“How could we possibly fight against that?”

Bai Zhen and Wang Ning were both a bit shocked.

“Exactly, how could we fight against that?” Zhao Bowen grabbed a cup of water from the coffee table and drank it, not caring whose it was. “But those people don’t care about all that. Whether the Black Moon is aliens or whatever else, they just want to fight. You don’t know what huge moves they’ve been making in secret – their plans are terrifying. They want to pre-position nuclear weapons in orbit, like laying a minefield, to blow up the Black Moon when it arrives. Initial estimates call for deploying twelve thousand nuclear weapons in the first phase alone.”

“You couldn’t convince them?” Bai Zhen asked. “What happened to your silver tongue?”

“I’m not Zhuge Liang – how am I supposed to out-debate all the scholars of Jiangdong?” Old Zhao shook his head. “First time I’ve met people who can slam tables louder than me. Can’t out-slam them, can’t out-slam them.”

“What about your wall-slam technique?” Wang Ning asked.

“The other guy’s waist was too big – couldn’t reach the wall around him.”

“Flying dragon to the face!” Bai Zhen said.

Zhao Bowen thought for a moment, his brows furrowing, “Well, I’d have to be willing to put my mouth on it.”

Old Zhao wasn’t exaggerating.

While the Amateur Radio Emergency Communications Command Center for Reversing the Future and Saving the World was operating, several other groups were also working in secret. Nobody knew who was leading them, but they all had incredibly deep pockets. Today, Zhao Bowen was called to a meeting at the city committee, where some unknown bigshot presented a PowerPoint. The opening slide showed four large characters: Project Hedgehog.

What followed shocked Old Zhao to his core. These people seriously discussed how to set up a nuclear weapon minefield in low Earth orbit. Only then did Old Zhao understand – the so-called Project Hedgehog aimed to turn Earth into a super-sized hedgehog that would hurt anything that touched it. This grandiose plan called for positioning twelve thousand nuclear weapons in orbits between 300 and 500 kilometers in just the first phase. There would be second, third, and fourth phases, deploying weapons in geosynchronous orbit, polar orbit, lunar orbit, and on Earth’s surface. The presenter swept his hand dramatically, declaring confidently that if all countries went into full production over the next five years, manufacturing missiles like sausages and dropping nukes like laying eggs, they could cover Earth with a powerful protective shell that would ensure the Black Moon would never return.

Furthermore, they claimed their team was already working intensively on the problem of triple-phase explosives having insufficient power in vacuum environments. Without shock waves, they’d include their dense materials – the high temperature and pressure from nuclear explosions would cause instantaneous vaporization, with blast energy and expansion ratios far exceeding conventional high explosives like TNT or HMX. The presenter proudly declared, “Comrades, this big firecracker is much easier to develop than metallic hydrogen or all-nitrogen anion salts. If we can’t make antimatter bombs within five years, this will be the most powerful weapon in the world!”

The whole venue erupted in thunderous applause.

Old Zhao felt bitter – why didn’t his plans ever get such enthusiastic applause?

Next, a second team took the stage. If the previous team’s main focus was defense, this one was all about offense.

First PowerPoint slide: Missiles have no future.

Missiles fly too slowly, react too slowly – by the time missiles engage the Black Moon, it will already have descended overhead, and it’ll be too late. Future space warfare will belong to directed energy weapons!

Nothing travels faster than electromagnetic waves. Using X-ray lasers, gamma-ray lasers, striking at light speed – the Black Moon wouldn’t be able to dodge.

But to inflict effective damage on the Black Moon would require staggering power levels and volumes. After team analysis, they determined they’d need at least 6,400 X-ray generators arranged in a phased array, plus focusing mirrors covering 45,000 square meters. Something this massive couldn’t even be mounted on a rotating axis, so they planned to select a location in the mountains of Guizhou or Sichuan, installing it like the FAST radio telescope or Arecibo, built into the mountains.

