The massive sliding steel doors of Assembly Bay Four rolled open with a deep rumble. Inside, a hundred overhead cranes glided silently across yellow steel gantries, their cables hoisting gleaming black engine cradles.
Master Zhao Tiebi stood on a steel staging platform, shouting orders over the hiss of pneumatic torque wrenches. His blue technician’s coat was already smudged with dry graphite dust, but his eyes shone with fierce energy.
Beside him, Master Lu Shan adjusted a set of copper-jade circuit plates. Academician Fang Dequan checked the digital telemetry on a rugged tablet.
“Keep the contact pads flush to two microns!” Master Zhao barked to a crew of three senior fitters. “If the jade track touches the negative terminal with any tilt, the qi conduction will drag. Align the pins with the locator pins!”
“Understood, Master Zhao!” the fitters shouted back.
Lin Mo walked down the central aisle, his footsteps quiet against the epoxy floor. He paused beside the main assembly cradle.
Before him lay the finished Taichu Mark-I Spirit-Graphene Power Core.
It was a marvel of combined science and ancient craftsmanship. The core was sealed inside a lightweight titanium-magnesium shell. Beneath the cover, Fang’s ultra-dense graphene battery cells connected directly to Master Lu’s micro-etched jade conduits. It produced zero exhaust, zero vibration, and generated three times the torque of a heavy marine diesel engine.
