118: Chapter 118 The sky has fallen? My bird just took flight!

Bunker No. 3, 3:01 AM.

The moment the engine was embedded into the back of the Yu-01, the blue light of the force field surged by half a color grade.

The four-meter-two silvery-white main body sank into the reserved compartment on the aircraft's back, the energy pipelines docked automatically, and the three guide vanes of the thrust vector nozzle extended from the tail.

Su Che held the control stick with his left hand, while his right hand continuously input verification commands on the touchscreen.

Thirty-two data buses, handshaking one by one.

Signal latency: 0.

Packet loss rate: 0.

The weapon pod was hooked onto the hardpoint under the right wing, the "click" sound crisp and clean.

The progress of the flight control program installation ran steadily on the screen, 81%, 82%.

The blue-white panel in his mind flickered.

[Ding! Detected that the main R&D task [Adaptive Variable Cycle Aerospace Engine] has been completed!]

[Cold start test passed, all core performance indicators met! Variable cycle valve group response latency 0.07 milliseconds, thrust vector nozzle full-frequency band normal!]

[Task reward: 8000 skill points!]

[Current host has accumulated skill points: 9500 points.]

Nine thousand five hundred.

Su Che went over this number in his mind but didn't move.

It wasn't the time to spend.

The panel immediately popped up a line of small blue text.

[Hint: Detected that the host's current mission environment is highly correlated with the Nantianmen Project, subsequent main missions are being prioritized, please be prepared, host.]

Then it retracted.

Su Che stared at the flight control progress—93%, 94%.

The blast door was pushed open a crack.

Lin Waner squeezed in sideways, her sneakers, patched with three layers of tape, making almost no sound on the metal floor.

She carried an enamel mug in her hand, setting it on the edge of the console.

"Ginger soup, it's hot."

"Why did you come up?"

"Couldn't stay put."

She stood behind him, looking at the pitch-black aircraft suspended in the force field, not asking what it was, nor what he was doing.

Flight control installation: 97%.

Su Che picked up the mug and took a big gulp.

Hot, spicy, sweet; too much brown sugar.

"Go back to sleep."

"Wait until you're done."

"Then don't stand at the door."

Lin Waner pulled up a folding chair and sat down quietly.

100%.

[Flight control program installation complete, full aircraft diagnosis started.]

Data flow ran for thirty seconds, all green.

Su Che pulled over the walkie-talkie.

"General, Yu-01 full aircraft diagnosis passed."

"Wait for my order." Lieutenant General Peng's three words.

Su Che put down the walkie-talkie and glanced at the clock in the bottom right corner of the console.

3:19 AM.

Golden Dome countdown: 41 minutes.

The bunker light tubes hummed, mixing with the pulse of "Kuafu".

Su Che leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, "Waner, I'll nap for a bit, I'll wake up before four."

Before Lin Waner could answer, light snoring had already started.

...

4:00 AM sharp.

The whole world seemed to shudder.

Not an earthquake.

The lighting in Bunker No. 3 flickered, automatically switching to the independent power circuit.

On the military supercomputing terminal screen, the row of green indicator lights representing the status of conventional communications—with a "swish"—all turned red.

Satellite navigation: Disconnected.

Military shortwave: Disconnected.

4G/5G base stations: Disconnected.

Broadcast signals: Disconnected.

Golden Dome.

Seventy-two directional electromagnetic pulse arrays, activated simultaneously, flooding all electromagnetic channels over the Dragon Country into a dead sea of white noise.

Su Che had already opened his eyes.

He stared at another row of indicator lights on the screen.

Blue.

Sky-Breaking Bow quantum entanglement communication network.

All blue, not a single one extinguished.

Quantum entanglement does not rely on electromagnetic waves.

The relationship between Golden Dome and it was like splashing ink into a swimming pool, trying to interfere with someone using chopsticks to pick up peanuts in the building next door.

The walkie-talkie rang, using the quantum encrypted channel, clear and without noise.

"Golden Dome activated, conventional military communications completely paralyzed." Lieutenant General Peng paused, "All four core nodes of the Sky-Breaking Bow are online, command link is clear."

He paused again.

"Su Che, you are a fucking genius."

"Location of the USS Reagan?"

"127 degrees east longitude, 22 degrees north latitude, nine hundred kilometers from the territorial sea line, intelligence shows it will open fire within twenty minutes of the Ame-no-Murakumo Golden Dome activation."

Twenty minutes.

Around 4:20 AM.

Taklamakan to 127 degrees east longitude: 4,650 kilometers in a straight line.

Yu-01 can run at fifteen Mach in near-space altitude.

Fifteen minutes.

Time enough.

"Takeoff permission."

"Granted."

Su Che hung up the walkie-talkie and turned to Lin Waner.

"Go back to the underground floor."

No room for negotiation in his tone.

Lin Waner stood up and walked to him.

She didn't say be careful, didn't say wait for you to come back.

She reached out to straighten the crooked zipper of Su Che's hoodie, her fingers pressing down where they touched his collarbone.

She turned and went out the blast door.

The door closed.

Su Che placed his hands on the dual control console.

Left hand, Candle Dragon remote force field, controlling the hatch on top of the bunker to slide open.

Right hand, flight control system access.

The hatch opened, and the desert night wind, carrying sand grains, poured in.

Overhead was pitch black, no starlight; Golden Dome had dyed the sky into white noise invisible to the naked eye.

But Yu-01 didn't rely on electromagnetic waves.

