206: Chapter 206 The bee swarm has finished sharpening its teeth; it's now sharpening its blade with directional energy!

Countdown to the arrival of the sentry ship, 85th day.

Pangu Laboratory, Level B2, 2:40 AM.

Zhao Mingyuan had run six consecutive rounds of the highest-level combat simulation, with 300 virtual Xuannü drones in each round battling a top-tier enemy swarm generated by the main god ai.

The loss rate for the fourth round was 7.1 percent.

The fifth round was 6.3 percent.

The data for the sixth round had just refreshed.

Zhao Mingyuan stared at the number on the screen and slammed his bag of goji berries onto the table.

"4.8 percent."

Su Che switched over from the scheduling engine's code window and glanced at the battle report.

"Did you implement hierarchical classification for the tactical context inheritance in the memory pool?"

"I did." Zhao Mingyuan tapped the tabletop with two fingers.

"The last 30 seconds are level-one cache, the previous five minutes are level-two archive, and anything over five minutes is automatically downgraded. The reason the loss rate for the sixth round could be suppressed is mainly due to the level-two archive; the tactical experience retrieved during formation reorganization was more complete."

"Did you adjust the downgrade threshold?"

"I changed it from five minutes to eight minutes. Tactical memories within eight minutes all retain medium weight, and the decision-making speed after reorganization is 0.4 seconds faster."

Su Che didn't reply, pulling up the detailed log for the sixth round and scanning it line by line.

Out of 300 Xuannü drones, 14 were lost.

Of those 14, nine were from the vanguard reconnaissance formation that was focus-fired within the first two minutes of the start.

The loss of the vanguard was tactically anticipated and did not count as a decision-making error.

The actual unexpected losses were only five drones.

Of those five, three were caught by the enemy AI during the instant of reorganization, exploiting a 0.1-second gap in the formation.

Su Che marked the data on that 0.1-second gap in red.

"There is still room for optimization in the transition frames of the reorganization formation."

"Academician Qian."

Academician Qian Zhenhua didn't look up, his left hand twisting the pen cap while his right hand modified parameters on the code terminal for the layered networking protocol.

"I heard you. I'll shave a bit more off the subnet switching latency for the reorganization transition frames."

"How much will you shave off?"

"It's currently 200 nanoseconds. I'll try to push it down to 150. Any lower and we'll hit the hardware limit; the multiplexing flip of the quantum entanglement channel requires physical time."

Su Che opened the parameter interface for the transition frames to Academician Qian Zhenhua.

The three of them tapped away at their respective tasks; in Level B2, aside from the sound of keyboards and the air conditioning, there was nothing else.

3:30 AM.

Academician Qian Zhenhua pushed the subnet switching latency down to 160 nanoseconds.

"I couldn't do 150. The physical lower limit for the quantum state flip is stuck at 158. I went with 160 to leave a 2-nanosecond safety margin."

Zhao Mingyuan took the new parameters and fed them into the seventh round of simulation.

300 virtual Xuannü drones came back online.

The highest-level enemy AI changed its strategy this time; instead of focus-firing the vanguard, it dispersed and infiltrated, attempting to create chaos from within the swarm.

The Xuannü swarm's anti-AI interception module identified the infiltration pattern at the 40th second.

The Cognitive Graph autonomously generated a "Hive Contraction" tactic.

All peripheral combat drones simultaneously converged toward the center, forming a dense defensive sphere, squeezing the infiltrated enemy units inside the sphere.

Inside the sphere, an annihilation squad composed of 12 Xuannü drones completed the cleanup.

The battle report popped up.

Loss rate: 3.1 percent.

Zhao Mingyuan pushed his chair back and stretched his arms behind his head.

"3.1."

Su Che archived the battle report.

"Run the final round. The enemy AI will load all 1.5 billion sets of combat experience with no strategic restrictions."

Zhao Mingyuan sat up straight and adjusted the parameters to the maximum.

The final round ran for 11 minutes.

The time was longer than all previous rounds.

With all the combat experience, the highest-level enemy AI displayed extremely strong adaptability.

In the first three minutes, it switched through seven attack modes in succession, each precisely targeting weaknesses that the Xuannü swarm had previously exposed.

The Xuannü swarm's Cognitive Graph was also evolving in sync.

