Volume 1, Chapter 64: Man-Made

A harsh alarm siren tore through the entire testing zone.

Red warning lights spun frantically, their beams slicing through the dust and smoke hanging thick in the air. When Du Yuze rushed into the engine test bed room, a pungent smell of burning metal choked him into a fit of coughing.

"Medical staff! Hurry!"

"Director Ma! Ma Xiangdong!"

Amidst the chaotic shouts, several engineers in blue work clothes were trying to lift a man who had collapsed near the console. The man was Chief Project Engineer Ma Xiangdong; there were obvious bloodstains on his arms and chest, and he had already lost consciousness.

Du Yuze strode through the crowd. Medical personnel had already pushed in a stretcher and were swiftly administering initial first aid to Ma Xiangdong.

"What's the situation?" Du Yuze grabbed the arm of a young engineer nearby, whose face was covered in soot.

"An explosion... turbine blades, the high-pressure turbine blades broke." The young engineer's voice was shaking. "Fragments pierced through the protective shield, and Director Ma happened to be right in that spot."

Du Yuze's gaze shifted toward the massive engine prototype. On the alloy protective shield, which should have been impervious, there was now an irregular breach, the metal edges rolled outward, exposing the complex internal pipelines and structures.

"Get Director Ma to the academy hospital immediately, and notify the best surgeons to prepare for surgery," Du Yuze commanded the medical staff, then turned to the person in charge of the site. "Old Zhang, brief me."

The test supervisor, known as Old Zhang, was pale. He pointed to the chaotic floor. "Director Du, the test had reached the maximum thrust stage, and everything was normal. Suddenly, sensor readings became abnormal, and before we could manually abort, it blew."

"Pull up the surveillance footage," Du Yuze's command was short and clear.

"Already have."

A few minutes later, in the adjacent central control room, Du Yuze watched the playback on the screen. The high-speed camera had clearly recorded the entire disaster. The engine's tail nozzle emitted a dazzling light, and everything was steady. The image zoomed in, focusing on the interior of the engine. In a fraction of a millisecond, a crack appeared at the root of a high-speed rotating turbine blade, followed by a fracture.

The broken blade turned into a lethal projectile, ricocheting at a terrifying speed inside the enclosed space, instantly piercing through multiple layers of the engine body structure, and finally shattering the thick protective shield.

"Pause," Du Yuze said.

The image froze at the exact moment the blade fractured.

"Pull up the supplier information for the blade."

"It's... it's Xinhui Materials," a clerk in charge of procurement records replied in a low voice.

"Xinhui?" Du Yuze repeated the name. This was a long-standing partner known for consistent quality.

"Yes, all certification documents and quality inspection reports for this batch are right here." Supervisor Old Zhang immediately called up the relevant documents, projecting them onto another screen. "All indicators are fully compliant, and we even conducted random sampling ourselves without finding any issues."

Du Yuze didn't look at the reports. He stared at the blurred image of the fractured blade in the surveillance footage. A material trap, a cyber attack. Now it was physical destruction. With these events happening back-to-back, they couldn't be isolated incidents.

"Lock down the entire testing area. No one is allowed in or out except medical personnel," Du Yuze ordered. "All fragments, every single piece, must be recovered, numbered, and sent to the Materials Analysis Center. I want the most detailed microscopic structure report."

"Understood."

"Everyone involved in the assembly for this test will remain on standby in place and be subject to questioning."

Order after order was issued, and the chaotic scene gradually regained order. Du Yuze remained alone in the control room, pulling up all system logs for the JXX project once again. His fingers operated the control panel, and data streams flashed rapidly across the screen.

What he was looking for wasn't the test logs, but the logs for supply chain management and warehouse inspection.

From Xinhui Materials' shipping order to the logistics information, then to the research institute's warehouse receipt, and finally to the material inspection report. He retrieved the data for every single link.

On the surface, it was flawless. Every document complied with regulations, and every signature was clear and accurate.

Du Yuze's thoughts did not stop. If the enemy could implant a backdoor at the system level and tamper with the database, then forging a perfect warehouse inspection report wasn't impossible. However, while forging a report was easy, forging the physical properties of the material itself was extremely difficult. Unless...

Unless the problem had existed deep within the material from the very beginning and could not be detected by conventional testing methods.

He expanded the log range, searching for all records related to the keyword "Xinhui," including emails, internal communications, and even print logs.

Time ticked away second by second.

The internal telephone on the desk rang. It was from the Materials Analysis Center.

"Director Du," said Professor Li, the laboratory director, on the other end of the line, his voice suppressing a peculiar fluctuation. "You'd better come over in person. We've made a major discovery."

"I'll be right there."

When Du Yuze arrived at the Materials Analysis Center, Professor Li was standing beside a massive scanning electron microscope. Several cleaned blade fragments were placed on the sample stage.

"Director Du, look at this." Without unnecessary pleasantries, Professor Li projected the microscope's view onto the large screen on the wall.

On the screen was a grayscale metal lattice cross-section, magnified to an extremely high degree.

"This is the microstructure of the fracture location. We checked according to standard procedures, and initially found no abnormalities; the metal composition and lattice structure all met the strengthening standards of TC4 titanium alloy," Professor Li explained.

"Get to the point," Du Yuze interrupted him.

Professor Li adjusted the equipment parameters, and the image on the screen magnified once more. Amidst the originally dense metal structure, some extremely tiny black dots became distinct.

"We scanned with a higher-precision probe and found these things," Professor Li pointed to the black dots. "They aren't impurities, nor are they pores generated during the casting process."

"Then what are they?"

"They're cavities. Nanoscale cavities," Professor Li's expression was extremely grave. "Every single cavity is close to a perfect sphere, with smooth inner walls. The most crucial part is that we detected a residual inert gas inside them: argon."

Du Yuze didn't speak; he simply stared at the screen.

"In conventional smelting and casting, even if there are pores, their shapes are irregular, and what remains inside would be air or other reactive gases," Professor Li continued. "Such perfectly spherical cavities enclosing high-purity argon on the inside could not possibly appear during a natural formation process. There is only one explanation."

Professor Li turned off the projector and turned to face Du Yuze.

"This is an artificially created structural defect. During the powder metallurgy process, someone mixed in argon-filled nano-capsules through precise injection. These capsules ruptured during high-temperature sintering, sealing the gas inside the metal and forming countless tiny stress concentration points. Conventional non-destructive testing simply cannot detect them, but under extreme centrifugal force and high temperatures, these points become the sources of cracks."

The entire laboratory echoed only with the low hum of the equipment.

Man-made.

In Du Yuze's mind flashed the internal IP address that Lin Hui had tracked down: Building B, Archive Room 307. Then he recalled this batch of materials from "Xinhui."

A complete chain of evidence began to emerge.

The enemy had used a false internal attack source to divert everyone's attention, while the real fatal blow was hidden within the most fundamental materials. They had calculated that the test would reach maximum thrust, and they had calculated that the blades would fracture at that exact moment.

This was not a simple act of sabotage. It was a meticulously planned murder. The target was not just Ma Xiangdong, but the entire JXX project.

Du Yuze picked up his phone and dialed a number.

"It's me. Notify the Security Department to dispatch personnel to Xinhui Materials Company immediately. This is not a request; it's an order."