A Nuclear Moon Landing (Please keep reading)

National Space Administration headquarters.

Gao Jian had finally returned, his little backpack on his shoulders.

The capital was as bustling and lively as ever. After leaving the airport, he spent ages crammed into the subway, then took a taxi before finally reaching the CNSA headquarters building.

But he was in no hurry to go inside. Instead, he booked a room at a nearby hotel and checked in.

It was too early to go in. After all, the old man had told the leadership that Gao Jian needed at least half a month of rest at home.

But Gao Jian had only stayed home for three days. He planned to return to work in another four, using the intervening days to sort out his thoughts.

He had not been idle during those three days at home. He withdrew all five hundred thousand from his bank account, rented a storage unit, and bought plenty of everyday supplies: rice, flour, cooking oil, and everything else he might need. He even bought a sizable quantity of strategic supplies like white sugar.

In fact, he bought so much sugar that the police came to ask questions.

"Young man, what do you need all this sugar for? What's your name?"

"My name's Gao Jian."

"Which characters do you write that with?"

"The Gao from Gao Yuliang, and the Jian associated with Gao Yuliang."

"Oh, a misunderstanding. Just a misunderstanding." The older policeman and his younger colleague saluted. Looking at the boxes of snacks and assorted goods, he asked, "Do you need us to help carry these inside?"

"Thanks, but I can manage. Don't worry, I'm just planning to open a little convenience store. This is all the stock."

The grandson of one of Han Dong Province's top three officials was opening a convenience store? That was downright incorruptible.

The older policeman scratched his head, but still reminded him, "There's nothing wrong with buying supplies, but remember to get your business license and operating permit when you open the shop. Make sure you complete all the paperwork."

"Of course, of course." Gao Jian nodded obediently.

In short, five hundred thousand in savings sounded like a lot, but once converted into rice, flour, cooking oil, sweets, canned food, drinks, and snacks, it only just filled the garage-sized storage unit.

Then Gao Jian waved his hand, and all the supplies went into his Storage Pouch.

Naturally, he also locked the unit's roll-up door. He had only rented it for a month. When the landlord came to take it back a month later, there would be nothing amiss.

Meanwhile, the newly appointed director of the anti-corruption bureau had been transferred back to Han Dong Province with a specific assignment. Gao Jian's unusual purchases naturally caught his attention, and he even had Gao Jian secretly investigated.

But he could not figure out why Gao Jian was buying so many snacks, especially energy bars like Snickers, which he carried into the unit by the boxful.

Still, all the money in the account Gao Jian used to buy his supplies came from his legitimate salary over the past two years, so the investigators had no choice but to drop it.

After checking into the hotel, Gao Jian began planning his next steps.

Immortal cultivation was definitely his main objective.

During his three days at home, Gao Jian had cultivated twice in total. By "twice," he meant that he had recharged his spirit stones through two full cycles.

His cultivation had improved slightly.

Being able to cultivate again was certainly cause for celebration, but he had also discovered a problem: three spirit stones were nowhere near enough. First came the issue of recharging them. He needed to eat and drink his fill and fully restore his stamina before his spiritual power could replenish itself.

Recharging the spirit stones alone took most of a day. Then absorbing the spiritual energy within the three stones to cultivate took an entire night.

As a result, his cultivation speed was severely limited. His overall progress amounted to just ten percent of what he could normally achieve in secluded cultivation back home. Although he had cultivated for three days, his cultivation had stalled completely at the peak of early Foundation Establishment.

For the next six months, he would probably struggle to reach mid Foundation Establishment. And this was only an early stage of cultivation. Once he reached the middle and later stages, such as Core Formation or Nascent Soul, those three lousy spirit stones might require him to cultivate for centuries just to advance one minor realm.

So he certainly could not keep relying on those three spirit stones alone.

He could keep transferring power from one hand to the other indefinitely, but efficiency was a problem.

Was his ability to cultivate consistent with materialism? Gao Jian believed it was.

As a human, he needed to take in energy. His dantian condensed that energy into spiritual power, converting physical energy into spiritual power. When he poured that spiritual power into the spirit stones, they converted it into spiritual energy, and the cycle repeated.

Essentially, his cultivation ran on the food he ate.

That was why Gao Jian had been eating so much lately.

During those two days at home, he had practically cooked Auntie Zhang into a stupor. When she asked why he was eating so much, he could only vaguely explain that he had never gotten used to the food in the United States and had been terribly hungry.

Seeing that her spatula was practically smoking from all the cooking, Gao Jian felt guilty. That was why he had decided to return to the space administration.

The space administration's cafeteria was pretty good.

If he wanted to reach Golden Core, Nascent Soul, or even higher realms, he would have to explore other ways to cultivate. He had already visited the Jade Market and tested every common type of stone, including marble, quartzite, granite, and potassium feldspar.

He had even tried jade minerals like tremolite, jadeite used in emerald jade, and diamonds made of pure carbon. He had tested metals ranging from pure iron to pure tungsten, and even alloys, but none could store spiritual power.

