73: Chapter 73 The master key to the South Heavenly Gate, left behind by my grandfather!

Outside the alloy door, the atmosphere was oppressive to the extreme.

Lieutenant General Peng's eyes were bloodshot. He slammed his fist hard into the emergency communication terminal nearby, denting the hard alloy casing, while alarm lights flashed frantically.

Yet, as if he couldn't feel the excruciating pain from his hand bones, he just stared fixedly at that motionless door.

"Engineer Su! Engineer Su! Answer me!"

Inside the door, there was dead silence.

President Liu Qianghua's face was deathly pale. He rushed to another terminal and his fingers typed rapidly on the physical keyboard, attempting to bypass the locking protocol from a physical level.

On the screen, there was only a line of crimson warning.

["Dragon Vein" core area has activated the highest-level "Shield-Casting" protocol; all internal and external communications are physically isolated.]

Physically isolated!

This meant that Su Che was facing that unknown, terrifying "the observer"!

"It's over..." President Liu Qianghua's body swayed as he muttered to himself.

Just as the two of them fell into despair.

"Hum..."

A faint humming sound, as if a heavy burden had been lifted, rang out.

That alloy door, as thick as a mountain, slowly slid open to both sides.

Su Che stood at the doorway, his face somewhat pale, with sweat beads still hanging on his forehead, but his eyes were unusually calm.

Behind him, the medical staff on site were busy tidying up.

Su Changshan on the hospital bed had fallen back into silence, and the brain waves on the monitor had once again returned to a cold, straight line.

"Engineer Su! You..."

Lieutenant General Peng rushed forward in one stride, grabbed Su Che's shoulders, and looked him up and down.

"I'm fine."

Su Che shook his head, his voice a bit hoarse.

"Just like that time with Senior Lin Weiguo, that thing came again."

He explained concisely.

"Before I completely solve the signal shielding problem, this Brain-Computer Interface cannot be used again."

Lieutenant General Peng and Dean Liu exchanged a glance, both seeing lingering fear and relief in each other's eyes.

Although they failed to wake Su Changshan, at least Su Che was fine.

"Then... the old man..." Dean Liu looked at the hospital bed, wanting to say something but stopping.

"My grandfather left something for me."

Su Che did not answer but walked straight to a military confidential terminal.

He raised his head, looked at Lieutenant General Peng and Dean Liu, and said word by word.

"Heavenly Gate."

"luan bird."

"And... a password."

Lieutenant General Peng and Dean Liu's bodies jolted violently!

There was not a trace of surprise on their faces; what emerged was a kind of ecstatic relief!

"Nantianmen Project!"

"luan bird aerospace carrier!"

Lieutenant General Peng's voice was uncontrollably excited.

"The old chief... he has handed the master key to you!"

"Let's go, it's time to reveal the full picture of the Nantianmen Project!"

Dean Liu walked quickly to the core conference room terminal and, with a gesture bordering on pilgrimage, called up the highest-authority verification interface for Su Che.

"Engineer Su, please enter the password."

Su Che steadied his mind and slowly entered the string of characters that his grandfather had transmitted with all his mental strength at the last moment.

[Password verification passed.]

[Welcome, Nantianmen Project, second-generation general director, Su Che.]

["Southern Gate" project master database has been opened for you.]

"Boom!"

As if a universe that had been sealed for decades was slowly pulling back its curtain before the three of them.

On the main screen connected to the terminal, a massive, breathtaking, tree-structured technical database appeared before their eyes.

It was not just a few files, nor was it a few dozen GB of data.

It was a galaxy of technology composed of tens of thousands of blueprints, millions of experimental data points, and the life's work of countless scientists!

From basic materials science to high-energy physics.

From aerodynamics to Artificial Intelligence.

From weapon systems to life support.

[Nantianmen Project], this top-secret of the Dragon Kingdom, for the first time, revealed its full picture to Su Che.

Its goal was far grander than Su Che had imagined.

That was not just an aerospace carrier battle group.

That was an ultimate national defense system integrating air, space, electronics, network, and intelligence, capable of achieving rapid global reach and interstellar strategic projection!

Lieutenant General Peng and Dean Liu looked at the familiar project tree on the screen, which had regained vitality due to Su Che's arrival, and their eyes turned red.

"It's been fifteen years..." Lieutenant General Peng's voice choked, "Old Chief Su held on underground for fifteen years, and finally there is hope, there is a successor..."

Su Che did not speak.

His gaze was fixed on the core node of the project tree.

—— [luan bird aerospace carrier].

He clicked it open.

A 3D structural diagram of a giant aerospace carrier, a hundred times more complex than any blueprints he had obtained before and full of sci-fi aesthetic, popped up.

The streamlined hull was full of a sense of power.

The weapon arrays covering its entire body were ferocious and lethal.

Su Che's gaze then directly penetrated these shells and locked onto the power core area of the carrier.

There, a key module was marked in glaring red.

[Adaptive Variable Cycle Aerospace Engine].

Su Che clicked on this module, and more detailed design blueprints and R&D logs filled the entire screen.

That was a theoretically incomparably perfect engine.

It could work efficiently within the atmosphere like a turbofan engine.

After flying out of the atmosphere, it could switch to ramjet mode, or even the most violent rocket mode.

One engine, compatible with three working states, enough to take human aircraft to unprecedented heights and speeds.

However...

Su Che's gaze fell on the last few pages of the R&D logs.

[Experiment No. 774: High-temperature alloy blades exhibited irreversible structural creep under simulated Mach 15 conditions... Experiment failed.]

[Experiment No. 812: Variable cycle mechanism response delay exceeded 500 milliseconds, unable to achieve instantaneous cross-medium switching... Experiment failed.]

[Experiment No. 999: Intelligent control algorithm unable to process combustion chamber flow field data exceeding 100 million variables, leading to engine surge... Experiment failed.]

...

Page after page, it was all failure.

Finally, there were the annotations written by Su Changshan himself, with deep exhaustion and unwillingness revealed in the handwriting.

[Energy, materials, computing power, propulsion, control... the five major bottlenecks, like five great mountains, stand before us.]

[Nantianmen, wanting to fly to the nine heavens, but... broke its wings here.]

Seeing this, Su Che finally understood.

The Nantianmen Project didn't lack design blueprints.

Rather, it had the technique to slay dragons, but could not forge the sword to do so!

Twenty-five years ago, the generation of researchers including his grandfather, holding back a breath of determination, used first-generation computing equipment and their own flesh and blood to create an Anti-gravity material that transcended the era, which led to the launch of the Nantianmen Project fifteen years ago.

But the subsequent energy, materials, computing power, propulsion, and control technologies were left far behind by the era.

They conceived of a god, but discovered that there were no temples in the mortal world to worship it.

Including this god-level engine, because of the limitations of the era, it was effectively bugged and trapped on the blueprints.

"So... that's how it is."

Su Che muttered to himself, and the mysterious coordinate located at the Earth-Moon Lagrange L2 point, which was decrypted in his grandfather's letter, suddenly flashed through his mind.

"It seems that grandfather didn't just accomplish nothing in these fifteen years; he probably left some backup plan... But to know everything, I can only wait for him to truly wake up."

He looked up at Lieutenant General Peng and Dean Liu, and a raging flame ignited in his eyes.

"General, Dean Liu."

"I know what the first step of the Southern Gate should be."

He pointed at the engine on the screen that had been sentenced to death,

"The heart of this engine stopped long ago."

"Now, I am going to personally replace it with a new heart that belongs to this era!"