112: Chapter 112 Variable Circulation Valve Assembly, Grandpa's Second Secret Door!

Bunker No. 3.

Inside the force field, the final layer of atoms of the third-stage turbine rotor disc settled into place.

A green confirmation code popped up on the screen. Su Che saved the parameters and casually fished the last piece of pickled mustard tuber out of the thermos, stuffing it into his mouth.

It was salty enough to burn his throat.

He unscrewed the milk tea machine and took a gulp; it was cold, but the sweetness was still there.

All three stages of the rotor discs were complete, arranged on a temporary shelf next to the force field. The silver-white discs stood in a row, the Kunlun Alloy coating on their surfaces gleaming with an extremely faint, cold light under the fluorescent tubes.

Next was the combustion chamber casing.

Su Che pulled up the blueprints. The carbon fiber-silicon carbide inner wall structure was simpler than the rotor discs, but its volume was large, requiring it to "grow" in three separate sections before being spliced together.

He stuffed a preform into the force field's work area, started the program, and leaned back against his chair, rubbing his temples.

He was exhausted.

But his mind wouldn't stop racing.

The things Jiang Yingxue had mentioned kept running in the background of his mind.

The unnatural deep space signal intercepted by the US, the decrypted "apocalypse fragment," and the coordinates pointing to L2, which coincided with his grandfather's encrypted coordinates.

A coincidence?

Like hell it was.

He stared at the silicon carbide casing taking shape in the force field, suddenly remembering his grandfather's last words.

"The seed."

Could a seed survive in a vacuum for fifteen years?

It wasn't a biological seed.

Then what was it?

The force field emitted a soft click as the first section of the casing was completed.

Su Che pulled back his thoughts and began the second section.

Outside the bunker, the sky was already fully bright.

The blast door chimed.

It wasn't Zhou Qihang, but Jiang Yingxue.

She had changed into a set of base-issued camouflage training fatigues, with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows. The gauze on her left wrist had been replaced with a fresh one, and her hair was pinned back with a pencil.

In her hands, she carried two stainless steel lunchboxes.

"Your Teacher Lin asked me to bring these over."

She placed the lunchboxes on the edge of the console, glanced at the semi-finished product suspended in the force field, and didn't ask any questions.

Su Che lifted the lid of a lunchbox, and steam carrying the aroma of green onions and scrambled eggs billowed out.

Congee, steamed buns, and a dish of scrambled eggs with chopped chili peppers.

It was the flavor of Xiang Province.

He picked up a steamed bun, took a bite, and asked indistinctly, "Why are you up so early?"

"I didn't sleep." Jiang Yingxue pulled over a folding chair and sat down, three meters away from the console—a distance that wouldn't get in his way. "The camp cot is too hard. I'm not used to it."

"Princess syndrome."

"I used to be."

Su Che didn't pursue the topic. He stuffed some eggs into his steamed bun and finished it in three bites.

Jiang Yingxue watched him eat, then suddenly made a seemingly random statement.

"Do you know why Adam is in such a hurry to push the 'Golden Dome Project'?"

Su Che chewed on his steamed bun.

"It's not because the food embargo failed, nor is it because the B-21 was stripped bare."

She lowered her voice slightly.

"It's because he's afraid."

Su Che stopped chewing.

"There is an ironclad rule within the Prometheus Family: whoever first reaches the end point pointed to by the 'apocalypse fragment' gets the ticket to the next century."

"For the past few decades, the US has been the only participant."

"Until you appeared."

Jiang Yingxue looked at the combustion chamber casing that was growing at an atomic level inside the force field, showing an expression that Su Che couldn't quite read.

"Some of the things you've created have already surpassed the technological level in the 'fragment'."

"Adam isn't blockading the Dragon Nation; he is blockading you."

Su Che swallowed the last bite of his steamed bun and patted the flour crumbs off his hands.

"Blockading me?"

"Fine."

He turned and sat back at the console, pulling up the parameter file for the third section of the casing.

"Then let him see what a blockaded man can accomplish in forty hours."

...

In the morning, as the sun rose.

All three sections of the combustion chamber casing were completed, and the splicing and calibration took forty minutes.

The atomic-level manufacturing precision of the Candle Dragon made the splicing a purely physical alignment process with zero tolerance. When the three sections of the casing were put together, the atomic-level Van der Waals forces at the joints locked them together, making it cleaner than welding.

Su Che stretched his stiff neck and called up the next process.

The variable cycle valve block.

It was easily the most complex component of the entire engine.

Twelve miniature hydraulic cylinders, forty-eight transmission connecting rods, six sets of high-temperature sealing rings, and one central distribution valve body.

All components had to complete their full-stroke linkage switching within 0.3 seconds, with precision requirements down to the micrometer level.

This was exactly where his grandfather's Experiment 812 had ground to a halt.

Su Che took a deep breath, maximized the 3D model of the valve block provided by the system, and went through it part by part.

Hydraulic cylinders—niobium-tungsten alloy cylinder block, Kunlun Alloy coated piston rod, temperature tolerance 3,200K, no problem.

Transmission connecting rods—carbon fiber-silicon carbide composite structure, lightweight, high rigidity, no problem.

