Although it was underground, the air circulation was very good. The lights were also light bulbs that absorbed real sunlight. It was apparent that this underground base was not just established as a hidden base, but more like a temporary underground command post after a nuclear strike. The facilities were also quite complete.
Lin Mo had obtained some information from Old Hu. The Dark Night Secret Service Brigade itself had a certain amount of aerial armed forces for transportation and as protection for evacuation, but it now had an urgent need for powerful aerial attack power. The information Dark Night had indicated that its opponents were becoming more and more difficult to deal with, so it had reached a stage where ground assaults alone might not be able to resolve them effectively. The enemies even had jet fighters.
Everyone knew how awkward it was for infantry to get in airplanes.
The era of crude equipment was gone forever. Weapons and equipment were naturally provided generously with a country’s backing. Maintaining a firepower advantage was necessary, and the commander of Dark Night did not hesitate on the decision to upgrade the troops’ equipment.
Lin Mo’s luggage was in his living room, just as Old Hu had said. The airdrop box had been removed, leaving only the few boxes filled with his things.
Lin Mo unpacked his clothes and belongings and began to decorate his room. He filled the empty closet and then took some clothes to the bathroom to take a comfortable hot shower, washing away the chill that entered his body while waiting in the wild.
He dried his body with a bath towel. Then he brought out his laptop bag and unzipped it. It was totally empty, as if it had been that way the whole time. There was only a mouse pad and a poor mouse left, seemingly mocking Lin Mo.
Lin Mo had an ominous premonition.
Unable to believe his eyes, Lin Mo looked around frantically and opened all the boxes again. He finally could not stop the volcano from erupting.
“Gold Coin! You f*cking bastard! Where the hell is my laptop?!” Lin Mo shouted angrily and almost rushed out of the room. Gold Coin was missing from his wrist.
Burp! An untimely belch came from the corner of the sofa.
Lin Mo exhaled, creating a strong airflow in the room. He saw a strangely-shaped fellow on the sofa, playing with the military tablet he just received.
It was strangely-shaped because there were strange circuits exposed on the surface of its body, as well as dense integrated circuits, capacitors, and various electronic remote parts like a screen, showing Lin Mo’s familiar laptop in a distorted way. It even showed the names of folders that Lin Mo had created on his laptop.
“Gold Coin, you bastard! What did you do to my laptop?!” Lin Mo grabbed his new military tablet and said to the monster on the sofa, “Return my laptop, or else I’ll send you to the labs to be dissected and studied!”
“Burp! Second Lieutenant Lin Mo, first, I want to make it clear. Burp! It wasn’t my intention! But it’s already happened. Burp! I didn’t mean it. I really didn’t mean it! Burp! Burp!” Gold Coin lost its dragon shape, seemingly having eaten something wrong, burping ceaselessly. It kicked parts and said in a deadpan tone, “You have a new favorite anyway, so you don’t need that broken laptop anymore. Why bother? Be a generous adult. Burp! Big deal. How about I transform into a laptop for you to use? I guarantee it will work smoothly! Hehe! Burp!”
Given this guy’s smugness, it was definitely premeditated. This bastard had been eyeing Lin Mo’s laptop for more than just a couple of days. It used to eat broken radios and broken meters, and now it wanted to try something fresh. What could be more enjoyable than a complete laptop?
There was only one conclusion for its guilty tone and his missing laptop. This fellow definitely ate his laptop. Lin Mo swore in his heart. The laptop was not only made of metal but also with other complex components. This fellow had a good appetite and was not worried about getting an upset stomach.
“You bastard!” Lin Mo answered Gold Coin by kicking it off the sofa. He could not care less that this was a bloodthirsty Giant Dragon previously.
“Hey! My laptop! You really did it! Can you reassemble it? Are you a dragon or a dumb pig?!”
“How dare you kick me! Enough! Any more and I’ll get angry!
“A Giant Dragon has our pride. Do it again, and I’ll fight back. Be careful not to hit the display. I finally managed to fuse with it.
“Damn you! What are you trying to do?! I’m not afraid of you!”
Engineering plastics, glass, PCBs, and various other electronic components—Gold Coin had not had the time to digest them yet and had too many scruples. How could it be able to match Lin Mo now? It was beaten up for some time, causing parts to fly everywhere.
