Chapter 226

In the end, they still didn't open fire.

Three minutes later, the Fairy Isle had already flown over the battle zone.

Below was the Xu Guo border, two armed factions were fighting over a strategic small town, and the sound of artillery could be faintly heard even from an altitude of two kilometers.

"Ground combat detected." Chen Guang's voice came from the ground.

"Torch Dragon marked three fire points, a suspected command post, and…… two kilometers to the southwest, there's a refugee camp with about three hundred civilians trapped."

Li Yang stared at the tactical screen: "Can you tell which side is which?"

"The blue side is the government army, the red side is the anti-government militia. The refugee camp is right between the two sides' fire lines, and it seems they've been without water and electricity for about three days."

Wang Hao scratched his head: "How are we supposed to handle this? We're a warship, not a UN peacekeeping force……"

Feng Yan's voice cut in from the Dragon Chant General Control Room: "But we also have rescue capabilities; instead of just showing off military force, we should show some kindness, which would also benefit our diplomacy."

"Li Yang, launch the mechs down and move the people in the refugee camp to a safe area."

"Understood." Li Yang pulled up the status panel of the Heavenly Mech.

"The first four will sortie, carrying out a humanitarian rescue mission, with rescuing disaster victims as the main objective."

Five minutes later.

The soldiers of the two fighting sides down below were locked in fierce combat when suddenly they heard a strange whistling sound coming from the sky.

Looking up, four silver-gray humanoid mechs descended from the sky, their rear vector thrusters spewing blue flames.

"Wo de, fa ke! What the hell is this?!"

"Mechs! They look like Longguo's mechs!"

Both sides stopped fire at the same time, both sides dazed.

The Heavenly Mechs sprang into action as soon as they landed.

Two of them set up a temporary perimeter outside the refugee camp, while the other two went straight into the camp.

Inside the cockpit, Zhou Ming gripped the control stick, his palms sweating.

This was his first combat mission; although it was a rescue, the feeling of bullets flying all around below still made his heart race a bit.

"Zhou Ming, you're in charge of the third tent on the left." the squad leader's voice came through.

"Thermal imaging shows life signs inside, moving slowly; likely a wounded person or an elderly one."

"Received."

Zhou Ming lowered the mech into a crouch, and the mechanical arm carefully lifted the tent flap.

Inside, an old man was curled up, holding a baby in his arms; upon seeing the mech, he shrank back in fright.

"Don't be afraid." Zhou Ming opened the external speaker, using translation software for real-time translation: "We're here to help you leave this place."

The mechanical arm slowly reached out; after a few seconds of hesitation, the old man still trembled as he extended his hand.

The mech's palm had precise pressure sensors, allowing Zhou Ming to feel the old man's weight through tactile feedback.

He lifted the old man and the baby together out of the tent, turned, and headed toward the evacuation point.

Another mech was still using a laser cutter to slice through the collapsed beams, rescuing the woman trapped underneath.

The action was precise to the millimeter; sparks flew, but no one was injured in the slightest.

The soldiers on the ground were dumbfounded.

A minor leader of the anti-government militia picked up a binoculars, watching the mechs carry civilians out one by one, and swallowed hard:

"They…… they're here to save people?"

"It…… seems so."

"So… should we still fight?"

"What the hell! Haven't you seen those mechs? Can you even beat them?"

Half an hour later, over three hundred civilians were completely transferred to a safe zone twenty kilometers away.

The Heavenly Mechs also left behind a temporary medical station in the safe zone, a module the size of a shipping container.

Upon landing, it automatically deployed, containing simple beds, medicine, and water purification equipment.

And a simplified Black Tortoise Fusion Energy Core, enough to keep the medical station running for a month before it would automatically be scrapped.

A local child cautiously approached the mech, extending a dirty little hand, and touched the mech's leg armor.

Zhou Ming looked down, and the cockpit screen magnified the image.

The child had big eyes, tear streaks on his face, but at that moment he was looking up and smiling at the mech.

He lowered the mech into a crouch, and the mechanical hand gently touched the child's head.

The child smiled even more happily.

The global live broadcast was transmitting all of this in real time.

When the mecha lifted the infant from the ruins, the style of the comments on social media suddenly changed:

"This… this isn't quite like the mecha I imagined."

"I thought they were only used for fighting."

"That mecha's gesture of patting the child's head made me cry."

"So Penglai isn't a weapons platform? It's really just a mobile rescue center?"

"The headline of a Middle Eastern local media outlet was exaggerated: 'An angel descended from heaven, bearing steel wings.'"

"Longguo's Ministry of Foreign Affairs took the opportunity to issue a statement, quoting Feng Yan's original words from the channel: 'Force should be used for protection, not aggression.'"

"Penglai has proven here that technology can benefit the world, not just bring destruction."

"At the end of the statement was attached a set of data: this rescue took thirty-seven minutes, zero casualties, energy consumption almost zero, equivalent to boiling a bowl of instant noodles."

"A netizen calculated: 'In other words, the energy used to save over three hundred people is still less than what I use running my air conditioner all night?'"

"This energy efficiency is heaven-defying, right?"

