I built an armada.

It was as if my consciousness was being violently pulled out of the deep sea by an invisible hand!
boom!
Su Dingping's body practically sprang up, landing heavily on the bed, cold sweat instantly beading on his forehead. The nightmarish sense of space rapidly faded, and the laws of physics returned, bringing with them a feeling of heaviness, exhaustion, and... a warm, slightly heavy weight on his arm!

He suddenly lowered his head.

Like a startled fawn, Guo Xueyun hurriedly propped herself up to get off the bed, two obvious blushes rising on her cheeks, her eyes filled with shyness and unprepared panic.

Just now, she actually fell asleep leaning on his arm!
Just now, in the instant he was awakened, he clearly felt her steady, warm breath brushing against the nape of his neck.

"Snow Cloud..."

Su Dingping's voice was hoarse from just waking up, and he subconsciously reached out to pull her back to explain.

"How...how did you wake up?!"

Guo Xueyun's voice was a little urgent, with a hint of coquettish reproach that she herself was unaware of. She quickly tidied her slightly messy hair and shirt collar, avoiding eye contact with him and glancing towards the door. Her voice was very low, urgent, and fast.

"Wan Long is calling you from outside! It must be an emergency! Go open the door quickly!"

Seeing Guo Xueyun's flustered and helpless state, as if her secret had been exposed, Su Dingping's anxiety about the forced interruption of the core test dissipated almost entirely, replaced by a soft, even somewhat amusing feeling.

He chuckled and reached out to smooth a stray strand of hair from her temple.

"What's the panic, Sister Xueyun?"

Throughout the entire laboratory, from top to bottom, everyone knows us…

His voice lowered, carrying a hint of comforting laughter.

"...relationship?"

"no the same!"

Guo Xueyun stamped her foot in frustration and slapped away his outstretched hand, her face as red as a ripe peach.

"I know, but... but we didn't follow the proper procedures! What's the point of me, a young woman, spending the whole night here... what's going on here?! It'll look bad if word gets out! It's not good for you either! Hurry up and open the door! Don't keep Wanlong waiting!"

As she spoke, she pushed him toward the edge of the bed, then jumped off the bed somewhat awkwardly, quickly tidying herself up with her back to him, as if she wanted to distance herself from the bed.

Seeing her stubborn dedication to "procedures" and "influence," and that endearing persistence in upholding the last vestiges of traditional rules despite their mutual affection, Su Dingping's heart instantly softened.

He obediently took two steps back, nodding helplessly yet indulgently.

"Okay, okay, Steward Guo is right, we'll listen to you."

He gazed tenderly at her slender yet stubborn back, and a thought quietly settled in the weary yet resolute lake of his heart, heavy with the weight of a thousand pounds.

"The moment 'Dragon Star' is lit up... we must make her nod under the dazzling light!"

Outside the door, Wanlong could clearly hear the faint voices and sounds of getting up inside, and the calls became clearer.

"Director! Director! I'm so sorry to disturb your rest, but the military factory is in a real emergency! They need us to go there immediately..."

Su Dingping took a deep breath, suppressed his thoughts, and also suppressed the slight regret that the core verification of "Dragon Star" had not been completed. He quickly straightened his wrinkled work clothes and strode towards the door.

He reached out and turned the handle.

The door opened.

At the door, Wan Long stood with his hand raised, ready to knock again. His tall, burly body was taut, his dark face showing clear anxiety, and fine beads of sweat were seeping from his forehead.

However, when his gaze passed over Su Dingping's shoulder and glimpsed the bedding that hadn't been fully made in the room, and Guo Xueyun, blushing and facing away from the door, pretending to be nonchalant while trying to hide her true feelings as she adjusted her cuffs...

Wanlong froze as if frozen in place! His face flushed red in an instant, the contrast between his dark complexion and the sudden blush making him look particularly comical.

His hand, raised halfway, froze awkwardly in mid-air, unsure whether to put it down or knock. His eyes darted around, looking left and right, but he dared not look into the room a second time, wishing he could see right through the floor and find a crack to crawl into.

"I'm so sorry, Director!"
"Um... Director Guo is here too... I... I really didn't mean to! I..." Wan Long stammered, his tongue tied in knots. He instinctively tried to turn his head, but he used too much force and the back of his head hit the door frame with a soft "thud," making him even more embarrassed and his face turn bright red.

This towering man now resembled a primary school student caught red-handed making a mistake.

The atmosphere froze for a moment in an eerie way.

