Chapter 428

Chapter 428: The Thorny Path

If Major General Sun were here, he would surely grab the Gold Coin’s claws and sincerely express gratitude, saying, "Good comrade, good citizen, you have upheld the country’s important secrets."

If the orchestrator of this attack knew the truth, he would probably spit blood in anger. After years of careful planning to launch this attack, he never expected that someone would secretly sabotage him, making his efforts worthless.

"How can one skillfully boast about delicate needlework while preventing others from drawing their brows long?

Year after year, it’s a painful regret, creating wedding garments for others."

The underground storeroom’s door had actually been opened long ago, but this door made of special alloys was quietly tripped by a gigantic dragon from another world. Such little tricks are so easy to pull off and leave no trace.

The outcome is predetermined. Hearing a commotion outside, the dragon sneaked out to watch, closely following a few extraordinary six-legged robots.

The gold giant dragon truly hit the jackpot, even it couldn’t believe this wasn’t a dream.

If it weren’t for these six-legged robots, the Gold Coin might never have had the chance to stealthily enter this pinnacle of world technology, where its only task was to silently attach itself to the robots, masking its own electromagnetic signals with theirs.

Having struggled against numerous difficulties to reach the entrance, the elite six-legged robots were fully equipped, with attacking and defending capabilities far superior to those of the cannon fodder outside, yet they still couldn’t prevent their complete annihilation.

The six-legged robots failed to enter, but by taking others’ paths, the gold giant dragon seized the chaos to slip quietly into the storeroom.

That steel door, capable of withstanding armor-piercing projectiles, hardly posed a difference for the Gold Coin.

While the strength of composite materials is not inferior to steel, metal doors are easier to forge. More importantly, they are heavy, which alone can deter many forms of intrusion, such as hydraulic rams.

What lay before it astonished the Gold Coin completely.

The vast expanse of starry sky outside the atmosphere and planetary gravitational fields was not just an absolute danger zone for the gold giant dragon kin but was also unreachable for other dragons. Some fervently reckless young dragons confirmed with their lives that this starry sky was a domain accessible only to deities.

However, humans in this world relied on their frail bodies and incredibly smart brains to develop technologies that took them beyond their nurturing earth, boldly touching the outer edges of the starry heavens. They could even traverse great distances to reach completely unfamiliar, lifeless desolate planets: the Moon and Mars.

Aerospace technology represents a pinnacle of human wisdom, signifying the transition from conquering the skies to entering the cosmic era.

As a sky creature and metallic predator, the Gold Coin understood the crucial significance of such technology for the gold dragon kin.

With minimal risk, it sought out an unprecedented vast feeding ground, signaling a realm of limitless evolutionary possibilities.

Various rare and infinite metal resources meant the gold dragon kin would undoubtedly become the rightful darlings of the heavens.

The advantages of cosmic creatures over sky creatures are nearly equivalent to the advantages sky creatures have over land creatures.

Space shuttles, aerospace engines, space modules, and all expensive, rare space equipment challenge the gold giant dragon’s understanding of this world to its limits, time and again.

Under normal circumstances, even if Lin Mo became a general or took direct control of the National Defense Star, he might not access such high-level secrets. All of this was thanks to a certain conspirator behind the attack.

If the aerospace engines made of special alloys were present in the past, they would undoubtedly have been swallowed without leaving a bone behind. But upon arriving in this world, once the Gold Coin had its fill, it learned to exercise restraint. Unless it was a particularly rare formula metal, it wouldn’t attract its attention.

In this world filled with wisdom, "One who is close to vermilion becomes red; one who is close to ink becomes black." After repeatedly hitting walls, this dragon was finally forced to learn rational thinking, to study technology, to shed its clumsy identity, and to better adapt to this world, enjoying the true good life meant for gold giant dragons.

To avoid bringing unnecessary troubles to itself and Lin Mo, the Gold Coin thoroughly scanned many devices using its innate abilities. Although this method was rough and akin to violent reverse engineering, it couldn’t stop it from completely memorizing everything and completing the most detailed modeling to digest slowly later.

Such a harvest was indeed a tremendous gain; it was the pinnacle of world aerospace technology laid bare before this gold giant dragon.

Once it digested these technologies, it would mean that the Gold Coin was the first gold giant dragon to obtain a ticket to outer space, the only one beneath the starry sky.

