Chapter 786: Thunder Strikes from the Ground

“Sister?”

Li Muling didn’t expect her sister to take her back, and she anxiously called out, seeing that her efforts were about to go to waste.

“Let’s talk about it later!”

Li Muxin spoke to her sister in a tone that brooked no argument. Upon hearing the little girl’s words, she realized that her sister’s judgment was about to face unforeseen changes.

At this moment, whether it was a superpower, magic, or science, no one could make a truly objective judgment.

Regardless of whether Lin Mo was an Earthling or an Alien, no one could prove if he had betrayed his country.

What they witnessed now was simply beyond logical explanation, but personal knowledge is always limited, and no one dares to claim their judgment is definitely correct. A primitive man seeing a fighter jet wouldn’t automatically consider it a god descending from the heavens.

Rather than embarrass herself, it was better to stop early.

Li Muxin fixed her gaze on her sister, showing no sign of negotiation.

“Humph!”

Seeing her sister’s stern look, Li Muling could only glare at Lin Mo, seething like a frustrated leopard.

You, I will reveal your true identity; I will come back!

If Lin Mo knew what Li Muling was thinking at that moment, he would surely shake his head in helplessness. Superpowers… it really made no sense.

“What is she doing? Knight, it seems she’s not very friendly.”

The blonde girl, Maisha Wright, watched as the pair of beautiful twins walked away.

“I don’t know?”

Lin Mo shook his head, looking puzzled. Li Muling’s mysterious mumblings about those terms left him bewildered.

He was a Dragon Knight from the first squad of the first assault team of the Royal Dragon Knight Corps of the Stilan Kingdom.

Aliens and superpowers? What even was that?

If Li Muling’s nonsensical chatter managed to get Lin Mo to react, it would truly be strange.

“Go ahead and work; I’ll wait for you!”

Maisha didn’t seem shy at all. Right at the hangar door, she found a patch of grass and pulled out her laptop to turn it on.

No matter how much software she had installed, this laptop still ran like the wind, as if it came with an endless supply of computing resources from a giant mainframe computer.

Seeing the little girl happily entertaining herself, Lin Mo finally relaxed. Tech enthusiasts probably are able to adapt to their surroundings easily, making them simple to please.

The “monstrous” variable wings fighter jet, weighing over twenty tons, only weighed around twenty kilograms in the anti-gravity field, allowing any soldier to lift it alone. This weight seemed insignificant in the hands of a Dragon Knight.

With a gentle toss, the “monstrous” fighter landed softly on the Parking Area like a paper airplane.

The repulsion shield was turned off again, and the shock absorbers and tires underneath the landing gear visibly showed signs of pressure, causing the aircraft to dip slightly.

This was just a simple test. Although the fuel tank wasn’t full, it was enough for Lin Mo to test the fighter jet’s needs.

After all, with the Ser engine, the fighter jet’s fuel consumption had dramatically decreased.

With the repulsion shield turned off, he started the engine. The aircraft shook slightly before stabilizing immediately.

The twin-engine exhaust suddenly brightened, spewing out crimson flames that quickly transformed into a subdued blue-green hue.

This pure flame indicated that the burning efficiency of the aviation fuel had reached its peak.

Thanks to the infrared suppression technology, the blue-green flame was strictly confined within the vector nozzle. Once it extended beyond a certain distance, it would turn into a surging and high-temperature airflow.

Lin Mo activated the repulsion shield, and the main control display showed the fighter jet’s schematic, with the power output of each Ser engine gradually increasing.

Lin Mo pressed a button in the top right corner of the fighter jet’s schematic, causing a pointed arrow shape to appear. Through the force field control system, an invisible force field was displayed as a network of lines.

These repulsion fields, mutated from the anti-gravity field, released resilient lines that wrapped around the entire fighter jet.

When Lin Mo lifted the fighter jet, these repulsion lines would automatically converge to resist the incoming pressure, naturally repelling any foreign objects that could compromise the integrity of the force field.

Due to the original energy net structure of the Flowing Wave Heavenly Transformation Magic Circle, the newly enhanced repulsion shield exposed some gaps, allowing sufficient space for the air intake, pulse detonation engine, and main engine exhaust.

Moreover, the updated onboard repulsion shield control system not only could activate the entire repulsion shield at once but could also selectively activate localized blocks of the shield in specific directions, controlled by different Ser engines.

This flexibility in repulsion shield control was much higher compared to the previous rigid integrated usage, allowing it to adapt to various circumstances and emergencies.

Though this extra repulsion shield improved the endurance and defense capabilities of the fighter jet, it also constrained its super-maneuverability and future upgrade potential. If Lin Mo wanted to make modifications in the future, he would have to consider the impact of the repulsion shield generated by the Flowing Wave Heavenly Transformation Magic Circle and design a new mathematical model as a technical prototype foundation.