Almost as the rescue livestream reached its climax, a shocking scandal suddenly erupted domestically in the Chicken Basin country.

An investigative media outlet released a long report, with a shocking headline: "Fatal Flaw in the Eight Branches Project: Defense Ministry Officials Collude with Foreign Organizations, Using Defective Materials Causing the Prototype to Crash."

The report attached a large amount of evidence: email exchanges, material procurement slips, laboratory test reports, and even a secretly recorded meeting audio.

Inside, the person in charge of the Eight Branches Project could be clearly heard saying: "The formula performance data from Longguo is excellent, and its cost is only one-third of what we developed ourselves."

"Although the source hasn't been confirmed yet, we're running out of time."

The most damning is the material test report: the material produced from the "Longguo formula" becomes brittle under a specific vibration frequency, and the Eight Branches' engine just happens to generate that frequency.

"So it wasn't shattered by impact," a tech blogger analyzed.

"It broke apart first and then got hit—it's like driving a car with failed brakes into a wall and then blaming the wall for being too hard."

The Chicken Basin Defense Ministry, in a panic, hastily convened a press conference overnight, but as soon as the spokesperson took the stage, reporters bombarded them with questions:

"Is the material source from Longguo?"

"Which foreign organization exactly is it?"

"Or did an attempt to steal another country's technology fail and end up backfiring on us?"

The spokesperson finally had no choice but to hastily leave after saying only "We're investigating."

Penglai bridge.

Wang Hao watched the news push, slapping his thigh in delight: "Hey, look! The Chicken Basin's own people are exposing their own! This investigative reporter is fierce!"

Chen Guang pushed up his glasses: "Torch Dragon detected that three hours before the report was released, an anonymous encrypted data packet was sent to that media outlet's chief editor's private server. The content… matches the 'evidence packet' we prepared."

"Anonymous?" Li Yang raised an eyebrow.

"Anonymous." Chen Guang nodded, "but the IP hop route shows the exit node was inside the hairy bear's territory. The hairy bear side… our relations have been good lately."

Feng Yan listened in the main control room and smiled: "That's Minister Lei's handiwork. Since they want to investigate, we'll help them dig deeper."

He paused: "Also, that media outlet's chief editor's overseas account just gained a 'reader donation' of five hundred thousand dollars this morning, sourced from a foundation in the Cayman Islands—also arranged by us."

"What's this called?" Wang Hao grinned, "Oiling the bullets so they shoot smoothly?"

"This is called cleaning house." Li Yang looked at the screen showing the Chicken Basin Defense Ministry's livestream in chaos, "but now the Confluence organization won't be able to sit still."

Indeed.

In the dark web's encrypted chat room, the leader of Confluence, "Professor," was already furious.

"That material formula was a trap deliberately given by Longguo people! We've become their knife, clearing out the Eight Branches Project for them!"

Member A: "But now the Chicken Basin is investigating us; if they trace the funding flow…"

Member B: "Eagle Country also came asking, wondering why we didn't verify the materials before providing them."

The "Professor" fell silent for a long time, then slowly said: "Activate the Tail-Cutting Plan. All contact channels with the Chicken Basin are to be cut off immediately. Related personnel are to relocate within forty-eight hours."

"What about our ten-year-operated network in the Chicken Basin…"

"Abandon it." The Professor's voice ice-cold, "Better than total annihilation."

The chat room disbanded.

Chen Guang watched the monitor as Confluence began large-scale data wiping, pushing up his glasses: "They're reacting fast. But Torch Dragon has already locked onto the physical locations of their seventeen core nodes."

"Should we move in?" Li Yang asked.

"No rush." Feng Yan said, "Let them expose all their covert lines first, then we'll net them all at once."

At dusk, Penglai left the Middle East, shifted its course southeast, preparing to return to East Asia.

On global social media, the hashtag #Penglai is not a weapon but hope# has topped the trending lists in multiple countries.

Someone posted a screenshot of a mecha holding a baby; someone analyzed the rescue operation's energy consumption data; someone else dug up an old photo from three years ago of the Dragon Chant team building the first exoskeleton in a warehouse, captioned: "From saving one person to saving three hundred, they took three years."

Meanwhile, inside the Chicken Basin country, protesters had gathered in front of the Defense Ministry building, shouting "Reveal the truth!" and "Severely punish traitors!"

In the Defense Ministry's third-floor meeting room, an emergency meeting was ongoing late into the night. Amid swirling smoke, someone murmured softly: "The Eight Branches Project… might truly be completely finished."

"Not just the Eight Branches." Another person gave a wry smile, "The entire aerospace strategy needs to be reevaluated. Longguo's side is no longer just a generation gap—it's… an era gap."

Outside the window, protest surges rose one after another.

Inside the window, dead silence.

And on the other side of the Pacific, in a certain meeting room of Eagle Country's Pentagon, the lights were also on until dawn.

A group of senior generals and think tank experts stared at the big screen, which showed Penglai's withdrawal route from the Middle East.

"Gentlemen," Secretary of Defense Robert Mitchell said slowly, "We need to redefine what 'strategic advantage' means."

He paused:

"Because the old definition has ceased to be effective."