Su Dingping, on the other hand, seemed quite calm, completely unconcerned about Wan Long's subtle embarrassment. His mind was now filled with the alertness aroused by the words "extremely urgent" and "military factory."

He stepped out the door, gently closing it behind him, cutting off Wanlong's view and also blocking Guo Xueyun's current predicament inside.

pat.

The door slammed shut with a soft click, cutting off the light from the corridor. Wanlong, as if released from a pressure point, let out a deep breath; the back of his shirt was already soaked with cold sweat.

He raised his hand to wipe his forehead, finally daring to focus his gaze on Su Dingping's still weary face, his tone fiery.

"Director! I'm so sorry to have dragged you out of bed! But there's an uproar at the Precision Manufacturing Workshop 7! The imported multi-axis winding machine suddenly malfunctioned, and the precision dropped so low that even your own mother wouldn't recognize it!"

He spoke as fast as a ticker timer, gesturing with his fingers in the air.

"A deviation at the micrometer level! We watched helplessly as seven or eight superconducting copper wire blanks were all turned into scrap!"

Deputy Chief Engineer Jiang stayed up all night, his hair almost completely pulled out, and with red eyes, he said one sentence: "Even a god couldn't help us if we didn't get it sorted out! If we can't resolve this, the 'three-dimensional torsion magnetic confinement coil,' the heart of 'Longxing,' will be cut off, and the entire assembly line will be grounded!"

The weariness in Su Dingping's eyes was instantly replaced by sharpness, as if cold water was poured into hot metal, producing a clear hiss.

"Precision out of control? At the micrometer level?"

He spoke slowly, but every word he uttered was impactful.

"Get the car ready, we'll talk on the way."

The wheels rolled over the dusty road surface of the military factory, kicking up clouds of dust. At the entrance of Workshop Seven, Lü Guangjun and a group of key research personnel were already waiting like ants on a hot plate.

The once bustling factory was now eerily silent, save for a few machines in a corner with their scarlet fault indicator lights glowing like silent wounds. The massive imported multi-axis winding machine in the center had completely stopped working, its precision guide rails stiff as dead snakes.

On the operating table were several twisted copper ingots, gleaming with a dark gold luster—these were scrapped superconducting copper wire blanks, each one representing a huge loss and the passage of time.

"Director! You've finally arrived!"

Lu Guangjun practically lunged at him, his eyes sunken, lips chapped, and voice hoarse.

"Look at this ancestor! We've tried everything, re-flashed the program three times, disassembled and reassembled all the parts and recalibrated them, but as soon as it starts moving, the winding accuracy goes wildly off!"
It veers left and right, with deviations reaching as low as 0.0015 millimeters!

He pointed to a glaring red alarm on the control panel.

“Right now we’re just barely holding on with manual fine-tuning, but the efficiency is shockingly low, with a pass rate of less than 5%... The vacuum chamber is being urged eight times a day, and the magnetic field system is also waiting for the rice to be cooked. 'Dragon Star's' heart can’t beat anymore!” Su Dingping didn’t speak, but walked quickly and steadily to the huge winding machine. He placed his palm on the cold outer shell, feeling the subtle, irregular vibrations caused by the internal malfunction in his fingertips.

He gestured to the technicians to open the heavy-duty maintenance cover on the side of the equipment. Gears, bearings, a dense web of circuitry, and finely threaded precision stepper rails were exposed.

He leaned down, almost burying his upper body inside, his deep gaze like a probe, scanning every corner that might hide a tiny flaw.

"It's not a program problem."

His calm voice emanated from the equipment cavity.

"I've checked the system logic, and it's fine. It's not that the drive shaft is worn out either; the sound and feel are too predictable."

My fingertips gently brushed over the mounting base of a bearing.

"Focus on investigating temperature sensing and feedback compensation systems."

High-precision winding is extremely sensitive to local environmental temperature fluctuations, especially…

He paused briefly, then picked up a wisp of almost invisible metallic powder near the base with his fingertips.

"The viscoelastic changes of lubricating grease can amplify tiny temperature drifts on a micron-scale."

Several key technical personnel immediately brought over a high-precision thermometer and a data logger. Sure enough, when the monitoring focused on the core bearing area of ​​the winding machine, the temperature curve on the instrument screen resembled a wildly fluctuating electrocardiogram, oscillating rapidly within a range of a few tenths of a degree above and below the set reference value!

This is a disaster for equipment that requires absolute precision down to the micrometer level.

"The temperature compensation module of the imported equipment is based on a standard database established in the constant low-temperature and dry environment of Northern Europe!"

