A live stream of someone hand-making a giant white robot attracted the attention of the government,

Shin-bashi Airport, tarmac.

As soon as the dark gray Gulfstream G650 without any serial number came to a stop, the Hongqi convoy, which had been waiting for a long time, turned on its hazard lights.

Wearing sunglasses and clutching the race flag he'd smuggled back from the Nürburgring, Wang Tao was immediately hit by a mouthful of wind as soon as he stepped out of the cabin.

He wasn't annoyed at all; instead, he cheerfully waved to the empty tarmac as if a huge army of fans were standing there.

"Brother Bai, you haven't seen the comments from those bastards on the foreign internet. Right now, the top ten trending topics on Twitter are all our 'Phantom' parody videos."

Wang Tao climbed into the car, still buzzing with excitement, and shoved the tablet in front of Bai Che: "And this too! A tycoon from the UAE sent me a private message asking if the 'Phantom' could be fitted with a pure gold casing, offering two hundred million US dollars! Two hundred million, Brother Bai! Shall we sell it? We'll break even on just one!"

"Not for sale."

"Why? That's two hundred million dollars!" Wang Tao cried out in anguish. "Even if we don't mass-produce it, we could at least sell a limited edition to make money."

"The underlying logic of the 'Phantom' is a nuclear-powered pre-demonstration machine. Sell it to them? Do you want those Middle Eastern guys to dismantle it, then modify the battery packs into bombs and drop them on US military bases?"

One sentence was enough to silence Wang Tao.

"Besides," Bai Che turned his head to look at the fleeting night view outside the window, "that's just a toy. The things that can truly change the world aren't on the racetrack."

In the front passenger seat, Su Wanqing closed her laptop and handed Bai Che a glass of warm water.

"Minister Li is already waiting at the Kunlun base." Her voice was a little hoarse. "Also, regarding the rare metal reserves you requested, several overseas supply chains have been disrupted due to changes in the international situation."

"As expected." Bai Che took a sip of water. "They lost face, so naturally they'll try to regain it through substance. Blocking materials is standard procedure."

"Are you still going?"

"We have to go. Some walls can't be bypassed by simply going around them. We have to blow them up."

……

Deep within the Kunlun base.

The massive underground cavity was illuminated as brightly as day by hundreds of industrial searchlights.

Countless automated engineering robots move among the intricate steel structures.

In the central area, a circular structure reaching a height of twenty meters is beginning to take shape.

This is a large-scale experimental unit of the "Ark Reactor".

Bai Che changed into a dustproof suit and walked quickly across the long pier.

Li Jianguo and several elderly experts with gray hair were gathered around a holographic projection table, their faces solemn.

"Work for nothing!"

Upon seeing Bai Che, an elderly man wearing thick-rimmed glasses looked as if he had seen a savior.

"What's wrong?" Bai Che walked over, his gaze sweeping over the red alert area on the hologram.

"It's stuck." Li Jianguo stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray, his voice low. "It's not a technical problem, it's a material issue. Lao Qin, you talk to him."

Qin Bing pulled up a set of data: "Bai Gong, your design drawings are flawless, and the ignition formula for 'cold fusion' is a genius idea. However... we can't make the confinement material for the core reaction ring, that is, the palladium isolation layer."

"Can't make it?" Bai Che frowned.

"It's not that the process can't be done, it's a problem with the materials!" Qin Bing pointed to the data sheet. "According to your design, to maintain the stability of the magnetic field of that miniature sun, we must use high-purity palladium as the lining. This one experimental machine will consume three hundred kilograms of palladium."

Three hundred kilograms.

When this number was revealed, even Wang Tao gasped in shock.

What is the global annual output?

"All the palladium in the national strategic reserve is only enough to build two of these machines. In the end, if this thing can't be made widely, then even if it is built, it will only be an expensive decoration, and it won't be a revolution in energy at all."

Bai Che fell silent.

this is the truth.

In the movie, Tony Stark can extract palladium from a missile and handcraft a reactor; in reality, resource scarcity is an insurmountable obstacle.

Without palladium, the high-temperature plasma generated by the reactor would instantly burn through everything, and the consequences would be even more terrifying than Chernobyl.

"What about alternatives?"

"We've tried it." Qin Bing shook her head. "Rhodium is too brittle, and platinum isn't magnetic enough. We simulated tens of thousands of alloy formulas on a supercomputer, and none of them could withstand that kind of extreme magnetic field tearing."

