Volume One, Chapter Fourteen: The Little Flame

“Unless you can make it fly.”

Zhou Zhenhua’s words echoed through the empty workshop without stirring a sound, yet they detonated like a deep-water bomb in the hearts of Li Guodong and Pang Qingquan.

Silence.

A silence as still as death.

Zhou Zhenhua did not utter another word. He turned and strode toward the workshop door. His back remained as straight as when he entered, each step firm and resolute. He did not look back.

The heavy iron door was pulled open by him, then slammed shut with a resounding bang.

“Clang!”

That thunderous sound sealed hope completely.

“Damn it...” Pang Qingquan’s lips trembled as he struggled to utter these three words. He collapsed onto a nearby toolbox, his whole body seeming to be drained of strength.

Li Guodong gripped the edge of the lightbox for film inspection, his body trembling slightly. It was not anger nor fear; it was despair.

“He’s not giving us a chance,” Li Guodong’s voice was as dry as sandpaper scraping, “he’s setting a trap for us, a trap right in front of the whole factory, to lead us into a dead end ourselves.”

He lifted his eyes to the J-5 fighter quietly parked there. “Make it fly? With a main spar that could break at any moment? What does he want to see? Our destruction and death? That way, when Workshop 207 is shut down, no one will have any objections.”

Pang Qingquan buried his face in his rough, grease-stained hands and muttered hoarsely, “It’s a death blow to our hearts... that’s the party committee’s decision... a death blow to our hearts...”

The tiny flame of hope was extinguished by a bucket of ice water the moment it had just flared up, leaving no trace behind.

This aircraft was a coffin. Zhou Zhenhua had personally pointed them inside and demanded they nail down the coffin lid themselves.

Du Yuze stood still in place.

The despair of Li Guodong and Pang Qingquan wrapped around him like a cold wave. He understood. From any normal perspective, Zhou Zhenhua’s demand was not an opportunity but humiliation—a blatant trap.

Flying a plane with a primary structural damage like this was absolutely forbidden under aviation regulations in any country.

But...

Du Yuze’s mind was racing at an extraordinary speed.

He was not pondering Zhou Zhenhua’s motives nor succumbing to despair. He was analyzing a possibility. A mad, unprecedented possibility.

Zhou Zhenhua’s last words pointed to this very aircraft.

He said “it,” not “J-5.”

One word made all the difference.

Du Yuze closed his eyes.

[System, based on current conditions, objective: restore flight capability to the target airframe (J-5, serial number 404) and demonstrate combat potential beyond its original design. Constraints: existing personnel and existing scrap or sealed materials within the factory. Request optimal solution generation.]

[Command received. Conducting multi-dimensional feasibility analysis…]

[Structural strength, aerodynamic layout, propulsion system, material limitations… analysis complete.]

[Feasibility of conventional repair: 0%. Political risk assessment: extremely high.]

[Initiating “breakthrough” logic. Generating unconventional modification方案...方案 generated.]

[Project codename: “Sky Li Kui” simplified version.]

In an instant, a vast and clear data stream surged through Du Yuze’s consciousness. It was not lines of text but three-dimensional structural diagrams, complex mechanical stress cloud maps, and a frighteningly long bill of materials.

---

Du Yuze suddenly opened his eyes.

“Old Li, Brother Pang.”

His address made both men, lost in despair, lift their heads simultaneously.

“We’re not repairing it,” Du Yuze said.

Pang Qingquan looked puzzled. “Not repairing? How is it supposed to fly? By magic?”

“Little Du, stop talking nonsense. Let’s just think about how to write our self-criticism reports,” Li Guodong waved his hand, utterly defeated.

“I said, we’re not ‘repairing’ it,” Du Yuze emphasized. He stepped forward, squatted down, and picked up a piece of chalk that Pang Qingquan had dropped.

On the dusty concrete floor, he forcefully drew a crude wing cross-section with a big ‘X’ marking the crack.

“According to regulations, repairing this kind of crack requires dismantling the entire main spar, replacing the damaged segment, then conducting heat treatment and non-destructive testing. We don’t have the equipment or the time,” Du Yuze said, drawing a box next to the crack, “so, we don’t touch it.”

Li Guodong frowned. “Don’t touch it? Then how will the load be transferred?”

“We’ll give it an ‘exoskeleton,’” Du Yuze drew two thick lines above and below the spar, “composite material panels clamping it from above and below, bonded cold with structural adhesive. The stress will bypass the crack area and be transferred through our newly added structure.”

“Composite materials?” Li Guodong’s engineer instincts kicked in. “Where can we find aviation-grade carbon fiber panels?”

“Warehouse 7, in the corner, there’s a wrecked unmanned reconnaissance drone test model. Its vertical tail is fully composite. We can cut that off; it’s enough for us.”

Pang Qingquan was stunned. “Glued on? Can that really work?”