At the fifth minute, the swarm autonomously generated a tactic that had never appeared in the training data.

Three formations simultaneously performed three contradictory maneuvers, causing the enemy AI's predictive model to experience decision oscillation within 0.02 seconds.

Within the oscillation window, 180 Xuannü drones completed the encirclement.

Battle report.

Loss rate: 2.7 percent.

Zhao Mingyuan stared at that number for five seconds, poured the last berry out of his goji bag, and tossed it into his mouth to chew.

"The goji berries are finished, and the work is done too."

Su Che packed the complete data from the eight rounds of combat simulations into an encrypted vault.

From 22 percent down to 2.7 percent.

Four days.

"Finalize the version."

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

[Ding! Main R&D task "300 Iron Birds, Must Learn to Bite Together!" has been completed!]

[Swarm coordination and anti-AI interception algorithm R&D verification passed! Distributed swarm coordinated combat has achieved seamless reorganization of 300 drones across the entire domain, the anti-AI interception algorithm successfully induced decision oscillation in the highest-level enemy AI, and cluster damage self-healing maintains tactical integrity even with 50 percent losses! The swarm can not only fly on its own but also coordinate to bite the enemy to death!]

[Task reward: 350,000 skill points!]

350,000 credited.

Su Che closed the panel.

Zhao Mingyuan had already pushed his swivel chair into the corner, curled up inside it, and rested his legs on the legs of the nearby folding table, falling asleep instantly.

Academician Qian Zhenhua, at the east workstation, silently patched the final version of the layered networking protocol and pushed it synchronously to the burning queue of the Xuannü mass production line.

The lights on Level B2 had never been turned off.

...

Countdown to the arrival of the sentry ship, 84th day.

8:00 AM.

Su Che sat up from the cot next to the main console and rubbed the back of his head.

Zhou Dehai's holographic projection flickered twice in the bottom right corner of the main screen, and he connected.

"Chief Engineer Su, the dual-cavity base of the Zhulong-2 was cast yesterday, and the quantum field isolation membrane is being installed."

Zhou Dehai was standing in the backup factory building, with the semi-formed chassis of the second unit behind him.

"The anti-phase interference cancellation module will be installed this afternoon, and we'll do the full system joint debugging tomorrow. If everything goes smoothly, we'll finish tomorrow."

"No rush, make sure the joint debugging is solid."

"I know, I won't cut steps just to rush the work."

The projection cut off.

Academician Li Zhengyang carried his thermos, a ring of white water stains already dried on its surface.

"Chief Engineer Su, I discovered a problem when Academician Qian Zhenhua and I were jointly debugging the fire control for the airborne directed energy components of the Solar System version of the Xuannü."

Su Che turned around.

"When the particle beam strikes at ultra-long distances, although the energy attenuation isn't large, the beam's pointing drift accumulates to the centimeter level over 3 million kilometers. It's enough for fixed targets, but it falls short for maneuvering targets."

"How much does it fall short?"

"The hit probability drops from 97 percent to 83 percent."

Academician Li Zhengyang set his thermos on the edge of the console.

"The near-Earth version of the directed energy weapon uses lasers to hit targets within 100 kilometers, so this problem doesn't exist at all. But the Solar System version needs to hit deep space targets millions of kilometers away, so the pointing accuracy needs to be improved by one or two orders of magnitude."

Su Che pulled Academician Li Zhengyang's data onto the main screen.

83 percent.

With 300 Xuannü drones firing in unison, an 83 percent hit rate means over 50 shots miss per volley.

Missing doesn't matter; the key is that there is no atmospheric scattering in deep space, so the missed particle beams will fly in a straight line to who knows where.

Moreover, the Xuannü's directed energy components are based on the near-Earth version, which is inherently an entry-level model.

Su Che leaned back in his chair.

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

[Ding! Detected that the performance of the airborne directed energy weapons on the Solar System version of the Xuannü cannot meet the requirements for ultra-long-distance precision strikes in deep space. Main R&D task triggered!]

[Task Name: Hitting a Target 3 Million Kilometers Away, No Deviating!]

[Task Content: The near-Earth directed energy weapon is more than enough for targets within 100 kilometers, but deep space combat often involves millions of kilometers. Beam drift and energy attenuation reduce the hit rate by 20 percent!]