After completing the upgrade of the repulsion shield, Lin Mo ordered two sets of small pulse detonation engines from domestic aerospace manufacturers, as the current “monstrous” fighter jet’s F119-PW-100 advanced twin-rotor afterburning turbofan engine had reached its performance limits.

He couldn’t find a more advanced engine domestically, and even the WS-15X would be of no help. To advance further, Lin Mo would need to consider adding auxiliary power.

With the repulsion shield fully masked, the air intake gaps created special vortices, drawing a large amount of air into the engine’s intake fan.

At this point, the aircraft weight was only a third of its original weight. After Lin Mo unlocked the landing gear wheel locks, the reduced weight allowed the engine’s minimum idle speed to increase by 5%, easily propelling the aircraft to slide down the runway.

As the fighter jet glided onto the runway, Lin Mo’s first impression was that it had extremely high power utilization. The reduced aircraft weight and the aerodynamic shape provided by the repulsion shield enhanced its straight flight capabilities to the extreme, and its climbing performance also peaked.

With just a slight run-up, the aircraft’s gentle tremor suddenly became steady, and the landing gear rapidly lifted off the ground.

Applying full throttle to the engines!

A violent push felt like an invisible force pressing Lin Mo into his seat.

This was the effect of the G-forces, with the instant overload value displayed on the cockpit’s dashboard reaching an astonishing figure.

The fighter jet charged forward, with the “monstrous” jet achieving unprecedented acceleration.

Boom!

Thunder struck from the ground!

In less than two hundred meters of advance, a milky-white sonic boom cloud suddenly appeared at the leading edge of the repulsion shield, quickly racing along the shield’s surface and dissipating behind the fighter jet.

The thunderous sound of breaking the sound barrier echoed through the valley where the airbase was located, resembling a fierce explosion.

“Huh? Where’s the plane?”

Maisha Wright, immersed in her computer world, looked up to find the runway in the valley completely empty. The fighter jet that had just been speeding down the runway had vanished, leaving only a distant rumble like rolling thunder in the sky.

In the blink of an eye, that strangely shaped fighter jet had shot up into the air, disappearing beyond visual range.

“Ten seconds to break the sound barrier, starting at 1.5 Mach! Reaching 5 Mach in five seconds!”

Lin Mo glanced at the speed changes, surprised by the data recorded by the newly equipped comprehensive speed measurement device.

At this moment, he found himself ten thousand meters high in the sky. Looking down, the little valley appeared as small as a bathtub; if the weather conditions were poor, he would only see a thick layer of clouds beneath.

The aerodynamic effects of the repulsion shield were excellent, but they couldn’t completely eliminate air resistance; they could only improve the engine’s thrust utilization efficiency without significantly increasing the fighter jet’s speed.

Lin Mo kept his hand on the throttle, pushing the engine output power to the peak of afterburner combustion.

4.8 Mach, 4.9 Mach, 5 Mach, 5.1 Mach…

As the fighter jet reached 5.4 Mach, it struggled to go any faster, seemingly having maximized its thrust-to-weight ratio of 11.7 and unable to provide greater thrust.

Through the sensors, he detected temperatures around the repulsion shield exceeding 1,000 degrees Celsius. This friction rate fell far below the temperature of pure mirror-like metal surfaces, while the fighter jet’s surface remained at a manageable temperature of about 50 degrees, completely insulated from the heat.

This was the high temperature that followed breaking through the thermal barrier. Without special skin materials and aircraft structures, the intense air friction could have incinerated it to ashes. However, the “monstrous” variable wings fighter jet, with its repulsion shield extended, completely ignored the high temperatures caused by slicing through the air at high speeds.

Lin Mo pulled the control stick, and the “monstrous” jet exhibited a slightly larger turning radius than when the repulsion shield was off, with slightly slower response times, indicating that the repulsion shield was not suitable for super-maneuverable dogfights.

After extending the repulsion shield, the optimal operations for the “monstrous” jet involved long-distance raids, armored assaults, and low-altitude bombings; otherwise, it would become a durable target in the sky.

Lin Mo did not activate the IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) signal; the ground-based air defense radar remained empty. If a target moving at 5 Mach suddenly appeared on the radar screen, it would surely cause a commotion.

Let’s pretend I didn’t see anything. This isn’t the first time a Dragon Knight has violated regulations.

Realigning the little valley, the “monstrous” jet turned off its engines at an altitude of fifteen thousand meters, gliding solely on the aerodynamic effects of the repulsion shield.

Whether using forward-swept wings or swept-back wings, the fighter jet’s aerodynamic design originally employed a statically unstable scheme for increased flexibility. Now, however, the arrow-shaped aerodynamic form was a standard statically stable design, meaning that even if the fighter jet ran out of fuel mid-air, it could still glide to a landing.