Han Feng stood in a corner of the crowd.
He watched the pilot named Li Wei.
The aura this guy gave off was completely different from that of a Martial Artist.
It wasn't the pressure that came from high Cultivation.
It was a unique presence, one that belonged only to a top-tier pilot.
A sharpness honed by entrusting one's life to the sky.
This was the pilot's "Dao."
Li Wei wasted no time on pleasantries. After confirming with the ground crew, he boarded the aircraft directly.
A moment later, the sound of the engine starting up shattered the silence of the tarmac.
The canopy of the "Falcon Third Generation" slowly closed.
"Main control, this is 'Flying Eagle,' requesting takeoff."
Li Wei's voice came over the channel, calm and professional, betraying no emotion.
In the main control room, Zhao Yu, seated in the commander's chair, gave the order.
"'Flying Eagle,' you are cleared for takeoff. The runway is clear. Good luck."
"Roger that."
The silver-gray fighter taxied to the end of the runway and paused for a moment.
The next second, the engine's roar intensified.
The sound was deafening.
The jet shot forward abruptly.
Its nose lifted, and it rocketed into the sky at an impossibly steep angle.
"Beautiful!"
In the main control room, an engineer couldn't help but cheer.
"That ascent profile is just brutal!"
Chen Gang stood before the screen, arms crossed, his eyes gleaming as he stared intently at the rapidly changing data.
That was the engine he had helped design. His blood, sweat, and tears were roaring in the sky.
There was no substitute for this feeling of accomplishment.
"'Flying Eagle' reporting. Altitude five thousand, preparing to conduct basic maneuver tests."
"Proceed."
The sky became the "Hunting Falcon's" stage.
Steady circles, crisp barrel rolls, and high-G, rapid-fire turns.
Li Wei's every maneuver was frighteningly precise.
And the "Falcon Third Generation's" response was just as terrifyingly fast.
The atmosphere in the main control room was optimistic.
"Engine parameters are stable!"
"The cooling system is perfect!"
"Spiritual Power utilization efficiency is stable at one hundred three point four percent—even better than we'd hoped!"
Engineer Qian grinned from ear to ear as he watched the data.
An hour later, the fighter landed smoothly.
Li Wei stepped out of the cockpit and removed his helmet, a playful smile on his face.
"Not a bad toy."
He scanned the crowd, his gaze pausing on Han Feng and Chen Gang for a moment.
"Fast response, plenty of power. It's just that when you firewall the throttle, it still lacks a little kick."
He paused, then changed the subject.
"Also, there's a zero-point-zero-three-second delay in the Spiritual Power transmission to the left aileron. It doesn't affect flight, but it feels... uncomfortable."
That single sentence froze the smiles on the faces of every engineer present, replacing them with shock.
A zero-point-zero-three-second delay!
What did that even mean?
Even our most precise instruments might not be able to detect an error that small!
'He sensed that just by feel?'
"A minor issue."
Zhao Yu immediately turned to Liu Wenbo.
"Old Liu, take a note. We'll tune it this afternoon!"
After a short break, the real test began.
"Li Wei, are you ready? Time for the extreme performance test."
Zhao Yu's voice was grave.
"Ready when you are. I'm curious to see just how big of a heart you guys put in this toy."
The fighter took to the skies once more!
This time, there was no elegance.
It became an awakened Fierce Beast, performing a series of insane maneuvers in the sky that seemed to tear the laws of physics apart!
"Cobra Maneuver!"
During high-speed level flight, the nose suddenly pitched up, perpendicular to the ground, like a massive serpent raising its head!
"Falling Leaves!"
The plane shuddered so violently it seemed about to fall apart, as if it would disintegrate at any moment.
But it didn't fall. It was held in an iron grip.
In the main control room, everyone held their breath.
On the screen, the numbers representing the G-load repeatedly broke past the 9G redline!
Just then, a shrill, ear-piercing alarm suddenly blared throughout the main control room!
"WARNING! 'FLYING EAGLE' RIGHT MAIN WING CONTROL SYSTEM FAILURE! AIRCRAFT IS OUT OF CONTROL!"
The icon representing the aircraft on the screen began to spin wildly.
The altitude reading was plummeting!
"'Flying Eagle'! 'Flying Eagle'! Do you copy?!"
Zhao Yu roared into the microphone.
Over the channel, there was only Li Wei's heavy, ragged breathing, strained by the immense pressure, and the sound of groaning metal.
"Dammit... The stick... it's jammed!"
Li Wei's voice was squeezed out through gritted teeth, laced with a terror he himself didn't even notice.
In the cockpit, red warning lights flashed frantically, bathing his handsome face in a bloody glow.
His body felt like it was being torn apart by the G-force.
He used all the strength of a Meridian Passage Realm Martial Artist to try and wrest back control.
But the control stick felt like it was welded in place. It wouldn't budge an inch!
On the ground, everyone watched, their faces pale, as the fighter jet tumbled out of the sky.
'It's over!'
'The plane's going down, and he's going with it!'
Just when everyone thought all was lost...
A savage roar suddenly erupted over the communication channel!
"MOVE! DAMN! YOU!"
"CRACK—!"
A sharp crack echoed over the channel.
It was impossible to tell if Li Wei had brute-forced something to break, or if a component had finally snapped with a shriek.
On the screen, the tumbling, falling aircraft miraculously stabilized at a deadly altitude of less than a thousand meters from the ground!
The airframe was still shaking violently, looking like it would fall apart at any moment.
But it had survived!
"I need a runway for an emergency landing! Now! Immediately!"
Li Wei's voice was incredibly hoarse.
"Backup runway three is clear! Ambulance and fire crews are standing by!"
In the end, the battered fighter jet, trailing a long plume of black smoke, slammed down hard at the end of the runway.
In the main control room, everyone collapsed into their chairs, utterly drained.
Rescue personnel pried open the canopy.
Li Wei's face was ashen, his entire body drenched in cold sweat.
After unbuckling his safety harness, the first thing he did wasn't to vomit.
Instead, he staggered to the edge of the runway and slammed his fist into the ground, his eyes bloodshot!
Humiliation!
For an ace pilot, this was a fate worse than death!
"Lock down the scene! Retrieve the black box! Everyone, to the technical analysis room, now!"
Zhao Yu's voice shattered the dead silence of the aftermath.
「Half an hour later.」
The atmosphere in the smoke-filled technical analysis room was so thick with tension you could cut it with a knife.
Engineer Qian pushed up his glasses and pointed at a garbled stream of data on the screen, his voice hoarse.
"I've found the problem."
"During the 'J-Turn' at 11 Gs of overload, the number three Spiritual Power directional node in the right main wing experienced a half-second energy disruption."
"An energy disruption?"
Chen Gang frowned.
"A wiring problem, or a design flaw?"
"Neither."
Engineer Qian shook his head and pulled up another set of data, his voice laced with a deep sense of helplessness.
"We've checked all the schematics, all the wiring."
"In ground simulation tests, even when we pushed the power to one hundred fifty percent, this node was perfectly stable. Not a single issue."
The hearts of every engineer in the room sank.
"This thing is like a ghost," a young engineer muttered, voicing what everyone was thinking.
"It only shows up in the air, only when the aircraft is pushed to its absolute limit."
"The moment it lands, it vanishes. We can't catch it, so we can't fix it."
And that was the most terrifying part.
If they couldn't find the root cause, they could never truly fix it.
If they couldn't find the root cause, it meant the Divine Level Engine, into which they had poured their blood, sweat, and tears, would never be able to truly take flight.
It was a lemon.
The entire technical analysis room plunged into a despair even more profound than during the near-crash itself.