Without hesitation, this gold giant dragon’s split form got to work, leveraging a special mystical connection with its main body far away at the "Night" base. The high-capacity data chips on both sides filled up at the same speed. Fortunately, the military-grade, high-capacity storage chips the Gold Coin acquired were sufficient; it almost got overwhelmed by the massive data influx.

As this dragon became too absorbed in its task, Major General Sun and some top leaders at the aerospace training center opened the door, nearly startling this smug dragon into a panic.

What escape the gold giant dragon might achieve remained to be seen, but the loud noise of the special alloy steel door reverberated, shocking the Gold Coin back to reality as it meticulously scanned various devices and products.

Without even pausing to synchronize the data it had just collected with its main body, the split form near Lin Mo instinctively shifted. In a flurry, it slipped to the entrance and tried to blend in as a paperclip on a work table, using the metal accessories on the newcomers as launchpads to keep moving.

For reasons unknown or perhaps due to the physical rules of this world, the gold giant dragon had a particularly strong reaction on the radar. When electromagnetic waves touched it, they would reflect back without reservation, and even gain a boost at times.

Without the invading robots to cover it, the gold giant dragon, no matter how much it disguised itself, couldn’t escape the dense metal detection and magnetic sensing devices throughout the passage.

As the best live target in this world, the outcome remained the same—even before civilian equipment. Even if it turned into the size of a grain of sand, like a light bulb shining in the dark, it could not evade detection.

The first beating it took upon arriving in this world was from torpedoes and missiles in the South China Sea. After several encounters, the Gold Coin had conducted a few experiments and confirmed this point; perhaps the only thing that could render it invisible relied on current human stealth technology in fighter jets.

Listening to the Gold Coin relay the harvest, Lin Mo almost felt like a pufferfish, gasping more times in this moment than in a lifetime, his heart racing uncontrollably.

If even a hint gets leaked, he would welcome a worldwide hunt, genuinely finding himself in a situation without any path to heaven or earth.

Since China was rejected by America to join the International Space Station, it lost its ticket to outer space and had to close its doors, wholeheartedly researching its own version of space technology.

It was akin to the development of strategic weapons like atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs in those years, all relying completely on self-reliance and hard work, gathering the manpower and resources of all China, investing heavily even at the cost of affecting people’s livelihoods. Thus, Shenzhou emerged, and Tiangong came into being. While they may not rank among the world’s top-tier aerospace technologies, they at least took sturdy steps forward, forging a path through thorns.

International technological blockades did not hinder China’s journey into space, ultimately forming a cohesive research and development direction. For other nations, even a fragment of information leaked would be considered a treasure.

Thus, what those who painstakingly sought did not obtain fell into the hands of this dragon and person.

Lin Mo felt quite speechless; he wondered if this unfortunate giant dragon following him to this world was experiencing a change in fortune.

However, the Gold Coin had an important piece of information it hadn’t shared with Lin Mo; otherwise, this Dragon Knight would launch into the air in shock.

While invaders orchestrated a network attack, the Gold Coin independently accessed the aerospace training center’s internal computer system’s hard drive via metal physical links.

Although the computer experts at the aerospace training center reacted swiftly, quickly capturing data access traces based on operating system rules, they still couldn’t stop the gold giant dragon from downloading the materials it desired according to its interests.

It was as if a grandchild encountered a grandfather; in this invasion, the one who harvested the most remained a mystery, while the orchestrators of the fruitless operation took all the blame, bearing the full brunt of retaliation.

More than two thousand kilometers away in Siberia, hidden among dense Siberian spruces, larches, and lime trees, a few extremely rudimentary wooden cabins lay concealed.

Perhaps these cabins serve as temporary resting spots for hikers or hunting folk.

If someone were to push open the cabin door at this moment, they would find the once empty floor now pushed towards the ceiling.

Beneath the makeshift floor, however, lay a great mystery. Several hydraulic supports propped up the floor, and below what should have been the permafrost of Siberia was now a large hole, shimmering with lights. A massive pot-like antenna reached out, constantly sending and receiving signals to the outside world.

“Failed? We actually failed? This is simply unforgivable! Jin Shunyi, how am I supposed to write this report?”

A voice from twenty meters underground seemed to penetrate the frost layer.