Chapter 53: The Grand Plan!!!

"Well... hmm?" Shang Luo frowned and thought for a moment.

The airplane had already leveled off, and the two pilots up front were still flipping through the manual. Adhering to the principle of "eight dos and one don't," they would not act blindly and recklessly, but would first follow the standard procedures to troubleshoot the malfunction.

"No, there isn't enough time," Captain Lin raised his head. "There's no time to troubleshoot everything. We need to act now. Speed and altitude are dropping rapidly."

"The odds are about... twenty-three percent," Captain Chen calculated on his fingers. "Following the manual troubleshooting gives us only that much chance of saving the situation. Let's divert; we should head back first."

"Alright, let's divert." Captain Lin picked up the microphone and began tuning to the airport broadcast frequency. Suddenly, he noticed a shadow in the back.

Shang Luo had unbuckled his seatbelt himself and walked out, still looking around curiously.

"Little Shang, don't worry, we're just going to... Hey! What are you doing? Why are you holding a hammer?!" Captain Lin was about to get up to stop him when Shang Luo leaped up and struck the ceiling with a hammer.

The aircraft suddenly felt much lighter.

"Holy crap! The booster has separated!" Captain Chen cried out. "Old Lin, look! The light is on!"

"Huh?" Captain Lin paused in surprise. He looked at the indicator light, then looked at Shang Luo.

He opened the cockpit door and walked out. The engines were at the rear and couldn't be seen from the cockpit; he had to go into the cabin to check.

Ten seconds later, he returned with a look as if he had seen a ghost.

"What did you do? How did it detach? The separation valve hasn't even been pressed yet."

"I tapped its Baihui acupuncture point," Shang Luo replied truthfully.

Silence fell inside the cabin. The two men stopped operating the controls altogether and simply stared at him.

...

"Professional!" Captain Lin suddenly took the lead in applauding, and the other captain joined in. The two of them stopped flying the plane and just clapped for him.

"Ah, I remember now," Old Chen slapped his forehead. "He's that—that Shang Luo! Isn't he the one who used a hammer to bring the generator back to life... What was it called again? The exquisite heart with seven apertures, right? Professional, extremely professional. With you here, we can rest easy."

"You must be hungry after practicing your arts? Come, come, we have in-flight meals here—actually, we do have cabin service, just not on this particular flight, but the in-flight meals are always prepared."

...

The small tray table folded down, and Shang Luo's table was piled high with food. Everything was there except radishes. Desserts like jelly were handed to him along with their packaging boxes, stacked up in front of him.

[Why do they always assume you'll be hungry after practicing your arts?]

"Maybe that's just how Qi practitioners are... I've heard that after circulating Qi, one gets very hungry. Wenyuan is like that; he ate a bunch of things earlier. But I didn't circulate Qi at all, I'm not hungry in the least, and in this situation, I can't stomach anything."

After jettisoning the booster, the plane had now entered a normal operating state.

However, this "normal" state wasn't very normal either. Four pulse detonation engines were running at full capacity at an altitude of 12,000 meters, and the plane had long since broken the sound barrier. The sounds of the world had been left behind, but the vibration of the engines was even more violent than before.

The operating frequencies of the four engines were not only uneven, but they also formed a bizarre resonance. It vibrated his entire body into a daze and made his head ache.

The two pilots flying the plane, however, were completely unfazed. Just now, they weren't just warming up food for Shang Luo; the main reason was that the previous climb had also consumed a significant amount of their "True Qi," and they needed to replenish it as well.

While Captain Lin held the control stick, Captain Chen was eating with a meal tray, but the violent vibration did not stop him from enjoying his food. His right hand held a water cup, and the water inside remained completely still; the vibrations from the engines were entirely neutralized by his limbs.

Seeming to sense a strange gaze from behind, Captain Chen looked back at Shang Luo:

"Shang Luo, aren't you hungry?"

"A little~~~ shaking~~~ can't eat~~~~" Shang Luo's voice trembled along with the vibrating fuselage.

