231: Chapter 231 The Solar System Version of the Southern Heavenly Gate Project Concludes Successfully!

Countdown to the arrival of the sentry ship, twenty days.

Pangu Laboratory, Level B2, morning.

The final joint debugging of the Mecha had reached its fourth round.

On the large public screen, the 7.5-meter humanoid Mecha was performing a set of extreme tactical maneuvers in the main god ai's combat simulator.

Ground walking, low-altitude flight switching, micro-spatial displacement dodging, directed energy rifle firing, melee cutting blade slashing, and micro quantum protective shield full power activation.

All six core capabilities were superimposed.

The simulation scenario was a planetary surface landing and assault.

Twelve enemy unmanned platforms surrounded it from three directions, in complex terrain featuring gravel slopes, architectural ruins, and open ground.

The Mecha advanced on the gravel slope using walking mode, its left arm shield blocking two low-energy beams, while its right-hand rifle fired continuously to suppress the frontal targets.

Three high-speed small platforms suddenly appeared on the flank.

The main god ai detected the threat, and the dodge module was triggered.

The Mecha "slid" three meters to the left.

Three beams passed through its original position and hit the gravel.

Su Che stared at the energy consumption readings of the dodge module on the large screen.

A single displacement consumed 7.6% of the fusion battery.

It was 0.4 percentage points lower than the design target of 8%.

Academician Chen Shian stood next to the test bench, his lab coat sleeves unrolled today, silver-rimmed glasses perched on the bridge of his nose, holding a printed biosafety assessment report in his left hand.

"The cumulative magnetic field exposure for twenty dodges is within 61% of the safety threshold."

Su Che acknowledged.

The simulator continued to run.

The Mecha switched to low-altitude flight mode, with the Anti-gravity module at full capacity, rising from the gravel slope to a height of fifteen meters before diving toward the last three targets.

The cutting blade was activated.

The high-frequency vibrating alloy blade traced an arc in the simulator, and the first target was split down the middle.

The second target performed an evasive maneuver, but the Mecha pursued it, using its left arm shield to knock aside the target's maneuver path while its right-hand cutting blade swept across.

The third target attempted a sneak attack from behind.

The shield adjusted automatically, instantly maximizing the shielding intensity in the direction of the impact.

The rifle turned, and a single shot pierced through.

Twelve targets, all destroyed.

The Mecha's own power consumption was 57%, with 43% of the fusion battery remaining.

The comprehensive score popped up on the large screen.

96.2.

Academician Zhang Weide stood up from the supercomputing terminal and stretched.

Zhao Mingyuan was staring at the real-time logs of the mapping algorithm at a corner workstation, flipping to the last page, where the handwriting on his cuffs had been blurred into a smudge by sweat and ink.

"96.2." He recited the number, offering no other comment.

Su Che was in no rush to finalize the version.

He pulled up all the logs from the fourth round of joint debugging and went through them one by one.

At the seven-minute mark, a 43-millisecond peak delay appeared in the waist rotation.

It was three milliseconds more than the expected 40 milliseconds.

"Zhao Mingyuan, check that 43-millisecond peak at the seven-minute mark for the waist."

Zhao Mingyuan flipped back to the corresponding section of the log.

"The pilot simulation body performed a composite action of a continuous waist turn followed by a side kick; the interval between the two commands was too close, and the confirmation window of the second command overlapped with the execution tail frame of the first command by three milliseconds."

"Push the start frame of the confirmation window back by five milliseconds to create an interval from the tail frame of the previous command."

Zhao Mingyuan made the change and re-ran that segment.

The 43 milliseconds dropped back to 39.

Su Che continued reading the logs.

At the eleven-minute mark, when the shield automatically adjusted its shielding direction after being hit, there was an 8-microsecond jitter in the communication link.

Academician Qian Chenhua.

"The communication recovery subroutine after the micro-spatial displacement dodge shared the same interrupt priority as the shield adjustment subroutine, causing contention when both were triggered simultaneously."

Academician Qian Chenhua separated the interrupt priorities of the two subroutines, setting the shield adjustment one level higher and the communication recovery one level lower.

Re-run.

The jitter disappeared.

Su Che flipped to the end of the log; there were no other anomalies.

He encapsulated and packaged the complete technical package for the Mecha, labeling it "Mecha – Solar System Version – Final Draft".

He pushed it to the encrypted storage.

Deep in his mind, a blue and white panel popped up.

[Ding! Main R&D task "Put the soldiers in a 7.5-meter-tall iron coffin!" completed!]

[Final system verification for the Mecha Solar System Version passed!]

[Seamless switching between planetary and surface dual-mode mobility, 3-meter zero-exposure micro-spatial displacement dodging, precision suppression with individual directed energy rifle, short-range damage with high-energy melee cutting blade, dynamic adaptation of micro quantum protective shield, comprehensive score 96.2!]

[The ten-ton iron man has stood up!]

[Task Reward: 1,500,000 Skill Points!]

1.5 million.

Su Che closed the panel.

Liu Huaqiang walked out of the communication area, his notebook open to the page for the Mecha.

All the checkboxes were filled with checkmarks.

He didn't close the notebook; he flipped back a few pages to a blank one.

At the very top of the blank page, he had previously written five characters in pencil.

Nantianmen Solar System Version.

Below the seven characters, five lines were listed.

luan bird — ✓

Xuan Nu — ✓

White Emperor — ✓

Mingdi Interceptor — ✓

Mecha — ✓

Five checkmarks.

Liu Huaqiang tucked the pencil into the notebook's binding and closed it.

He said nothing.

Level B2 was quiet for a few seconds.