It was quantum.

Takeoff command input.

Anti-gravity module activated, a faint blue light appeared on the belly.

The black drone fighter flew through the hatch and entered the desert night sky.

Turbofan mode ignition.

"Boom!!!"

A low roar tore through the dead silence.

Yu-01, trailing blue-white exhaust, pierced into the night sky at a near-vertical angle.

Altitude ten thousand, thirty thousand, fifty thousand.

Speed one Mach, three Mach.

Variable cycle valve group switched to ramjet mode, latency 0.07 milliseconds.

"Kunlun Alloy" coating 0.73 Hz heat suppression field effective, turbine section temperature gradient zeroed.

Altitude seventy thousand, near space, air density plummeted.

Ramjet to rocket.

The nozzle guide vanes deflected at full power under the protection of the 2.19 Hz cryogenic band.

Eight Mach, twelve Mach, fifteen Mach.

Four thousand six hundred kilometers.

Fifteen minutes.

Su Che pulled up the weapon module standby interface.

Laser preheating, nuclear fusion power supply fully charged, fire control system took over.

He sent a quantum encrypted short message to Lieutenant General Peng.

[Yu-01 has taken off, arriving in fifteen minutes.]

Reply arrived in a second.

[Latest position of the USS Reagan is 127.3 degrees east longitude, 21.8 degrees north latitude, Ame-no-Murakumo charging countdown is about sixteen minutes.]

One minute difference.

Su Che pushed the thrust slider up one notch, 15.5 Mach.

Fourteen minutes, enough.

On the terminal screen, the flight path of Yu-01 was an arc extending straight from the northwest hinterland to the southeast sea.

Eighty kilometers altitude, fifteen times the speed of sound.

Ground radar couldn't find it; Shield-Casting swallowed all electromagnetic radiation.

Detection in the sky was drowned in the white noise of Golden Dome.

It was like a bullet wrapped in darkness, flying toward the depths of the Pacific Ocean.

...

West Pacific, USS Reagan.

Combat Command Center.

"Dragon Country military communications completely interrupted." The technical officer reported.

Howard chewed his gum, staring at the deep green area on the tactical screen.

Communication link icons were all gray.

"Ame-no-Murakumo charging?"

The short man from Ida Heavy Industries pushed his black-rimmed glasses.

"81%, estimated full charge in seven minutes."

"Destroy the Quantum Communication satellites first." Howard churned his gum, "Adam said the Dragon Country built a quantum network to replace conventional communications, cut off the last straw too."

No one noticed that eighty kilometers above, a black object with no radar signal and no infrared signature was diving at a speed of five kilometers per second.

...

Bunker No. 3, 4:18 AM.

The terminal screen switched to the belly optical reconnaissance module.

On the pitch-black sea surface, a gleaming ball of light.

USS Reagan, one hundred thousand tons of steel.

Su Che zoomed in on the image; at the rear of the deck, a three-meter-long cylindrical device was fixed on a bracket, its top beam-focusing port turning toward the sky.

Ame-no-Murakumo.

Weapon module switched from standby to combat.

Laser: Ready.

Nuclear fusion power: Fully charged.

Fire control lock: Acquired.

Su Che placed his right index finger on the launch button.

"General, I'm going to hit the aircraft carrier."

"Do it."

The index finger fell.

The nozzle of the Yu-01 right wing weapon pod bloomed with a silent light.

Quantum-enhanced laser, scattering rate approaching zero; from eighty kilometers altitude to the sea surface, the beam did not spread by a millimeter.

A ray the thickness of a needle tip precisely pierced the rear of the deck.

The Ame-no-Murakumo superconducting cavity was cut open by a 1.2-meter-long gash, liquid nitrogen spewed, console data zeroed out.

USS Reagan alarms blared.

The gum in Howard's mouth fell to the floor.

"Ame-no-Murakumo hit! Equipment failed!"

"Hit by what?!"

"Radar no target! Infrared no signal! Electromagnetic no signal!"

"Saw nothing!"

Howard rushed to the screen.

The sky was clean.

As if stabbed by an invisible hand from eighty kilometers in the sky.

...

Bunker No. 3.

Su Che watched the white smoke rising from Ame-no-Murakumo on the terminal, picked up the milk tea machine, and took a sip. Cold.

The walkie-talkie rang.

Qin Lan's voice:

"Su Che! New intelligence! Ame-no-Murakumo is not just one unit!"

"The 7th Fleet's USS Antietam, USS Chancellorsville, plus Sakura Country's Izumo, each ship carries one!"

"All three are entering charging mode simultaneously!"

Su Che put down the milk tea machine.

One became four.

Jiang Yingxue's pledge of allegiance was indeed not complete.

Three new target icons flashed red on the screen, scattered in three directions.

Yu-01 only had one.

One against three.

Su Che pushed his chair back and stood up.

The blue-white panel in his mind lit up again.

Not a mission hint.

It was that line of red text cut off last time at the final assembly.

This time it didn't disappear.

[...System underlying database has deep correlation...]

[...Related project: ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■...]

The red text flashed.

Then, the third line appeared.

A complete system prompt never seen before.

[Detected that the host is facing multi-target simultaneous threats, suggest prioritizing unlocking—]

The prompt stopped there, stuck again.

0.3 seconds later, the panel returned to normal, and all red text disappeared.

Su Che gripped the control stick, the veins on the back of his hand taut.

The system wanted to tell him something.

But something blocked it for the second time.