119: Chapter 119, 4 minutes and 6 seconds! The Izumo, flag and all, burned!
Bunker No. 3, 4:26 AM.
Three red icons were pinned to the terminal screen, like three nails waiting to be pulled out.
Su Che grabbed the tactical tablet and tossed the three sets of coordinates into the fire control interface.
USS Antietam, 128.1° E, 23.2° N, 190 kilometers from Yu-01's current position.
USS Cape St. George, 129.4° E, 22.1° N, 380 kilometers away.
JS Izumo, 130.2° E, 20.8° N, 560 kilometers away.
The three ships were deployed in a fan shape, stretching nearly 400 kilometers from northeast to southeast.
Su Che ran the calculations in his head.
Mach 16, 5.3 kilometers per second.
The closest one, USS Antietam, thirty-six seconds.
Turning around to fly to USS Cape St. George, another seventy seconds.
Finally, turning to JS Izumo, sixty seconds.
The entire journey, plus the intervals between the three attacks, would take just over four minutes.
It takes twenty minutes for Ame-no-Murakumo to charge from zero to full capacity.
After he punctured the one on USS Reagan, the other three were urgently activated.
Eight minutes have passed now, so there's at least a twelve-minute window.
More than enough time.
Su Che pushed the thrust slider up one notch.
Thousands of kilometers away.
Yu-01 carved an arc through the high-altitude near-space, diving straight toward the northeast.
The speed reading on the terminal flickered twice before stabilizing at Mach 16.2.
He picked up the walkie-talkie with one hand.
"General, I'm going to pay a few visits. I'll take care of all three and be back in four minutes."
Lieutenant General Peng replied with only one word on the other end.
"Hurry."
4:30 AM sharp.
Eighty kilometers directly above USS Antietam.
The ventral optical lens zoomed to maximum magnification.
At the stern of the deck, the superconducting chamber of Ame-no-Murakumo was powered on, but the charging indicator light was less than thirty percent lit.
Su Che didn't give it the chance to finish lighting up.
Right-wing weapon pod—locked—released.
A quantum laser, no thicker than a needle tip, struck down from eighty kilometers away, precisely slicing open the side wall of the superconducting chamber.
Liquid nitrogen sprayed all over the deck.
The Sakura Country technician at the console was still hunched over, looking at the data, but the screen in front of him had already gone black.
Su Che didn't watch the battle damage assessment.
He adjusted his course, pushed to full thrust, and dived straight toward USS Cape St. George.
4:31:42 AM.
USS Cape St. George.
The same procedure.
Lock, release, cut.
The Ame-no-Murakumo charging light had just climbed to forty percent when the chamber was split in two by a beam of light.
The duty officer on the bridge was shouting "Report to flagship" into the communicator, shouting into the void.
Golden Dome had suppressed their own conventional communications as well.
The Eagle Country picked up a rock only to drop it on its own feet.
Two Ame-no-Murakumo units, time taken: one minute and forty-two seconds.
Su Che set the empty milk tea machine on the console and adjusted his course.
The last one.
JS Izumo.
The pride of the Sakura Country Maritime Self-Defense Force, 27,000 tons, nominally called a "helicopter destroyer," but in reality, a light aircraft carrier.
Su Che stared at the icon on the screen.
Izumo.
He was no stranger to this name.
In the 1937 Battle of Shanghai, the flagship of the Sakura Country Navy was also called Izumo.
Back then, that JS Izumo was anchored on the Huangpu River, with its naval guns aimed at civilians and refugee camps on the shore.
Eighty-eight years have passed.
Su Che switched modes in the fire control interface.
"Point Cutting" changed to "Area Ablation."
Power output was pushed from the rated value to 120% overload.
This was the first time he had manually pushed to overload.
For the first two Ame-no-Murakumo units, he had used a scalpel.
For this one, he swapped it for a soldering iron.
4:33:05 AM.
