200: Chapter 200: 100-Day Countdown - Xuan Nu Must Undergo a Complete Transformation!

Alien civilization navigation timer, Day 140.

Su Che transferred from Jiuquan Launch Base to a military plane and landed in the capital, and the ground shuttle drove directly into the Western Hills.

He had transferred from the Near-Earth Orbit Base to the ten-thousand-ton verification version of the luan bird to return to Jiuquan, then flew to the capital; the whole process took half a day.

He tucked the small cloth bag from his duffel bag back into the inner pocket of his jacket.

9:00 PM, B2 level of Pangu Laboratory.

The door to the B2 level opened, and the air conditioning vents emitted a steady stream of dry, temperature-controlled air.

Su Che dropped his duffel bag on the floor next to the main console, and before he could even sit down, his phone rang.

Lin Waner.

"You arrived?"

"Just walked in."

There was a pause on the other end for a few seconds.

"Su Che, I need to tell you something."

"Go ahead."

"Yingxue and I have been assigned to participate in a classified physics research project at Jinghua University. It will last about three or four months."

Su Che pulled out his swivel chair and sat down.

"Who authorized it?"

"It's a joint project between the university and the military. Qin Lan helped coordinate the procedures. The specific details are classified, so I can't go into them."

"That's a good thing. Go with peace of mind; don't worry about things here."

"Make sure you don't just eat whatever is convenient."

"Mm."

"Su Che."

"Hmm?"

"...Never mind, I'm hanging up."

The call ended.

Su Che placed his phone on the desk and didn't move.

He was the only one on the B2 level.

The images on the monitor wall refreshed quietly, and the outline of the luan bird in the Dry Dock shimmered with a cold light under the cabin lights.

He pulled the keyboard over, opened the forty-seven unread messages Liu Huaqiang had sent to the encrypted group, and scrolled from beginning to end.

The core issue was in the thirty-first message.

Liu Huaqiang used a long technical description.

But the meaning was simple: the autonomous decision-making architecture, flight control logic, and avionics system of the first version of the Xuan Nu were all designed for the Near-Earth orbit environment. Once put into deep space, they couldn't keep up.

Su Che stared at that description for half a minute.

Previously, the Xuan Nu Zero-model had swept away the Rods from God in three seconds in Near-Earth orbit; that was a job at an altitude of 400 kilometers.

But the place the luan bird was going now was deep space, 23 million kilometers away.

The Xuan Nu Zero-model's flight control had cumulative deviations during long-distance maneuvers in a vacuum, and the latency of the swarm communication protocol over ultra-long distances had exceeded the tolerance threshold for swarm coordination.

The fire control logic for the airborne directed-energy weapons was also not adapted for deep space targets.

Simply put, the Near-Earth version of the Xuan Nu would be practically crippled once it left the Earth's gravitational well.

Liu Huaqiang's last message was sent at 5:00 PM today.

["Su Che, the problems with the Xuan Nu cannot be solved by patching. It requires an entire system-level upgrade. The academician team has already organized the preliminary assessment report. Take a look when you get back."]

Su Che finished reading the messages and closed the group.

In his mind, a blue and white panel popped up.

[Ding! Detected that the Near-Earth version technology of the Xuan Nu unmanned aerial combat vehicle cannot meet the combat requirements of the Solar System deep space. Main R&D mission triggered!]

[Mission Name: The swarm cannot just roam around the front door!]

[Mission Content: The Near-Earth version of the Xuan Nu walks sideways at a 400-kilometer orbit, but in deep space, it's a blind man and a cripple! Please fully upgrade the Xuan Nu unmanned aerial combat vehicle to the Solar System version, achieving autonomous evolutionary decision-making in deep space, ultra-high maneuverability control across orbits, massive swarm global coordination, and advanced stealth avionics fusion, so the swarm can bite in any corner of the Solar System!]

[Mission Reward: 850,000 skill points, unlock exchange permissions for deep space global autonomous evolutionary decision-making technology, cross-orbit ultra-high maneuverability control technology, massive swarm global coordination technology, and advanced stealth avionics fusion technology. Required exchange points: 450,000.]

[Current host main skill point balance is sufficient. Do you wish to redeem?]

Su Che didn't rush to press it.

