.
He waited less than two minutes.
Amid the static of the signal transfer, an unfamiliar voice came through the phone.
"Hello, this is the Air Force Management Command Center."
"Hello."
Chen Yi repeated his request. "Requesting a drone test flight, numbers 0A01 and 0A02."
"0A01, please confirm the airspace for your test flight."
"Airspace?"
Chen Yi paused, then immediately understood.
They meant the route and altitude range for his test flight.
"Taking off from Penghai, coordinates E114, 05, 51.17, N22, 38, 18.79."
"After takeoff, heading west-northwest, passing through Guangxi Province, Yunnan Province, the Hengduan Mountains, and the Himalayas."
"Altitude below seventy thousand meters."
The other end fell silent for a moment, seemingly seeking instructions.
More than ten seconds later, the voice spoke again.
"0A01, your test flight application has been approved.
Please pay attention to Civil Aviation routes and do not remain within Civil Aviation altitude ranges for extended periods.
At the same time, the drone is prohibited from breaking the sound barrier below one thousand meters."
"Thank you."
Chen Yi thanked them.
He hung up, then opened the rolling shutter door on the side of the second floor.
He moved the multirotor drone used for signal relay, along with some signal equipment, to the open balcony on the third floor.
He also brought up an induction cooker and a small soup pot, then took noodles, fatty beef, sliced lamb and beef, mushrooms, leafy greens, and other ingredients from the refrigerator. After giving them a quick wash, he prepared to make himself a little meal while test-flying the drone.
Knowing Chen Yi had a habit of staying up late at irregular hours.
Qin Xiaoyu had stocked these ingredients in the refrigerator and replaced them regularly, making it convenient for Chen Yi to cook himself something whenever he got hungry in the middle of the night.
He opened his laptop and connected the signal antenna and control pedals, using them as a cover for anyone watching from outside.
"Takeoff!"
He put a pot of water on to boil.
Chen Yi powered up the virtual helmet and activated its main functions. Then he put on the brainwave-sensing headband and the immersive AR Glasses, which had been adjusted to resemble student-style glasses.
At a thought.
A brainwave flickered.
Screech!
A jet-like sound rang out from the second floor.
In the still-quiet early morning, the sound was particularly distinct.
Two seconds later.
A drone whose underside and tail slowly emitted blue radiance.
Like a pixelated manta ray.
Flew out at an angle through the open rolling shutter door on the second floor.
Its body was more than three meters wide, already wider than the shutter door.
To get out, it could only emerge at that angle.
"Looks like I'll need to change locations when I get the chance.
Now that the drone's been built, getting it out is already a problem."
Using the precise control of the ion thrusters, Chen Yi guided the Sun Never Sets Drone out from the second floor and into the air outside.
The movable aileron on its left wing tilted.
The drone leveled out from its slanted position.
Then violent airflow and radiance erupted from beneath its body.
The entire drone rose into the sky, taking off vertically and rapidly reaching an altitude of several hundred meters.
"This is a bit ridiculous."
Once in the air, Chen Yi habitually activated the infrared scanning function.
Before the sun rose and the surroundings warmed up, he wanted to confirm the presence of nearby living beings.
That way, when the drone accelerated later, it would not hurt or disturb anyone nearby.
But the moment he activated it, a string of orderly red dots scattered around his home, occasionally moving about, was projected onto Chen Yi's retina through the AR Glasses.
Having lived here for several years, Chen Yi was already extremely familiar with the area.
At a glance, he could tell that the locations where those red dots moved were all key access routes, high points, and observation spots surrounding his home.
"Am I already that big of a deal?"
Chen Yi recalled Professor Zhang saying that the consultant identity would make it easier to reasonably arrange certain matters for him, and he roughly guessed who these people were.
Clearly, they were professional protection personnel assigned to prevent him from ending up like the nuclear physicist from the Persian Country.
"Rotating detonation engines, triple-combination scramjet engines, formula models involving quadruple-combination and even quintuple-combination engines.
Plus Wingflight's ultra-high-energy batteries and high-end stress-resistant materials.
It seemed... yeah, I really was that impressive. I qualified for this."
Chen Yi counted the technologies he had revealed over this period.