Directly above JS Izumo.
The ventral view zoomed in.
The Ame-no-Murakumo charging on this ship was faster than the previous two.
The charging light had already climbed to seventy percent.
Su Che glanced at it; they had pushed the power directly to overload charging.
They were panicked after receiving news that the first two had been destroyed.
Su Che, however, was not in a rush.
He shifted the optical lens slightly to the left.
Above the bridge of JS Izumo, a flag with a red circle on a white background fluttered in the sea breeze.
Su Che retracted the lens and placed his finger on the launch button.
"Eighty-eight years."
He didn't say it to anyone; he just muttered it to himself.
His finger fell.
It wasn't a needle tip.
It was an ablation beam that had spread to the diameter of a washbasin.
The beam struck down from eighty kilometers high, hitting the position of Ame-no-Murakumo at the stern of the deck.
The superconducting chamber was instantly vaporized.
Along with the flight deck steel plate beneath it, and the hangar ceiling below the deck, it was all burned through.
A hole, three meters in diameter with red-glowing edges, appeared on the stern of JS Izumo.
The rising heat wave blew away the flag above the bridge.
The white cloth burned in mid-air.
The red center eventually turned black, turned into ash, and fell into the Pacific Ocean.
Su Che watched the flag finish burning.
"The account is settled."
He switched the fire control mode back to standby.
4:33:11 AM.
Total time: four minutes and six seconds.
Three Ame-no-Murakumo units, all destroyed.
The "Kuafu" in the bunker was still humming as it ran, its light tubes emitting a steady white light.
Su Che leaned back against the chair and stretched his neck, his joints cracking with a series of pops.
He picked up the walkie-talkie.
"General, all three have been taken care of."
Lieutenant General Peng was silent for two seconds on the other end.
"Battle results?"
"For USS Antietam and USS Cape St. George, I only cut the Ame-no-Murakumo units; the ships are fine."
Su Che paused for a moment.
"JS Izumo's deck was burned through."
"How large is the area?"
"Not large." Su Che tilted his head. "About three meters in diameter."
"Also, their flag was burned."
"What flag?"
"The Rising Sun Flag."
Lieutenant General Peng didn't speak.
Three seconds later, a dull thud came over the walkie-talkie, like someone's fist slamming onto a tabletop.
Then, a heavy snort.
"Good."
Just one word, but it carried enough weight.
4:34 AM.
Yu-01 began its return flight, heading back from the Western Pacific to the Taklamakan Desert, a fifteen-minute journey.
Su Che stood up and stretched.
It had been over thirty hours; his lower back wasn't just aching dully, it was clearly protesting.
He twisted a couple of times, and his lumbar spine clicked back into place, feeling a bit better.
He walked to the insulated container and lifted the lid; the porridge was gone, and the steamed buns were gone too.
He rummaged through his pockets and found half a squashed Snickers bar, tore open the wrapper, and took a bite; it was too sweet.
Just as he was chewing the Snickers bar and preparing to sit back down.
In his mind, a blue and white panel lit up.
Su Che's chewing motion paused for a beat.
It wasn't the cut-off red warning from before.
Blue text. Normal format. Steady as a rock.
[Ding! Core combat requirements for the Nantianmen Project detected, main mission triggered!]
[Mission Name: A Lone Bird Cannot Form a Formation Without a Flock!]
[Mission Content: One Yu-01 can pierce four shields, but war has never been a one-man show! The Nantianmen Project needs a swarm of steel that can think independently, fight in coordination, and evolve on its own! Please develop the Yi Ren Intelligence General Cognitive Kernel to grant machines cross-domain autonomous decision-making and multi-platform coordination capabilities!]
[Mission Reward: 6000 skill points, unlock redemption permissions for [Non-Humanoid Logical Reasoning Technology] + [Cross-Domain Autonomous Learning Technology] + [Complex System Autonomous Decision-Making Technology], redemption cost: 3500.]
