148: Chapter 148 The Mysterious Maiden is unsheathed once more, a test from the stars!

3:00 AM sharp.

In Pangu Laboratory, Level B2, the large freight elevator platform descended slowly.

Three heavy military trailers were parked on the platform.

Fixed on the truck beds was a massive, silver-white cylindrical device, three stories tall.

Wen Bo, wearing a military overcoat, jumped down from the passenger seat of the lead vehicle.

He walked up to Su Che and pointed at the behemoth.

"Chief Engineer Su, this is the lifeblood of the Materials Research Institute." Wen Bo exhaled a puff of white air. "I've brought you the highest-precision vacuum electron beam melting furnace in all of Dragon Country."

Su Che stepped forward, holding a tactical tablet.

He circled the furnace, his gaze stopping at the control cabinet at the bottom.

"Highest precision? That just means a temperature control error of 0.5 degrees per minute." Su Che reached out and tapped the iron casing of the cabinet. "The heart of this thing is too old."

Wen Bo followed behind, rubbing his hands.

"It has an imported German five-axis temperature control motherboard; no one in the country dares to take it apart." Wen Bo admitted truthfully. "If you dismantle and reassemble it, the tolerances will increase."

Su Che didn't reply. He pulled up the structural diagram of the furnace on his tablet and drew two red lines on the screen with his finger.

"Qin Lan." Su Che said without turning his head.

Qin Lan walked over quickly.

"Tell the power team to bring hydraulic cutters."

Su Che pointed at the control cabinet.

"Strip the main control board and cut all the magnetic field coils. Replace them with 3-nanometer quantum chip drive modules, and rewind the coils using the graphene superconducting wire purified yesterday."

The two technicians from the Materials Research Institute who had come with the truck grew anxious and took a step forward.

"Chief Engineer Su, this furnace costs 800 million!" One technician raised his voice. "If you cut the coils, the entire magnetic confinement system will be ruined!"

Wen Bo raised his hand, stopping his two subordinates.

"This is Pangu Laboratory." Wen Bo looked at the furnace. "Listen to Chief Engineer Su. If he can forge a 37,000-ton thrust platform, modifying a furnace is nothing."

The sound of hydraulic cutters biting echoed through the underground hall in the early morning.

Over the next two days, Su Che barely left the furnace.

He forcibly crammed the control logic of a 100,000-ton aerospace carrier into a piece of civilian research equipment.

The old silicon-based chips were tossed into the scrap bin, replaced by a quantum-state parallel computing hub.

The third day, 8:00 AM.

The modified vacuum melting furnace was powered on again.

Su Che sat in front of the newly built console and pushed down the test lever.

The temperature inside the furnace chamber instantly surged to 2,000 degrees. Su Che input the gradient solidification command.

On the main screen, a red curve representing temperature slid steadily downward, and in the data box beside it, the temperature drop rate locked at 0.100 °C/min.

Wen Bo's face was almost pressed against the screen.

"The error is 0.001." Wen Bo took off his glasses and wiped them with the corner of his coat. "You've turned a tractor into a space shuttle."

Su Che pulled the keyboard over.

"Load materials." Su Che ordered. "Titanium, nickel, hafnium, gadolinium, samarium, enter the chamber according to the formula ratio, evacuate the vacuum, and start the alternating magnetic field."

A robotic arm delivered the raw materials into the furnace chamber in batches.

High-temperature melting, the alloy liquid phase mixed uniformly.

"Gradient solidification program started." Su Che pressed the Enter key. "Countdown: seventy-two hours."

The hall quieted down, with only the extremely low hum of the melting furnace.

The most time-consuming material synthesis stage had begun.

During these three days, the process parameters were fully taken over by the Yiren AI Core; any manual intervention would disrupt the directional alignment of the rare earth particles.

Su Che leaned back in his chair, his long-tense nerves relaxing slightly.

Lin Waner pushed a food cart over, placing a bowl of preserved egg and lean meat porridge and a plate of cucumber salad on the table.

"The furnace is running on its own; you can finally rest for a while, right?" Lin Waner handed him a spoon.

Su Che took the spoon and drank a mouthful of porridge. The temperature was just right.

The fourth day, 2:00 PM.

The melting furnace had forty-two hours left on its countdown.

The structural blueprint of the 100,000-ton carrier slowly rotated on the main screen; Su Che was calculating the capillary network layout of the self-repair module.

The sound of Qin Lan's footsteps broke the silence.

She walked quickly, her military boots making crisp sounds on the alloy floor.

"Consultant Su." Qin Lan walked to the console, her tactical terminal flashing with piercing red light. "The Xiang Province Meteorological Bureau issued a red alert ten minutes ago."

Su Che didn't take his eyes off the screen. "A meteorological bureau alert should be reported to the local government."

"This time is different." Qin Lan placed the terminal on the desktop. "A super-strong single-cell storm is forming over Tonghui County, with center wind speeds exceeding level 17, accompanied by massive hail and short-term heavy precipitation. The storm eye's path is heading directly for Su Family Village."

Su Che's hands stopped typing.

He turned his head and looked at Qin Lan.

"Has the infrastructure team at Su Family Village evacuated?" Su Che asked.

"The China Construction engineering team's equipment is too heavy; they can't evacuate in time." Qin Lan reported quickly. "The Ministry of State Security sentries demanded a forced evacuation, but the elder of Su Family Village refuses to leave, saying that the infrastructure they worked so hard to finish can't just be left to be destroyed."

