Chapter 703 - 682: Black Shuttle

Throughout mid-May until the 21st, Zhong Cheng had been regularly getting up early and working late into the night.

He hadn’t forgotten to get back to Lin Ju in Rong City, but he consistently believed that the latter was entirely focused on Yu Man and did not want to disturb him until the evening of the 21st.

The Typhoon was already prepared at the launch site in Qiongzhou, scheduled to launch at 14:00 the next afternoon. Due to its symbolic significance, there would be a small but high-level meet-and-greet after the launch, which all relevant personnel needed to attend.

Zhong Cheng had sent out invitations in advance, but had not received a reply by the previous evening, which he thought was odd.

However, he still believed Lin Ju must have simply overlooked it, as the message was sent through an assistant in Beijing and was definitely delivered. In any case, flying over from New Yuan would take less than an hour, so there would be plenty of time to come over the next day.

As he thought about these things, the effects of ’An Shenduo’ had worn off, and the heavy side effects swept over him, sending Zhong Cheng into his last peaceful slumber.

...

Meanwhile, inside the underground facilities of the base, it was still brightly lit.

Yu Man looked on worriedly as Lin Ju opened a bottle of An Shenduo and downed it in one go, then took another larger bottle of liquid medication.

In the cluttered office, more than twenty people were either sitting, standing, or even lying down, each busy with their own tasks, with only sporadic brief exchanges of words occurring now and then.

During these days, Lin Ju, senior base staff, and the CSR Group had averaged less than 6 hours of sleep, all under the influence of medication.

The biological laboratory, in cooperation with ’An Shenduo,’ had developed an auxiliary deep sleep drug that extended waking time to 3 hours and reduced the necessary sleep time to 4 to 6 hours with the aid of another drug that accelerated bodily recovery. This required resting in specially designed simple sleep pods.

This kept everyone physically fit while greatly extending their working hours, allowing everyone to work around the clock devising meticulous plans.

Lin Ju was no exception. As the final executor of the plan, he needed to thoroughly understand every step to avoid any mistakes.

"Should I go make another cup of coffee?"

The soft female voice was accompanied by a reassuring pressure on the shoulder. Though Lin Ju had stressed that the hardcore sleep regimen from the biological laboratory was more restful than regular prolonged sleep, the stubborn woman still thought he was tired. Her concern was actually making Lin Ju worried about her health.

"You’ve worked hard, rest early. I’ll be there in a bit," he replied.

After Yu Man left, the smile gradually disappeared from Lin Ju’s face, returning to a look of solemnity.

The outside world thought he was keeping out of the public eye due to a happy family event, unaware of the many earth-shattering events that had taken place over the past ten-plus days.

Thanks to the relentless efforts of ’Mountain and Sea,’ Old Mr. Barry from Livingston, who was investigating the "false report" incident, found nothing. The most critical informant died in a car accident before his detailed discussion with Barry.

GW180509 had left traces in the database of the Livingston Observatory. An on-duty informant had discovered it, but recording a gravitational wave signal is a complex and tedious process, especially during a computer system upgrade.

The informant hadn’t even had the chance to look at the waveform of GW180509; otherwise, it wouldn’t have been so simple.

In fact, the sole informant at the time had just finished a night shift and wanted nothing more than to sleep, not caring about anything else until the next day, when he realized the log he had marked in red had not been seen by anyone. It was not until the evening of the second day that he planned to take a serious look and report it again.

Between 2015 and now, over two years have been enough time for gravitational waves, once a world-shocking Nobel discovery, to become a mundane task for staff, with an average frequency of more than 1.5 times per week that didn’t inspire much excitement.

However, the informant made a colossal mistake by lazily plugging his phone into the control mainframe to charge because he couldn’t be bothered to look for his charger.

The eagerly waiting ’Mountain and Sea’ was thus able to erase most of the key information just like before, smoothly.

But the informant had already interpreted part of the content, and sensing something was wrong, he took his notes home to study further, planning to report immediately after confirmation.

And on the day he finished his night shift, while driving his brand-new Tesla home, fatigued from the night work, he crashed directly into a nearby ditch. The car’s battery pack was damaged and caught fire, leaving nothing but the frame.

In the end, all that was left for others to find was the log of the detected signal, with everything else unknown.

Barry could only assume that there was an error during the computer system upgrade or that some other hardware issue required troubleshooting.

From then on, ’Mountain and Sea’ completely erased all traces of GW180509 on Earth.

This was greatly facilitated by the trend of autonomous driving and the electronic control of key systems in new energy vehicles, which allowed for intervention by the ECU. Otherwise, it would have taken more effort to find another new energy car to create an artificial accident.

Lin Ju was now relieved that he did not need to worry about America’s reaction. As for the M event escalation caused again by ’Departing Fire,’ he was not worried as the entire situation was still within the controllable range of the base.

What he needed to focus on now was the outrageous deception planned by the smartest minds in the base, crafted with artifacts from a ’Parallel World.’

"Whew~"

Xiao Okada let out a long sigh and put down the strangely-shaped wrench he was holding.

His current appearance was substantially different from his usual one, dressed in an airtight jumpsuit that only revealed his face. If he also wore a bizarre breathing mask, he would look just like the villain in a biohazard movie.

The object he had just been working on was placed on a circular workbench that had been cordoned off. The object itself was shuttle-shaped, slightly larger than a coffin, with a semi-translucent black surface outlined with unusual and unrecognizable patterns, including both intaglio and relief engravings. From a distance, it seemed to depict three strange characters.

The style of the characters was complex, and from certain angles, they even appeared to float in the air.

The surface of the shuttle-shaped object had no seams, leaving only a square opening about 30 cm on each side, where one could vaguely make out the complex and precise internal structure.

Inside was no circuit board or wiring, yet the combination of unseen components still conveyed a sense of advanced technology.

"This thing, with its materials half real and half fake and its design completely alien to human understanding, should be enough, right?" remarked Xiao Okada. This was the "alien artifact" they were about to present.

Its core was a genuine C172 model type-A metallic hydrogen battery, an authentic extraterrestrial craft made on another planet, unimpeachable by even the mightiest of beings.

Wrapped around the battery was a computer made entirely of 14nm silicon carbide ternary chips, manufactured with various design ideas from other world lines obtained by the base. From communication protocols to layout standards, everything was unheard of on Earth, a genuine artifact of another world made with earthly materials.

The system was a heavily modified SC09, though it was not expected to be visible much, to avoid future detection of anomalies.