The atmosphere fell into a deathly silence.

"Stop work for now."

After a long silence, Bai Che uttered three words.

Li Jianguo suddenly looked up: "Bai Che, this is a national-level project! The losses from a single day of work stoppage are calculated in the hundreds of millions!"

"Staying up is a waste of time. Give me a quiet room, and grant me access to all materials science databases. I need to go into seclusion."

"how long?"

"I don't know." Bai Che waved his hand. "Maybe tomorrow, maybe... forever."

……

The door to the quiet room located deepest in the base was tightly closed.

The food that was brought in was barely touched; only countless sheets of draft paper covered with calculations were thrown out, which Su Wanqing carefully collected.

Nobody knows what Bai Che is doing.

In reality, Bai Che was in a daze.

He sat cross-legged on the ground, with a holographic screen floating in front of him displaying the periodic table of elements.

His gaze lingered on the "Pd (palladium)" grid for a long time before he finally closed his eyes in despair.

The laws of physics do not lie.

Even if he had blueprints ahead of his time, he couldn't conjure up the elements that were already scarce on Earth. This is the essence of "a skilled cook can't make a meal without rice."

"Should we first develop aerospace technology and then mine for minerals in the asteroid belt?"

This is a vicious cycle: without unlimited energy, there can be no low-cost spaceflight; without spaceflight, there can be no enough minerals to mine for energy.

Just when he was about to lose his composure.

Deep within my mind, that long-silent mechanical voice suddenly rang out.

[Ding! Resource barriers detected in the host's core technology path.]

[Current Challenge: Materials Science Bottleneck (Palladium Shortage)]

[Searching for solutions...]

Search complete.

[Recommended Alternative: The Carbon-Based Materials Revolution]

[System Rewards: Mass Production Technology of Single-Layer Graphene (Physical Exfoliation Method Version 2.0) and Carbide-Dyne Composite Array Reassembly Technology.]

boom!

A massive flow of information instantly flooded into Bai Che's mind.

The intense swelling and pain caused him to groan.

Five minutes later, the pain subsided.

"Haha...hahaha!"

石墨烯。

It's graphene!

This material, known as "black gold," has been a concept that has been overhyped on Earth for a long time.

Graphene batteries and graphene underwear are all scams.

Currently, humans can only produce either fragmented powders or exorbitantly expensive laboratory microgram-level samples.

However, the system output is "mass production".

In other words, just like papermaking, we can produce perfect single-layer graphene cheaply, quickly, and on a large scale!

What terrified Bai Che the most was that "carbazene composite array".

By rearranging inexpensive carbon atoms through specific atomic arrangements, a superconducting, ultra-strong, and magnetically confined supermaterial can be formed.

The magnetic confinement properties of this material are one hundred times that of palladium.

And what are its raw materials?

It's carbon.

It's the most abundant thing on Earth!

"Using the cheapest soil to create the most expensive golden statue."

Bai Che staggered to his feet, walked to the door, and pulled open the heavy isolation door.

"Bai Che? Are you alright? You look terrible..."

Su Wanqing frantically tried to help him up.

"President Su, call Li Jianguo over."

"Now...now? But it's three in the morning..."

"Yes, right now."

"Tell him to cancel all palladium orders."

"We won't need that thing anymore."

……

Half an hour later, in the control room.

Li Jianguo, wearing a military overcoat and with messy hair, ran in.

Bai Che stood in front of the huge holographic control panel.

On the screen, the red high-risk area representing the reactor core is being replaced by a brand-new black honeycomb structure.

"Minister Li, do you know what the ultimate goal of materials science is?"

"Is it...an atomic arrangement?"

"No."

Bai Che pressed the Enter key.

"They are God's building blocks."

Bai Che turned around and pointed to the model on the screen that was enough to overturn human understanding of materials science.

"This is the heart I'm going to put in the Ark—an all-carbon-based superconducting magnetic confinement ring."

"The cost of its raw materials is about 200 RMB per ton."

"Moreover, it can be used to build more than just reactors."

Bai Che paused, his gaze sweeping over everyone present who was dumbfounded.

"What if I told you that this thing could also increase the speed of our chips by a thousand times, reduce the weight of our aircraft by half, and even create an elevator that goes straight to space..."

Do you believe it?