He hung the system panel in the corner of his consciousness and first pulled up the image of the Dry Dock on the right side of the monitor wall to look at it carefully.

The deep space minerals filling the hold had already been unloaded into the strategic reserve warehouse through the transport system of the Near-Earth Orbit Base.

He withdrew his gaze.

"Redeem."

[Ding! Consumed 450,000 main skill points. Core technology unlocked!]

[System Prompt: Supporting auxiliary technologies have not been redeemed yet, including: ultimate revised machine blueprints, cross-domain space-based swarm secure communication protocol, advanced directed-energy airborne adaptation scheme, redundant high-level flight control system blueprints. Total exchange points: 90,000.]

[Current host main skill point balance is sufficient. Do you wish to redeem?]

"Redeem all."

[Ding! Consumed 90,000 main skill points.]

Four sets of technical frameworks flooded into his consciousness space.

It wasn't even in the same magnitude as the Near-Earth version.

The autonomous decision-making logic of the Near-Earth version of the Xuan Nu was like a well-trained soldier; it executed whatever instructions it was given.

The decision-making architecture of the Solar System version was like a general who could fight on their own. In extreme situations like deep space communication interruption or mothership command delay, it could independently complete the full-chain tactical loop from reconnaissance to strike.

The swarm coordination algorithm jumped directly from "small-scale formation" to "massive global scale."

Hundreds of Xuan Nu could fight simultaneously in different orbits of the Solar System, maintaining real-time synchronization with each other through the space-based Quantum Communication network.

Cross-orbit ultra-high maneuverability control solved the fatal shortcoming of the Near-Earth version's flight control, which had cumulative deviations in long-distance vacuum travel.

Advanced stealth avionics fusion integrated the multi-domain coordination control of the ultimate version of the stealth film directly into the avionics system; it was no longer an add-on stealth, but an entire machine-level fusion.

Su Che digested this for nearly five minutes.

He opened his eyes and picked up his handheld device to call Liu Huaqiang.

9:30 PM.

"Dean Liu, tomorrow at 8:00 AM, the entire academician team is to report to the B2 level."

"You've finished reading the messages?"

"I have. The Near-Earth version isn't a matter of patching; the whole machine needs to be redone."

"Do you have a plan?"

"I have a framework in my head. We'll divide the work tomorrow after we go over the details." Su Che naturally wouldn't say it like that.

"All right, I'll notify everyone."

Su Che hung up the phone and unfolded the blueprints for the Solar System version of the Xuan Nu on the main screen.

A twenty-five-meter wingspan, the fuselage lengthened to twenty-eight meters, the tail engines upgraded from two to four improved scaled-down adaptive variable cycle engines, with an embedded mini Controlled Nuclear Fusion power supply module.

The weapon bay in the belly was doubled in capacity, and the interface for the advanced directed-energy components had three specifications reserved.

The airborne distributed unit of the Deep Space Main God AI was written directly into the underlying avionics, no longer an external module.

The entire aircraft, from its bones to its skin and its brain, had been completely replaced.

Su Che shrank the blueprints and cut to the deep space monitoring panel of the Global Deep Space Quantum Radar.

A habitual action.

Every time he returned to the main console, the first thing he did was check the status of the luan bird, and the second was to look at this.

The cursor of the sentry ship was lit up on the deep space star map.

The speed reading automatically updated by the main god ai was hanging next to the cursor.

Eight hundred kilometers per second.

Su Che stared at that number.

He pulled up the speed curve from the previous few days to compare.

It was seven hundred ninety-one before, now it was eight hundred, an increase of nine.

But the slope of the speed curve was flattening out.

Su Che enlarged the curve and had the main god ai do a set of extrapolation predictions.

When the result popped up, he leaned back in his chair and didn't move.

Eight hundred kilometers per second was the speed limit of this sentry ship.

It wouldn't get any faster.

Based on the current speed and remaining distance, the main god ai provided an accurate estimation of the arrival time.

One hundred days.

Starting from today, in one hundred days, this alien outpost observation ship coming from the edge of the Solar System would arrive at Earth.

Su Che locked this number on the main screen.

He closed all unnecessary panels, leaving only two things.

On the left, the blueprints for the Solar System version of the Xuan Nu.

On the right, the countdown to the arrival of the sentry ship.

Day one hundred.

He pulled the keyboard over and began to write the first line of code.