Great Power Reclamation

The mornings in Sunrise City are awakened by the whistling of pigeons. Flocks of grey-spotted pigeons in the City Hall Square, their flapping wings mingling with the rhythm of pile drivers at the distant reconstruction site, becoming the city's new background noise.

Marta opened the window and took a deep breath of the air, which was filled with concrete dust and the smell of bread.

She was among the first group of refugees resettled in the Northern Development Zone. Her husband lost his right arm in Operation Melting Pot and now works as a security guard in the community.

She herself participated in the Queen's "Weaving and Hope" program, learning to weave blankets from locally produced flax and wool. Some of these blankets were supplied to the army, while others were sold to foreign merchants who came to inspect the area.

Today is a special day. Her sixteen-year-old daughter, Kalissa, will be among the first students to enter Queen's Technical College after going through a rigorous selection process.

The school was built on the site of an old military camp, and it is said that there were teachers from John's Kingdom and China who taught solar panel installation and water-saving agricultural techniques.

"Mom, I'm a little scared." Kalissa straightened her brand-new dark green school uniform—the color personally chosen by Queen Ye Rou, who said it symbolized life and resilience.

Marta pinned the school badge on her daughter, which featured crossed rifles and gears surrounded by golden ears of wheat.

"What are you afraid of? Your father can learn to operate the water pump controller with one hand. You are ten times smarter than him."

She paused, then softened her voice, "Remember, this opportunity was earned by many people who risked their lives. Study hard, and teach more people in the future."

At the same time, at the border outpost "Anvil" 300 kilometers from Sunrise City, Private Abdul was counting ammunition boxes.

He was a new citizen who had voluntarily joined the army from a southern resettlement camp six months ago; he had originally been a shepherd in his hometown.

“Thirty-seven, thirty-eight…” he counted in a low voice, his fingertips tracing the rough numbers on the wooden box.

The sergeant once said that behind each number was the sweat and toil of factory workers working overtime, and the hard currency that Premier Yang Dayong had obtained from foreigners through mining contracts.

"Abdul!" The sentry's hoarse voice came from the watchtower, "Keep your eyes peeled! Drone report: abnormal movement of a heat source five kilometers away at three o'clock!"

Abdul immediately threw down the counting board, grabbed his binoculars, and rushed to his post. The barren, yellow hills across the border were eerily quiet in the morning light.

But he dared not be careless. Three months ago, a similar heat source anomaly led to an ambush of a patrol team from a neighboring outpost, resulting in the deaths of three people, one of whom was the veteran who taught him to read maps.

He reported into his headset: "The field of vision is clear, and there are no visible targets. I suggest sending out 'eyes' to scout."

"Eyes" was the nickname they gave to the small reconnaissance drone. A few minutes later, the palm-sized black aircraft silently flew over the barbed wire fence.

Abdul stared at the control panel, his heart beating steadily—Instructor Iron Hammer had said that fear only makes the muzzle of a gun tremble.
-
In the study of a townhouse in Georgetown, Washington, Ye Feng rubbed his temples while staring at a screen full of graphs. Outside, cold rain fell, a stark contrast to the sunshine of East Africa—a world apart.

His legislative affairs officer handed him a newly printed document:
Senator Claire, along with twelve other senators, is preparing to include a clause in the National Defense Authorization Act:

"Any company that uses U.S. chips or software is prohibited from doing business with Bayonet Security in East Africa and its affiliated companies. It's smart; instead of comprehensive sanctions, they're targeting the technology supply chain with precision."

Ye Feng glanced at the terms and sneered, "She certainly knows how to choose her entry point. 'Bayonet's' communication equipment and drones do indeed use a lot of American technology."

He stood up, walked to the liquor cabinet, and poured himself a small glass of whiskey. “But our Republican friend, Senator McCarthy, has three chip testing plants in his district, and their main clients include the Malaysian company that manufactures the ‘bayonet’.”

"what do you mean?"

“Arrange an ‘informal lunch’ so that McCarthy’s campaign manager might ‘accidentally’ learn that if the clause passes, the three factories could face lost orders and anticipated layoffs… well, let’s estimate about two hundred people. They’re all union members.”

Ye Feng took a sip of his drink, the amber liquid swirling in his glass. "Let our friends in Silicon Valley spread the word that East Africa is in talks with a semiconductor research institute in Shanghai to jointly build a packaging and testing line for specialty chips. Send a draft of the letter of intent in Chinese, and remember to 'accidentally' let it slip to a reporter from The Wall Street Journal."

