Rejecting Tsinghua and Peking Universities: I Will Lead Harbin Institute of Technology to World Lead

The brief clash over the eastern seas has ended, but the costs and gains are laid bare before the highest levels of the Chinese government.

The loss of a precious Fuxi aerospace fighter and the injury of several White Tiger warriors—this price was heavy, proving that the individual weapons of the subterranean civilization were extremely threatening, and could even inflict effective damage on China's most advanced air force currently in service.

But the gains were equally astonishing. Two nearly intact Atlantean Shadow Shuttle-class vanguard ships were captured, and nearly twenty Atlantean scouts were taken prisoner. This marked the first time that China, and indeed all surface civilizations, had truly encountered the physical form of this mysterious subterranean enemy.

The post-war analysis report was sent to Mr. Li immediately. When he saw the footage of the Fuxi fighter jet's armor being easily melted through by enemy laser weapons and the pilot being forced to parachute, Mr. Li's brows furrowed deeply.

"The enemy's energy weapons pose a serious threat to our existing defense system," Elder Li pointed out at the emergency meeting. "The Fuxi's armor is already top-tier on the surface, yet it couldn't even withstand a single blow. If the enemy's main warships are equipped with more powerful weapons of the same type, or even more advanced ones, our air superiority will be gone, and important ground targets will also face serious threats."

He looked at the intelligence department: "We need to expedite the interrogation of the prisoners, but they are highly civilized and determined; it will be difficult to get them to talk in a short time. We must employ a two-pronged approach!"

His gaze finally settled on the briefing about Lin Feng: "Contact Comrade Lin Feng immediately! Deliver those two enemy ships to his designated research location as soon as possible! Make him concentrate his efforts on the primary objective: deciphering the principles of the enemy's energy weapons, especially that terrifying laser technology! At the same time, find or develop materials or technologies that can effectively defend against, or at least weaken, the lethality of such weapons! Time is of the essence; we must find a way to counter this before the enemy can react and launch a larger-scale attack!"

The order was absolute. The two captured Shadow Shuttle ships and their internal equipment were secretly transported overnight by heavy transport planes, eventually arriving at a newly built, highly protected special research facility at the Northwest Base. This would be Lin Feng's operating table for dissecting these fangs of the earth.

As for the Atlantean prisoners, they were taken in by the military intelligence's most elite interrogation and psychological experts and imprisoned in a top-secret location completely isolated from them. Lin Feng did not inquire about this; his battlefield was in the laboratory.

Standing inside the massive research bay, Lin Feng gazed at the two Shadow Shuttle ships before him, their sleek lines and technological beauty undeniable even amidst their scars. They did share similarities with the Breath of Earth Engineering Ship, both demonstrating a profound understanding of energy field propulsion and adaptation to extreme environments, but their details revealed a sharper edge, especially the several uniquely shaped weapon launch ports marked on their hulls.

"Let's begin." With Lin Feng's command, the research team and intelligent robots, who were already prepared, began to work together.

Non-destructive scanning, residual energy analysis, outer shell material sampling, internal structure analysis... massive amounts of data flooded into the supercomputer like a torrent. Lin Feng personally oversaw the disassembly and analysis of the core components, especially the laser weapon system.

Three days, without sleep or rest.

The research has made groundbreaking progress. The overall technical level of this Shadow Shuttle ship is indeed similar to that of the Breath of Earth ship in terms of energy utilization, environmental sustainability, and structural materials, and even slightly inferior in some aspects to the Breath of Earth design which incorporates systems theory. Its greatest advantage, or rather, its greatest threat to the surface, lies entirely in its weapon system.

"Ultra-compressed phase laser array," Lin Feng named the weapon in the final technical briefing. "Its principle is not simply to increase energy output, but rather to introduce a special energy lattice resonant cavity and spacetime curvature fine-tuning field during the laser generation stage. This allows the generated laser beam to be extremely compressed at the microscopic level, with photon density and energy concentration reaching tens or even hundreds of times that of ordinary laser weapons. At the same time, the phase modulation accompanying its emission enables it to penetrate or neutralize the defensive layers of conventional energy shields and physical armor to a certain extent, achieving a penetration effect that is almost ignoring defense."

He pulled up a simulation of the cross-section of the Fuxi fighter's armor that had been melted through: "Our armor is like butter under a hot knife in front of it. The same principle applies to the instantaneous destruction of the exploration robots in the Earth's core. This is not an absolute crushing on the energy level, but a generational difference in the form of attack."

The conclusion was alarming, but it also pointed the way forward.

"We must develop targeted defensive measures immediately," Lin Feng reported to Elder Li. "Simply increasing armor thickness or energy shield strength is inefficient against ultra-compressed phase lasers and would result in unbearable weight and energy consumption. We need a completely new material or technology that can actively respond to or passively mitigate this extreme penetration effect."

The mission was clear, and time was of the essence. Lin Feng did not return to Harbin Institute of Technology, but instead remained at the top-secret Northwest Base. He dismissed most of his assistants, leaving only the necessary intelligent support units.

Consciousness sinks into the system's simulated space.

The flow of time is 1:100. Every minute and second in the real world is precious here.

Lin Feng first perfectly replicated the attack model of the ultra-compressed phase laser in space. That extremely condensed, incandescent white beam of light, seemingly capable of cutting through space itself, shot out again and again on the virtual target range.

He began conducting a vast amount of materials testing.

In his first year, he experimented with all known or conceived high-strength alloys, composite ceramics, nanolattice materials, and energy-absorbing coatings based on existing theories… The results were disheartening. Faced with the ultra-compressed phase laser, these materials were either instantly melted through or structurally disintegrated due to energy overload; at best, they could only barely withstand one or two attacks before becoming unusable.