Su Che stood up.

He picked up the encrypted handheld device on the table and directly connected to Political Commissar Li of the Xiang Province Military Region, an old acquaintance he had met at Su Family Village.

"This is Su Che."

"Chief Engineer Su, we are organizing a helicopter rescue, but the wind is too strong; the helicopters cannot approach the airspace of Tonghui County." Political Commissar Li's voice was mixed with static.

"Have the helicopters stand by; don't go." Su Che hung up the communication.

He turned and pulled the keyboard over, switching the main screen to the global meteorological satellite cloud map.

Over Xiang Province, a huge black cyclone was swirling madly, the cloud layer reaching an astonishing dozen kilometers in thickness, as cold and warm air currents collided violently in the troposphere, releasing terrifying energy.

"Notify the meteorological bureau." Su Che stared at the cyclone. "No matter what they see on their radar next, treat it as equipment failure."

Qin Lan immediately picked up the communicator to issue the order.

Su Che placed his hands on the keyboard and brought up the master control interface of the Yiren AI Core.

"Core, take over the low-Earth orbit 10,000-ton luan bird verification ship." Su Che input the command.

[Command confirmed, luan bird verification ship control system online.]

"Unlock No. 1 hangar, Xuan Nu No. 0, launch."

In space 400 kilometers away.

A gap split open in the belly of the invisible steel behemoth.

Xuan Nu No. 0 detached from the mother ship, its tail's adaptive variable cycle engine ignited, turning into a dark blue meteor as it dove toward Earth.

"Target coordinates: Troposphere over Tonghui County, Xiang Province." Su Che hit Enter. "Mission: Physical meteorological intervention."

On the right side of the main screen, the first-person view from the Xuan Nu fighter was transmitted back.

It passed through the Kármán line and entered the atmosphere.

The plasma shield around the fuselage insulated it from the high heat generated by friction.

Two minutes later, Xuan Nu arrived over Tonghui County.

In front of it was a wall of black clouds connecting heaven and earth, with lightning madly slithering like spiderwebs inside the clouds; the meat grinder of a level 17 storm was enough to tear any conventional aircraft that approached it into shreds.

Su Che sat in front of the console, picked up the bowl of preserved egg and lean meat porridge that had long since gone cold, and took a sip.

"Charge in." Su Che ordered.

In the footage, Xuan Nu did not slow down at all, slamming into the heart of the storm at Mach 8.

The fuselage jolted violently, then was forcibly stabilized by the Core's attitude control algorithms.

"Lock onto the intersection layer of cold and warm air currents." Su Che typed the final command on the keyboard. "Quantum-enhanced laser array, full-spectrum scattering mode, cut it off."

The hexagonal payload bay in Xuan Nu's belly unfolded.

Without waiting for charging, the energy from the nuclear fusion reactor instantly flooded into the laser crystals.

Dozens of invisible quantum lasers erupted inside the pitch-black clouds.

This was not a point-to-point strike, but an area-of-effect attack.

High-density quantum energy evaporated tens of thousands of tons of water vapor in the core area of the storm into nothingness in one-thousandth of a second.

The physical intersection of the cold and warm air currents was forcibly severed by extremely violent means, and the cyclone's power source collapsed instantly.

On the satellite cloud map.

The arrogant, super-strong single-cell storm was like a balloon that had been popped.

The level 17 gale plummeted to level 7 within eight minutes, the thick black clouds lost their rotational centripetal force and began to dissipate in all directions.

The massive hail didn't fall, turning into a widespread ordinary rain shower in mid-air.

Qin Lan stood by the table, watching the red waves on the meteorological radar disappear rapidly, her throat bobbing.

Using an interstellar fighter to fight the weather.

This was ten thousand times more absurd than using anti-aircraft guns to kill mosquitoes.

"Danger cleared." Qin Lan confirmed to the Ministry of State Security sentries via the communicator. "Everyone at Su Family Village is safe, and the Quantum Communication tower is intact."

Su Che put down the bowl in his hand.

He took a tissue to wipe his mouth, getting ready to recall Xuan Nu to orbit.

In the upper right corner of the main screen, the Yiren AI Core suddenly popped up a tiny yellow warning box.

Su Che's gaze swept over it.

[Warning: Weak gravitational wave residue detected in the dissipated storm core area.]

[Spectrum comparison complete: This residual frequency band has 71% isomorphism with the transition signal from the Atacama Desert "God's Revelation" facility.]

The tissue in Su Che's hand was crumpled into a ball.

He stared at the line of yellow text.

A natural storm on Earth could not possibly have gravitational wave residue inside it.

Much less could it have isomorphism with the high-dimensional signals generated when Adam detonated the "apocalypse fragment".

This natural disaster targeting Xiang Province, or rather, coming directly for Su Family Village.

It was not naturally formed.

"Qin Lan." Su Che's voice turned cold.

"Present."

"Package all the raw monitoring data from the Xiang Province Meteorological Bureau for the past seventy-two hours and pull it into the Pangu supercomputer."

Su Che tossed the tissue into the trash can. "The guests from the sky have reached out further than I imagined."

The high-dimensional cleanup program hadn't arrived yet, but their probing had already crossed the edge of the Solar System and fallen into Earth's atmosphere.