Lu Guangjun slapped his thigh suddenly, realizing what was happening, but his voice was filled with annoyance.

"Damn it! The underground workshop at our Jiangdong Military Factory is so humid, and the ventilation ducts are right next to a large annealing furnace! The environmental micro-parameters are all messed up!"

That bulky, crude compensation module has absolutely no adaptive learning ability, so of course it'll just go completely astray!

Su Dingping nodded, pulled himself out from deep within the equipment, and showed no surprise on his face.

"We'll bring over two sets of domestically produced 'Beidou' sensor arrays, along with a dynamic self-learning compensation algorithm package. One external set will be used for environmental benchmark anchoring, and the other internal set will be used to correct temperature drift in the core area in real time."

At the command, the entire Workshop 7 sprang into action like a wound-up machine. Precision sensors were carefully embedded in key positions; a new temperature control compensation module was connected to the main control computer via a correction algorithm hastily written by Su Dingping; and the technicians held their breath as they gently pushed a brand-new, shiny copper ingot into the feed inlet.

Hundreds of eyes in the workshop were fixed on the blank that was slowly being wrapped with copper wire.

"start up."

Su Dingping stood in front of the control panel, his voice clear.

*Whoosh!* The winding machine restarted precisely, the humming of countless tiny motors converging into a peculiar, steady mechanical roar. The slide rail moved smoothly, and the delicate copper wire was evenly and tightly wound into the predetermined track.

On the control panel, the curve representing precision is no longer a wildly throbbing red python, but a gentle, straight, deep blue lifeline.

Time passed second by second.

The first coil blank slowly detached from the workstation. The laser measuring instrument's probe emitted a thin beam of light, rapidly scanning every inch of the curved surface. The piercing alarm did not sound!
On the terminal screen, a bright green "Qualified" message popped up, with a note below it.

Radial error.

±0.00003 mm.

The deathly silent workshop suddenly erupted into thunderous cheers! Someone started it all, and excited applause and shouts resounded throughout the vast space! Lü Guangjun wiped his eyes hard and rushed over to grab Su Dingping's hand.

"It worked! It really worked! Director, you saved a life!"

The coil is now stable; 'Dragon Star's' heart can be saved!

Amidst the jubilant cheers, Su Dingping's personal communicator in his pocket vibrated slightly.

He took it out, and on the screen was a very brief text message.

"Stay up all night? Don't overwork yourself..." There was no signature, but he knew who that number belonged to. A tired yet warm feeling of being nestled close seemed to wash over him again, as if he could smell the faint fragrance of her hair... The cold, hard edge in his eyes softened for a moment, and his thumb quickly pressed the keys, replying with three words.

"It's resolved, don't worry about it."

However, this moment of warmth was instantly interrupted by a bigger problem. Lu Guangjun, who had just caught his breath from the joy of success, became serious again, grabbed Su Dingping's arm, and lowered his voice.

"Director, the coil has been saved, but there's an even bigger hole ahead! The vacuum chamber!"

That thing requires the precision of its inner and outer walls to be controlled to one ten-thousandth of a meter! Our current processing methods, even at our best, can only control it to a few ten-thousandths of a meter… it simply cannot meet the core design standards of 'Longxing'!

He tapped his head painfully with his fingers, pointing to a spacious area next to him with a huge steel frame.

“That place, which was originally intended to be the assembly location for the ‘Dragon Star’ heart chamber, is now… empty.”

The atmosphere in the laboratory was equally oppressive and suffocating.

Huge blueprints covered the central long table, with countless precise markings on them like densely packed stars.

A group of researchers stared at the blueprints, their brows furrowed in deep worry.

Su Dingping frowned deeply.

Unlike the unrestrained expression of data and thought in the forging space, the physical laws and processing bottlenecks of the real world stand like cold iron walls, ruthlessly blocking the grand blueprint.

One ten-thousandth of a meter? This number seems to be a concrete, insurmountable mountain.

"Traditional modular casting and reassembly...is too prone to leaving errors..."

In the corner, Li Yun, a female lab technician with a ponytail, stared at the complex three-dimensional structure of the cavity on the blueprint, her eyes filled with despair, muttering to herself almost in a dream.

"...If only I could...like molding clay...create it whole..."

"Give birth?"

These three words struck Su Dingping like a powerful electric current!

He suddenly looked up, and the extinguished flame in his eyes suddenly surged back up! The image of the seamless recombination and melting of virtual materials in the forging space in his mind collided violently with a vague concept in reality, overlapping like lightning!

"3D printing!" (End of Chapter)