Gao Jian had not even spared lead-acid or lithium-ion batteries. He sneaked downstairs in the middle of the night, secretly dismantled the old man's electric scooter, took out its battery, and pressed his hand against the terminals to channel spiritual power inside.

Unexpectedly, the old man heard the noise and came downstairs. Seeing Gao Jian touching the battery terminals frightened him so badly that he grabbed a broom and started swinging.

None of those worked either.

In short, his attempt to manufacture spirit stones had failed. For now, those three spirit stones were his only means of cultivation.

Foundation Establishment granted a lifespan of two hundred years, Golden Core five hundred, and Nascent Soul one thousand. Gao Jian was now twenty-eight. He had to form his core within the next hundred and fifty years, at least, to avoid dying young.

Despite everything that had happened recently, Gao Jian believed that, for the sake of immortal cultivation, he still needed to find a way to visit the moon if an opportunity arose.

After all, the traces left by fellow Buddhist cultivators that he had seen on the moon did not seem fake.

But a moon landing...

If he remembered correctly, when he first returned to China, Deputy Director Bian had personally told him that China's Moon Landing Program had been terminated.

How could they terminate it?

If you terminate it, how am I supposed to get to the moon?

That simply won't do.

Now that Gao Jian had returned, he would have to find some way to persuade the administration's leadership to restart the Moon Landing Program. While he was at it, he would also probe whether they knew about the Flat-Earth Matter.

There was also one crucial question: if Earth was flat, how had things like the Moon Rabbit Rover, the Lunar Orbiter, and even the Mars Probe gotten up there?

And did the space administration know that gravity stopped working in Low Earth Orbit, or about the abnormalities in the Van Allen radiation belt?

He needed to sound them out on all of it.

If the higher-ups remained adamant and refused to restart the Moon Landing Program, Gao Jian had a fallback plan.

He would temporarily leave CNSA and go to the United States to find Elon Musk and his company, SpaceX. At least that businessman genuinely wanted to land on the moon and had the money and technology to do it.

Once his cultivation advanced further, he could also assist with the lunar landing effort.

For instance, he could throw a lunar module from the moon into Low Earth Orbit with his bare hands, sending it on its return journey.

Besides, he could survive on the moon indefinitely and build a lunar base with his bare hands.

Oh, wait. Maybe the fellow Buddhist cultivators up there would even welcome me as their guest.

He also had another reason to go to the United States: to avenge Robert.

Even if he had to sweep the entire North American continent with his divine sense, he would drag out every last one of those demons who had eaten Robert, tear them to pieces, and grind their bones to dust to vent the hatred in his heart.

Still, if he could go through China's space program, he would. At least he had personally helped design many parts of the Long March 10. He would feel safe riding it.

Four days passed in a flash.

When Gao Jian walked into the lobby of CNSA headquarters with his backpack on his shoulders, the young woman at reception almost failed to recognize him. But she quickly realized who he was and let out a shriek.

"Engineer Gao's back?!"

As everyone knew, the high-energy overtones of a woman's voice were concentrated in the 2-4 kHz range, which happened to be the range where human hearing was most sensitive. Thus, although high-frequency sound waves in this range attenuated severely, their instantaneous penetrating power was extremely strong.

In an instant, the entire lobby visibly erupted into commotion.

"Engineer Gao's back!!!"

More and more people shouted it. It was as if someone had thrown a bomb into the lobby. First, a few heads poked out. Then came the ear-piercing scrape of chair legs against the floor. Finally, people gathered around in twos and threes.

Almost all of them were young engineers around Gao Jian's age who had joined at the same time as him.

Greetings and small talk overlapped in a chaotic chorus, mixed with curious questions about Gao Jian's recent experiences. Someone even thrust a Douyin video with nearly ten million likes in front of him. Its star was none other than Observer Gao, speaking out for justice in NASA's launch hall.

Gao Jian spoke extremely quickly, answering everyone in an orderly fashion and somehow ensuring that not a single person went unanswered.

What he feared most was someone speaking and receiving no response, left stranded in embarrassment.

Amid this lively crowd, the administration's leaders finally arrived. At a glance, he spotted Deputy Director Bian, Director Dan, and his mentor, Old Li.

Gao Jian smiled at them and was just about to say something when the large screen on the lobby wall, normally used to show launch news, suddenly switched to a dark blue emergency news display.

A red [BREAKING NEWS] banner scrolled up from the bottom of the screen. Then solid black text in both Chinese and English began appearing against the dark blue background, accompanied by a male announcer's voice that was almost eerily quiet.

Everyone in the administration froze and turned toward the screen.

An emergency news bulletin?

From the screen, the male announcer said coldly:

[Just now, our space monitoring system detected that at 13:17, UTC+8, a certain country used a large ballistic missile submarine in waters near the Arctic Ocean to launch a high-yield conventional missile toward the moon. The missile was launched vertically at full thrust and is expected to reach the limit of its vertical range in eight minutes, at which point it will explode. We strongly condemn...]

Gao Jian checked the time. It was now 13:21.

There were three minutes left until the nuclear missile exploded.