"Guozhong, you mean you want to see its combat capabilities, right?"
Elder Wang stroked his beard and asked with a smile.
"Yes, yes, that's exactly what I mean."
Li Guozhong nodded emphatically.
This would be his first time seeing a mech undergo combat capability testing.
Of course he had to watch!
And watch closely!
"All right, I'll arrange it!"
Elder Wang took out his phone, called Wang Yixue, and gave her a brief explanation.
Inside the mech, Wang Yixue had just been about to shut it down and get out when she heard her grandfather say the leaders wanted to see a live combat test.
She couldn't help pursing her lips.
She had already tested it in low Earth orbit. It worked great.
As long as he locked onto a target with the quantum-source phased-array radar.
Once the shoulder railguns fired, whatever the target was, it instantly exploded into two bursts of fireworks. They were quite pretty.
Li Guozhong summoned his guards and had them bring their vehicles over.
They loaded everyone aboard and headed for the firing range.
Ten Dongfeng Mengshi vehicles roared away.
Twenty minutes later, they arrived at Zhonghai Research Base's dedicated firing range.
This was where new equipment was tested and used for training.
Every kind of test target was available.
By the time Li Guozhong and the others arrived, Wang Yixue had already taken a short nap in the cockpit.
Their twenty-minute journey had taken Wang Yixue less than sixty seconds in the mech.
She closed her eyes, opened them, and she was there.
It was ridiculously fast.
"Guozhong, this mech is called Crimson Sky No. 1. It currently has two offensive weapons."
Recalling the data announcement before the mech had taken off, Elder Wang explained,
"Judging by the voice announcement before takeoff, it should have four types of weapons in total."
"Look over there!"
Elder Wang pointed at the dark gun muzzles on the mech's shoulders and said,
"Those are the shoulder railguns."
"The one carried on its back is a high-frequency particle blade."
"The other two, the beam weapon and the Dragoon System, aren't mounted."
Seeing Crimson Sky No. 1 up close again, Li Guozhong still couldn't hide the surge within him.
This perfect masterpiece seemed to have come from the future.
"Elder Wang, developing this thing certainly couldn't have been easy!" Li Guozhong said with feeling.
No matter how one looked at it, this thing had already reached a technological level beyond Eagle Sauce's.
He could well imagine just how much hardship and suffering scientists like Elder Wang had endured to put it together.
"To tell you the truth, Crimson Sky No. 1 wasn't actually developed by our research center."
Elder Wang spoke as he thought,
"The person who developed this thing seems to be named Xu Fan. He's a student at Zhonghai University of Defense Technology."
"What???"
Li Guozhong's bell-sized eyes went round.
"Elder Wang, you're not joking with me, are you?"
"Guozhong, that's not all!"
Elder Hua added,
"You might not believe this, but this mech took less than two days from project initiation to completion."
"What??"
Li Guozhong sharply drew in a breath.
For a moment, he didn't know what to say.
Waves of numbness washed over his scalp. His brain couldn't think at all.
His train of thought broke off completely at that moment.
His head spun, and stars swam before his eyes.
Had those words come from anyone else's mouth.
He would have snapped right back: what kind of bullshit was that!
But what sort of figures were Elder Wang and Elder Hua? Even he had to respect them from the bottom of his heart.
Pillars of the nation like them could never joke with him about something like this.
Besides, both elders had their own grounds for what they said.
Since they had said it, it was almost certainly true.
Just who was this Xu Fan, capable of building such a divine artifact?
Li Guozhong grew a little curious.
"Guozhong, which of the two weapons should we test first?"
Elder Wang's words interrupted Li Guozhong's thoughts.
"Either is fine. You make the arrangements!" Li Guozhong said with a smile.
"All right, we'll test the high-frequency particle blade first."
Elder Wang made the decision on the spot.
He picked up his phone and called Wang Yixue.
"Little Yixue, let's test the particle blade first. There are a few scrapped T-54 tanks at Range 277. Give the fronts of the tanks a few slashes, and let's see how it goes. Remember to send photos afterward."
Beside him, Li Guozhong blinked blankly, looking utterly bewildered.
Slash a T-54 tank with a blade?
What savage words!
The T-54's armor was made of ten-centimeter-thick alloy steel. Even ordinary missiles might not penetrate it.
What kind of move was taking a blade to it?
The corners of Li Guozhong's mouth twitched. He clearly couldn't quite keep his composure.
The officers who had just followed them over also heard this, and their pupils quaked.
Anyone else saying something like that would already have been sent to a psychiatric hospital.
But inside the mech, Wang Yixue replied,
"Grandpa, I'll send a temporary visual projection plug-in to your phone now. Install it, and I'll sync the holographic helmet's visual feed to you. You can all watch directly!"
"Even better."
Elder Wang opened his Huawei phone and tapped a few times. The mech's synchronized visual feed appeared on the screen.
It was much like what had appeared on Wang Yixue's phone earlier.
Only the communications panel in the lower left and the information panel in the lower right were missing.
Elder Wang then forwarded the plug-in to Li Guozhong. After they forwarded it among themselves, everyone could watch the synchronized feed.
At that moment, Wang Yixue yawned.
Then she stretched.
She tossed out a line. "Leaders, watch closely!"
With that said.
Crimson Sky No. 1 drew the high-frequency particle blade from its back.
Its legs bent slightly, then drove hard.
Boom-
A five-meter-wide crater blasted open in the reinforced-concrete ground.
Debris flew everywhere.
The load-bearing rebar all snapped, lying exposed at crooked angles.
The entire mech shot into the air like an artillery shell.
No flames spurted from its vectoring nozzles. Clearly, it couldn't even be bothered to start the hydrogen engine.
In midair.
With a hum, the high-frequency particle blade in the mech's hand burst into four meters of aqua-blue light.
It seemed to flow, dazzling and brilliant.
Rumble-
An earth-shaking roar rang out from a distant mountain hollow.
It made even the ground beneath Elder Wang and the others tremble violently.
Li Guozhong and the officers felt the shaking beneath their feet.
Every one of them was too stunned to speak.
Watching the footage on their phones, they felt as though they themselves were inside the cockpit.
They leaped up in sync with the mech, then crashed back down, making the earth shake and dust billow.
Thump, thump, thump...
Their hearts pounded madly, almost leaping out of their throats.
Everyone had the same thought.
If I could pilot a mech myself just once in this lifetime, even dying would be worth it!
Mechs, a romance belonging to men alone.
Women would never understand!
The mech landed.
It stopped right in front of a rust-covered T-54 tank.
This T-54 tank had been abandoned for years.
Many of its internal electronic components were already gone.
But its ten-centimeter-thick armor remained.
Wang Yixue controlled the mech, gripping the blade with both hands.
It assumed a trailing-blade stance.
Watching on their phones, Li Guozhong and the officers all held their breath, staring intently at their screens.
They didn't even dare blink.
They were afraid of missing a single moment of what came next.
At the same time, a question rose in all their minds.
When a particle blade struck tank armor, which would prove harder?