115: Chapter 115 The Sakura Kingdom is here to die again! Final Assembly, fifteen hours countdown!

Bunker No. 3, 1:12 PM.

Su Che stared at the blank panel area in his mind, waiting for ten seconds.

It was gone.

That line of red text from just now had vanished completely, leaving not even a cached ghost image.

He tried poking the system interface in his consciousness; the blue-white panel popped up normally, with the task list and skill point balance as usual.

It was as if nothing had happened.

But he remembered those few words: "Deep Correlation", "Insufficient Permission", and a set of coordinates that hadn't finished displaying.

It wasn't a system glitch.

Something had blocked the system.

Su Che pushed this matter to the bottom of his mind and locked it away.

Now was not the time to think about this.

He gripped the control stick of the "Candle Dragon" terminal again, and the hum of the force field rose by half a tone.

Fifty-seven parts hovered above the assembly area, the silver-white metal cluster rotating slowly in the blue light, like a flock of migratory birds waiting to return to their nest.

Step one of assembly: The core engine.

The six-stage turbine rotor disks threaded into the main shaft one by one, with spacing accurate to the atom.

Su Che's right hand was as steady as if it were welded to the control stick, while his left hand continuously input alignment commands on the touchscreen.

The moment the rotor disk fell into the combustion chamber casing, the "Candle Dragon"'s quantum force field automatically executed a Van der Waals force lock.

No bolts, no welds.

Atom biting into atom, more secure than any fastener.

Su Che didn't celebrate; he pulled over the central distribution valve body of the variable cycle valve assembly and inserted it into the mid-section interface of the core engine.

The outlet of the spiral flow channel aligned with the air guide groove on the inner wall of the combustion chamber, with zero tolerance for deviation.

"Candle Dragon" gave a green confirmation code.

Perfect fit.

The twelve micro-hydraulic cylinders of the variable cycle valve assembly were arranged in a ring around the valve body, with transmission rods interwoven into a precise spiderweb.

Su Che pushed this entire mechanism into the core engine casing, and the high-temperature sealing ring automatically clicked into place.

The core engine... was done.

He leaned back in his chair, wiped his forehead, and grabbed the milk tea machine to take a sip.

Cloyingly sweet; Lin Waner had added too much brown sugar.

The walkie-talkie rang.

"Chief Engineer Su, the Aerospace Control Center reports that the orbital fine-tuning for all six Quantum Communication satellites is complete, forty minutes ahead of schedule." Zhou Qihang's voice.

"What about the parameter updates for the Sky-Breaking Bow ground backbone network?"

"Dean Liu confirmed ten minutes ago that all thirty-six provincial nodes have finished switching. The measured value for optical lattice clock synchronization jitter is zero."

Su Che picked up the tactical tablet and scanned the status codes of each node.

All green.

He sent a message to Lieutenant General Peng.

[Sky-Breaking Bow is ready. Golden Dome can be activated at any time. I'm not afraid.]

Lieutenant General Peng replied instantly.

[Good. Focus on building your engine. Leave the outside matters to us.]

Su Che tossed the tablet aside and continued working.

The air intake component was mounted on the front end of the core engine, and the variable-section guide vanes unfolded in the force field like a blooming metal flower.

The compressor blade sets were inserted level by level; the blade profiles of the six-stage high-pressure section had been treated with "Kunlun Alloy" coating, their surfaces shimmering with a faint, cold blue.

The fuel supply module was embedded into the reserved slot on the side wall of the casing, and the pipelines docked automatically.

Su Che's movements became faster and faster; the installation time for each part was compressed from the initial eight minutes to four minutes.

He had been tinkering with things for over twenty years, from the scrap metal in junkyards to the core components of the Quantum Lithography Machine. The feel for it was carved into his bones.

3:00 PM sharp.

Thrust vector nozzle mounting complete.

Three arc-shaped guide vanes deflected slightly in the force field, and the magnetic field lines of the high-temperature superconducting electromagnets formed an invisible constraint field on the outer wall of the nozzle.

Su Che called up the diagnostic program and performed a cold scan of the entire machine.

On the screen, a 3D model of a complete Adaptive Variable Cycle Aerospace Engine appeared in its physical state for the first time.

Flat ring body, outer diameter of 4.2 meters.

The variable air intake at the front was like a slightly open mouth, and the thrust vector nozzle at the rear converged into three petals, ready to spew out flames capable of tearing through the atmosphere at any moment.

The silver-white body shimmered with a cold metallic luster under the bunker lights, the "Kunlun Alloy" coating faintly visible, like a layer of thin ice.

Is it ugly?

Not ugly.

But it wasn't exactly beautiful either.

It was just a machine, a cold, silent machine waiting to be awakened.

Su Che stared at it for three seconds, then sat back at the console and began injecting the control program.

