Chapter Forty-Five: The Clash Begins

The cavern chamber resounded with a thunderous roar, like the tolling of great bells!

“Rise—!”

Old Ji stretched out his hands and shouted fiercely into the hot wind, his scattered gray hair wild like a mad ancient shaman.

The entire world began to move.

The massive, heavy, rust-streaked crankshaft slowly stirred. Its reciprocating motion drove the gears, which in turn set the chains clattering. The whole workshop awakened. As far as the eye could see, intricate mechanical structures resembling watch movements unfolded, their complexity defying human comprehension. The gears meshed together, raising the work platform, where workers hammered bells with all their might from above. The Colossus Cacophony was but a part of the 112 cavern chamber. The colossus-workshop complex was the largest and most intricate machine humanity had ever created, tasked with an equally daunting mission—to maintain normal operation during a super electromagnetic pulse outbreak.

Shang Lu had called the 104 main cavern the “104 Shrine,” but his experience was limited.

It was the 112 workshop that was the true mechanical sanctuary.

It was hard to fathom the immense resources human society had poured into this. If 151 and the Crimson Lotus inspired awe, then 112 and Cacophony should inspire sheer reverence. Suppose that after humanity’s extinction, some primitive civilization discovered this base in a thousand or ten thousand years—they would surely worship this as a god.

And yet Old Ji stood before this god and said, “Call me dad.”

He truly was a cool old man.

As a punk-style colossus, Old Ji’s principle was to embrace punk fully. Cacophony used a vacuum tube computer as its computational core, so its power source had to match the vintage aura of vacuum tubes with steam power—fiber optics, electric motors, composite materials, deep-learning neural networks all had to step aside. What was needed was a combustion chamber! Turbopumps! Pistons! Steel cables! Crankshafts! Heavy hammers! Hydraulics! Steam turbines! Power through brute force and miracles, like a steam locomotive’s engine!

If a civilization founded on Maxwell’s equations could not resist the angels, then they would stamp on thermodynamics with thousands or even tens of thousands of tons of force!

The colossus slowly raised its right hand. High-pressure steam hissed out from the pressure-relief valves at its joints, while the ventilation ducts behind it sucked away the combustion exhaust.

Its power core was, simply put, a pressure cooker. The heat source could be a nuclear reactor, or it could burn kerosene, methane, or even coal. Currently, in the experimental phase, it burned kerosene. The primary loop used liquid oxygen and kerosene, the secondary loop used water. Water’s high heat capacity made it a less ideal working fluid but was cheap—drawn freely from the Jialing River, as much as needed. When the time came for actual missions, it could switch to a fluorinated fluid like FC40, or in desperation, even liquid hydrogen.

Of course, liquid hydrogen was avoided if possible; Old Ji refrained from using cryogenic fluids because the low temperatures risked freezing and damaging the pipes.

Cacophony’s power core was still a variable-cycle engine. In normal mode, it used high-pressure steam from the secondary loop as the power source. When pushed to the limit, it switched to “all-out mode,” where the high-temperature combustion gases from the primary loop’s liquid oxygen and kerosene burned directly drove it. This was akin to shoving a liquid rocket engine nozzle inside the machine—steam power became rocket power. Nobody knew how long it could last, but the thrust was tremendous!

If one day, assuming the colossus could speak, it would surely howl to the sky, eyes blazing: “I am filled with power—!”

Old Ji thought this rather unreliably.

But today, Cacophony could only twitch its fingers.

This prototype was still far from perfect.

If the project did not progress, if Old Ji could not make it more reliable, Cacophony faced the risk of being scrapped. Many in the industry had doubts about Old Ji’s plan. Clearly, building a vacuum tube computer-powered steam colossus might not be able to fight angels, but it certainly satisfied Old Ji’s personal tastes.

There was no evidence that a super EMP like the one unleashed by the Seraph 001 would happen again, but the threat of other angels was real and present. Instead of wasting time and energy, it might be better to think more about how to deal with the Wave Angel.

At every review meeting, Old Ji argued that he was preparing for the worst and preventing disaster before it struck, and he managed to persuade the leaders.

Another main reason was that half the experts on the committee were his old comrades.

Old Ji raised his left hand.

Cacophony slowly raised its left hand in response.

Surging power coursed wildly inside it. High-pressure steam was a formidable force but difficult to control. The internal energy stored in the gas was like a wild dog, untamed. Humans could only forcibly restrain it with metal. All the steam-filled pipes were ultra-high-pressure chambers, a testament to Old Ji’s skill and confidence in his design. He dared to stand so close during startup, for even a minor blockage or leak could send scalding steam blasting across the entire work surface.

Everyone but Old Ji was terrified but could only risk their lives to accompany the chief engineer.

“Tell me, do you think this thing will be useful once it’s running?” Old Ji turned and casually asked several equipment department officers standing nearby.

They exchanged glances. Nobody dared say it was useless in front of the chief engineer—doing so would be courting death. Next moment, Old Ji could have Cacophony crush them.

Finally, an older engineer stepped forward: “Chief engineer, in terms of countering EMPs… it definitely will be effective.”

“That’s what I’m talking about!” Old Ji clapped his hands.

The engineers secretly sighed. Every time Old Ji came to inspect progress at 112, he asked the same question. To the workshop engineers, the chief engineer was notoriously hard to deal with—strict, demanding, foul-tempered, and unyielding. He often fired off a barrage of technical questions anytime, anywhere. If they couldn’t answer, they were met with a torrent of scolding.

“Are you going to do it or not? If not, get out!”

“How did you become a team leader? Don’t know this, don’t know that—did your brain just grow last night?”

“Damn it!”

Shang Lu was no exception. Old Ji had worn a mask of kindly elder for days to trick him into joining 151, but once the agreement was signed, his face changed completely. The friendly, gentle facade vanished, replaced entirely by curses and insults. Old Ji paced through the cavern, suddenly realizing that when he passed by the 110 workshop earlier, hardly anyone was there—no accounting office, no operator office, not even the construction office. So he turned to someone nearby and asked:

“Where are they?”

The other person thought for a moment. “Seems there’s some BCI system competition today, and the operator and accounting offices are at odds.”

Old Ji thought it over. That sounded about right—and he had approved it.

“Then why is the construction office there?”

“To fan the flames.”

…

“Comrades! Shout with me—!”

The hard-working masses of the construction office, led by their director, had occupied the best viewing spots. Dozens lined up on the work platform. The director held a megaphone, standing beneath the platform facing the crowd, shouting:

“Fight!”

Everyone yelled in unison:

“Fight—!”

The laborers of the construction office had long resented the other two offices and shouted with fiery enthusiasm.

Amid the clamorous cries of “Fight! Beat the hell out of them!” Shang Lu and 1047 slowly pushed out two heavy mechanical arms.