CIATB Chapter 269 Plot!
Chapter 269 Plot!
Tanaka and his group returned to their hotel looking dejected.
Seven students walked silently down the corridor, their footsteps muffled on the carpet.
No one spoke.
The haughty, inspection-like demeanor he displayed when he entered has vanished completely.
The young professor, who was carried back, lay on the bed with two broken ribs.
The hotel has already called an ambulance.
Tanaka closed the door, stood by the window, his back to the students who dared not utter a sound.
His hands were shaking.
The gold-rimmed glasses were taken off and placed on the table, with a fine crack on the lens—it was unclear when they had been bumped.
That mech.
Black.
A two-meter-tall metal tiger.
The moment it appeared out of thin air, Tanaka's entire understanding of materials science and industrial manufacturing collapsed in the same second.
Servo response time is 0.3 milliseconds.
Fully integrated nano-hydraulic joints.
Optical stealth.
Autonomous defense system.
Any one of these items alone would be enough to make the world's top military laboratories kneel down and call them "daddy."
These four technologies were casually displayed in the university lecture hall by a first-year undergraduate student.
Yamamoto leaned against the corner of the wall, speaking very softly.
"Professor Tanaka... what should we do?"
Tanaka did not answer.
He pulled an encrypted satellite phone from the bottom of his suitcase.
This wasn't issued by the school.
Dial the number; the call connects.
There were three rings from the other end.
"Feed".
A deep male voice, with the conciseness of a soldier.
"Mr. Ito," Tanaka said in a low voice, "I am Tanaka. There has been a problem with the exchange meeting."
"What's the problem?"
Tanaka took a deep breath.
"They have a combat-ready autonomous mech."
"It is about three meters long, fully armored, and has an autonomous defense and counterattack system—one of my colleagues tried to interfere with its joints with an electromagnetic pen and had two ribs broken by its tail."
There was a five-second silence on the other end of the phone.
"Mecha?"
"It's not a prototype from the lab."
Tanaka gritted his teeth, chewing each word thoroughly before spitting it out, "It's a finished product that can go to the battlefield."
"Brought by a freshman."
"Freshman year?"
"Twenty years old, his name is Zhang Yan."
The silence on the other end of the phone suddenly changed.
Tanaka could hear someone flipping through documents on the other side.
A long time passed.
"You mean... Zhang Yan?"
Takehiko Ito's voice suddenly became sharp.
"Wait a minute, tell me the specific form of that mecha."
"Tiger form, approximately two meters tall at the shoulder, three meters in length, armored with titanium carbide tungsten alloy, and fully internal hydraulic systems at the joints for extremely fast response..."
"Have you observed any energy weapons?"
Tanaka was taken aback.
"no."
"Only physical defense and tail attacks were demonstrated."
"But its armor hardness... Kobayashi's electromagnetic pen didn't cause any damage at all."
A heavy, suppressed gasp came from the other end of the phone.
"I'm asking you."
Ito's voice changed, sounding like it was being squeezed out from between his teeth, "Has this student ever demonstrated underwater equipment?"
Tanaka's pupils suddenly contracted.
Underwater equipment?
he does not know.
He was merely an academic spy, responsible for assessing the cutting-edge technological trends in Chinese universities.
Regarding the incident at sea, he only knew a vague code name—"Unidentified Deep-Sea Mechanical Entity".
A month ago, in the South China Sea, three main warships of the Maritime Self-Defense Force were sunk in sixty seconds.
That incident triggered an earthquake-like panic within the military.
As deputy chief of staff, Takehiko Ito personally led the subsequent manhunt.
But the target vanished like a ghost.
"You mean..." Tanaka's voice was so dry it was almost impossible to speak, "...the same person who sank our three warships and appeared in the university lecture hall today...?"
"I'm just confirming a possibility." Ito's tone regained its soldierly coldness. "Send me his photo. Facial features, build, every detail you can remember."
Tanaka opened his phone's photo album.
He actually took those photos secretly.
In the lecture hall, the moment Zhang Yan walked towards the mecha, he subconsciously took a picture.
In the photo, a young man wearing an ordinary jacket stands sideways next to a black metallic tiger.
He has delicate and handsome features, and a medium to thin build. He looks no different from any ordinary male student on a university campus.
But his eyes looked wrong.
It was an extremely quiet composure, one that didn't belong to this age group.
Tanaka sent the photos over via an encrypted channel.
There was a long silence on the other end of the phone.
This time the silence was even longer.
When Takehiko Itō spoke again, there was something in his voice that Tanaka had never heard before.
It's not anger.
It's greed.
"Tanaka."
"exist."
"You should refrain from making any rash moves for now."
"Don't contact that student."
"Don't let anyone know about your contact with me."
My heart is racing in the field.
"What will we do after we get back?"
"as usual."
"Apologize when you should apologize, admit your mistakes when you should admit them."
"You are scholars who went there for academic exchange. If an unpleasant accident happens, you should end it gracefully."
"But Kobayashi's injury—"
"He brought it on himself."
Ito's voice was as cold as a blade, "An idiot caused trouble on someone else's turf with an electromagnetic pen, and got retaliated against. Who can he blame?"
Tanaka shut his mouth.
Listen carefully.
Ito paused for a moment, then said, "I will send someone over in a week."
"Send someone?"
"A person who can actually get things done."
Ito hung up the phone.
Tanaka stood by the window with a receiver in hand, looking at the brightly lit night view of Keikai City outside.
Today, the young man named Zhang Yan stood in the lecture hall and casually displayed a "Tiger" tank, a weapon designed for urban warfare, as if he were flipping through a boring textbook.
If what he has is from the same system as the monster in the ocean that sank three warships...
Tanaka suddenly felt a chill.
He glanced back at the young professor still groaning on the bed.
The mechanical tail used only one percent of its force.
If it's all out...
Tanaka didn't dare to think about it anymore.
Yamamoto cautiously approached.
"Professor, what's next...?"
"Pack your things," Tanaka's voice was hoarse. "We'll formally apologize to Jiangda tomorrow."
"Be sincere, and everyone keep your mouths shut."
"Apologize?"
Humiliation and resentment appeared on Yamamoto's face.
Tanaka glanced at him.
There was something in that glance that Yamamoto couldn't understand.
"An apology is only temporary."
Tanaka put his cracked gold-rimmed glasses back on.
His gloomy profile was reflected in the windowpane.
A week.
……
three days later.
Tanaka, along with his delegation, delivered a formal written apology to the School of Mechanical Engineering at Jiangnan University.
The wording was extremely earnest.
The incident was characterized as "serious misconduct by an individual member of the group." The university expressed its deepest apologies for the damaged lecture hall equipment and the negative impact caused, and promised that the professor would be dealt with seriously by the university after returning to his home country.
Professor Yan was also present when the apology letter was delivered to the department head's office.
The old man glanced at the beautifully bound apology letter and snorted.
"Why didn't you do this sooner?"
The department head gestured for him to stop talking, politely accepted the apology letter, exchanged a few pleasantries, and saw him off.