Crossing Orb: Newtype Commander

CE48 Obuascha Residence

On Char's third birthday, Uzumi gave him a book.

It's not a children's picture book, not a fairy tale, but a book called "The Founding History of Ob"—a thick, hardcover edition with the Askha family crest printed on the title page, and the inner pages filled with records of how this archipelago nation was born from war and how it survived in the cracks between powerful forces.

Three-year-old Xia sat on the tatami mat and turned to the first page.

He recognized those words.

It wasn't something he "learned." It was something that happened to him one morning when he woke up, and those complex Chinese characters and grammatical rules suddenly appeared in his consciousness, as if they had always existed deep in his mind, just waiting to be activated. This had happened to him many times—one day he would wake up and suddenly have mastered a branch of advanced mathematics; another day he would open his physics textbook and find that he "already knew" the contents; another day he would hear Orb officials discussing foreign policy, and his brain would automatically begin to analyze the pros and cons.

Uzumi stood at the study door, watching the three-year-old child flip through three hundred pages of "The History of the Founding of Ob" in half an hour, and then write a line in still somewhat clumsy handwriting on the blank page of the last page:

Neutrality is not weakness. Neutrality is the greatest strength.

Uzmi remained silent for a long time.

This child is special. He knew it from the first moment he held the baby in his arms in that sea. But just how "special" was he, Uzumi, was constantly reassessing his own understanding of the child's nature.

Three years old. While other children are still learning to walk, talk, and distinguish colors and shapes, Char is already analyzing Orb's geopolitical predicament.

"Char." Uzumi walked into the study and sat down opposite Char.

Char looked up.

On that youthful face, the eyes were the most striking feature—so deep, so profound, like two bottomless pools of water. Those eyes lacked the innocence and naivety of a three-year-old; instead, they held a weariness completely incongruous with their age…

"Father." Xia's voice still had a childish quality, but his tone was unusually steady.

"That line," Uzmi pointed to the annotation on the page, "what were you thinking?"

Xia looked down at the words he had written and remained silent for a few seconds.

"Because everyone says Orb is weak," he said slowly, seemingly choosing his words carefully. "But I don't think so. A weak nation couldn't have survived this long between the Coordinators and Naturals."

"so?"

"So neutrality isn't because of a lack of power. It's because we have power, but choose not to use it." Xia raised his head, his eyes clear and firm. "What Father wanted was that kind of power that we can choose not to use."

Uzmi's heart skipped a beat.

This child.

He is trying to understand himself.

It wasn't about "obeying" or "following" orders, but about truly understanding, from the depths of his ideology, what kind of country Uzmi Nara Askha wanted to build.

"You're right." Uzumi reached out and patted Char's head. "But this path is difficult. Very difficult."

"I know," Xia said earnestly, "but difficult things always have to be done by someone."

Outside the study, the setting sun was slowly sinking into the sea. The glass curtain wall of the Dawn Society factory building reflected a golden-red light, like a burning lighthouse.

CE50 Obuascha Residence

Five-year-old Xia has already completed the entire curriculum of a normal student's twelve years of schooling.

He displayed astonishing reading speed and learning ability at the age of four, capable of reading in a single day what would take an average person a month to digest, and understanding things with a depth far exceeding the surface. Uzmi arranged a dedicated team of private tutors for him, covering more than ten fields including political science, military strategy, diplomatic negotiation, economics, engineering, physics, and biology.

The teachers' initial feedback was consistent: "This child is not normal."

It's "abnormal" at a fundamental level. Char's learning method isn't "understanding," but more like "recalling." When teaching advanced physics, he would often fall into a brief silence after hearing the basic concepts, and then utter some theoretical derivations that even the professor had never heard of.

"Regarding the principle of particle acceleration you mentioned," five-year-old Xia said to his teacher after a physics class, "wouldn't it be more efficient to use magnetic field confinement instead of electric field acceleration?"

The teacher was stunned.

"Magnetic...magnetic field confinement? That requires superconducting materials, and—"

"If there were a particle that carries no electric charge but has zero rest mass," Xia tilted his head, as if reading from a screen only he could see, "then it could exist stably in a magnetic field and interfere with low-frequency electromagnetic radiation. In that case..."

He suddenly stopped and blinked.

"Never mind. Never mind."

What the teacher didn't know was that Xia had almost uttered the name "Minovsky particle"—a concept that had never existed in this world. That feeling returned: something was surging deep within his mind, like a flood hidden behind a tightly closed door; if the door were to open even a crack, knowledge would pour out.

But he still couldn't open the door.

It's not that it's impossible.

The time is not right yet.

After class, Char sat alone in his study, closed his eyes, and tried to "introspect" into the depths of his consciousness. It was a strange space—boundless, with countless points of light floating in the dark blue void. Each point of light was a piece of technical data, from the UC era, from the 00 era, from those histories that he had never experienced but were etched in his memory.

He reached out to touch a point of light.

The light flickered.

And then—nothing happened.

"Higher privileges required." A voice echoed deep within his consciousness. It wasn't a human voice, but rather some kind of programmed prompt. "Current unlocking progress: 2.7%. Continue to solidify your basic knowledge."

Char opened his eyes and sighed.

He knew those materials were there. Minovsky physics, MS design blueprints, nuclear furnace technology, GN particle theory, solar furnace design, VEDA architecture—all these things that were enough to change the world were "lying" in some corner of his consciousness, like a sleeping treasure trove.

