Having finished her canned food, Violet happened to notice the chaotic mess scattered all over the ground, and she looked rather quizzically at the empty space beside the pile of items.
That was precisely where Zhurong had been standing.
"Violet, can you hear me?"
Zhurong was testing out her newly acquired psychokinesis.
"I can hear you! Where are you?"
Violet looked around her surroundings, trying to locate Zhurong.
"My current state is a bit peculiar, somewhat like a soul's form. I can only speak to you using psychokinesis."
Violet found this somewhat hard to comprehend, and metaphorical steam appeared to be rising from her head.
"I'm still alive, I've just changed the way I live, and I'm still by your side," Zhurong comforted her.
It took Violet a little while to process the current situation.
Taking advantage of this pause, Zhurong swept up the massive, disorderly pile of items on the ground.
Regrettably, the stored Hector Plasma Macrocannon Precision Strike Beacon could not be purchased repeatedly.
"Hector Plasma Macrocannon Precision Strike Beacon. (100%, single-use available)
Description: A naval gunfire strike from another spacetime. Crossing the Warp and countless spatial barriers, solely to crush the Emperor's enemies.
Purchase points. (Available for purchase only once.)"
Gathering her wits, Violet patted her cheeks and looked up at the empty air before her.
"Then, what should we do now?"
"We'll spend the night on the island and leave at dawn tomorrow. We'll sleep on the beach tonight; here are a bed and a quilt. I'm going over to that shipwreck to see what else can be salvaged."
Zhurong materialized the wooden cot and quilt from earlier.
"Oh right, you can just speak directly by reciting it in your mind; you don't need to say it out loud."
While conversing telepathically, Zhurong drifted toward the cruiser sunk at noon.
"Understood, but I still prefer speaking out loud," Violet said softly, a smile lingering at the corners of her mouth.
Zhurong shrugged and continued drifting toward the wreckage.
"You don't need to wait up for me tonight; clearing the battlefield will probably take a long time."
Fifteen meters underwater, a light cruiser broken into three sections lay upon the white sand.
Scattered around her were various fragments, anti-air gun wreckage, and the remains of several main gun turrets.
"Good grief, I never expected a single shot to shatter it into this state."
"Let's hope there's still something usable in here. If all else fails, I'll sell it for scrap metal..." Zhurong muttered to herself as she slipped inside the shattered wreckage.
Being in a spiritual state, the seawater and twisted wreckage did not impede Zhurong's exploration inside the warship in the slightest.
When she encountered a blocking door, she passed straight through it.
When she encountered blocking wreckage, she passed straight through it.
When she encountered the spare parts compartment, she passed stra...
Wait, spare parts?
Take them, take them!
The stern gun turret is still relatively intact? Dismantle it and sell it!
The wreckage is too fragmented? Sell it all as scrap metal! It even saves the trouble of dismantling it.
Huh? How does this twin-axle ship have three propellers?
Could it be from another ship?
"The other cruiser must have fled while missing a propeller... Looks like she took quite a beating."
After a frantic bout of scavenging, only a shell remained of the entire ship. Aside from things that couldn't be detached, Zhurong sold the rest as junk.
"Even though you struck first, I still hope you can rest in peace."
Zhurong planted a watertight bulkhead upright on the island and carved a line of text upon it in Chinese.
"May all innocent lives lost in war find peace."
It had to be said, psychokinesis was quite useful. One could directly use psychokinesis to simulate one's own collision box and then overlap them.
This achieved the effect of an invisibility cloak.
After finishing the monument, Zhurong set about recovering the weapons and ammunition from the fallen soldiers on the island.
She gathered all the corpses together, dug countless individual graves in front of the monument, and buried each fallen soldier in his own plot.
By the time all of this was completed, the sky was already beginning to grow light.
"Let's go get familiar with the aircraft's controls first."
Zhurong drifted over to the shoreline and clicked to claim the BV-238 in the system.
At that very instant, fragmented memories flashed through Zhurong's mind like a motion picture.
How to perform a cold start, how to operate it, aircraft characteristics, specific performance, and more flashed past one by one.
"BV-238 Improved Version.
Maximum speed increased from 420 km/h to 530 km/h.
Maximum range increased from 2,500 km to 3,000 km.
All self-defense turrets changed from crew-operated to remote-controlled turrets.
Minimum crew reduced to 3."
Entering the interior of the aircraft, Zhurong did not see crude World War II interiors, but rather advanced-looking ones resembling a C-17. (The Y-20 interior isn't fully revealed yet, so I can only use the C-17 as a rough description.)
"Let's see... this is the electric ignition, this is the fuel pump, this is the radar warning receiver, this is the radar search mode..."
"Wait! Where on earth does a World War II seaplane bomber get radar from???"
"What on earth are this radar warning receiver and ballistic computer?!"
"This thing is probably an AC-130 disguised in a BV-238 skin!"
Floating inside the cockpit, Zhurong was completely dumbfounded.
What is this weapon control panel?! It shows that the aircraft is still carrying four air-launched Tomahawks!
What on earth is this spherical turret control cabin?! The entire spherical control cabin is filled with curved screens!
Why is there a lounge and a toilet in the rear section of this cabin?!
And the autopilot is even more absurd!
The most absurd part of all was that there was a HUD on the cockpit glass of this aircraft!
"What the hell, what kind of ridiculous nonsense is all this?"
This aircraft gave Zhurong a very peculiar feeling.
It was like a hodgepodge blending the J-20, the AC-130, the KJ-2000, and Air Force One all together.