The code for the Quantum Predictive Control Kernel V1.0 was injected through a data cable into the engine's central processing unit—a 3nm quantum chip.

The progress bar advanced at a steady speed.

...

Hasty footsteps sounded outside the bunker.

Not the sound of Zhou Qihang's military boots; too light.

Jiang Yingxue pushed open the blast door, holding a piece of paper just torn from the encrypted printer.

"Su Che."

She didn't call him "Chief Engineer Su".

Su Che turned his head to look at her.

"Signal intelligence just intercepted by the Ministry of State Security. Qin Lan told me to forward it to you immediately."

She slapped the paper onto the console.

Su Che scanned two lines, and his hands lifted from the keyboard.

The intelligence content was very short.

[Intercept Source: Sakura Country Maritime Self-Defense Force Fourth Escort Flotilla encrypted communication.]

[Summary: The remaining technical team of Ida Heavy Industries has been secretly transferred to the flagship of the Eagle Sauce Seventh Fleet, the aircraft carrier "USS Reagan", carrying an unknown technical device codenamed "Ame-no-Murakumo".]

[The device has completed shipboard adaptation and is expected to launch simultaneously with the "Golden Dome Project" operation. The "Judgment Day" is also estimated to launch ahead of schedule.]

[Intelligence Rating: S-Class. Credibility: 92%.]

"Ame-no-Murakumo."

Su Che read the three words.

The name of one of the three sacred treasures of Sakura Country. These bastards really didn't hold back on naming things.

"Didn't I ruin Ida Heavy Industries?"

"The company is ruined, but the people aren't all dead." Jiang Yingxue pulled up a chair and sat down. "Ida Yuji is hospitalized, but a portion of his core technical team evacuated Tokyo in advance, destination unknown. Now it seems they were picked up directly by Eagle Sauce."

Su Che leaned back in his chair, tapping his fingers on the table twice.

During the last cyberwar, he had blown the Ida Heavy Industries data center to pieces, taking down Sakura Country's power grid and banking system along with it.

But the technical team were people, not data.

If the people ran, the technology remained.

"What is 'Ame-no-Murakumo'?"

"Not sure." Jiang Yingxue shook her head. "But the last un-destroyed research direction of Ida Heavy Industries was a directed energy beam technology reverse-engineered based on the 'apocalypse fragment'. The power isn't high, but the directivity is extremely high."

Su Che's fingers curled into a fist.

Directed energy beam.

Extremely high directivity.

If they mounted this thing on an aircraft carrier and aimed it at the satellites in the sky...

"They're going to cooperate with Golden Dome." Su Che stood up. "The electromagnetic pulse suppression signal is a soft kill, this 'Ame-no-Murakumo' is a hard kill. Combining soft and hard, paralyzing signals on one side, and physically destroying satellites on the other."

Jiang Yingxue nodded. "That's what I concluded as well."

Su Che glanced at the injection progress of the control program.

87%.

He grabbed the encrypted phone and dialed Lieutenant General Peng.

It rang once.

"General, new situation."

"What?"

"A dog can't change its habit of eating feces."

Su Che finished summarizing the intelligence in three sentences, then added one more.

"My Sky-Breaking Bow can block the electromagnetic suppression of Golden Dome, but it can't block physical strikes. If they really use 'Ame-no-Murakumo' to burn the satellites, the satellite-borne terminals for Quantum Communication will be destroyed, and the channel will still be cut."

"What do you need?" Lieutenant General Peng was straightforward.

Su Che looked at the silver-white engine in the center of the force field.

Control program injection progress: 91%.

"Give me eight hours."

His voice was calm.

"After eight hours, I won't just give you an engine."

"I'll also give you a spear that can pierce an aircraft carrier's deck."

On the other end of the phone, Lieutenant General Peng covered the receiver a little tighter.

"What do you mean?"

Su Che didn't answer; he hung up directly.

He turned to look at the intelligence on the console, his gaze falling on the words "USS Reagan".

In his mind, the system panel automatically popped up a line of blue text.

[New R&D intention from host detected, matching available technical reserves...]

[Match complete.]

[Available technologies: Quantum Enhanced Laser Technology (redeemed) + Nuclear Fusion Energy Directed Output Technology (redeemed) + Adaptive Variable Cycle Aerospace Engine (assembling).]

[The above technology combination can derive: Airborne Directed Energy Weapon Module.]

Su Che stared at the text, slowly sitting back in his chair.

The engine provides power.

Nuclear fusion provides energy.

Laser technology provides the strike method.

He had all three things.

No need for the system to issue a new task, no need to redeem new technology.

Using the cards he had in his hand, he would build it himself.

He pulled over a piece of white paper and began to sketch.

In the bunker, only the rustling of the pen tip across the paper and the never-ending pulse of "Kuafu" remained.

On the console screen, the control program injection progress jumped to 100%.

Golden Dome Project countdown.

Less than fifteen hours left.