The Motherland Is Taking Action!

"I'm willing!" Almost without a moment's hesitation. Lin Yi gripped his phone and squared his shoulders. "Academician Pan, tell me—what should I do?" "..." On the other end of the line. A flicker of surprise crossed Pan Yongnian's face, as though he had not expected Lin Yi to be quite so decisive. But he knew this was no time to ponder Lin Yi's state of mind, so he quickly composed himself and said gravely: "Comrade Lin Yi, thank you for being willing to trust us. I give you my word—our side will do everything in our power and will not let your trust down!" "Let me first bring you up to speed on something. Before the meeting began, I had already boarded a military aircraft in Anhui Province. We'll be landing in Lindu before long, and I can reach Nan'an West Road within half an hour." "We've also calibrated the equipment. The experiment can begin as soon as we arrive. That leaves only two details I need to confirm with you once more." Lin Yi's expression turned serious. "Go ahead." "First, distance." Pan Yongnian posed his first question: "Guihua Sect... or rather, your current position—is it near or far from the spot where you first landed in the Tianling Realm? Can you give me a rough figure?" "The distance between me and the crossing point?" Lin Yi blinked a couple of times, not quite following, and glanced back over his shoulder. "Well, it's not far. It's in the forbidden ground behind my Grand Elder's Hall, a few hundred meters from me." "To be honest, the reason we chose to found our sect here all those years ago was to be a little closer to our home world—purely for peace of mind." Back then, when Lin Yi and his two companions were deciding where to establish their sect, they settled on this patch of land with almost no argument. For one thing, the place sat on the frontier of Qingzhou, the weakest prefecture of the Great Zhou Immortal Dynasty. Remote as it was, that also meant no one would come to annex or seize it—ideal ground for a weak sect to grow slowly. For another... This was exactly where Lin Yi and the others had first descended into the Tianling Realm. By the time they founded the sect, returning home had already become a hopeless wish. Yet the longing for home that Huaxia people carry in their blood had only grown stronger with the passing years. Just as Lin Yi said—it was simply so his mind could rest easy. Besides, the place where the group had crossed over was a mountain hollow, and in their flight they had passed a small stream and then a steep cliff. Decades on, those landmarks had not changed much. So it hadn't taken much effort. Lin Yi and the others found the exact spot where they had crossed over, designated it as the sect's forbidden ground, and built the Grand Elder's Hall a little in front of it. If not for this business of demon beasts attacking the gate. Then when Lin Yi's lifespan ran out and he dissolved into the Dao and passed from the world, his tomb would have been raised inside that forbidden ground too. "Oh? Only a few hundred meters?" No sooner had Lin Yi finished speaking than Pan Yongnian's voice came over the receiver, faintly excited: "That's wonderful! It seems our situation is far more optimistic than we originally estimated!" "It's only a hypothesis, but in theory, the closer your phone is to the crossing point, the better the chance of completing our experiment." Then. Pan Yongnian drew a deep breath and went on: "The second question concerns your phone—Comrade Lin Yi, do you know how much longer your phone's battery can last?" "The experiment may involve some command operations, and power consumption will certainly be much higher than an ordinary call. If the battery runs out..." "Don't worry about the battery." Lin Yi picked up the thread at once, a rare note of confidence in his voice. "We've invented a Charging technique. One cast and the battery's full." A Charging technique? And one Lin Yi and the others had invented? Pan Yongnian, who had prepared for every contingency, was briefly taken aback. He instinctively glanced at the power bank in his other hand, already plugged into the phone. A spell that works with technological devices...? That sounded like a good sign, at least. ... Half an hour later. Inside Lindu City. A convoy led by a black Joylong Coaster minibus slipped silently into Nan'an West Road and pulled up beneath a leafy roadside tree. Pan Yongnian had barely stepped out when a lean middle-aged man in civilian clothes emerged from beside the tree: "Academician Pan, hello! I'm Zhou Huan, head of the Lindu security department." "Comrade Zhou Huan, thank you for your hard work," Pan Yongnian said, giving him a brief handshake and looking around. "How's the situation on site?" By now not a single civilian vehicle could be seen along Nan'an West Road. A short distance away, several simple prefab huts had been erected in the middle of the road, with municipal engineering vehicles parked around them. Around the huts, a few workers in Lindu No. 1 Construction uniforms were busy at work. The whole scene looked just like an ordinary temporary road-maintenance site. "Everything's going smoothly. The whole area is under full lockdown and surveillance." Zhou Huan half-turned and gestured toward both ends of the road, reporting at a rapid clip: "Nan'an West Road is a branch road south of Tongfu Avenue, eight hundred and seventy-four meters long, four lanes, two in each direction." "It's one of the four main routes to the university town, so the daily traffic volume isn't low, but there are few residential buildings or shops nearby, which makes controlling it fairly easy." Like most university towns. Lindu University Town sat in the suburbs northwest of the city proper, roughly 21 kilometers in a straight line from Ye'an District, Lindu's recognized city center. The area around the university town was lively enough. But a connector road like Nan'an West Road, linking city and outskirts, had no such bustle around it—it simply carried a lot of traffic. As far as the eye could see there was nothing but vacant lots, rows of hardware stores, and sprawling medium-to-large warehouses. "We've already closed the entrance on the south side of Tongfu Avenue and coordinated with the traffic police to set up temporary checkpoints," Zhou Huan said, leading the way as he laid out the details. "The public line is that there's a problem with the road surface on Nan'an West Road, so it's temporarily closed for inspection, and passing vehicles are being diverted onto a few nearby roads." "These construction workers may be wearing road maintenance uniforms, but they're all comrades from within the security system. Completely reliable." "In addition, access to every camera in the area—including privately installed ones—has been taken over by the capital's security department. Aside from the equipment you brought, all communication devices are in silent mode." As the two men talked. The members of the research team accompanying Pan began carrying the experimental equipment down from the vehicles. So Pan Yongnian pointed upward: "And the satellites?" "The General Administration has plans for that as well." Zhou Huan had clearly prepared thoroughly, and the figures came out without hesitation. "Lindu isn't a city foreign countries focus on. Today only twenty-seven passes of non-domestic satellites will cross overhead." "In thirty-seven minutes and twenty-five seconds, AP-5 will pass over Lindu." "An hour, twenty-eight minutes, and forty-seven seconds from now it's the HK11 satellite, followed by the thermal-infrared remote sensing satellite Htat-3—that one's the biggest threat, relatively speaking. It isn't fully daylight yet, after all..." "So we've urgently readied cesium-doped tungsten oxide panels with heat-source shielding, and with the dynamic camouflage net we've brought, that should be enough to evade spy-satellite observation." Listening to Zhou Huan's contingency plan. Pan Yongnian gave a slight nod. "Very good." That said, he raised his head and turned his gaze to the sky. This time, however. His gaze did not settle on those spy satellites invisible to the eye, but fixed on the distance. It was five-thirty in the morning, and the horizon was already showing the pale white of dawn. "It's almost dawn..." In fact. It was not only Pan Yongnian. The Capital Think Tank Base, the Situation Awareness Center where Zhou Jianmin was stationed, the National Laboratory of Heavy Ion Accelerators... And inside a certain building at the very, very heart of it all. Other figures stood just as he did, hands clasped behind their backs at their windows, gazing toward the far edge of the sky. They were all waiting. Waiting for an answer. Waiting for... Another light of daybreak.