But the doors of the treasure trove are only open to what he "understands".

It's not "knowing", it's "understanding".

He could recite the basic principles of nuclear fusion at the age of five, but that didn't mean he truly understood it. True understanding requires something deeper—not the knowledge itself, but the logical chain behind it, experimental verification, and the accumulation of engineering practice. He needs to follow the paths laid by his predecessors step by step to truly "unlock" those technologies that were ahead of their time.

"2.7%..." Xia silently calculated, "At this rate, it will take at least twenty years to unlock the core content."

Twenty years.

CE70. The year the war broke out.

CE50th Anniversary of Dawn Corporation First Technology Development Bureau

When Erika Simmons first met Char, she thought she was hallucinating.

The First Technology Development Bureau of the Dawn Corporation is Orb's top-secret research institution, responsible for the core technology research and development of the defense industry. Ordinary people are strictly prohibited from entering; even Orb officials require the highest level of authorization.

But today, Chief Uzmi came personally with a child.

A five-year-old child.

"Dr. Simmons," Uzumi's voice was calm and natural, "this is my adopted son, Char Langlad Ashar. He wants to see your energy laboratory."

Erica Simmons, the youngest senior researcher at Dawn Corporation, a genius engineer trained in Orb. She looked down at the little boy standing next to Uzumi, dressed in a small suit, his expression serious as if he were there to inspect something.

"Sir," Erica said, trying to keep her tone polite, "there's dangerous equipment in the lab; it's not suitable—"

"Dr. Simmons," Char said.

Erica was stunned.

The fact that a five-year-old interrupted her was not a big deal in itself, but the tone of her voice was too calm and confident, like an experienced engineer communicating with a colleague, rather than a child talking to an adult.

"Is your lab's plasma confinement device experiencing magnetic field stability issues?" Char looked up, his eyes fixed on Erica.

Erica raised her eyebrows.

How did you know?

"Just a guess," Xia said. "Your energy consumption has increased by 12% in the past three months, but output hasn't increased accordingly. This indicates a decrease in confinement efficiency. Under current technological conditions, the most likely reason is a defect in the topology of the magnetic field."

Erika turned to look at Uzumi.

Uzumi shrugged slightly, his expression conveying, "Don't look at me, I don't know where he learned that either."

Erika crouched down to be at eye level with Char.

"Little friend, do you know what the topological structure of a magnetic field means?"

"I know." A glint flashed in Xia's eyes. "But I'm not sure if I'm right. So I need to go into the lab to take a look. Is that alright?"

Erica hesitated for three seconds.

Then she made a decision that changed the course of her life.

"Come with me."

In the laboratory, Char stood in front of the control panel of the plasma confinement device.

He was only a head taller than the control panel, and had to stand on tiptoe to see the data on the screen. But Erica didn't laugh at him—because she was looking at the equations he had written.

three minutes.

It only took three minutes from entering the lab to starting to write the equation.

Char picked up a pen (his small hands struggled to hold it) and wrote down a series of mathematical derivations on a piece of scrap paper. The complexity of those formulas far exceeded Erika's expectations; they were formulas that "any engineer might not be able to write."

Magnetic field constraint equations.

Plasma magnetohydrodynamics.

Applications of non-Euclidean geometry in magnetic field topology.

Erica felt as if she had witnessed a miracle.

"How did you come up with this correction term?" Erica pointed to a line in the equation, her voice trembling slightly.

"I saw it," Xia said casually.

"See?"

"It's... just seeing it in my head." Xia knew he had let something slip, but he didn't intend to take it back. "Some things, once I see the basic principle, I can 'see' its extensions. Like a painting, the basic principle is the sketch, and the extension is the complete image. I can see the picture, but I can't draw it yet."

Erica remained silent for a long time.

She is a scientist. She doesn't believe in the supernatural, nor in vague concepts like intuition and inspiration. But this child before her is challenging all her preconceived notions.

"Commander," Erica turned to Uzumi, her voice hoarse, "this child..."

"I know," Uzmi said.

"Do you know what this means?"

"I know," Uzumi repeated, his expression still calm, "that's why I brought him to you."

Erika understood.

Uzmi wasn't showing the children around. He was arranging a meeting—a meeting that could determine the future of Orb.

"Dr. Simmons," Char put down his pen and turned around, "I want to stay in touch with you. I'll offer you some technical ideas, some of which may be crazy, some of which may be impractical. But I hope you'll take them seriously."

Erica looked at the five-year-old child and took a deep breath.

"Okay," she said.

From that day on, Char and Erika Simmons began a secret correspondence that lasted for decades. The technological concepts Char proposed in his letters became increasingly advanced and astonishing—Minovsky particle theory, miniaturized nuclear fusion reactors, fluid pulse propulsion systems for mobile suits, the basic principles of beam weapons…

Erika initially thought these were the fantasies of a gifted child.

But when she conducted a preliminary verification following Xia Yaxin's instructions, she discovered—

Every idea.

Both are feasible.

It's not "possible," it's "theoretically entirely possible, only requiring engineering implementation."

She began to realize that what this child held in his hands was not a collection of scattered technical ideas, but a complete, self-contained system powerful enough to overturn the entire world order—

Technology tree.