111: Chapter 111 How much is a woman worth 3 billion now?

Taklamakan Desert, Shennong Base, Bunker No. 3.

3:40 AM.

Inside the force field, the second-stage turbine rotor disk was "growing," with niobium-tungsten atoms being laid down layer by layer, while the crystal lattice model on the screen rotated at a steady speed.

Su Che held the terminal control lever with his left hand, while his right hand stuffed the last half of a steamed bun into his mouth.

Zhou Qihang appeared at the entrance of the bunker again.

"Chief Engineer Su, someone is here."

"Who?"

"Qin Lan from the Ministry of State Security, and also one other..." Zhou Qihang's tone was a bit strange. "Jiang Yingxue."

"Hmm!?"

Su Che swallowed the bun and rinsed his mouth with the porridge from his thermos.

"Qin Lan brought her personally?"

"Yes, and there's another one named Gao Jian, also from the Ministry of State Security. Three vehicles, coming from the direction of Urumqi."

Su Che turned his head to glance at the rotor disk in the force field; there were still twelve minutes left to complete the current process.

"Tell them to wait at the command tower. I'll go over as soon as I finish this process."

...

4:03 AM, Shennong Base command tower.

When Su Che pushed the door open and entered, the first person he saw was Qin Lan.

Wearing a black windbreaker with her hair tied back tightly, the buzz-cut man beside her was Gao Jian; they were both old acquaintances.

Jiang Yingxue was sitting on a folding chair in the corner.

Su Che looked at her for an extra two seconds.

She was different.

Every time they had met before, this woman had always worn a carefully maintained shell—designer coats, high heels, exquisite makeup, and a proper smile—with the words "I am more expensive than you" written from head to toe.

Now, that shell was shattered.

She was wearing a gray hoodie from who knows where, her hair was casually pulled back, there was no makeup on her face, and a circle of gauze was wrapped around her left wrist, faintly showing traces of blood.

But as she sat there, her back was still straight.

"Mr. Su." She spoke, her voice still the same—soft and sweet, unhurried.

Only a little hoarse.

"Qin Lan, what's the situation?" Su Che didn't acknowledge her first, turning instead to Qin Lan.

Qin Lan handed over an encrypted tablet.

"Just yesterday, a purge occurred within the Pan-Pacific Technology Alliance. Led by Adam Rockefeller, it targeted all the core members of the alliance's pragmatic faction."

Su Che took the tablet, which displayed a briefing compiled by the Ministry of State Security.

Seven senior pragmatic members: three under house arrest in New York, two missing in London, and one detained by local police in Tokyo on charges of "economic crimes."

Jiang Yingxue was the seventh.

"The kill order was issued yesterday afternoon. Her private jet was intercepted in the UAE, and her entire bodyguard team was detained. She traveled alone from Dubai to Islamabad, and then entered Longguo by land from Pakistan."

Qin Lan's tone was devoid of emotion.

"Our people picked her up when she entered at Kashgar."

Su Che flipped through two pages of the briefing and closed the tablet.

"So, you ran here to seek refuge with me?" He looked at Jiang Yingxue.

Jiang Yingxue stood up, took a thumb-sized black memory card out of her hoodie pocket, and placed it on the table in front of her.

"The complete operational plan for the 'Golden Dome Project.' Satellite strike sequences, electromagnetic suppression nodes, and the cyberattack timetable are all inside."

She pushed the memory card toward Su Che.

"This is my token of allegiance, the third one."

Su Che didn't reach out to take it.

"The last token of allegiance you gave was intelligence on those agents. The one before that was the warning when you took a bullet for me."

He pulled up a chair and sat down opposite her.

"I didn't take the three billion, I didn't go to NASDAQ, and I didn't sign any global distributors. What are you after?"

Jiang Yingxue stared at him for three seconds.

Then she smiled.

It wasn't the standard smile from her previous business settings; it was genuine amusement.

"Mr. Su, do you know what I thought when I first met you?"

"I don't know."

"I thought you were a madman," she said. "A madman in some poor mountain valley tinkering with scrap, holding technology worth hundreds of billions, yet only wanting to get internet access for the village and repair a water pump."

"And then?"

"Then I realized you weren't a madman."

Jiang Yingxue's voice lowered.

"You are the only person in this era who is truly moving forward."

"Whether it's the Pan-Pacific Technology Alliance or the Prometheus Family, we are all just spinning around in the old rules. Stealing technology, creating bottlenecks, engaging in monopolies—we've been playing the same old tricks for decades."

"You are different; you just flipped the chessboard over."

She spread her hands, palms up.

"I bet on you to win, ever since the first time we met. Now that the card table has exploded and I have nowhere else to go, I've come to you to collect on my bet."

Su Che leaned back in his chair, chewing his cheek as he thought for a moment.

"I'll have people verify the stuff about the 'Golden Dome Project.'" He picked up the memory card and handed it to Qin Lan, who was beside him.

Qin Lan took it, exchanged a look with Gao Jian, and the two walked to the terminal on the other side of the command tower to begin decryption.

Su Che looked back at Jiang Yingxue.

"You said something before."

Jiang Yingxue tilted her head slightly.

