I started with a ship full of max-level veterans, and I'm just a complete noob.

One minute and thirty seconds.

Lu Qinghe's fingers rested on the red lever on the front panel of the receiver, and he could feel the slight resistance from the spring reset mechanism.

If we push it all the way down and cut off the power supply to tube A03, this precious improved prototype tube can be saved.

But once she shuts down, the monitoring link in the wooden house will be paralyzed, and the second directional point will become blind at the most critical moment of the capture.

The receiver's metal casing was already hot to the touch, and through the top heat dissipation vents, the dark red glow emanating from the filament resembled a charcoal nucleus about to burn through.

The rare earth coating is operating under overload, struggling to withstand the impact of the broadband noise wall.

The second hand of the alarm clock crossed "twelve," and the twenty-minute mark was reached.

But she didn't move the lever; her gaze returned to the oscilloscope screen.

The indentation created by the delay line is still there. Although the signal outline is blurred like ink smeared by water, the directional characteristics are still intact.

"The location hasn't changed."

Lu Qinghe's voice pierced through the broadband noise, revealing an unwavering determination.

Old Zhou grabbed the microphone, reported the data to the command post, and quickly received the reply that "the troops are advancing."

The heat emitted by the machine caused the temperature inside the wooden house to rise continuously.

Chen Zhiyuan, holding a pencil, turned to look at Lu Qinghe.

"Time's up, the coating could burn through at any moment, how much longer can you hold on?"

His gaze fell on the microampere, the pointer still hovering around 260 microamperes.

Lu Qinghe slowly loosened the red lever and wiped the cold sweat from her palms on her work pants.

"If we shut down now, and the assault team encounters reverse interference after going down, or the enemy turns the launch port to another channel, we will not be able to provide new coordinates, and they may be led into a dead end."

She gripped the frequency knob again and added, "Give me three more minutes, I'll keep an eye on the tube."

Chen Zhiyuan did not try to persuade him further.

He knew what this decision meant, and immediately started a new line in his notebook, writing heavily, "Timeout begins at 4:00 AM."

Every second of overtime operation accelerates the depletion of cathode life, and the microammeter pointer of tube A03 begins to decline at a visible rate.

At 4:00:30 a.m., the reading dropped from 268 microamps to 265 microamps.

"One hundred and forty-seven degrees, no deviation."

Lu Qinghe stared at the data displayed on the oscilloscope, and with a pencil in his right hand, he drew a deep line on the paper.

At 4:01, the hands of the watch crossed 261 microamps.

Chen Zhiyuan pushed the secondary capacitor of the delay line down another half mark, attempting to extract a clearer spectrum from the noise wall.

However, the saturation phenomenon in the receiver preamplifier became increasingly severe, and the image on the oscilloscope began to flicker.

"4:01:30, 254 microamps."

Lu Qinghe directly reported the current data, his breathing gradually becoming heavier as the clock hands ticked.

The sharp drop in current indicates that interfacial impurity ions are invading into the coating under the combined effects of high temperature and strong electric field.

Once the reading falls below the minimum usable threshold of 200 microamps, the consequences are not just that the tube will be scrapped, but it may also cause an internal short circuit and destroy the entire power module.

Old Zhou gripped the microphone, pressed his ear against the speaker grille, and tried to discern the movements at the front line from the static.

"Two hundred and forty-eight micro-amperes."

Lu Qinghe gritted her teeth and read out the time; the alarm clock showed 4:02.

A burnt smell gradually filled the air; it was the smell of the insulating mica sheets at the bottom of the tube being baked at high temperatures.

Just as the microammeter needle was sliding toward 241 microamps, and the 22nd minute was about to end, a muffled bang suddenly came from the radio speaker.

That was the echo of a grenade exploding in an enclosed space.

Immediately afterwards, the company commander's urgent shouts pierced through the electrical noise and crashed into the wooden house.

"The two personnel inside the target bunker have been apprehended, the launch equipment has been located, and power has been forcibly cut off!"

As soon as the voice rang out, the towering wall of broadband noise on the oscilloscope suddenly disappeared.

A thin, straight green baseline once again lies across the center of the screen, so quiet it's almost unsettling.

Lu Qinghe slapped down the red lever.

With a crisp sound, the power supply to tube A03 was completely cut off, and the indicator light on the receiver panel went out.

The only sound in the wooden house was the faint hum of the radio.

Chen Zhiyuan shook his aching wrist and wrote heavily in the notebook: "Timeout ended, 4:03:12, shutdown current 241 microamps."

Old Zhou stood up from the radio, took two steps to the wooden table, and stared at the map that had just been drawn.

"What exactly was installed in the underground fortifications? How could it have caused such a commotion?"

Five minutes later, the follow-up battle report came in its entirety from the military region's communications department, and the atmosphere in the wooden house became tense again.

The telegram indicated that the underground bunker was a concrete room of about 20 square meters, containing a large transmitting device far larger than a typical shortwave radio, two hand-cranked generators, a destroyed cipher machine, and enough supplies for three months.

One of the two agents trapped inside was killed and the other was injured.

The deceased was the officer who shot himself, and the wounded have been taken into custody by the assault company and are being prepared for interrogation.

Chen Zhiyuan took the telegram from Lao Zhou and his gaze lingered on the last line of supplementary information.

The transmitter had a Soviet-made nameplate embedded in its casing; the model could not be confirmed at the moment, and the device was not equipped with a transmitter button.

Lu Qinghe ignored the telegram.

She waited for the receiver to cool down for five minutes before putting on asbestos gloves and carefully unplugging tube A03 from the socket.

She took the tube to the window and, using the still-lingering darkness and the light of the tungsten lamp, carefully examined the inside of the glass tube.

On the dark gray nickel base, a distinct light yellow mark has appeared around the edge of the originally uniform and dense milky white rare earth coating.

This is a manifestation of the carbonization of binder residues caused by high temperature, as well as partial lattice damage.

But most importantly, the main coating did not peel off or crack over a large area.

This means that the formula that Jiang Ming prepared using a complex process lasted for an extra three minutes even when it exceeded the limits.

Lu Qinghe put the tube back into the wooden box lined with shock-absorbing foam, then took out half a pencil from his pocket and carefully wrote on the label on the box lid: "Use for a maximum of 23 minutes, survive."

This data was soon incorporated into the formal delivery and acceptance documents for Type B pipes, becoming a core parameter called "Tactical Timeout Allowance".

Back at the radio station, Chen Zhiyuan compiled the details of the Soviet nameplates and equipment features from the front lines into a coded message, ready to be sent to Beijing immediately and then transferred by the First Ministry of Machine Building to the Third Electronics Factory.

But just before pressing the send button, he looked at the descriptions of "no send button" and "broadband noise suppression" in the record, and his expression became serious.

Chen Zhiyuan picked up his pencil again and added a personal judgment to the end of the cipher.

"This device is by no means an ordinary shortwave radio. Its output power and modulation-free broadband characteristics are closer to those of a generator used in the microwave field."

After reading the sentence to Lu Qinghe, he pressed the send button, sending this intelligence, which was enough to stir up a storm, to Beijing.