High-temperature sealing rings—hafnium-based ceramic powder sintering, thermal shock resistant, no problem.

Central distribution valve body...

Su Che's finger paused on the screen.

The internal flow passage design of the valve body was highly unusual. It wasn't the conventional straight-through type, but a spiral progressive structure where the passage cross-section rotated every 15 degrees, forming a pathway similar to a DNA double helix.

He had found this structure strange the first time he saw it in the system's blueprints.

Conventional variable cycle valve bodies aimed for the shortest flow passage and the least resistance.

This spiral structure clearly increased flow resistance, which actually reduced aerodynamic efficiency.

Why?

He pulled up the CFD simulation data for the valve body and ran a simulation.

Once the data came out, Su Che stared at it for thirty seconds.

In turbofan and ramjet modes, the spiral flow passage was indeed less efficient than the straight-through type.

But in rocket mode—

When the gas temperature exceeded 2,800K and the pressure exceeded 70 atmospheres, the swirling airflow generated by the spiral passage would form a stable "gas film" on the inner wall of the valve body.

The purpose of this gas film was thermal insulation.

It reduced the actual contact temperature on the inner wall of the valve body from 3,200K to 1,800K.

Su Che froze for a moment, then flipped open the scanned copy of his grandfather's notes and found the appendix for Experiment 812.

In the appendix, there was a hand-drawn cross-section diagram of the valve body. It was very scribbly, but it was clearly a straight-through flow passage.

His grandfather had used the straight-through type back then.

That was why, in rocket mode, the valve body had directly borne the full thermal impact of 3,200K, causing the high-temperature sealing rings to fail, the hydraulic oil to vaporize, and the entire valve block to be ruined.

Yet this spiral flow passage provided by the system...

Su Che put the two diagrams side by side on the screen, his eyes darting back and forth.

No, that wasn't right.

This wasn't a design "invented" by the system.

He looked again at his grandfather's scribbled cross-section diagram. In the bottom right corner of the drawing, there was an extremely tiny pencil mark, so small that he hadn't noticed it at all before.

A question mark.

Followed by a line of tiny, microscopic characters.

[Straight-through is not the only solution. Swirling flow? To be verified. — Su Changshan]

Su Che sprang out of his chair.

Swirling flow.

Spiral flow passage.

When his grandfather was drawing the straight-through blueprints, he had already thought of the possibility of a spiral structure!

He hadn't verified it because the computing tools of that era couldn't run such complex CFD simulations.

But he had hidden this idea, using a question mark and a few words, in the corner of an abandoned blueprint.

Fifteen years later, the "standard answer" provided by the system perfectly matched his grandfather's unverified intuition.

Su Che stood in front of the screen, gripping his pen, not moving for a long time.

"Old man."

He cursed softly under his breath, a smile on his face.

Then he sat back down and entered the processing parameters for the spiral flow passage into the Candle Dragon terminal.

The niobium-tungsten alloy raw ingot floated into the force field.

Atoms began to peel away and reorganize, laying down that DNA-double-helix-like flow passage structure layer by layer.

...

Outside the bunker, the desert sun had already risen high in the sky.

In the distance, the golden rice fields shimmered in the heatwaves like a sheet of flowing metal.

Zhou Qihang ran over from the direction of the command tower, his military boots thudding against the sand.

"Chief Engineer Su! The latest satellite reconnaissance map forwarded by the Western Theater Command Joint Command!"

He handed the tactical tablet inside.

Su Che took it with one hand, his left hand never leaving the Candle Dragon's control lever.

On the tablet was a high-resolution global military deployment map.

Seventy-two red triangular markers formed a closed ring around the Dragon Nation, stretching from Northeast Asia to the Western Pacific, and from the Indian Ocean to the heart of Central Asia.

Beside each triangular marker was a set of data—the estimated power and coverage sector of the directed electromagnetic pulse array.

Su Che scanned it and set the tablet aside.

"The Golden Dome's array deployment has eleven more nodes than the intelligence Jiang Yingxue provided."

Zhou Qihang was taken aback.

"All eleven new nodes are deployed in the geostationary orbit projection zone directly above the Dragon Nation."

Su Che's voice was steady.

"They don't just want to paralyze our satellite signals; they want to build an electromagnetic ceiling right over our heads."

"Once activated, all satellite-dependent communication, navigation, and early warning systems within the Dragon Nation will completely fail."

Zhou Qihang swallowed hard.

"Then we..."

"Which is why I have to hurry."

Su Che pulled his gaze back to the force field.

One-third of the valve body's spiral flow passage had already taken shape. On the silver-white metallic inner wall, that precise double-helix pathway gleamed coldly under the lights.

He pulled over the walkie-talkie.

"Jiang Yingxue."

Three seconds later, Jiang Yingxue's voice came through.

"I'm here."

"You mentioned earlier that the 'apocalypse fragment' contains the underlying framework for Quantum Communication protocols."

"Yes."

"What is the anti-interference rating of that framework?"

The communication channel went silent for two seconds.

"Theoretically... immune to any known electromagnetic suppression methods."

Su Che stared at the force field and suddenly smiled.

"That's perfect."

He created a new folder on the Candle Dragon terminal, naming it with just three words.

[Sky-Breaking Bow.]