He put down his wine glass, his gaze as calm as if he were playing a game of chess that he had already rehearsed countless times:
“They want to play the technology card, so we tell them that in the era of globalization, technological blockade is a double-edged sword, and the East is not just island nations and South Korea.”

The legislative affairs officer nodded knowingly, but then whispered a reminder:

"But the pressure from domestic public opinion remains. Every night on the news, we can still see footage of East African troops patrolling the newly occupied territories, and commentators are saying, 'This is dangerous expansionism.'"

Ye Feng walked to the window and watched the rainwater meander down the glass:

"So we need a new story. Not a story about soldiers with guns, but... a story about a girl going to school."

He turned around. “Find the girl named Kalissa, and her mother who learned to knit in the resettlement camp. Make a short film, not long, five minutes.”

"The focus is not on the war itself, but on what happens after the war: how a family that has lost its homeland can re-establish itself in a new country, and how children can gain educational opportunities that their parents could never have imagined."

He paused, his voice growing deeper: "Let the audience think for themselves: Should we destroy such a future with bombs, or should we consider how to coexist with a nation that can create such a future?"

Under the same sky, on the newly built Queen's Technical College playground in North East Africa, Kalissa stood in formation, listening to the principal's address. The principal was a one-legged veteran, his cane thumping loudly on the ground.

"...This land beneath your feet was covered in landmines and barbed wire a year ago! Now, circuit boards, water pumps, and solar cells are growing here! Why?"

The veteran principal scanned the young faces, saying, "Because someone risked their life to protect it, and even more so because someone believed it deserved to be built even better!"

Kalissa clenched her fists. She remembered her father's empty right sleeve and her mother's tired yet focused profile as she knitted under the lamp late at night.

She didn't understand international politics very well, but she knew that the machines in the classroom with foreign language labels were a kind of recognition from the outside world for this newborn country—perhaps unwillingly, but ultimately an recognition.

After class, she found an English book on basic electronics in the library and struggled to flip through it. A voice sounded beside her: "This word is pronounced 'capacitor,' meaning capacitor."

She looked up and saw a young male teacher wearing glasses, with fair skin and a slightly strange accent. Later she learned that he was one of the teachers hired from Singapore through the Ye Family Foundation.

“Teacher,” Kalissa asked, mustering her courage, “can learning this really make our country…stronger?” The teacher adjusted her glasses, not answering directly, but instead asking:

"Do you know what the conversion efficiency of the solar photovoltaic panels used in this building is? It's 22%. But we already have samples in the lab that can achieve 26%."

"This 4% increase means that a power station of the same size can supply electricity to an additional 1,000 households."

He pointed to the book, "And the key to improvement lies in these fundamental principles. A strong nation is not something that can be achieved by shouting slogans, but by accumulating percentages and building upon each individual component."
-
The reconnaissance results from the border outpost are in. The heat source was a few wild goats that had wandered into a minefield and been killed by an explosion; it was a false alarm.

Abdul breathed a sigh of relief, took out a small notebook from his pocket, and began to review the reconnaissance points taught by Instructor Iron Hammer in the dim morning light.

On the notebook's title page was a photograph cut from a newspaper: Queen Ye Rou was at a frontline hospital, bending down to adjust an IV drip for an amputee soldier. The edges of the photograph were worn and carefully covered with transparent tape.

The sergeant walked over and handed him a compressed biscuit: "Looking at that photo again? You little rascal, you don't happen to have a crush on the Queen, do you?"

Abdul blushed and quickly put away his notebook: "No! I just feel... she's very close to us. Unlike the president of my previous country, who only appeared on TV."

The sergeant sat down beside him, lit a cigarette, and exhaled a long, drawn-out puff:
"She was close because she knew how heavy this military uniform was and how hot the border was."

He looked out of the barbed wire fence. "We are guarding this place not only to protect our homeland, but also to protect the future she promised us—so that shepherds can go to school, people with missing arms can have jobs, and all those who choose to stay will no longer have to flee."

In the distance, the sun fully rose above the horizon, bathing the newly constructed patrol road in gold. Further back, the wind turbines in the northern development zone began to slowly turn, like giant white flowers blooming on the plateau.

Marta finished weaving her first blanket of the day and got up to stretch her aching shoulders when she heard Premier Yang's calm voice coming over the radio:
"...Reconstruction in East Africa is not a choice, but a matter of survival. Our doors to cooperation are open to all countries that respect our sovereignty and development path. We are not enemies of anyone, but we will never accept any form of bullying."