“Yes.” Du Yuze’s answer was one word, resolute and unyielding.

Li Guodong’s breath quickened. This idea was wild—too wild for a proper engineer. But after careful thought, from a mechanical point of view, there really was a faint chance.

“Alright, even if... even if the structural problem is solved, it’s still a J-5. Flying it won’t prove anything. It’ll just prove we can send a pile of forty-year-old scrap into the air?” Li Guodong pressed on.

“Who says it’s still a J-5?”

Du Yuze grinned, wiped the chalk drawings off the floor with his foot, and sketched a rough outline of an aircraft.

Then, behind the tail, he drew an enormous engine nozzle.

“We’re going to take out its original heart—the WP-6 turbojet.”

Li Guodong and Pang Qingquan leaned forward simultaneously, sensing what Du Yuze was about to say but unwilling to believe it.

“Then,” Du Yuze pressed the chalk heavily on that spot, “we’re going to replace it with a... WP-7A!”

“You’re crazy!”

Li Guodong and Pang Qingquan shouted almost in unison.

“WP-7A? That’s the engine from the J-7!” Li Guodong waved his arms excitedly. “It produces nearly twice the thrust of the WP-6! The air intake doesn’t match, the rear fuselage structure can’t withstand it! If you do this, it will tear itself apart just taxiing on the ground!”

“Yeah! The airframe already has cracks, and you want to put in an even more powerful engine? Do you want it to die faster?” Pang Qingquan yelled.

“Who said we want it to fly at 20,000 meters and dogfight?” Du Yuze retorted.

His question stunned both men.

“We’ll strip all unnecessary avionics and the two cannons, reducing weight to the absolute minimum. Then, we’ll reinforce the engine mounts, rivet and weld them rigidly to the main load-bearing structure!”

Du Yuze stood up, his shadow stretching long under the dim light.

“Zhou Zhenhua wants us to make it fly. He didn’t say how. So we won’t play by his rules. We won’t chase high altitude or speed. We want low altitude, ultra-low altitude! We want a throttle so powerful it pins you to your seat!”

---

“We’re not restoring an old warbird. We’re creating a monster. A beast that skims the ground and tears everything apart!”

Du Yuze spread his arms wide, as if embracing the cold fighter.

“Imagine this: in front of the whole factory, in front of those leaders waiting to see us fail, a plane everyone thought was dead, a plane with a deadly crack, suddenly lets out a roar totally unlike itself, launching off the runway like a lunatic, flying right over their heads!”

“That’s not a J-5. Then what is it?” Pang Qingquan murmured, captivated by Du Yuze’s vision.

“It’s ‘Li Kui,’” Du Yuze answered. “The Sky Li Kui. No reason, no rules, just brute force. One swing of the axe, and it cleaves through all the demons and monsters!”

Silence fell again in the workshop.

But this time, the air was no longer thick with despair.

Instead, it was charged with a madness, a burning, blood-pumping possibility.

Li Guodong looked down at the graffiti on the floor, at the J-5 bearing the crack, then at the young man seemingly ablaze with passion before him. His mind churned with countless data and formulas calculating the odds of this plan’s success.

The chances were infinitesimally close to zero.

But the failure rate was not one hundred percent.

Pang Qingquan breathed heavily, his oil-stained hands clenched into fists without him noticing. He was a simple man, unfamiliar with grand principles, but he understood this: Du Yuze wanted to turn this scrap into a violent machine even he had dreamed of.

“Zhou Zhenhua gave us a rope. Everyone thinks it’s for hanging ourselves,” Du Yuze said, looking at the two men and speaking each word carefully, “but today, the three of us will use this rope to make a slingshot.”

“To smash this iron coffin hard and fast—right in everyone’s face!”

“We might only have a few days. Materials? We’ll steal, scavenge, dig through every corner of the warehouse. If we do this, we’re betting our lives and futures. If it works, Workshop 207 survives. If we fail, the three of us pack up and leave, maybe even end up in jail.”

“Old Li, Brother Pang.”

“Now, do you dare to go all in with me?”

Pang Qingquan suddenly slapped his thigh, jumping off the toolbox, his greasy face flushed red.

“Damn it! Let’s do it!”

His voice exploded through the workshop.

Li Guodong slowly straightened up. He pushed up his glasses; behind the lenses, the calm and reason of a chief engineer was being replaced by a long-lost fervor.

He walked to Du Yuze without a word and extended his hand.

Du Yuze grasped it.

Pang Qingquan also extended his large, rough hand, firmly covering the other two.

Three hands—one chief engineer, one senior technician, and one mysterious young man—stacked together.

“Alright,” Li Guodong said, a single word heavy as a thousand pounds.

Pang Qingquan grinned, revealing a mouth of smoke-stained yellow teeth.

“Where do we start? Uninstall that damn engine first?”