114: Chapter 114 Debris Self-Destruction, Strange Phenomena Descend

Texas, Boca Chica, Starship Base, underground experimental area.

After being taken away by the military, Musk and Edward were released on bail in less than twelve hours and returned to their base in Texas.

While they were detained, Brick and the Warren Family Retainers did not remain idle.

Following the satellite coordinates Musk had left behind, they located the wreckage of a crashed Grey Alien saucer at the edge of a scorched crater created by carrier aircraft debris, southeast of the Hoover Dam.

At this moment, the wreckage was being dismantled into several transportable modules, neatly stacked inside a heavy-duty containment chamber in Musk's underground experimental area.

Marcus Lin was half-crouched in front of the largest piece of the saucer's bottom hull, holding a portable laser rangefinder, scanning every circular hatch and the edge contours of the pipe interfaces on the fragment, inch by inch.

His lips moved, emitting a very low and rapid sound, as if he were arguing about a calculation result that had been plaguing him for hours with someone only he could hear.

Victor Strauss was on the laser cutting platform next door, wearing an explosion-proof isolation suit, attempting to use an ultra-precision cutter to strip a cross-section from a palm-sized metal sample of the saucer's hull.

Irene Zhao and her team were in the data room, cracking the interface of the alien storage device retrieved from the wreckage, with hexadecimal decoding data still scrolling across the screens.

When Musk and Edward pushed open the alloy door of the containment chamber and entered, Marcus Lin had just placed the rangefinder on his knees and was rubbing his temples with his right hand.

His hair, having been repeatedly clawed at for hours, had formed a messy patch of white tufts on his forehead, and he kept muttering to himself.

"Not right… still not right."

"Circular hatches, circular pipes, circular interfaces… to the naked eye, they all look circular, but the laser measurements show none of them are perfect circles."

"They are all ellipses."

"Not a single one is a perfect circle."

"Why?"

"There are many reasons for ellipses to form in nature: thermal expansion, manufacturing errors, deformation from collisions…"

"But this isn't a manufacturing error; errors wouldn't be this precise."

"The ratio of the major and minor axes for every ellipse is identical, too identical—it's as if they were made this way on purpose…"

Victor looked up from behind the explosion-proof isolation window of the laser cutting platform and shouted to Marcus through the blast-resistant glass:

"I just measured the stress distribution of its hull material; this piece of metal contains an extremely unbalanced type of residual stress."

"It doesn't belong to thermal stress, nor mechanical stress; it's interatomic, the stress between every single atom."

He aimed the cutting head at the surface of the metal sample. The moment the laser made contact, the entire palm-sized metal fragment instantly exploded inside the explosion-proof containment chamber.

A blinding white light erupted from within the chamber, and the shockwave sent spiderweb cracks through the blast-resistant glass of the isolation window.

The energy-absorbing interlayer in the chamber walls contained most of the energy within the containment chamber, but a low-frequency vibration still traveled through the floor to the soles of everyone's feet.

Several hundred kilograms of TNT equivalent.

A palm-sized piece of metal, without any gunpowder, chemical explosives, or radioactive isotopes, released a detonation on the level of small tactical explosives simply because the laser cutting head touched its surface.

Victor stepped back from the explosion-proof isolation window and removed his goggles, his eyes still locked on the residual stress distribution map on the analysis screen.

His expression flickered constantly, and his voice was squeezed slowly from deep within his throat:

"Several hundred kilograms of TNT equivalent; it's not a chemical reaction, nor is it a nuclear reaction."

"Every atom inside this material has been compressed to the limit like a spring—it explodes at the slightest touch."

"The entire saucer hull is in this state."

"In its original space, it had a perfect geometric configuration, but after entering our space, its entire physical parameters were forcibly stretched during the process of readapting."

"It's like a three-dimensional mirror that has been twisted hard by someone; all the reflections are distorted."

Musk stood at the door of the containment chamber and listened to the first experimental briefing of the day. He simply nodded and tilted his head to whisper to Edward beside him:

"Normal phenomenon, nothing to worry about."

"When labs encounter problems they can't solve, these symptoms usually appear."

"Muttering, talking to themselves, shouting loudly, staring blankly at data."

"They'll be fine after a few hours when they finish their calculations."

Edward watched Marcus Lin, who was crouched beside the saucer's bottom hull, continuing to scan the edge of the same circular hatch repeatedly with the rangefinder. He then looked at Victor behind the explosion-proof isolation window, sliding his still-trembling fingers across the stress distribution map.

Edward sighed softly.

He himself was not a scientist, but this near-manic, stubborn dedication bore quite a resemblance to the state of political spies he had handled, who would mark time in place when they couldn't crack a code.

The two turned and walked out of the containment chamber. Musk casually shifted the topic, his tone hovering between casual conversation and a secret discussion:

"What have you thought about the Warren Family situation? Link saw the kidnapping of the Zeta Star Fourth Prince with his own eyes in Las Vegas."

Edward's footsteps faltered for a moment, then he continued walking forward. His voice was a little lower and steadier than usual, but also half a beat slower:

"Let's take it one step at a time."

"There's no other way for now; we can only wait for Lord Joshua to appear before making further plans."

Musk tilted his head slightly to look at him but did not press further.

In his heart, he had already roughly deduced Edward's trump card: sacrifice himself to preserve the family.

Any of the Warren Family Retainers could take a bullet for their master, but some things could not be solved by taking a bullet.

Link was the witness, the only mortal who had directly witnessed the entire process of the Fourth Prince being beaten and captured between the Zeta Star royalty and the Deep State.

He already had a pretty good guess as to what Edward would do, but this matter was too deep and too heavy; he knew Edward would not easily reveal any details until he could fully implement them.

Just as the two reached the door of the containment chamber and had not yet crossed the threshold, the space above their heads suddenly went dark.

It wasn't that the lights had gone out; it was as if the light source for the entire sky had been switched off simultaneously.

Although the containment chamber was located underground, there were two skylight ventilation shafts extending down from the surface above, which normally allowed the natural afternoon Texas sunlight to shine in evenly.

But now, pitch darkness was cast down from above the shaft openings.

Then white light.

Then pitch darkness.

Then white light again.

Day and night switched repeatedly at extremely short intervals; every time it switched back to daylight, the concrete cross-section at the edge of the shaft reflected the blinding sunlight violently, and every time it sank into darkness, only the faint emergency power lights remained, casting several swaying shadows against the walls.

At the same time, a harsh and sharp "crackle" sound poured in from above the shaft, as if the sky itself were being treated like a television screen, and someone had crudely twisted the signal adjustment knob.