Radar doesn't lie! But who can explain this humanoid heat source!
Jinghai Air Traffic Control Center.
The clatter of keyboards mingled with the controllers' overlapping instructions, carrying a sense of oppressive bustle.
At that moment, Xiao Li, the operator responsible for Jing Airlines 8732's flight sector, was holding his headset up blankly, frozen at his workstation as though he had been struck by lightning.
Captain He Yiming's voice-cracking roar still echoed through the headset.
Xiao Li swallowed and called out hoarsely, "S-Supervisor Zhao..."
The duty supervisor, Zhao Zhen, was making his rounds through the aisle with a stainless steel insulated cup in hand.
With fifteen years in the profession, Zhao Zhen was known for his iron-faced impartiality. He lived by just one maxim.
Radar didn't lie.
Hearing Xiao Li's distorted voice, Zhao Zhen frowned and strode over.
"What are you panicking for? Is the sky falling?"
"N-no..." Xiao Li pointed at the screen, stammering. "Captain He said... said there's someone outside their plane racing on a sword."
Zhao Zhen froze for a full two seconds.
He stared into Xiao Li's eyes. Once he confirmed the kid wasn't joking, his face instantly turned as black as the bottom of a pot.
"Nonsense!"
Zhao Zhen snatched Xiao Li's microphone and pressed the transmit button.
"Jing Airlines 8732, this is Zhao Zhen, duty supervisor at the air traffic control center! Please remain professional! Don't make this kind of pointless joke on a public channel!"
He Yiming's heavy breathing came through the radio.
"I'm not joking!"
He Yiming sounded on the verge of breaking down.
"I'm fucking professional!"
"I've logged twenty thousand flight hours and earned a first-class merit citation! Would I joke about something like this?"
"He's five hundred meters ahead on my right! Wearing a ratty short-sleeved shirt, standing on an iron sword! He just did a barrel roll right in front of me! Requesting radar confirmation!"
Zhao Zhen laughed in anger.
He thought He Yiming must have suddenly developed some kind of high-altitude claustrophobia, or simply lost his mind.
"8732, listen up. Radar doesn't lie. I'm looking at the screen right now. Within fifty nautical miles of you, there's nothing but clouds-not a single aircraft!"
"Check your mental state immediately! If necessary, have the first officer take over at once! Be prepared for an aviation medical urine test after landing!"
After delivering his reprimand, Zhao Zhen cut the connection.
He tugged irritably at his tie and was about to have Xiao Li write an incident report.
"Supervisor Zhao!"
A shrill cry suddenly came from the corner.
He Xiaoyun shot to her feet at the radar monitoring station.
Zhao Zhen's heart lurched. He hurried over. "What happened? What's all the shouting about?"
"An-an anomalous signal!" He Xiaoyun's fingers hammered frantically at the keyboard, bringing up a set of data. "It's entered 8732's flight path! Five hundred meters ahead on their right!"
Zhao Zhen's heart tightened, and he leaned over to look at the screen.
Sure enough, a tiny red dot had appeared beside 8732's green dot at some point.
"A drone that's strayed off course? Or a high-altitude weather balloon?" His professional training swiftly calmed him, his mind racing.
"N-no, neither!" He Xiaoyun stared fixedly at the shifting data on the screen, her face deathly pale. "Its radar cross section is too small, less than 0.1 square meters. Something that size would be no bigger than a person! But its speed..."
"It's reached nine hundred kilometers per hour! Mach 0.8! And it's still accelerating!"
At those words, the nearby controllers who had heard the commotion all sucked in a breath.
A radar cross section of less than 0.1 square meters, traveling at nine hundred kilometers per hour?
Those were the fucking specs of a cruise missile!
"Impossible!" Zhao Zhen flatly rejected it. "There are no military exercises around Jinghai. Where would a missile come from? It must be a ghost return on the radar!"
"It's not clutter! Its trajectory is extremely stable, completely consistent with aerodynamics... no, wait, it has no aerodynamic configuration! It's just brute-forcing its way through the air!" He Xiaoyun was so frantic she was almost in tears.
Zhao Zhen pushed He Xiaoyun aside. "Let me!"
He dropped into the chair, his hands leaving afterimages across the keyboard.
Since conventional radar couldn't identify the target's nature, he would use the highest level of access.
"Requesting access to the high-resolution weather satellite!"
"Retrieve military-grade thermal imaging!"
"Lock coordinates: thirty-one degrees north, one hundred twenty-one degrees east, altitude eleven thousand meters!"
As Zhao Zhen issued his string of commands, the huge LCD screen taking up half the wall at the front of the control center flickered twice.
The next second.
The feed appeared.
Across the entire Jinghai Air Traffic Control Center, more than thirty people.
At that moment, they collectively fell into deathly silence.
The enormous screen displayed a high-altitude thermal image.
Against the deep blue background representing extreme cold, an outline giving off an intense heat signature was hurtling forward in an utterly brazen posture.
It was a person.
A humanoid heat source with all four limbs intact and a slender build.
Beneath that humanoid heat source's feet was a long, narrow object.
Even more absurdly, once the image was enlarged, everyone could clearly see that the humanoid heat source actually had both hands clasped behind his back, his posture as leisurely as if he were strolling through a park.
Moving at such tremendous speed, the heat source forcibly drew a long white contrail through the stratosphere.
Clatter.
Someone's handheld radio fell to the floor.
It shattered the suffocating, deathly silence.
"Wh-what the fuck is that thing?" An older controller standing beside Zhao Zhen practically had his eyeballs pressed against the screen.
"The radar... the radar must be broken, right?" someone else muttered.
Zhao Zhen sat in the chair, utterly stupefied.
The fifteen years of professional experience he took such pride in, the creed he had believed in without question-at that moment, they were trampled to pieces.
The radar hadn't lied.
The equipment wasn't broken either.
The world had gone mad.
"Did... did he just scratch his back?" He Xiaoyun pointed at the screen, her voice drifting.
On the screen, the humanoid heat source did indeed free one hand, scratch twice at his lower back, then return it behind him.
The narrow object beneath his feet abruptly released an even stronger burst of heat, blasting a visible ring of sonic boom condensation through the clouds.
Zhao Zhen shuddered violently.
This was no longer something civil aviation could handle.
Was this a fucking immortal descending to earth, or an alien invasion?!
Whatever it was, if a humanoid creature capable of flying on a sword ten thousand meters in the air entered the skies above urban Jinghai, it would absolutely be an unpredictable disaster!
"What are you still standing around for!"
Zhao Zhen sprang from his chair and roared hysterically at all the controllers in the hall who had been scared witless.
"Notify Director Liu Weidong immediately! Sound the red alert right now!"
"Cut off all civilian channels! Encrypt this footage! Immediately! Right now! Transmit it to the Jinghai Military Region Air Defense Command!"
"Notify every flight around Jinghai to change course immediately and avoid that... that..." Zhao Zhen pointed at the screen and gritted his teeth. "Avoid that unidentified humanoid flying object!"
With Zhao Zhen's roar, the entire control center instantly boiled over.
The piercing red-alert siren echoed wildly through the hall. Red warning lights flashed incessantly, bathing everyone's faces in crimson.
Everyone hammered frantically at their keyboards, some making calls, others switching channels.
Yet every one of them kept glancing uncontrollably at the big screen.
Watching that figure soar freely ten thousand meters up, everyone had only one feeling.
Their scalps tingled.