The following year, he turned to more cutting-edge theories. An energy deflection layer based on the quantum tunneling effect? ​​Failed; laser phase modulation disrupted the stability of the deflection field. A miniature gravitational lens defense utilizing the principle of space warping? Theoretically feasible, but energy consumption was enormous and the structure complex, making practical application difficult. An attempt to mimic the energy resonance structure of the Shadow Shuttle's own armor? Discovered that it was only optimized for general energy attacks and offered no special resistance to its own weapons.

In his third year, Lin Feng began to change his approach. Since it was difficult to withstand the attack head-on, could the energy be mitigated or redirected? He designed an adaptive buffer layer based on a composite of non-Newtonian fluids and shape-memory metals, attempting to disperse the impact and heat by changing its shape at the moment of laser hit. The effect was somewhat improved, but it would still quickly fail under continuous irradiation or high-power attacks. He then tried an energy siphon solution, integrating a superconducting energy harvesting network on the armor surface, attempting to convert some of the laser energy into usable energy or export it. This idea was very creative, but the energy of the supercompressed laser was too concentrated and violent, and the harvesting network was often burned out before it could be activated.

Research and development has hit a bottleneck. Three years have passed in the system space, while more than ten days have passed in the outside world. Lin Feng can feel the increasing pressure from the outside world, the interrogation of the prisoners is progressing slowly, and the main force in the Earth's core may discover the vanguard ship's loss of contact at any time.

Just when he was about to try to use the remaining attempts in the system optimization solution library, a chance observation brought a turning point.

He noted that when the Shadow Shuttle was attacked by electromagnetic railgun projectiles from the Fuxi fighter, its armor not only withstood the impact but also generated an extremely brief and subtle energy field ripple around the point of impact, as if actively smoothing out the stress distortion caused by the impact. This phenomenon had been overlooked in previous weapon analyses.

Lin Feng immediately seized upon this detail and began a more in-depth analysis of the Shadow Shuttle's armor structure. This time, he not only examined the material composition but also focused on its internal energy circuits and microstructure.

Finally, he discovered it! Within the nanoscale composite material interlayer of the armor, there exists a special, almost life-like, energy-active unit. These units are normally in an inert state, but when subjected to a sufficiently strong external energy impact, they are activated, instantly forming a highly ordered energy-matter synergistic repair field in the damaged area. This field not only rapidly guides energy diffusion but also stimulates the atoms within the material itself to undergo rapid rearrangement, achieving self-healing at the microscopic level!

Although the Shadow Shuttle's self-healing ability is limited and mainly used to counter kinetic energy projectiles and ordinary energy beams, and is not very effective against its own hypercompressed lasers, it provides a completely new direction - not simply defense, but dynamic endurance and repair!

In the fourth year, Lin Feng combined this discovery with the advantages of previous solutions and proposed a brand-new design concept.

Instead of pursuing complete protection against laser penetration, he designed a gradient energy dissipation-instantaneous regeneration composite armor system. Its outer layer consists of several specially treated sacrificial layer materials with extremely high heat capacity and energy diffusion coefficient, specifically designed to rapidly consume and disperse laser energy at the moment of laser impact through controlled vaporization, phase change, and other methods, reducing its destructive power by an order of magnitude.

The middle layer is the core—a biomimetic self-healing nanocomposite material, which Lin Feng named the Spirit Pivot Matrix. It is filled with energy-matter synergistic units similar to the Shadow Shuttle armor but optimized a thousandfold, and pre-programmed with a complex energy guiding network. When attenuated laser energy reaches this layer, the Spirit Pivot Matrix is ​​activated, and the damaged area undergoes atomic-level reconstruction and regeneration at an almost insane speed. Theoretically, the regeneration speed can approach or even briefly surpass the destructive speed of the laser! As long as the energy supply is uninterrupted and the attack endured at a single point does not exceed its regeneration limit, this layer can grow stronger while being attacked, greatly extending the time before it is penetrated.

The inner layer is the last line of defense, made of high-strength, lightweight traditional composite armor, designed to protect against residual energy or fragments that may penetrate the first two layers.

The entire system also integrates an active energy sensing and distribution network, which can predict the attack landing point and enhance the energy supply and regeneration preparation in the area in advance.

The theoretical model underwent tens of thousands of simulation tests in system space. From low-power irradiation to continuous high-energy bombardment, from single-point attacks to saturation strikes… the new armor system demonstrated astonishing resilience. While not absolutely invincible, its effective protection time against ultra-compressed phase lasers is hundreds of times longer than that of traditional armor! More importantly, once the attack ceases, the armor can self-repair in an extremely short time using the Spirit Core matrix, maintaining almost no decrease in defensive capability!

"Success." At the end of the fourth year in the system space, Lin Feng looked at the armor sample that had withstood the continuous irradiation of three times the power of the Shadow Shuttle ship's main gun for ten seconds in the last simulation test, and whose surface burn marks disappeared without a trace within seconds after the beam stopped. He breathed a long sigh of relief.

He named this defense system Nezha.

With three heads and six arms, possessing great supernatural powers, and incarnated from a lotus, it is immortal and indestructible! This symbolizes its multi-layered protection, dynamic regeneration, and indomitable nature.

In the outside world, only a few days have passed.

Lin Feng regained consciousness, his eyes gleaming. He immediately assembled his team and began transforming the theoretical blueprint of the Nezha defense system into practical production processes and testing plans.