Not counting the black technology he used for building aircraft, the technologies he had already made public without concealing anything were enough on their own to make him a National Scholar Unparalleled.
More importantly, he was only three hundred months old.
Compared with the other experts and Academicians in their forties, fifties, sixties, and seventies.
No matter how one looked at it, he had limitless potential.
Under those circumstances, adding a tiny bit more protection was perfectly reasonable.
"Whatever. I don't have to pay their salaries, and they aren't intruding on my privacy up close. If they want to protect me, let them."
Chen Yi shook his head, pushed the matter aside, and began guiding the drone up to an altitude of one thousand meters before switching the engines to full power.
Whoosh!
In the early morning sky.
A flash of light suddenly appeared.
Rolling mist surged around the drone.
Immediately afterward, the drone's speed sharply increased.
It broke through the sound barrier, plunged into the mist, pierced through the clouds, and flew straight west.
Several seconds later.
The roar of the shattered sound barrier and the gale created by supersonic shockwaves.
Descended from the sky above together with the rising sunlight.
But after being weakened by the thousand-meter distance.
Other than the slightly scorching summer sunlight, the roar and gale had long become no more than a gentle breeze across his face.
"The drone has begun charging.
Real-time charging efficiency: 5.57 kilowatt-hours per square meter over twelve hours.
As expected of the summer sun.
It had only just broken through the clouds and hadn't even reached the stratosphere, where radiation was stronger, yet the morning sun was already this intense.
Once it reaches the stratosphere, the real-time efficiency at noon will definitely exceed twenty kilowatt-hours."
Chen Yi looked at the charging data projected by the AR system.
After thinking for a moment, he slightly reduced the drone's speed.
He kept it within the subsonic range of three hundred meters per second.
So it would not fly too fast for the sun to keep up.
"Today's sun-chasing mission: success."
After watching for a while and confirming that the drone was flying and charging normally.
Chen Yi activated the autopilot program and turned off the AR projection in one eye.
He picked up his chopsticks, grabbed a slice of lamb, and swished it through the pot.
Then he mixed some dipping sauce, opened a bottle of pineapple beer, and started eating breakfast.
Half an hour later.
Chen Yi finished breakfast and tossed the pot and bowls aside.
He brought over two more plates of sunflower seeds and dried fruit, then turned the AR projection back on.
He cracked sunflower seeds while keeping an eye on the drone's flight.
"Altitude: 8,600. Speed: 312 meters per second. Endurance replenished by 32.6 percent."
"The flight data from this run and the engine power curves are performing pretty well too."
"There aren't nearly as many minor issues as there were in the last test flight's data."
After checking the drone's flight parameters and recorded flight data.
Chen Yi looked beneath the drone.
Its powerful radar imaging function clearly captured the street scenes of the city below.
On both sides of the broad roads, countless electric scooters and Hongguang minis moved back and forth.
Workers in uniform clothing were hurrying to work.
Compared to Penghai, with its abundance of shirts, skirts, backpacks, laptops, leather shoes, and business suits, all exquisitely polished.
The city below was visibly more plain and simple.
Breakfast shops on both sides of the streets had already opened for business.
Through the tilted angle, the drone's camera clearly captured the signs of those shops.
All kinds of rice noodles.
Luosifen, Guilin rice noodles, Laoyou noodles, dry-mixed noodles, and so on. They made up more than half the offerings.
"We've reached Liucheng."
"No wonder there are so many rice noodles."
Looking at the dazzling array of food signs, Chen Yi felt his stomach grow a little hungry again despite having just eaten.
"Next time, I have to build the drone a functional module that can detect smells, then pair it with brainwave technology for remotely tasting food virtually!"
After watching for a while and taking photo after photo.
Chen Yi muttered to himself, then had the drone climb higher.
It accelerated along the Xijiang River basin, heading straight for Yunnan Province and the Hengduan Mountains.
But Chen Yi, who was flying along while appreciating the splendid landscapes of his homeland and experiencing the lively atmosphere of its cities and people.
Did not know.
At the Air Force Management Command Center.
A group of people stared at the positioning signal moving at supersonic speed across the screen, then compared it with the utterly empty, completely blank radar detection display beside it.
Every one of them fell into silence.
Some of them could not help but entertain an absurd thought.
This radar had to be fake, right?
Before you continue