Siheyuan: I, Shazhu, started out as an army and became a general.

Northwest Base, Conference Room No. 1.

The air was so murky, like smoky cured meat, that it made your throat feel tight.

On the blackboard, formulas were densely packed like ants crawling around, and the discarded draft paper on the floor was piled up so high that there was nowhere to step.

This debate about "how to blow it up" has been going on for three days and three nights in a row.

"Chief Designer He! The notes from our Soviet big brother are golden rules! The 'layered cake' structure is the only way!"

The speaker was an old professor who had returned from studying in the Soviet Union. His hair was a mess, like a bird's nest, and his eyes were bloodshot.

He pounded the table with a deafening roar, spittle flying everywhere: "One layer of uranium-235, one layer of lithium deuteride, it has to be stacked like this! What other tricks do we have? Rely on wishful thinking?"

The meeting room was deathly silent.

The atomic bomb went off, and the hydrogen bomb is the next sword hanging over our heads.

The American TU configuration is top secret, while the "sandwich" left by the Soviets is a trap, a dead end no matter how you look at it.

He Yuzhu sat firmly in the first seat, holding the iconic large tea mug in his hands, which contained the special Da Hong Pao tea awarded by the system. The aroma of tea and the smell of smoke mingled together, creating a somewhat magical atmosphere.

He ignored the old professor's roar and looked past the crowd, landing on the young man in the corner who kept his head down, writing and drawing.

The young man wore thick glasses, his face was deathly pale, and he was as thin as a bean sprout, as if a gust of wind could blow him away.

Yu Min.

The future "father of the hydrogen bomb" was at this moment just a nobody hiding in a corner.

"Xiaoyu, don't keep quiet, tell me your thoughts." He Yuzhu suddenly spoke up, his voice not loud, but it cut through the noisy debate like a knife.

Whoosh! All eyes turned to them like searchlights.

Yu Min was startled and dropped his pen. He adjusted his glasses, stood up awkwardly, and said in a voice barely audible, "I...I think the 'layered cake' approach won't work."

"The energy transfer is too slow. Before the inside can even catch fire, the outer shell is blown off. This... this is like trying to light wet wood with a match; it simply won't light."

"That's utter nonsense!" The old professor's beard trembled with rage. "This is a proven, classic theory! What do you, a country bumpkin who's never even left the country, know about fluid mechanics? What do you know about authority?"

"Let him finish speaking!"

"when--!"

He Yuzhu slammed the enamel mug in his hand heavily onto the table, making a crisp sound like metal clashing against stone, which made everyone present tremble.

He stood up, walked a few steps to Yu Min, and slapped her hard on the thin shoulder: "Here, there is no authority, only truth. Truth doesn't care how much you've studied abroad, it cares who has the stronger data and the bigger fist!"

Yu Min took a deep breath, as if she were drawing some kind of strength from He Yuzhu's palm.

He turned around, walked to the blackboard, picked up the eraser, and without hesitation wiped the complicated "layered cake" structure diagrams clean.

Amidst the swirling chalk dust, a few lines of utmost simplicity emerged.

"Let's try a different approach." Yu Min's voice, no longer trembling, now carried a fierce intensity. "We'll use the X-rays produced by the atomic bomb explosion to perform a radiation implosion compression... focusing the energy like a lens onto a single point..."

As the chalk tapped on the blackboard, a model of two spheres, one main and one secondary, using radiation pressure to transfer energy gradually took shape.

This is the prototype of the "Yu Min configuration" that would later astound the five permanent members of the UN Security Council!

The experts at the scene initially dismissed it, but gradually their brows furrowed, and finally, they all gaped open, as if they had seen aliens.

"This...this is insane..." the old professor muttered to himself, his eyes glazed over. "Using X-ray focusing? The idea is brilliant, but the computational complexity is astronomical! With our hand-cranked calculators and abacuses, we wouldn't be able to finish calculating it even in the next century!"

"Who said we were going to use an abacus?"

He Yuzhu smiled knowingly and snapped his fingers.

The gate burst open with a roar.

Several guards, chanting commands, carried in a silver server rack about half a person's height. Its streamlined design and flashing indicator lights gave it a futuristic aesthetic.

