150: Chapter 150 Earth is too small to contain the cradle of giant beasts!

The sixth day, 7:50 AM.

In Pangu Laboratory, Level B2, the explosion-proof side door was pushed open.

Su Che walked down the metal stairs.

The modified vacuum smelting furnace on the east side of the hall emitted a low hum of operation.

The countdown on the control panel displayed 00:10:00.

Wen Bo was still sitting on a folding stool next to the furnace, the military overcoat from yesterday had slid halfway onto the floor.

The old academician was holding a stainless steel tea mug, his eyes fixed tightly on the temperature control curve on the screen.

"Academician Wen." Su Che walked over, picked up the military overcoat from the floor, and draped it over the back of the chair.

Wen Bo did not turn his head, the water in the tea mug in his hand rippling slightly.

"Seventy-one hours and fifty minutes." Wen Bo's voice was hoarse. "The gradient solidification curve is a straight line; there isn't even a 0.01 fluctuation. You've turned this furnace into something divine."

Su Che pulled up a chair and sat down, watching the screen.

Eight o'clock sharp.

The countdown hit zero.

The smelting furnace emitted a long "hiss," the high-pressure exhaust valve opened automatically, and white cooling steam gushed out.

"Vacuum extraction disengaged, internal cabin pressure balanced." Su Che entered commands on the console. "Open the furnace."

The heavy circular hatch slid slowly open to both sides.

There was no blinding firelight, nor any startling heat wave. In the special crucible right in the center of the furnace chamber, half a canister of silver-gray liquid lay quietly.

It looked like mercury, but the surface had no reflection, presenting an extremely restrained matte texture.

Wen Bo put on anti-static gloves, walked quickly to the furnace opening, and leaned in to look.

"It remains absolutely liquid at room temperature." Wen Bo took a quartz probe, reached into the crucible, and stirred it. "The viscosity coefficient is even lower than water, and the fluidity is excellent. Is this the titanium-nickel-hafnium ternary base?"

"It's doped with gadolinium and samarium rare-earth particles, and coated with boron nitride on the outer layer." Su Che tapped on the keyboard, starting the automatic dispensing program. "Liquid at room temperature is just its disguise. Once it encounters a strong magnetic field and extreme temperature differences, you will see its true form."

The robotic arm reached into the furnace chamber and pumped this batch of adaptive phase-change memory alloy into a specially made constant-temperature storage tank.

"Materials team, take over." Su Che stood up. "Today, press this batch of repair agent into the capillary network of the forty-meter test section, and perform destructive testing tomorrow morning."

Wen Bo hugged the storage tank as if afraid someone would snatch it away, then turned and shouted into the distance, "Materials team! Bring the pump over!"

...

The seventh day, 10:00 AM.

Level B2 underground test area.

That forty-meter-long, 100,000-ton-class skeleton test section was laid horizontally across two huge alloy supports.

The fiber optic sensor network and piezoelectric ceramic array had all been installed, and the silver-gray repair agent had been injected into the capillary network inside the skeleton by high-pressure pumps.

Academician Li Zhengyang, Academician Qian Zhenhua, and Wen Bo, several old academicians, stood behind the explosion-proof glass.

Qin Lan and Jiang Yingxue stood on either side of the console, while Lin Waner pushed a cart full of mineral water to the rest area, her gaze also cast toward the test area.

Su Che sat in front of the main console, holding a red remote control terminal in his hand.

"Fiber optic network online." Su Che looked at the data on the main screen. "Piezoelectric ceramic array self-check passed. Microcapsules activated."

He turned his head to look at Academician Qian Zhenhua.

"Academician Qian, has the industrial-grade high-energy particle beam generator used by the weapons team for cutting tests been set to maximum power?"

Academician Qian Zhenhua was stunned for a moment, his hand unscrewing the thermos stopping mid-motion.

"It's set to maximum, but that thing at full power can instantly cut through half-meter-thick homogeneous steel plate. Even though your skeleton section uses aluminum-lithium-based composite alloy, it can't withstand such cutting."

"It's good that it can't withstand it." Su Che placed the remote control terminal on the table. "If it can't be cut, how can we test the repair?"

Without waiting for their reaction, he pushed down the master control lever.

Inside the test area, a heavy robotic arm grabbed the high-energy particle beam generator and aimed it at the main load-bearing beam in the center of the forty-meter skeleton.

"Zzzzt—!"

A blinding beam of high-energy blue light shot out.

Without any buffering, the blue light cut directly into the aluminum-lithium alloy main beam like a hot knife through butter.

Sparks mixed with white smoke from vaporized metal exploded instantly.

Behind the explosion-proof glass, several young researchers instinctively took a step back.

Academician Li Zhengyang widened his eyes, his hands slapping against the glass.

The main beam was cut to two-thirds of its depth, with a terrifying ten-centimeter-wide crack running across it.

The forty-meter skeleton emitted a tooth-aching sound of metal twisting under the force of gravity, appearing about to snap in the middle.

"Stop." Su Che shut off the particle beam.

On the main screen, among the one billion nodes representing stress monitoring, tens of thousands of points turned red instantly.

Before the alarm of the Yiren AI Core could even sound, the reaction inside the skeleton had already begun.

Deep inside the crack.

The microcapsules pre-embedded in the alloy lattice ruptured instantly under the dual effects of high temperature and physical tearing.

Immediately after, the capillary network sensed the catastrophic changes in air pressure and stress, and the valves opened automatically.

The silver-gray adaptive phase-change memory alloy surged wildly from the pipe walls on both sides of the crack like blood.