"Indeed a bit. Then you should eat the jelly; it's good stuff and can quickly restore your stamina. Plus, jelly comes with a straw, so even with the shaking, it won't spill."

Jelly. Shang Luo opened the packaging box of the jelly and looked at the contents.

Those children's food items labeled "jelly" on the packaging had now been shaken into finely fragmented and uniform semi-solid paste, and had even separated into layers. It looked just like it had been freshly taken out of a centrifuge.

"Uh..." Captain Chen watched for a moment, then pulled out a small notebook to jot down the current situation.

"Jelly: texture altered, unsuitable for consumption. So, Shang Luo, do you have any comments or suggestions regarding this flight?" After the rocket separation, the copilot's seat was much more leisurely than before. Until Captain Lin asked him to take over, he could do work outside of actual flying, such as collecting passenger feedback.

...

"Article 15," Shang Luo pointed to his back. "My spine is almost being straightened out by you guys... Can you make this chair have some curvature?"

"Very reasonable, very reasonable. After becoming Qi practitioners, many of our thoughts are different from before, so your feedback is extremely valuable." He nodded while taking notes. These precious interview records would be compiled along with the aircraft's operational data and sent back to Lanfang, preparing for the next generation of truly open commercial supersonic passenger planes.

He was still writing when suddenly, sunlight shone from behind. Dawn had broken.

Shang Luo also looked out the window. The sun was on the horizon, but it had yet to rise from below the ground. A sliver of golden light spilled out, illuminating the sea of clouds at the edge of the sky and the entire skyline.

That was the terminator line.

"Mhm," Captain Chen closed his notebook. "Though you have so many comments and suggestions, your trip today was definitely not in vain. What you are seeing right now is a shining moment of human civilization. We are chasing the terminator line, and soon we will surpass it. The linear speed of the Earth's rotation at this latitude is 1,447 kilometers per hour, and we have already surpassed the Earth."

"Lanfang will display the height of human civilization to the world," Captain Lin added, looking straight ahead:

"But we will not stop just here. Of course we know this aircraft is actually dangerous. Yet as Qi practitioners, we will charge ahead at the frontiers of human civilization. We will demonstrate the heights humanity can reach, thereby inspiring the entire world to move toward a brighter direction. This is our responsibility, and also the teachings of the Dao Ancestor. Humanity will ultimately fly faster, fly higher, and even... stronger. Do you understand what I mean?"

[He is certainly not shooting blanks. It seems he is probing you, and he probably also guessed that you are eager to ask about 'spacesuits'.]

"Can we go even higher? Using what?" Shang Luo asked.

"Well... actually, this is no secret; the imperial court knows. But we are willing to tell you this because you have displayed a talent sufficient to allow humanity to conquer new peaks. So, there is no harm in telling you. But you can guess."

"I'm guessing you're going to build rockets to launch into space?" Shang Luo hit the right answer right off the bat.

"Ha, kid, did you see this rocket plane and think we are going to take the rocket route? Then you are far too pessimistic; this rocket plane is merely scrap material. We have studied sounding rockets, but we found that delivering payloads of a few tens of kilograms requires rockets weighing thousands of tons—that is simply a monstrous waste of resources. How could we use such inefficient and makeshift technology? Humanity ought to have a brighter future; how could we play with firecrackers like salted fish? Lanfang's aerospace route has had a grand, perfect, and all-in-one ambitious plan from the very beginning!"

He turned back to look at Shang Luo: "Lanfang's headquarters, Pontianak, happens to be located right on the equator. Thanks to this unique geographical advantage, we plan to build a spaceport in Lanfang, to build a true Ladder to Heaven! This space ladder will be able to transport mass and personnel into space in a convenient way, thereby pioneering new frontiers for human civilization, and even heading all the way to the moon, and the more distant sea of stars!"

"Oh!!!" Shang Luo understood, growing somewhat excited. "Could it be that what you're going to build is..."

"That's right! Lanfang's plan is—the Lunar Cannon!!! We are going to build an unprecedented giant cannon to blast Qi practitioner astronauts onto the moon! Ha, kid, judging by your expression, you must be frightened by our ambitious plan!"