This is the "Loongson 2" that he modified using the "quantum computer prototype" he received as a system reward, combined with Lu Guangda's technology.

"This is our latest asset." He Yuzhu patted the cold server rack. "Xiao Yu, feed it your formula. Today, I'm going to show everyone what Chinese wisdom is, and what a 'dimensional reduction attack' really means."

Data input.

The indicator lights began flashing wildly, and the buzzing sound of the cooling system was like the low roar of a dragon.

It only took ten minutes, the time it takes to smoke a cigarette.

The printer whirred and produced a long data sheet.

The entire place was deathly silent; you could hear a pin drop.

Lu Guangda's hands trembled as he grabbed the data sheet. He glanced at it, and tears streamed down his face without warning: "It's done... the conditions for a thermonuclear reaction have been met! This yield... 1... 1.8 million tons of TNT!!"

"Whoosh—!!"

The meeting room erupted in chaos!

He roared with all his might, "It's done... Thermonuclear reaction conditions met! Yield... 1... 1.8 million tons of TNT!!"

What does this even mean?!

Keep in mind that the "Tsar Bomba" released by the Russians in 61 only had a TNT equivalent of 5000 million tons!

The Tsar Bomba, nicknamed the Tsar Hydrogen Bomb.

The projectile weighs approximately 27 tons, is 8 meters long, and has a diameter of 2.1 meters.

The explosive yield is 5000 million tons of TNT (the initial design was 1.7 million tons of TNT).

It was tested in October 1961 on the west coast of Novaya Zemlya in the Arctic Ocean, near the Soviet Union!

It was dropped by a Tu-95V strategic bomber via parachute and detonated at an altitude of 4000 meters.

At the moment of the explosion, the fireball had a radius of 4600 meters, and the light was visible from more than 2000 kilometers away.

The mushroom cloud was nearly 40 kilometers wide and about 64 kilometers high, more than seven times the altitude of Mount Everest!

The shockwave spread 1000 kilometers, causing windows to shatter in parts of northern Finland and Norway.

The ground crater was 390 meters in diameter and about 100 meters deep, and its impact caused early warning radar and communication systems in Alaska, 4000 kilometers away, to be disrupted for 20 hours.

The entire Eurasian plate has shifted southward by 9 millimeters!

And this is only 5000 million tons of TNT equivalent.

As for 1.8 million tons of TNT, this is not as simple as one plus one being greater than two; it is a devil that increases exponentially!

Its power is enough to destroy most of the Eurasian continent!

Throw humanity back to the Stone Age completely.

Some threw down their pens and laughed loudly, some buried their heads in their hands and wept bitterly, and some pounded on the table to release their long-suppressed emotions.

He Yuzhu felt incredibly satisfied looking at Yu Min, who was surrounded by the crowd, looking bewildered yet with her eyes shining.

Is this the joy of cheating?

No, watching these national treasure-level geniuses make the world tremble under my protection is a million times more satisfying than having a cheat code!

"Chief Engineer He," Qian Xuesen said, having appeared beside him unnoticed. Looking at the perfect design on the blackboard, he exclaimed, "Did you already know this was the right path?"

"How would I know?" He Yuzhu shrugged, but his eyes were as deep as if they held the stars and the sea. "But I do know one thing: we Chinese are never less intelligent than foreigners."

At this joyous moment—

"Waaaaah—!!"

A piercing alarm suddenly tore through the air above the base!

Highest level air raid siren!

The communications officer stumbled in, his hat askew: "Reporting, sir! Radar has detected an unidentified flying object! At an altitude of 22,000 meters! Extremely fast! It's approaching our nuclear test site!"

22,000 meters?

He Yuzhu, who had been smiling, suddenly turned cold, and a chilling murderous intent flashed in his eyes.

In this day and age, there is only one thing that dares to fly so high and run wild in China's airspace.

"U-2 reconnaissance aircraft?"

He Yuzhu sneered, straightened his military cap, and strode out, his demeanor suggesting he wasn't going to war but to collect a package.

"Great timing! I was just worried about where to test my new radar, and now someone has delivered it to my door."

"Since you're here, you're not leaving. Stay here and be used as scrap metal!"