"You said those materials didn't belong to this era and would bring trouble. You also said, 'Welcome to the realm of God.'"

Su Che paused slightly and threw out three words: "the observer."

Jiang Yingxue's body tightened slightly; it was a very subtle movement.

"How much do you know?" Su Che asked.

She was silent for a moment, then reached out and rolled up her sleeve, revealing a fresh wound beneath the gauze on her left wrist.

"I don't know much. Within the alliance, only people in the Prometheus core circle have complete information. I was on the periphery, only touching the edges."

"Speak!"

"During a deep-space signal monitoring mission in the 1960s, the Americans intercepted a set of non-natural signals. It wasn't radio; it was some kind of... information format they couldn't define."

"It took them nearly thirty years to decipher a small part of it. What they deciphered, they called 'apocalypse fragments.'"

Su Che's back left the back of the chair slightly.

"The 'Glutton' genetic engineering technology you saw in the Garden of Eden was reverse-engineered from those fragments; it wasn't something they invented themselves."

"What else?"

"Their stealth coating algorithms, the underlying framework of some of their Quantum Communication protocols, even the aerodynamic layout optimization of the B-21... the source of many things points to those fragments."

Jiang Yingxue looked at Su Che.

"The Americans didn't climb to the top of the technology pyramid on their own; they just picked up the breadcrumbs someone else dropped."

The air in the command tower became very heavy.

Su Che didn't speak for half a minute.

He remembered the line of text that appeared on his phone screen: "Interesting bug."

He remembered the gaze that reached over from a higher dimension every time he activated the Brain-Computer Interface.

He remembered his grandfather's last words.

Seeds.

"There is one more thing." Jiang Yingxue's voice dropped another half-tone. "There is a piece of information in the fragments that the people at Prometheus have studied repeatedly for over a decade, but never managed to understand."

"What information?"

"A set of coordinates."

Su Che clenched his fingers.

"The coordinates point to the Earth-Moon Lagrange point L2."

Inside Bunker No. 3, the pulsating sound of "Kuafu" traveled up from underground, dull and steady.

Su Che sat there, his five fingers clenched tight.

L2.

The encrypted coordinates in his grandfather's letter were also at L2.

The "apocalypse fragments" in the hands of Prometheus also pointed to L2.

What on earth was there?

Su Che stood up.

"Director Qin Lan, has the intelligence been verified?"

Qin Lan turned around from the terminal.

"Preliminary comparison is complete. The content of the 'Golden Dome Project' highly matches the scattered intelligence we intercepted previously; the credibility is very high."

"Specifically?"

"Before Judgment Day, the Americans will simultaneously paralyze all of Longguo's satellites in orbit." Qin Lan took a deep breath. "The method is not physical destruction, but signal hijacking. They will use directional electromagnetic pulse arrays deployed at seventy-two bases around Longguo to perform full-band suppression on our satellite communication links."

"Making us blind." Su Che added.

"Correct."

Su Che walked to the window.

It was still dark outside, and the desert night wind whipped sand particles against the glass, making a fine, rustling sound.

He turned and glanced at Jiang Yingxue in the corner.

Since their first meeting, this woman had been like a nail stuck in his life—sometimes a nuisance, sometimes a lifesaver, but she had never let him down.

He hadn't taken the three billion.

But this person, he could accept.

"From now on, you'll follow me."

"No R&D—you can't do that anyway. Material scheduling, intelligence integration, outreach channels—these will be your responsibilities."

Jiang Yingxue was stunned for a moment.

"Just that? No conditions to discuss?"

"You've ended up in such a state; what conditions are there to discuss?" Su Che was already walking toward the door. "There's an empty cot in Bunker No. 3; you can make do for the night. I'll have someone arrange a place for you tomorrow."

He pushed the door open, and the cold wind rushed in.

He walked two steps and then turned back.

"Oh right, that token of allegiance of yours."

Jiang Yingxue looked up.

"This time, I'll count it as a pass."

The door closed.

Jiang Yingxue sat on the folding chair, staring at the closed door for a long time.

Then she lowered her head, covered her face with her uninjured hand, and her shoulders trembled slightly.

She didn't make a sound.

...

Bunker No. 3.

Su Che returned to the console; the second-stage turbine rotor disk was finished.

The silvery-white disk hovered in the center of the force field, the Kunlun Alloy coating on its surface emitting a very faint blue light.

He sat down and pulled up the parameter file for the third stage.

His phone lit up.

An encrypted message from Lieutenant General Peng.

[I have received the intelligence on the 'Golden Dome Project'; the higher-ups have already initiated countermeasure plans.]

[On your end, how much longer for the engine?]

Su Che glanced at the completed parts and raw materials waiting to be processed on the force field workstation.

He replied with one message.

[Thirty hours.]

Lieutenant General Peng's reply was only one word.

[Faster!]

Su Che tossed his phone aside and placed his hands on the operating terminal.

The humming of the force field rose again, and the niobium-tungsten atoms for the third-stage rotor disk began to align.

Countdown: forty-one hours.

Outside the window, on the horizon to the east of the desert, a hint of gray-white faintly emerged.

Dawn was approaching.