Dire Wolf Heavy Armor Proving Grounds, Northwest Military District
Strong winds whipped yellow sand against cold armor plates. This was the Federation's most desolate Gobi Desert, the forge where its sharpest fangs were honed.
Rumble!
The earth didn't just shake; it groaned under the weight of an entire heavy armored combined-arms brigade conducting a night raid. Hundreds of Type-99A Vanguard main battle tanks, a river of steel beasts, caught the chilling glint of the moon.
Suddenly, a piercing red flare streaked into the sky.
Through the comms channel, Brigade Commander Leo's voice roared, raw and urgent: "All units, halt! Exercise terminated! Repeat, exercise terminated!"
The tanks braked hard, their tracks kicking up a vertical wall of dust. Tank commanders emerged from their turrets, bewildered. The exercise had barely begun—why stop now?
But the confusion lasted only a second. Leo's voice returned, carrying an unprecedented gravity.
"Receiving Operation Ember Order No. 1. The entire brigade is to enter Level 1 Combat Readiness immediately. Target: Starlight Top-Secret Base. Mission Type: Annihilation Engagement."
The radio channel, previously buzzing with chatter, went dead silent.
Logistics vehicles swarmed forward. This time, they weren't unloading blanks or training rounds. They hauled heavy crates of fin-stabilized discarding sabot (APFSDS) rounds, high-explosive fragmentation shells, and special-purpose incendiaries marked with black and yellow stripes—ordnance that hadn't seen the light of day in decades.
A young loader gripped a cold, heavy shell, his voice dry. "Sir... we're loading live ammo. Who are we fighting? Did the Westerners finally cross the line?"
The scarred Company Commander slammed his hatch shut and spat sand. His eyes were fierce. "Who cares who we're fighting? If the brass says load live, we go all out. Listen up: write your wills. Tuck them under your seats. This is SSS-Grade. if we don't come back, these are the last words your parents will ever read."
Scritch. Scritch.
Thousands of iron-blooded men used the faint glow of their instrument panels to carve hasty, fervent words onto helmet liners and the interior steel walls of their tanks.
"If I go and do not return, then I do not return."
High Energy Physics Institute, Federation Academy of Sciences
03:00 AM
The white-haired Academician Silas Li had barely slept two hours when a thunderous knocking shook his door. Outside stood two grim-faced National Security agents.
"Academician Li, apologies for the late hour. Per the Prime Minister's Order No. 1, please come with us immediately."
Silas Li pulled on his jacket, adjusting his glasses as he checked their IDs. He wasn't flustered. "Where to? My particle collider experiment is set for a breakthrough tomorrow..."
"That experiment is suspended," the agent said firmly. "All your projects are sealed. Where you are going, the subject is ten thousand times more important than a collider."
Across the capital, the scene repeated. A materials science prodigy from the University of Technology, a biology doyen, and several reclusive, national-treasure-level weapon designers were all awakened.
They weren't told a destination. Only one sentence:
"The nation needs you to decipher a brand new world."
Inside the transport van heading for the airfield, dozens of the Federation's top minds gathered. The initial grumbling died into a deathly silence as a folder containing a few blurry, impossible photos was circulated. Then came the heavy breathing—and the eyes that lit up in the dark with a mixture of curiosity and madness.
Northern Vehicle Research Institute
03:45 AM
The conference room door was nearly kicked off its hinges. A group of elderly men in disheveled white coats were arguing over blueprints. At the head of the table was Chief Engineer Silas Sun, the seventy-year-old "Father of the Vanguard."
He was screaming into a phone, spittle flying. "Nonsense! Preposterous! Who gave this order? Modify the Vanguard's cockpit? Remove the steering wheels and joysticks?!"
"Change the trigger to a pressure-sensitive plate? Triple the internal turret space? To fit what?!"
Sun slammed a blueprint onto the table. "I build tanks, not toys! What kind of creature has 'block hands'? How are they supposed to operate a complex fire-control panel without fingers? This is an insult to mechanical engineering!"
The person on the other end spoke a single sentence.
The room went quiet. The fury drained from Silas Sun's face. It was the Prime Minister himself.
"Silas," the voice said. "This is the foundation for a ten-thousand-generation legacy. This tank isn't just driving into a war zone; it's driving into mythology to secure our future."
Sun fell silent. After a full minute, he hung up. An unprecedented glint burst forth from his cloudy eyes.
"Stop arguing! All of you!" He slapped the table so hard the teacups jumped. "All project teams, listen up! The lightweighting plan is trash. Throw it out."
He grabbed a red marker. "New blueprints. Since the driver has no fingers, install a neural-link cradle. Since they have 'Cubic Manipulators,' replace the joysticks with embedded sockets. The pilot's arms will plug directly into the tank."
He leaned over the table, a mad grin spreading. "And... since we no longer need to worry about human frailty..."
He pointed to the heavy radiation shielding on the old designs. "On Earth, we couldn't build nuclear tanks because protecting a fragile human body required 60 tons of lead shielding, making the tank a sitting duck. But now? Our pilots aren't human. They don't need shielding."
Sun's eyes burned with fervor. "Replace all 60 tons of lead with depleted uranium plating and electromagnetic reactive armor. If we solve the heat dissipation, this miniature nuclear reactor will provide hundreds of thousands of horsepower. Even if this beast weighs 200 tons, it will move like a Ferrari."
"This isn't a tank," Sun whispered. "It's a Land Cruiser."
Inside the armored car, Ethan Ye remained unaware of the seismic shifts he had triggered. The vehicle passed through a heavily guarded gate, where sentry posts had tripled in the last hour.
Marcus Zhang looked out the window at the soldiers snapping to attention, then turned to Ethan, his voice soft and expectant.