They did not drip onto the floor.

Guided by the weak alternating magnetic field inherent to the skeleton, the silver-gray liquid defied gravity and hovered directly in the middle of the ten-centimeter-wide crack.

"The temperature is dropping rapidly!" Wen Bo shouted while staring at the data panel nearby. "In the high-temperature zone cut by the particle beam, the repair agent is forcibly absorbing heat and changing phase!"

Visible to the naked eye.

When that mass of silver-gray liquid contacted the high-temperature fracture of over a thousand degrees, it did not vaporize.

Its internal rare-earth particles rapidly aligned under the influence of the magnetic field, and the liquid metal completed lattice restructuring within two seconds.

The silver color turned into the same dark gray as the base material.

The liquid turned into a solid.

"Click, click, click—"

A dense sound of microscopic crystal interlocking was transmitted into the control room through the environmental monitor.

The ten-centimeter-wide crack was completely filled by newly grown metal in less than five seconds.

The broken and sagging skeleton was forcibly pulled back to level by this growing force.

Su Che pulled over the keyboard and started the stress loading test.

The hydraulic press at the bottom of the test area rose, pushed against the repaired part, and began to apply pressure.

One hundred tons, three hundred tons, five hundred tons.

The load-bearing data on the main screen soared all the way, and until it broke through 105% of the original skeleton design strength, the repaired part still showed no deformation.

Exceeding the strength of the base material.

Su Che shifted in his chair. The night before last, he had raised the upper limit of the protection parameters by three times, and the Yiren AI Core had optimized the capillary delivery pressure to the extreme.

The test result was perfect.

In his mind, the blue-white system panel popped up on time.

[Ding! Main R&D task [The Giant Beast's Self-Healing Instinct] has been completed!]

[Spatial self-healing structural module technology full-domain coordination passed! Damage perception latency < 1ms, autonomous completion molding strength achieved, full-temperature-range adaptive phase change successful!]

[Task reward: 60,000 skill points!]

[Current host accumulated skill points: 112,000 points.]

112,000 points.

Su Che closed the panel. With skill points breaking the 100,000 mark, he felt even more confident.

In the control room, Wen Bo slapped his thigh, his reading glasses nearly falling off.

"It's alive!" Wen Bo pointed to the skeleton section outside. "The metal has grown flesh! This thing is indestructible!"

Academician Li Zhengyang turned around and looked at Su Che.

"Chief Engineer Su, we have the propulsion, we have the takeoff and landing, and we have the self-healing. The data for the skeleton and armor has all been finalized."

The old academician pointed beneath his feet.

"But there is a physical problem."

Academician Li Zhengyang walked to the console and pulled up the 3D assembly drawing of the 100,000-ton-class luan bird.

"1,100 meters long, 360 meters wide, 100,000 tons of dead weight. Pangu Laboratory Level B2 is not long or wide enough, even if we hollowed out the entire mountain to build it underground."

He paused.

"How do we get such a big guy out? We can't blow up a mountain to let it take off."

Academician Qian Zhenhua also walked over and unscrewed his thermos.

"Old Li is right." Academician Qian Zhenhua took a sip of water. "The 10,000-ton-class verification version, over 200 meters long, could barely pass through the special shaft to lift off. For the 100,000-ton-class, there is no underground base on Earth that can hold it."

The explosion-proof control room fell silent.

Everyone was looking at Su Che.

No matter how perfect the blueprints are or how advanced the technology is, if it can't be built, it's just a pile of waste paper.

The Earth's physical space locked the birthplace of this giant beast.

Su Che sat in the chair, picked up the warm water Lin Waner had just placed on the table, and took a sip.

He raised his head, his gaze passing over the academicians and looking toward the thick alloy ceiling at the top of the hall.

"Academician Li." Su Che spoke, his voice not loud, but very clear in the quiet control room.

"Who said I was going to build it on Earth?"

For a moment, no one spoke; they hadn't wrapped their heads around it.

Su Che placed the water cup on the table, tapped on the keyboard, and pulled up the star map of low Earth orbit.

"The 100,000-ton-class aerospace carrier belongs to the interstellar era. Interstellar warships should be built in interstellar space."

He pointed to the low Earth orbit circle at an altitude of 400 kilometers on the screen.

"We're going to build blocks in the sky."

"On-orbit assembly?"

Academician Li Zhengyang leaned forward, immediately realizing his lack of composure. "Chief Engineer Su, on-orbit construction requires a massive space station for support, countless space robotic arms, and in-situ processing equipment. We don't even have a decent space Dry Dock right now."

"If we don't have one, we'll build it." Su Che pulled over the keyboard.

In his mind, the familiar mechanical voice sounded on time.

[Ding! Physical space for the assembly of the 100,000-ton-class aerospace carrier detected as limited, main R&D task triggered!]

[Task name: The Earth is too small to hold the cradle of the giant beast!]

[Task content: Break through the surface construction bottleneck. Please develop a low Earth orbit space infrastructure system and build a space Dry Dock at an altitude of 400 kilometers capable of supporting the assembly of a 100,000-ton-class carrier!]

[Task reward: 180,000 skill points, unlock redemption permissions for space autonomous construction technology, orbital component precision docking technology, space resource in-situ utilization technology, and orbital infrastructure scheduling technology, redemption points 120,000.]

[Current host accumulated skill points: 112,000 points, unable to redeem!]

Su Che stared at the panel, stunned. He had just felt confident, but this slap in the face came really fast!

This time it's outrageously expensive! System, are you doing this on purpose?