Academician Sun Qiwen emerged from the U-shaped array area, leaving his thermos on the cabinet, hands in his pockets.

"Chief Engineer Su, five blades, all ready."

Su Che's handheld device vibrated.

A message from Zhou Dehai.

"Chief Engineer Su, the final assembly of the first Mingdi Interceptor is complete, the cannon barrel optical interference test has passed, and the system self-test is complete; it is ready for a test flight."

Su Che replied with two words.

"Let's go."

...

Kaitian Base, northwest runway.

Afternoon.

The first Mingdi Interceptor Solar System Version lay at the start of the runway.

22 meters long, 11-meter wingspan.

It was more than a third shorter than the White Emperor and a whole size smaller than the Xuan Nu.

The narrow, long fuselage was covered in silver-gray stealth skin, with two engines semi-buried on both sides of the fuselage, the sawtooth lips of the air intakes fitting seamlessly with the skin.

The belly bomb bay was closed, showing no lines.

Below the nose, the 3.6-meter particle beam sniper cannon barrel was semi-hidden in the skin, with only the 0.3-millimeter beam exit at the front of the muzzle revealing a dark dot the size of a needle tip.

Su Che stood in the observation tower, the main screen connected to the main god ai real-time control interface.

Lieutenant General Peng Zhenbang stood to his right, in the same position as during the last Xuan Nu test flight.

"The second bird." Lieutenant General Peng Zhenbang said.

"The third," Su Che corrected him, "Xuan Nu is the first, and the White Emperor is the second."

Lieutenant General Peng Zhenbang did not respond.

Su Che pressed the communication key.

"main god ai, start the Mingdi Interceptor test flight program."

On the runway, the two engines ignited.

The sound was different from the Xuan Nu.

The sound of the Xuan Nu's four engines was a tearing hiss, while the White Emperor's six were a deeper version.

The Mingdi Interceptor's two engines had a sound so sharp it was almost inaudible.

The towing lock released, and it taxied.

A much shorter taxi distance than the Xuan Nu.

The front wheel lifted off.

Climb.

The Mingdi Interceptor's climb angle was steeper than both the Xuan Nu and the White Emperor, almost drilling straight up vertically.

On the observation tower's speedometer panel, the numbers jumped faster than the previous two times.

The few leafless poplar trees on both sides of the runway swayed twice under the wake.

Fifteen seconds later, the Mingdi Interceptor disappeared from view.

The altitude on the main screen was still jumping.

30,000, 50,000, 80,000.

Near space.

Switching to closed-cycle.

The speed continued to climb.

300, 400, 500.

550, 600.

650.

700.

720.

Top speed.

720 kilometers per second.

Less than nine minutes from Earth to the Moon.

First in the entire lineup.

On the main screen, the flight status data transmitted back by the main god ai was all green.

The thrust symmetry of the two semi-buried engines was perfect, and the airframe structural stress was 65% below the allowable value across the board.

The stealth skin sawtooth lips showed no abnormalities.

The sniper cannon barrel was in a stable standby state.

The four sets of cold gas micro-thruster covers were in a normal pre-open state.

Su Che issued the second command.

"Shut down the main engines, enter inertial gliding."

The two engines cut out.

The propulsion signal on the main screen returned to zero.

The infrared radiation value dropped from several hundred degrees to background noise level.

The Mingdi Interceptor turned into a silent block of iron, gliding through near space with an inertia of 720 kilometers per second.

The cold gas micro-thruster fired once, correcting the yaw angle by 0.2 degrees.

Nitrogen consumption: 0.3% of total capacity.

Gliding attitude stable.

Su Che waited for thirty seconds.

"Restore power, return to base."

The engines reignited.

The Mingdi Interceptor turned around and aligned with the runway.

Decelerate.

Landing.

The sound of the tires gripping the runway surface was crisp and clean.

Taxi, stop steady.

From takeoff to landing, less than eight minutes.

Lieutenant General Peng Zhenbang's gaze remained on the runway.

The Mingdi Interceptor lay quietly in the middle of the runway, its silver-gray skin barely reflecting light in the afternoon sun.

The 22-meter narrow, long fuselage was like a dagger returned to its sheath.

Su Che turned off the communication channel.

Lieutenant General Peng Zhenbang turned around.

"Five major pieces of equipment, all complete?"

"Complete."

Su Che packaged and archived the test flight data on the main screen and switched back to the global view.

In low Earth orbit, the Luan Niao Mothership hung quietly under the starlight, the pre-reserved installation ports on its 1,100-meter-long massive body arranged in neat arrays, waiting to be filled.

Kaitian Base's three Xuan Nu mass production lines continued to operate.

The first batch of White Emperor components were lining up in the final assembly workshop.

The mass production schedule for the Mingdi Interceptor was already in Zhou Dehai's hands.

The component breakdown table for the Mecha would be sent out tonight.

Su Che closed the global view and leaned against the windowsill of the observation tower.

"Lieutenant General Peng, all R&D for the second phase of the Nantianmen Project is complete."

Lieutenant General Peng Zhenbang did not answer immediately.

He walked to the window and looked at the Mingdi Interceptor on the runway and the direction of the final assembly workshop in the distance.

"What's next?"

Su Che extended a hand, spreading his five fingers.

"Three hundred Xuan Nu, twelve White Emperors, six Mingdi Interceptors, and ninety-six Mecha."

"The full set of carrier-based aircraft and combat units must be mass-produced, loaded onto the mothership, and complete collaborative combat drills within twenty days."

He pulled his hand back.

"Then, we welcome our guests."

Corner of the main screen.

Countdown to the arrival of the sentry ship, twenty days.