Chapter 257: Closed Loop

The blue light of the nuclear submarine dock flickered eerily thirty meters underwater. Chen Yuxin's fingerprints rippled across the airtight door lock. Luo Fei met her gaze through his diving mask; the girl's eyes reflected the dense Russian warning signs on the bulkhead—this was no water purification warehouse, but a nuclear test base left over from the Cold War.

"The reactor is on the lower deck." Amidst the static of Chen Yuxin's communicator came a mix of German-accented English curses, "They used Father's formula to modify the cooling system..."

Gu Changzheng's order came from the surface: "Remember, we need the reactor's self-destruct sequence!" Six moving light spots suddenly appeared on the sonar screen. Luo Fei pushed Chen Yuxin into a conduit and turned to fire three shots in the opposite direction. The bullets carved spiral bubbles through the high-pressure environment, and the blood mist of the pursuers stained the seawater red.

The temperature display of the reactor core chamber pulsed with scarlet digits: 479℃. Chen Yuxin's trembling fingers brushed over the console; the chemical formulas her father had taught her were now driving death. She found a video clip in the encrypted log—Chen Guodong appeared in the lab for the last time, pouring a test tube of liquid into the reactor.

"When the thorium-based catalyst meets excess calcium carbonate..." She suddenly grabbed the operation manual; on a blank page, written in invisible ink, was: 【Critical Point Reversal Formula】.

The sound of the pursuers' footsteps approached in the corridor. Luo Fei stuck a plastic explosive to the hatch: "How long do you need?"

"Seven minutes!" Chen Yuxin tore open her sleeve; beneath the barcode, her skin revealed a micro-storage interface. She inserted her father's wedding ring into the console. A holographic projection suddenly lit up, and Chen Guodong's virtual image began to explain the reversal reaction process.

The German representative's face twisted with rage: "You think deleting the data can stop..." His roar was cut short by an explosion; Gu Changzheng led his men to breach the underwater passage. Old Zheng held up a test tube in the makeshift lab: "Quick! Mix the reactor coolant sample with this!"

Ye Lin's pupils contracted after seeing the label: "This is the EDTA complex extracted from the bottom of Longhu!"

The moment the two liquids touched, the thorium-based catalyst in the petri dish began to boil violently. The monitor showed the reactor temperature beginning a countdown: 479℃→463℃→441℃...

"Go, quickly!" Gao Ye dragged away Xiao Sun, who was busy cracking the code. The blast door slammed shut behind them with a boom. Chen Yuxin's keyboard typing grew more frantic; in the hologram, Chen Guodong was demonstrating how to convert nuclear fission into an electrolytic reaction.

Zhou Shichang's wheelchair slid out from the shadows, his festering right hand gripping a detonator: "I won't live, and none of you will..." Before he could finish, Luo Fei's dagger pierced his wrist. As the detonator fell, Chen Yuxin lunged to catch it, the barcode on the back of her neck brushing against the reactor shell.

A blinding blue light swallowed the entire chamber. The alarm sounded with a mechanical female voice: "Biometric signal detected, self-destruct sequence terminated."

Chen Yuxin stared blankly at the identification zone on the reactor shell—those tattoos treated as product serial numbers were actually the self-destruct keys drawn by Chen Guodong with invisible nano-ink. Her father had planted the final safety catch back when he gave her the tattoo.

The submarine suddenly tilted violently; the German representative had activated the undersea seismic device. Gu Changzheng grabbed a swaying pipe: "He's going to trigger a trench collapse!"

Chen Yuxin lunged for the central console, her ten fingers flying across the keyboard like butterflies. Her father's final teaching video was playing: "... True purification is never about destruction, but transformation..." She connected the reactor output to the electrolysis system, and the radiation values on the screen began to plummet like a cliff.

"They are converting nuclear fission energy into seawater electrolysis!" Old Zheng stared at the suddenly soaring hydrogen production, "This will generate a massive amount of clean energy..."

The German representative's bullet pierced the console, and blood bloomed on Chen Yuxin's shoulder. In the 45-degree tilted chamber, Luo Fei fired back; his bullet struck the hydrogen delivery pipe, and roaring flames sealed off the escape route.

Chen Yuxin crawled toward the reactor through the thick smoke, her bloody fingerprints dragging a winding trail on the safety valve. Her father's voice echoed in her ears across seven years of time: "Science should be like a dandelion, spreading vitality to all corners..."

She turned the final valve, and the reactor shell opened layer by layer, revealing the glass test tube sealed within the core chamber—the true result of Chen Guodong's life's work: a deep-blue bacterial strain capable of decomposing radioactive materials.

Seawater rushed in madly from the cracks. Chen Yuxin shoved the test tube to Luo Fei: "Father's legacy... shouldn't be buried with us..."

Her white lab coat vanished into the azure vortex, and the barcode tattoo stretched into a dandelion pattern in the current. The submarine disintegrated in a hydrogen explosion, and the deep-blue bacterial strain spread with the shockwave; the radiation levels in the nearby sea began to drop miraculously.

Three months later, the shores of Longhu were covered in pale blue coral-like substances. Old Zheng took off his protective mask: "The deep-blue bacterial strain converted the Thorium-232 into calcium carbonate."

—————

Gu Changzheng buried Chen Guodong's wedding ring beneath a newly planted ginkgo tree by the lake, with an unmarked stone tablet standing beside the sapling. Encrypted files added to the case report showed that a certain international environmental organization had recently received a massive anonymous donation, with a postscript reading: "For the Dandelion Project."

Luo Fei touched the scar on his chin and looked toward the center of the lake, where a swarm of drones was sowing the modified bacterial strain. After the storm, the atmospheric ionosphere was exceptionally active, and an aurora like green silk drifted across the 28th parallel north—the traces of a massive amount of hydrogen burning in the high altitude.

In the deep sea, unknown to humanity, the wreckage of the nuclear submarine was being gently swallowed by the bacterial plaque, like a kiss of reconciliation from nature to technological civilization.

(End of Volume) ===== CHAPTER 258 =====