Chapter 40 Let's Rock Together

Old Man Ji stood on the operational platform and looked up. A crane slowly crawled across the girder, emitting a clattering sound—the rhythm of gears meshing with chains. The large white floodlight overhead shone brightly, looking as though a hole had been punched through the cavern ceiling, and the crane's black shadow passed through the light like a cable car.

Cranes were the most numerous machinery in Workshop 110. From the massive gantry cranes spanning the entire underground cavern to the small wire-rope manual hoists, workers operated the lifting equipment to transport components. Clanging and swaying, they looked like residents of Lilliputia tending to a fifty-meter-tall giant.

Old Man Ji still wore his signature filthy white lab coat, a mess of gray hair pressed down under a red hard hat, with a few wisps sticking out from the brim, dancing wildly in the hot wind. He was the chief engineer, the core of Base 151, the soul of the workshop system, and one of the people in the world who understood colossal mechs the best. Unfortunately, there were far too few people like him. Old Zhai often sighed that humanity's greatest flaw as an intelligent species was that knowledge could not be replicated; everyone had to learn and grow independently, turning out however fortune decreed.

He appeared in the workshop punctually every day, always claiming the place could not function without him.

He was not wrong.

Indeed, it could not function without him.

As the chief designer, chief engineer, and even chief technologist rolled into one, Old Man Ji was a supreme figure of the "three-in-one" trinity. Without such overwhelming competence, he could never have kept Base 151 in line. The materials and manufacturing processes for colossal mechs during their design and production phases had all passed through his hands, step by step. Although there were over a hundred successors in training at the base, no one knew who could possibly take over his position—Old Man Ji's status was so lofty, solid, and unshakable that whoever attempted to succeed him always seemed to fall just a bit short.

The half-body Crimson Lotus hung suspended within the cavern, consisting only of its upper torso and head. The wounds carved open by the Lighthouse Angel had already been repaired, and welding sparks burst forth in clusters across Crimson Lotus's surface.

The unasssembled Crimson Lotus was dark in hue; its gorgeous, brilliant deep-red armor had been stripped away. One hundred and twenty-eight robotic arms along the maintenance pipelines of Crimson Lotus could dismantle a complete mech into five modules within two hours.

Every colossal mech possessed an entire unique set of molds, fixtures, and maintenance pipelines, and these peripheral costs combined added up to an astonishing figure. The increasingly exorbitant manufacturing cost of colossal mechs was a headache-inducing problem. Crimson Lotus was a third-generation colossal mech; 161's Mirage was a third-generation colossal mech; 153's Kuiniu was also a third-generation colossal mech, while Science City was currently building an even more advanced fourth-generation colossal mech. Spreading these exorbitant costs across a small society of only one hundred million people posed a tremendous burden.

Even more terrifyingly, this burden was endless. As long as the Angels were not eradicated, humanity would not know a single day of peace.

1047 walked up, wearing a red hard hat.

Old Man Ji glanced at him sideways. "How is it over at Shen Jiang's end?"

"No idea." 1047 shook his head. "The entire territory has been occupied by the Operation Engineering Office. Chief Ji, even Science City couldn't get a handle on this MEG thing. Can 151 really pull it off?"

"How the hell would I know?" Old Man Ji replied bluntly. He gripped the railing with both hands and tossed his head back. "We'll take a shot at it while we have the chance. At the current rate of development, how much longer do you think Shen Jiang can hold out?"

1047 lowered his gaze. "The medical team says her condition is very poor."

"I know your attitude, Tang Di. In your heart, the interests of all humanity supersede everything else," Old Man Ji said. "The pilot's life is important, but not more important than the mission to annihilate the Angels. If sacrificing one pilot could trade for the elimination of an Angel, you would do it because you'd think it was worth it."

"I..." 1047 trailed off, words failing him.

Old Man Ji glanced at him, his gaze calm. "During the Great Retreat, we made choices far more difficult than this."

He let out a faint, lingering sigh.

"There's no telling when the new Angel will descend," 1047 said.

"Look at it," Old Man Ji said.

1047 raised his head, gazing at the enormous skull of Crimson Lotus.

"Building this thing costs ten billion. The resources of the entire society are concentrated on it, and everything usable has been utilized. Just to survive, how high a price have we paid?" Old Man Ji said. "Why on earth are we making such a huge fuss? It's simply to avoid placing human lives on the scales ever again. In the trolley problem, we refuse to be the switchman; we choose to build colossal mechs to flip the trolley over."

"Their efforts might very well be in vain," 1047 said. "The BCI system has been in use for so many years, and the current protocol is the optimal solution derived from a comprehensive consideration of multiple factors."

"True."

The yellow warning light above their heads flashed. Amidst the glaring, rotating light, the operational platform began to move slowly. Old Man Ji adjusted his cap and turned toward the elevator, and 1047 followed closely behind.

