To be honest, he didn't know how to deal with Sun Xiaorou's provocations.
But if he acted like he didn't know anything, it would only worsen the situation. Under Sun Jiao's questioning eyes, Jiang Chen took a deep breath and confessed what happened that day.
"Was Sun Xiaorou the provocative one? You sure you didn't threaten her?" Sun Jiao looked at Jiang Chen skeptically.
"Am I that type of person?!" Jiang Chen didn't know whether he should laugh or cry.
But as soon as the words came out, he realized it wasn't convincing at all. He took away Sun Xiaorou's first time, although he didn't know at the time that it was her first time."Then how are you going to treat Xiaorou?' Sun Jiao looked at Jiang Chen with a grin.
"I… I don't know." Jiang Chen said, embarrassed.
Sun Jiao seemed to have expected Jiang Chen's reply as she let out a sigh.
"If you want me to reject her, I can-"
"No, you're misunderstanding me." Sun Jiao shook her head unexpectedly.
"Mhmm?" Jiang Chen stared at her with a perplexed expression.
"If she…" Sun Jiao bit her lips with words stuck in her throat."If?" Because he couldn't make out her voice, Jiang Chen pulled his ear closer.
"Whatever, ahhh! This is definitely too weird!" Sun Jiao covered her suddenly burning face and hastily left the completely confused Jiang Chen there.
At the dinner table, Lin Lin was as noisy as always while she chewed her food with her mouth full while bantering with Sun Jiao. Sun Xiaorou's seat was right across from Jiang Chen. It was her first time tasting such delicious food, so she praised Yao Yao's excellent cooking skills. Yao Yao timidly smiled like always at being praised, her feet dangling under the table joyfully.
Jiang Chen was worried that the kiss at the door would cause some awkwardness between him and Sun Xiaorou, but it seemed like he worried too much.
Except, the moment their eyes met, Jiang Chen perceived a long and dubious message from her eyes.
…
After dinner, Jiang Chen went to Jiang Lin's lab.
He knocked at the door, and seeing as it was open, Jiang Chen waited for a moment before he took out the EP.
"At the rocket testing site?" He looked at the red dot on the map as Jiang Chen muttered to himself.
Because of the locating function of the chip, he possessed the exact coordinate of every knight. Of course, out of respect for personal privacy, he rarely used this function unless it was necessary.
He turned around and headed to the location.
Rocket testing site.
While the name sounded sophisticated, it was just an empty plot of land circled by concrete walls. There were two tables there with one covered in electronic parts while the other had chemical solutions. Aside from the two tables, there was also mechanical equipment he brought back from the Fake Leg Specialty Store as well as the old parts Jiang Chen funded.
Jiang Chen promised Jiang Lin that as long as he finished the work assigned to him, he would fund his dream to develop a warp drive engine for him. Now that the K1 kinetic skeleton production line was optimized and the mimicked version of the Dongfeng-76 ballistic missile was completed, he obviously had the time to work on his own dream.
"This is the warp drive engine?" Jiang Chen mocked him as he looked at the large turbine engine Jiang Lin was working on.
Without turning his head, Jiang Lin flipped a wrench in his hand, wiped off the sweat from his head and grinned.
"Not even close. This is only a simple propulsion engine - nowhere close to a warp drive. It's not even remotely close to the RF resonant cavity thruster."
"I thought you created it already," Jiang Chen said.
"I thought I almost created it." Jiang Lin sighed.
When Jiang Chen first captured Fallout Shelter no.27, Jiang Lin proposed a research project to Wang Qin. No, precisely, it wasn't a research project - he only provided the theoretical design of the "warp drive" to an aerospace expert to confirm the validity of his proposal.
But the answer he received was depressing - the expert criticized his design using all fields of knowledge and theory. Jiang Lin didn't give up; he even personally went to Camp 27 to debate with that expert.
The result was the same. The aerospace expert saw that Jiang Lin didn't believe him, so he personally simulated the design with the quantum computer, comically showing the errors he made in the wrap drive design.
It was analogous to a junior high student thinking he discovered the truth behind the perpetual motion machine who used his knowledge to draw a blueprint he thought was flawless and presented it in front of a physics teacher with a university degree.
Needless to say, the spirit of daring to try was worth praising. But in the name of science, only the truth stood.
After he heard Jiang Lin's story, Jiang Chen was silent for a moment before he comforted him in a soft voice.
"At least you proved that method doesn't work."
"But it wasn't me who disproved it - back in 2091, someone showed the error in my design philosophy. And in the next 80 years, people showed hundreds of incorrect design principles, but I wasn't aware of this at all." He laughed contemptuously at himself, threw the wrench in the toolbox, and took out a welding gun.
"Do you feel sad?" With sparks flashing, Jiang Chen asked.
"No, otherwise I wouldn't be working on this." Jiang Lin grinned as he stood up and patted the thing he had been working for a week.
Jiang Chen walked beside him and examined the metal, three-person tall object.
"This is?"
"RM-320 rocket engine… mimicked plus miniature version." Jiang Lin had a proud expression looking at the art he created himself. "Although it's technology from the end of the 21st century, don't you think it's like a piece of art?"
"Technology from the 21st century?"
"That's right. Based on the explanation of the aerospace expert, the propulsion rocket technology had been abandoned by the end of the 21st century. Space elevators could conveniently send spaceships into orbit from the ground. Spaceship arriving in orbit would then use the RF resonant cavity thruster to boost itself to the moon, or Mars, or someplace even further." Jiang Lin grinned.
"Are you planning to start from the fundamentals?"
But this was certainly useful for Jiang Chen. Propulsion or not, it was technology lightyears ahead of the modern world. Or it could still be a great booster for the ballistic missile in the apocalypse.
"What's the cost of this rocket engine?" Jiang Chen asked.
"Plus the cost of solid fuel, twenty thousand crystals."
"Damn, this rocket booster would eat the salary of 1000 people," Jiang Chen cursed.
Seeing that Jiang Chen didn't look pained, Jiang Lin smiled along and didn't respond.
After a moment, Jiang Chen examined the rocket engine again and abruptly said:
"I plan to establish the Aerospace Technology Research Institute with you acting as the director. Do you have any suggestions?"