Although it did not suffer any real damage, it hurt the pride of one from the Dragon Clan too much. If it were not for the more important parts, Gold Coin would have fought back. It was not a four-legged snake!
“Hmph! Gold Coin, don’t ever think about touching my computer again.” Lin Mo held his battle strategy tablet after he finished beating Gold Coin. He had no hopes for his original laptop. He did not expect it to restore it, given its lack of basic electronic knowledge.
Moreover, this had also been a great opportunity for Lin Mo to beat Gold Coin up. Anyone who had been suppressing his anger for a long time would want to vent it at least once. He knew that this troublemaker could never restore his laptop the moment Gold Coin swallowed it. With the electronic components broken down to this extent, given the Giant Dragon’s knowledge, it was impossible to reassemble it. It was totally different from interrupting the operation of the black box of a jet fighter.
At this moment, Gold Coin, which had been beaten to deformity, could no longer remember the location of the various parts. The laptop’s circuit board and components that it had swallowed had long since shattered. It was pitifully trying to pick up the broken parts on the ground while its body emitted wisps of smoke, which were from the electronic components being burned. Lin Mo’s room was suddenly full of a burnt smell. The only thing it had gained was that it could finally generate an electronic component—a farad capacitor.
Farad capacitors were also known as supercapacitors or gold capacitors and were electric double-layer capacitors. It was the electric double-layer capacitors that were produced the most in this world. The electric double-layer structure was composed of an activated carbon porous electrode and an electrolyte for super large capacity.
Such a simple structure did not require much technical knowledge, and Gold Coin could easily form a large-capacity battery in its body. It could now also install a light bulb and power it. It barely entered the electrical age.
“Want to fly before you can run?! Hmph!” Lin Mo expressed disdain. He searched for the conventional systems and basic information of Dark Night through his tablet.
The tablet given by Dark Night was far from the kind of computer that ordinary people saw on the market. It had the thickness of a one yuan coin, thin but sturdy. It was also equipped with a carbon fiber shockproof sleeve, and the alloy back felt very strong. Lin Mo suspected that it could even withstand a handgun shot at close range.
There were many ports, some of which Lin Mo could not recognize what they were for, but the main operation still relied on the touch screen.
Dark Night was, in fact, troop number 6513895. It was composed of more than three hundred combatants, nearly one hundred intelligence personnel, fifteen staff officers, thirty equipment personnel, and nearly one thousand non-combat logistics support personnel. Brigade Commander Colonel Feng Chenye had four subordinate combat squadrons responsible for assaults, assassinations, and reconnaissance missions. There was no upper limit for equipment and training support, and it obtained the latest weapons. It was treated amazingly well, but everyone knew that this was in exchange for their lives.
Dark Night’s base sprawled over an area of five square kilometers on the ground. On the surface, the buildings belonged to a variety of people or collective units, but their ultimate owner was the military. The underground area was even more huge, and there were seven floors. The deepest point was more than one hundred meters underground, and it could accommodate over eighty thousand people. Dark Night only occupied one-fifth of the entire underground area. There were mysterious areas that were closed off. They were not empty but stored a lot of arms, food, daily necessities, energy sources, and various industrial and electronic equipment that would be replaced once in a while.
Although it had not been disclosed, the most senior people in Dark Night knew that it was the country’s last lifeline. In the event of a crisis, they could use this to rebuild the entire country’s industrial and agricultural systems with the equipment and resources stored in it. This extremely large underground base was just one of such distributed in every corner of China. Therefore, another unknown task of Dark Night was to guard this mysterious final lifeline.
This underground city might have something to do with the Party’s retired troops stationed in Xinjiang. They became the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps in 1952. Its scale was too big for ordinary engineering teams to take over, and it took many generations of labor in secret and a lot of money to complete it.
Lin Mo found the location of the hangar on the map on the tablet. The hanger had four WZ-12 helicopters and two Mi-17B5 transport helicopters, which the base’s currently existing aerial armed forces and transportation.
Lin Mo had higher access to information than ordinary combatants since he was the only jet fighter pilot, and he found a lot of information through the tablet.
Lin Mo was most concerned about the take-off and landing environment for aircraft. The flat map showed that the single runway was not wide, and it was only eight hundred meters. Moreover, it was in a concave valley about fifteen kilometers away from his current position.