprint sent by the system and changed the status of the control kernel module from "pending" to "ready."

On the blueprint, of the sixty-seven core modules, only the hardware parts remained gray.

It was time to build.

He pulled over the newly delivered Candle Dragon remote control terminal—a half-man-high black cabinet with a touchscreen on top and dozens of data cables extending from the side, connecting to the transmitter components of the quantum field containment force field.

Su Che connected the terminal to the bunker's main power supply, and then plugged the energy output port of Kuafu into the terminal's energy feed inlet.

The physical body of the Candle Dragon was located at the Kaitian Base in the capital, but through a quantum-encrypted link, he could remotely control its quantum field generation module from here.

There was no need to move the entire machine tool over; he only needed to "project" the force field here.

Su Che inputted the first set of parameters on the terminal.

Target component: Core engine turbine rotor disk, Stage 1.

Material: Niobium-tungsten alloy NbW-7.

Process: Atomic-level directed energy deposition + 0.73 Hz Kunlun Alloy resonance coating.

He pulled up the 3D model and rotated it.

The turbine rotor disk was the core load-bearing component of the engine. It had to rotate at 45,000 RPM in temperatures as high as 3,200 Kelvin, withstanding hundreds of tons of centrifugal force.

With traditional manufacturing, this component would take at least three months from forging to precision machining.

Su Che placed a niobium-tungsten alloy ingot in the center of the force field's work area.

"Start."

*Buzz—*

A transparent quantum force field expanded in the center of the bunker.

The metal ingot levitated, and liquefied flow marks began to appear on its surface.

It wasn't melting.

It was atoms being stripped away one by one and rearranged.

Su Che stared at the real-time data on the terminal screen, his right hand constantly fine-tuning the parameters.

Niobium and tungsten atoms were stacked layer by layer according to the lattice structure on the blueprint.

The thickness of each layer: 0.2 nanometers.

The positional accuracy of each atom: plus or minus 0.01 nanometers.

Inside the force field, a silver-white disk about the size of a bowl's opening was taking shape at a speed visible to the naked eye.

There were no machining marks on its surface, because the very concept of "machining" did not exist here.

This was "growth."

Directly defining the final form from the atomic level.

While operating, Su Che went over the subsequent process schedule in his mind.

Six stages of the turbine rotor disk, about forty minutes per stage.

Combustion chamber casing, one and a half hours.

The variable cycle valve group—the most complex component—had to be handled separately, estimated at three hours.

Thrust vectoring nozzle, two hours.

Finally, final assembly, debugging, and uploading the control program.

Adding it all up, it would take thirty hours at most.

There were still over forty hours left before the full military containment.

Enough.

He grabbed the walkie-talkie and pressed the button.

"Colonel Zhou."

"Here."

"Get me something to eat and have it sent over. Anything is fine, as long as it fills me up."

He thought for a moment and added another line.

"Also, please tell Teacher Lin not to come over for the next two days. There's alloy dust everywhere in the bunker, it's not safe."

"Chief Engineer Su, Miss Lin asked me to pass a message to you half an hour ago."

"What message?"

"She said, 'The food is in the thermos. Heat it up yourself. Don't cover your face with the quilt when you sleep, or you'll suffocate.'"

Su Che was stunned for a moment.

He looked down at the crumpled quilt on the back of his chair, and then at the bottom right corner of the console, where a military thermos had appeared at some point.

Opening it, inside was a bowl of millet porridge, a small dish of pickles, and two white steamed buns.

It was still warm.

He took a large bite of a steamed bun, his other hand never leaving the terminal's touchscreen.

Inside the force field, the Kunlun Alloy resonance coating process for the first-stage turbine rotor disk was underway.

An atom-thick thin film of Kunlun Alloy was evenly adhering to the surface of the rotor disk under the precise frequency of 0.73 Hz.

On the screen, the temperature field monitoring data flickered.

The temperature gradient of the coated area—

Dropped to zero.

It was exactly as his grandfather had said.

Su Che chewed on the steamed bun, staring at that "0.00" for two seconds, expressionless.

Then he finished eating the bun, patted the flour crumbs off his hands, and opened the parameter file for the second-stage turbine rotor disk.

Outside the bunker, the desert's night wind howled.

The distant golden rice fields rustled under the starlight.

Forty-five hours left on the countdown.

...

On the other side of the ocean, at The Pentagon.

In front of a giant electronic sand table, Secretary of Defense Austin looked grim.

On the sand table, icons representing seventy-two bases were distributed in an arc, stretching from Northeast Asia to Southeast Asia, and from the Indian Ocean to the Western Pacific, sealing off the territory of Dragon Country like an airtight iron barrel.

Adam stood aside as a technology consultant, holding a proposal in his hand.

"Mr. Secretary, although 'Eden' was ruined, it was only to test their hydrological control capabilities," Adam said calmly.

Austin turned around. "The whole world is watching us now. 'Judgment Day' must be a one-shot kill."

Adam pulled a USB drive from his pocket and plugged it into the console next to the sand table.

A new operational plan popped up on the screen.

The code name was not "Judgment Day".

It was another name: [Golden Dome Project].

"In forty-two hours, I want every single satellite of Dragon Country to be blinded."

He stared straight at the sand table, his eyes fixed on the territory belonging to Dragon Country.

"We will make it so they can't even see the sky above their heads."