She didn't understand much political jargon, but she understood the word "survival." She touched the rough surface of the blanket, on which were patterns she had designed:

A rifle is encircled by ears of wheat, and below it is a line of small characters: "Stop war with war, heal wounds with weaving."

In his study in the military reclamation city, thousands of miles away, Ye Yuze listened to the same broadcast and said to his assistant:
“Tell Xiaofeng that his story about ‘girls going to school’ can be filmed. But the focus should not be on pity, but on dignity—the instinctive dignity of an individual to change their destiny through hard work, and the collective dignity of a nation to earn respect through struggle.”

The old man walked to the window, where the poplar trees in the yard stood tall in the autumn wind.

"The strongest defenses are never at the border."

He said softly, “In the classroom, in the factory, in the heart of every ordinary person who believes that tomorrow will be better. Let them blockade, let them impose sanctions. As long as the heart of this land is still beating, and dreams are still growing, East Africa will always have the means to turn things around.”

The wind blows from the Gobi Desert, sweeping past the flags fluttering at the border post, brushing against the collars of the boys on the technical college's playground, swirling up the documents scattered in front of the Prime Minister's office window, and finally dissipating into the vast sky. A new day has begun, and the Long March belonging to this land has only just taken its first step.

In the city of Xuri after the rain, the air carried a crisp, refreshing scent. At the morning market, Marta noticed that tomato prices had fallen slightly compared to the previous week.

The vegetable vendor beamed with joy: "Sister, it's cheap today! A new batch of intelligent temperature-controlled containers arrived at the port. They say they're made in-house, which has significantly reduced transportation losses!"

Marta was somewhat surprised. Her husband Hassan's community had just installed new security cameras last week, and the images were so clear that you could see the size of a mosquito flying by.

The security captain proudly declared that this was "military reclamation goods," far superior to the previous batch of imported goods that frequently broke down. It seemed these "military reclamation goods" weren't just for the security team.

What she didn't know was that the name "Military Reclamation Electromechanical" was becoming a formidable and unavoidable name in the high-tech field of East Africa and even the entire African continent.

Its parent company, "Warrior Group," a vast business empire founded by Ye Yuze and headed by Ye Feng, has already deeply embedded its sharpest technological fangs into the nascent body of East Africa through military reclamation machinery.
-
The atmosphere in the warehouse office of the "Seed Project" was completely different from before.

The professor was no longer scratching his head and worrying about the blueprints, but staring at an open silver metal box with an almost pious look in his eyes.

Inside the box, nestled within the black shock-absorbing foam, lie several rows of tiny, dark gray square sheets, each about the size of a fingernail, their surfaces smooth as a mirror and imprinted with a minimalist logo.

A shield with embedded gears and lightning bolts, below which is the abbreviation "MKED" (Military Reclamation Electronics).

"This is it……"

The doctor's voice trembled slightly as he carefully picked up a chip with special tweezers. "'Kunlun-7A' embedded AI processing chip. 36-core heterogeneous, supports real-time edge computing and adaptive learning… I won't go over the parameters, anyway…"

He looked up at the liaison officer sent by Premier Yang, his eyes shining brightly:
"This thing would be among the very top-tier products in the product portfolio of any tech giant in the world. And right now, it's right here, being supplied to us at an 'internal collaboration price,' as much as we need!"

The liaison officer couldn't hide his excitement, but remained cautious: "Performance testing passed completely?"

“Not just passable!” The doctor pointed to a prototype device running nearby, a soldier-level situational awareness terminal designed for the next generation of “Frontier Rangers.”

“Our original alternative was so large and consumed so much power,”

He gestured, "Upon replacing it with the 'Kunlun-7A,' the size is reduced by 60%, the range is increased by three times, and the image processing and threat assessment speed... is more than ten times faster! When that kid Iron Hammer saw the test data, he immediately cursed, saying that this is like giving soldiers 'heavenly eyes'!"

The biggest bottleneck restricting the "Seed Project"—core chips—has overnight transformed from the deepest anxiety into the strongest trump card.

This not only solves the problem of whether or not they have the equipment, but also gives East Africa the potential to "destroy" its own independently developed equipment.

“The Prime Minister’s Office has instructed,” the liaison officer said, taking a deep breath, “that we must accelerate several key projects based on the 'Kunlun' series chips.”

“A new generation of encrypted communication systems, intelligent reconnaissance drone swarms, and… the ‘Energy Guardian’ smart grid control platform.”

"Besides supplying chips, Junken Electromechanical will also dispatch a core team of engineers to assist us with software and hardware adaptation and in-depth development. This is a direct order from the highest levels of the 'Warrior Group.'" (End of Chapter)