Chapter 415: The Last Second

Lin Xian didn't know how hard sailors worked, but he thought this tradition was pretty good.

Sailor, thank you.

Since the Silent City banquet, Monica's judgment of the current situation had made him realize she was not merely a queen who commanded men, but one who truly possessed formidable wisdom.

Lin Xian truly believed this was wisdom, though he had indeed been bowled over by her qipao.

But in the late night, Lin Xian truly felt his Tunshi speed had seemed to accelerate—whether it was psychological or because the Queen's assault had truly shaken him, he couldn't tell.

【Current Mechanical Heart Level: LV. (6720/50000)】

Mechanical Tunshi: 6 (1100/5000) — Increase Tunshi efficiency

"This efficiency is acceptable."

At 4 a. ., Lin Xian had nearly finished Tunshi the scrap cars in half the port; though the mechanical source points and Tunshi proficiency gained from cars were low, their sheer quantity compensated, and since Lin Xian was operating remotely, he only needed to sit atop the port crane to cover a vast area.

After clearing a large stretch of cars, Lin Xian looked down at the sea of zombies and turned his gaze to a nearly capsized ship in the port, which still carried several rings of Starline train cars.

"This thing must weigh over ten thousand tons—let's try it…"

Without hesitation, Lin Xian activated Mechanical Tunshi; instantly, he seemed to hear a hollow "whoosh" from the massive ship, then felt his mental energy being steadily siphoned away as his scan expanded.

Zeng! Zeng! Zeng!

At that moment, three superstring reactor phase rings ignited behind Lin Xian, running at full power; his eyes glowed, and with the superstring reactors' boost, he now had an almost endless source of power.

"As long as I have time, no matter how many tons, I'm nuclear-powered bull now!"

【 Tunshi Progress: 1%】

Finally, the Tunshi progress bar appeared before Lin Xian's eyes; from it, he immediately estimated that Tunshi this ten-thousand-ton ship would take at least ten hours.

This slightly exceeded his expectations—he'd assumed the ship's mechanical structure couldn't possibly be as complex as a Dragon-class transport vessel or a Dreadnought, and since his Tunshi level had risen to LV. , it shouldn't take this long—but now that he'd begun, he saw it would still take roughly ten hours.

"Could it be because I've never Tunshi ed a ship before?"

Lin Xian frowned slightly, hesitating now; after all, the ship looked like nothing but lumps of iron—but since he'd already started, he gritted his teeth and plunged ahead.

Shhh!

Waves churned across the port, surging as if Lin Xian's action had triggered a violent reaction.

Meanwhile, on the Tiannan Ship, in the Star Research Lab, a hundred-member "Wangxing" research team—composed of astronomers, information specialists, radio astronomy engineers, and interstellar molecular astrophysics experts—had assembled; their leader, Yang Xu, 47, tall and slender, was a former academician of the National Astronomical Observatory of Longguo and an expert in astrophysics.

"Deep-space monitoring station reports: Target—South Tianmen Near-Earth Defense Platform—orbital data locked. Geostationary position: longitude 15. °W, latitude 51. °N, altitude 52, 60 km (error ±2 km). Orbital inclination: 51. 4°, drift rate 0. 2°/day. Matches predictive model."

"Optical tracking shows no anomalies in the South Tianmen platform's main structure. Six hours and forty-one minutes ago, it autonomously deployed all twelve photovoltaic panels; currently stable on observation orbit."

Yang Xu, frowning, led his team into the command center, where Chu Yan was now relaying Grace's transmitted data to others.

"Captain Chu," Yang Xu approached and said, "Have you contacted Team Leader Lin? Can you confirm the photovoltaic panels' deployment was his doing?"

Chu Yan replied: "Director Yang, I confirmed with Grace that this was Lin Xian's action. His purpose in shutting down the nuclear power core was likely to prevent nuclear radiation from attracting strange entities from the deep-space dark energy storm zones—we've encountered this multiple times in the Star Abyss. No mistake."

"But if the nuclear power core is shut down, South Tianmen can't launch an offensive in the short term," said another engineer, surnamed Chen, frowning.

Chu Yan explained: "Grace detected massive microbial invasion on the platform. There may also be some deep-space strange entity lingering on the outer hull—currently under investigation. This issue must be resolved first."

Yang Xu nodded: "Indeed. Has the dark matter information decoded from the gravitational wave yielded results yet?"

"Soon."

Chu Yan exhaled slowly: "That information was stored in the Fourth Deep-Level Secret Order. It requires decryption."

"Fourth Deep-Level Secret Order?"

The speaker was a slightly overweight middle-aged man—Wu Junping, formerly South Tianmen's information engineer, now looking puzzled: "Why would the data be inside a black box?"

"Is there a problem?" Chu Yan asked.

Wu Junping immediately replied: "The Fourth Deep-Level Secret Order is commonly called the 'Fallen Black Box'—a physical backup device used when a spacecraft crashes or fails. All platform data syncs into it, and it's never stored alone. If it's in the Fourth Deep-Level Secret Order, the parent storage units should contain it too."

"That's right—its existence solely in the black box is indeed strange…" other engineers chimed in.

"But that doesn't make sense—the black box decryption shouldn't be that complex. Grace's computing power should crack it instantly." Another engineer said.

"That's exactly my point," Chu Yan's expression turned grim. "According to Grace's logs, this dark matter information was captured at 00: 0: 1 on the Day of Revelation. But when Grace decrypted it, she found the data was recorded in the black box one second ago."

"One second ago? You mean 00: 0: 0 on the Day of Revelation?" Wu Junping adjusted his glasses, baffled.

"You mean…"

Director Yang furrowed his brow, raised his finger toward the clock above the command center hall, and asked Chu Yan:

"The 'one second ago'… right now?"

Chu Yan nodded.

Silence.

Dozens of engineers fell utterly still; a collective gasp of shock echoed through the room.

Director Yang's face turned stunned: "So… this information cannot be extracted?"

"At this point, it appears so."

"What's going on? A mechanical failure?" an engineer exclaimed.

"Unlikely," Wu Junping immediately shook his head. "Grace, as a top-tier AI, has an integrated optical clock system calibrated to within one second over three hundred years. This isn't just a storage time issue…"

"Could South Tianmen be caught in a time dilation effect, like the Star Abyss?"

"Possible—but time dilation shouldn't produce this kind of loop," Yang Xu frowned, then turned to Chu Yan: "The only solution now is to re-decrypt the dark matter information using the Pandax-4T liquid xenon detector."

Chu Yan sighed: "Grace just suggested the same."

Yang Xu immediately said: "Then…"

"Yes," Chu Yan said solemnly. "That dark matter information was also sent one second ago."

Hssss…

Instantly, the air in the command center turned uncanny; countless people felt a chill crawl up their spines.

"Time loop?" someone gasped.

"This is weird—how could this happen?"

Yang Xu's face was grave: "Colleagues, don't panic yet—this issue…"