[Please upgrade the aerospace directed energy weapon cluster system to the ultimate version, achieving zero drift in particle beam space transmission, zero attenuation in cross-medium directed energy strikes, and full coverage of global multi-target synchronous strikes, ensuring every beam hits exactly where it should!]

[Task reward: 450,000 skill points, unlocks exchange permissions for particle beam space transmission technology, cross-medium directed energy strike technology, and global multi-target synchronous strike technology, requires 240,000 exchange points.]

[Current host skill point balance is sufficient, exchange?]

Su Che finished reading the task description.

450,000 reward, 240,000 to exchange for core technologies.

"Exchange."

[Ding! Consumed 240,000 skill points, core technologies unlocked!]

[System prompt: Supporting auxiliary technologies have not been exchanged, including: Ultimate version directed energy weapon array blueprints, ultra-high-power energy compression module design, cross-medium transmission compensation algorithm, Deep Space Main God AI fire control system blueprints, total exchange points: 40,000.]

[Current host skill point balance is sufficient, exchange?]

"Exchange all."

[Ding! Consumed 40,000 skill points.]

Four sets of technical frameworks flooded in.

Particle beam space transmission technology solves the pointing drift of the beam during ultra-long-distance flight.

The core principle is to embed a set of quantum entangled "navigation particles" at the front of the particle beam.

The navigation particles are entangled in real-time with the Quantum Radar lock signal at the target end, and the flight path of the particle beam is continuously corrected by the navigation particles, suppressing the drift to the picometer level.

Cross-medium directed energy strikes combine laser and particle beam strike modes onto the same weapon platform, automatically switching based on target characteristics.

Global multi-target synchronous strikes are even more brutal; a single Xuannü's weapon bay can simultaneously lock onto and attack targets in three different directions.

The Deep Space Main God AI fire control system completely rewrote the fire control logic of the entry-level version, integrating it into the main god ai's tactical deduction layer to achieve "calculate while firing."

Su Che digested this for two minutes, then looked up at Academician Li Zhengyang.

"Academician Li, I have the ultimate upgrade plan for the directed energy weapons. Get everyone from the weapon adaptation area back here."

Academician Li Zhengyang didn't ask for the details of the plan, picked up his thermos, and turned to leave.

Su Che expanded the overall architecture diagram of the ultimate directed energy weapon array on the main screen.

"Dean Liu."

Liu Huaqiang responded from the other end of the communication area.

"A new round of R&D: ultimate upgrade for the directed energy weapons, duration five days."

Liu Huaqiang opened his notebook, the tip of his pencil resting on a blank page.

"What about the division of labor?"

"Academician Li Zhengyang will lead particle beam space transmission and cross-medium strike adaptation; this is his specialty. Academician Sun Qiwen will be responsible for the thermodynamic modeling of the ultra-high-power energy compression module; the power has increased by more than an order of magnitude compared to the entry-level version, so the heat dissipation needs to be recalculated."

Su Che pulled out the fire control part of the architecture diagram separately.

"I will write the fire control system myself; it needs to be deeply coupled with the main god ai's tactical deduction layer. Academician Qian will assist by creating the entanglement interface for the Quantum Radar lock signal and the navigation particles."

Liu Huaqiang quickly wrote four lines in his notebook.

"Are the current stocks of high-order high-energy laser crystals and superconducting energy storage upgrade units sufficient?"

"The laser crystals are enough, but we need to exchange some scarce base materials for the superconducting energy storage upgrade units from the interstellar version material library."

Su Che scanned his skill point balance in his mind. "You arrange the materials side first; I'll cover the shortfall."

Liu Huaqiang closed his notebook, took the pencil off his ear, and walked toward the communication area.

When passing by Zhao Mingyuan's corner, he looked down.

Zhao Mingyuan was curled up in his swivel chair, his legs still resting on the legs of the folding table, sleeping sprawled out, a bit of un-wiped goji berry residue hanging from the corner of his mouth.

Liu Huaqiang pulled the thin blanket off the back of the chair and covered his legs with it, without making a sound.

In the corner of the main screen, the countdown to the arrival of the sentry ship.

84 days.

The directed energy weapons began to hone their blades.