This super-laser would use up an entire day’s worth of electricity for a city of 2.8 million people in a single shot. Its instantaneous peak power would reach 20 million megawatts, releasing 1.19×10^14 joules of energy in one burst. Therefore, it would need an even more enormous energy storage pool – hollowing out an entire mountain to install capacitors or having 200,000 Ford-class aircraft carriers providing power.

The team leader claimed it could instantly destroy any object currently known to humanity from 380,000 kilometers away. Built with two energy storage pools per super-laser, it could fire two shots per hour. If twelve super-lasers were built worldwide, they could cover the entire celestial sphere without blind spots, ensuring the Black Moon would face at least four shots from two lasers no matter which direction it came from.

This would be the largest weapon ever created by humanity – what Old Zhao dubbed the “Earth’s Great Cannon Project.”

When Zhao Bowen told Old Bai and Old Wang about Project Hedgehog and the Great Cannon, both were stunned. Now that was some fucking grand ambition! Compared to them, their Amateur Radio Emergency Communications Command Center for Reversing the Future and Saving the World, despite its long name, was outclassed in every way.

That was what you’d call cool, what you’d call sci-fi, what a real interstellar war should look like.

Their little ragtag operation couldn’t even begin to compare.

Zhao Bowen said, “What do you know? We’re the secret front!”

The main battlefield was important, but wasn’t the secret front important too? They were doing intelligence work, cutting off supplies, striking at the heart, and making the enemy’s backyard catch fire. No matter how grand those people’s plans were, without their help, they wouldn’t even know which direction the Black Moon’s ass was facing.

He also complained that earlier, when he, Zhao Bowen, had begged and pleaded, running around shouting, nearly getting down on his knees and kowtowing, none of those people believed him. They treated him like he was spouting nonsense and talking in his sleep. Later, it was only thanks to him, Old Zhao, wracking his brains and using every trick in the book, that they finally got one rocket and one satellite, putting on a fireworks show twenty years in the future for the whole world – that’s when all hell broke loose, and everyone finally believed. Everyone woke up.

Now the grand schemes were coming one after another – where were they before?

“I remember all those eye-rolls you gave me, Zhao Bowen!”

“They all sound like projects of the century – can they be done?” Bai Zhen was skeptical.

Whether Project Hedgehog or the Great Cannon, neither was a small undertaking. Positioning tens of thousands of nuclear weapons in orbit, or building super-lasers in the mountains – the engineering challenges might not be any less than large particle accelerators or controlled nuclear fusion. Was it possible to complete it in five years?

“Who knows,” Zhao Bowen shook his head. “It’s still in the feasibility study phase. Turning Earth into a nuclear weapon factory – with such massive engineering work and such big plans, it’s not something that can be decided in a day or two.”

“Old Zhao, can you pull some strings?” Bai Zhen asked. “I want to join Project Hedgehog or even the Great Cannon would do. Do you know anyone?”

“What? Don’t want to be deputy leader anymore?” Zhao Bowen rolled his eyes.

“What future is there staying cooped up here?” Bai Zhen said. “Look at them, Old Zhao – nuclear weapons! Rockets! Laser cannons! Super engineering! That’s what you call saving the world, that gives you a sense of participating in something great. Old Zhao, can you get us a laser cannon too?”

“Bah!”

“If you can’t find anyone, just say so,” Bai Zhen said.

“Does saving the world have to shake heaven and earth?” Zhao Bowen snorted coldly. “How vulgar!”

“We’re vulgar and proud of it.”

Bai Zhen and Wang Ning were unabashedly vulgar.

“We are the core of everything,” Zhao Bowen was equally unabashed. “Without us, they can’t do anything. Right now, right here, Meihua Villa in Qinhuai District, Nanjing, is the center of the whole world. It may look calm on the surface, but undercurrents are surging below. A tsunami is just a wave a few dozen centimeters high before it reaches shore. When they arrive, you’ll understand what it means to turn the world upside down.”