Old Man Ji walked steadily on the moving platform, speaking unhurriedly, "Take the opportunity to learn more from the Operation Engineering Office."

1047 froze. He stared wide-eyed, pointing at himself, and asked, "Huh? Me? Learn from them?"

***

Shang Lu had strung a line between the electromagnetic shielding room downstairs and the Operation Engineering Office upstairs. The shielding room handled signal feature extraction, while the Operation Engineering Office performed data analysis. This was like throwing four salted fish into a hot wok, instantly shocking the idlers back to life. When had Wang Xiangbing, Li Wenxuan, Zhang Zhong, and Bai Shu ever witnessed such a spectacle? Shang Lu had transplanted his work habits from Science City wholesale, treating his four colleagues to an authentic, unadulterated experience of a "Science City closed-loop workflow."

In the words of Big Uncle Wang Xiangbing: A week ago, the Operation Core Maintenance Work Office of Base 151 grandly opened for business, and my brothers and I were filled with lofty ambitions. Who could have known that in less than three days of work, each person would average 1.5 flights, running away a total of 6 times within a week? Buddha bless us!

With this relentless drive to squeeze out remaining value, if Shang Lu were a capitalist, he'd be strung up from a lamppost.

"Hey... Tell me, what character is this?"

Bai Shu held a steamed bun in one hand, with a jar of chili paste open on the desk, nibbling the bun dipped in the sauce. Spread across her knees was the notebook Shang Lu had left behind. The parts Shang Lu required her to be responsible for were things no one had ever studied before, leaving Bai Shu with no choice but to sharpen her weapons at the last minute, learning as she went. These obscure and profound technical documents were all in Shang Lu's own handwriting—precious first-hand source materials, with the sole flaw being that his handwriting was a bit sloppy.

Wang Xiangbing leaned in to examine it for a long time. "This is the capitalized character for 'two'."

"Two?" Bai Shu raised her head, gesturing in the air. "Shouldn't the traditional character for 'two' be that other one? Why did he write it like this?"

"This is a second-round simplified Chinese character." Big Uncle, well-traveled and unfazed, slowly sat back down. "It wasn't used much and was abolished many years ago, but some people use it when taking shorthand."

"Shang Lu is truly amazing," Bai Shu nodded.

"I know how to use it too," Wang Xiangbing emphasized.

"Damn it, the electrodes inside this sister's head are truly troublesome, seriously interfering with the magnetic signal... Fuck, don't they know you can't have metal on you during an MRI?" Li Wenxuan muttered with a bun clamped in his mouth, burying his head behind three monitors as his ten fingers clattered wildly across the keyboard. "What I'm seeing on my end is a complete mess; filtering is such a headache..."

"Fourier!" Zhang Zhong called out from across the desk, shouting back through the air.

"Fourier can't solve everything," Li Wenxuan took a bite of his bun, his voice muffled.

"Bayes!" Zhang Zhong continued.

"Bayes is tough to deal with too..." Before Li Wenxuan could finish his sentence, he broke into a violent cough. "Damn it, I'm choking! I'm choking! Water... water..."

Wang Xiangbing hastily handed him a cup of water.

"Damn, as expected of a colossal mech pilot; her brain activity frequency is at least four times higher than an ordinary person's, except no one knows what she's thinking about. Such intense psychological activity..." Li Wenxuan swallowed a large gulp of water, pounded his chest hard, and took another bite of his bun. "What kind of thrilling truth-or-dare game are the director and the pilot playing down there?"

What Shang Lu and Shen Jiang were playing was even more thrilling than Li Wenxuan imagined.

"Ready—"

The young woman in the armchair in the room had her chest heaving slightly as she adjusted her breathing.

"Start listening to the question! Given the Kerr metric $ds^2 = -( ho^2 Delta / Sigma) dt^2 + (Sigma sin^2 heta / ho^2)(dphi - omega dt)^2 + ( ho^2 / Delta) dr^2 + ho^2 d heta^2$, where $ ho^2 = r^2 + a^2 cos^2 heta$, $Delta = r^2 - 2GMr + a^2$, and $Sigma = (r^2 + a^2)^2 - a^2 Delta sin^2 heta$, Comrade Shen Jiang, please answer my question now: find the area of the black hole's outer event horizon."

"Old rules, the equation has been cast to your screen. You can use your mind to control the projection for calculations, but you cannot use your hands. Failing to solve the problem within the time limit means you must sing any song by Wang Feng."

Shen Jiang's body instantly tensed up.

At the same time, Shang Lu activated the sound system, playing rock music at a high volume directly into her ears.

Through so many days of training, she had realized one thing—this bastard Shang Lu was an absolute madman the moment he entered work mode.

Amidst Wang Feng's howling, heart-rending, "Let's rock together, rock together—", Shang Lu began the countdown:

"Twenty-minute countdown! You have ten minutes left! 10! 9!"