[Current host has accumulated skill points: 9500 points, redeem?]
Su Che swallowed the Snickers bar in his mouth.
Yi Ren Intelligence.
Not Artificial Intelligence.
Non-humanoid logic—it means the way this system thinks isn't copied from a human brain at all.
Cross-domain autonomous learning—toss a bunch of aerospace dynamics data at it, and it can figure out how to fight on its own.
Complex system autonomous decision-making—a formation of one hundred drones doesn't need human instructions; it can fight on its own.
Su Che stared at those lines on the panel.
Tonight, he controlled one Yu-01 alone and took out four Ame-no-Murakumo units in a row.
But this was the limit.
A person's energy, reaction speed, and the amount of information processed simultaneously have an upper limit.
What if the enemy wasn't four ships, but forty?
It would be impossible for him to control forty drones simultaneously.
But what if every drone had an independent "brain" that could make its own judgments?
He would only need to give one command.
"Go, dismantle all the Ame-no-Murakumo units."
Then forty drones would form their own formation, assign their own targets, plan their own routes, and open fire themselves.
This is what the Nantianmen Project truly needs.
Not a goshawk.
It's a hive of hornets.
"Redeem."
[Ding! Consumed 3500 skill points, redeemed [Non-Humanoid Logical Reasoning Technology] + [Cross-Domain Autonomous Learning Technology] + [Complex System Autonomous Decision-Making Technology].]
[System Prompt: Detected that the Yi Ren Intelligence General Cognitive Kernel architecture blueprint has not been realized in reality; it can be redeemed directly. Redemption cost: 500 skill points.]
"Redeem."
[Ding! Consumed 500 skill points, redeemed Yi Ren Intelligence General Cognitive Kernel architecture blueprint and accompanying training plan.]
[Current host has accumulated skill points: 5500 points.]
An absurdly massive architectural diagram unfolded in his mind.
Su Che glanced at it and gasped.
The underlying logic of this thing was a completely different species from the Artificial Intelligence technology he had previously mastered.
Traditional Artificial Intelligence mimics human neural networks; essentially, it is "learning to speak like a human."
This Yiren AI Core, its reasoning chain is non-linear, multi-dimensionally parallel, and there are even parts of the structure he couldn't understand at first glance.
It's not learning from humans.
It's creating a brand-new species.
Su Che saved the architecture diagram into the military supercomputing terminal, setting it aside for now.
Now is not the time for R&D.
Golden Dome is still running, Judgment Day isn't over yet, and those seventy-two electromagnetic pulse arrays outside are still humming, pressing down on the sky of the Dragon Kingdom.
Ame-no-Murakumo was just an appetizer.
The main course hasn't been served yet.
He picked up the walkie-talkie again.
"General, mission accomplished, Yu-01 is returning. The Ame-no-Murakumo line has been broken; they won't have the ability to physically strike satellites in the short term."
"Su Che, new situation."
It wasn't Lieutenant General Peng's voice.
It was Qin Lan.
He didn't know when she had cut into the encrypted channel.
"Fourteen minutes after Golden Dome was activated, we intercepted a set of encrypted orders sent from The Pentagon to all fleets in the Western Pacific."
Su Che's hand holding the walkie-talkie tightened by half an inch.
"The content of the orders has been decrypted." Qin Lan's speaking speed was faster than usual.
"Codename 'Golden Dome: Second Movement'."
"What is the content?"
"In the event that Ame-no-Murakumo fails, initiate the backup plan."
"Use all sea-based medium-range missiles of the forty-six nation coalition forces to conduct a saturation strike against six provinces along the southeast coast of the Dragon Kingdom."
The humming of "Kuafu" in the bunker filled the three seconds of silence.
Su Che crumpled the half-chewed Snickers wrapper into a ball and threw it into the trash can.
"How long?"
"The launch window written in the orders is in forty-five minutes."