Complaints aside, getting familiar with the controls was something that had to be done.
After familiarizing herself slightly with the controls for a while, Zhurong drifted to Violet's bedside.
"Wake up, time to get moving."
"Mm... let me sleep a little longer..."
Feeling somewhat helpless, Zhurong had no choice but to lift both the bed and the person onto the aircraft together.
It had to be said that Violet and the bed combined weighed over two hundred pounds. Fortunately, her current psychokinesis limit was 250 kilograms, so lifting a hundred or so kilograms was still quite effortless.
"Headset, pedals, throttle, control stick..."
"Phew... prepare for takeoff!"
Zhurong turned on the electric ignitions for engines numbers three and four, then two and five, and finally one and six in sequence.
"Click, click, click! Rumble, rumble!"
The electric motors drove the engines to start, and thick smoke billowed from the exhaust pipes.
"Whirr-hum-hum-hum~"
Upon confirming that all six engines were operating normally, Zhurong began pushing the throttle forward.
"Hum-hum~ Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh~"
The aircraft began to taxi slowly across the sea surface.
As a large seaplane bomber, the BV-238 originally required an ultra-long water takeoff run of 3 kilometers.
Following system modifications, the takeoff run distance was reduced from 3,000 meters to 1,800 meters. However, because four single air-launched Tomahawks, each weighing 1.2 tons, were mounted under the wings and fuselage, the takeoff run distance remained an absurdly long 2,800 meters.
As the roar of the engines grew louder and louder, the airframe also began to vibrate.
Flaps set to 10 degrees, throttle at 95%.
The aquatic behemoth began to accelerate gradually.
The noise and vibration made it utterly impossible for Violet, who was already half-asleep, to sleep any longer.
"Is this... inside an aircraft?" Violet asked, still somewhat groggy.
"Put on the headset and come to the copilot's position to help me. This thing cannot use hydraulics and fly-by-wire controls during takeoff; it has to be pulled manually with steel cables. My psychokinesis might not quite be enough."
Without a second thought, Violet threw on her coat, picked up the headset, hung it over her head, and sat down in the copilot seat.
"What do I need to do?"
"See the airspeed indicator in the middle?"
"I see it."
"When the speed indicator reaches 260 kilometers, start pulling the control stick back. Mind your strength so you don't snap it. Once the airframe leaves the water's surface, you can let go."
"Understood."
Violet began staring fixedly at the airspeed indicator without blinking.
180 kilometers.
220 kilometers.
260 kilometers!
Grasping the U-shaped control stick, Violet began hauling it backward, looking effortless as she did so.
The rising horizontal stabilizers generated a tremendous nose-up pitching moment for the aircraft, and the heavy nose quickly lifted clear of the sea surface.
As the nose rose, the fuselage also gradually lifted out of the water, slowly gaining altitude.
Violet let out a sigh of relief and released the control stick.
After the aircraft climbed for a bit, Zhurong adjusted the flaps to 0 degrees and banked the stick to the right.
The giant in the sky gradually tilted to the right and began to turn.
"According to the navigation charts we obtained earlier, the nearest coastline is about three hundred kilometers away. Our destination is about two thousand kilometers away, so it will take a few hours of flying."
"During this time, I will teach you some flight knowledge."
"When do we start?"
Violet looked toward the captain's seat on the left.
It was completely empty, but various parameters were being input into the control panel.
It looked as though it were haunted.
Ugh...
It seemed she was indeed haunted, and that was that.
"The autopilot is set up, let's begin."
"See those numbers and boxes on the glass? Those respectively represent..."
Starting with an introduction to the HUD, she explained what the entire instrument panel and all those screens were used for.
Every switch and button inside the cabin needed to be explained in detail, and occasionally the two of them would end up flipping through the operation manual together to figure out what a particular button did.
After introducing the cockpit, the two of them began studying how to use the spherical turret control cabin.
Spending half an hour with both instruction manuals practically worn to tatters, they finally understood the usage of the spherical control cabin completely.
This thing was like an AR gaming pod; the spherical curved screen displayed the outside view, while the AR glasses displayed relative speed, wind speed, altitude, and various target information. The screen marked the pre-aiming position provided by the fire control computer. Upon confirming which target to attack on the AR glasses, turrets within the arc of fire would automatically calibrate and open fire.
The fire control system could designate countless targets simultaneously, and the turrets would prioritize attacking the closest targets based on proximity.
The maximum firing distance of the turrets was 2.2 kilometers; once this distance was exceeded, they would cease fire and wait for the target to enter an effective strike range before firing again.
The lounge area nothing special, featuring only two double-bunk small compartments, a toilet, a small shower room, and a small kitchenette. (The compartments were modeled after the captain's rest quarters on long-haul commercial airliners.)
It was worth noting that the shower room and kitchen could only be used when landing on water, and were unusable during flight.
The aircraft approached the coastline at an altitude of 5,000 meters and a speed of 450 kilometers per hour.
Zhurong's plan was to cross the coastal Leidenschaftlich directly and fly straight toward a giant freshwater lake near the border of the United Kingdom.
Judging from the map captured from the battleship, the current world situation was in utter chaos.
It was divided primarily into four factions.
Germanania Empire: Occupies the northeastern part of the continent, with its territory accounting for 1/3 of the entire continent. It borders the Union of Soviet Republics to the north, and the two countries are currently in a state of war. (Most of its territory consists of land occupied during the war, with its original territory accounting for only 20% of its current holdings.)
Union of Soviet Republics: Located in the northwestern part of the continent, its territory accounts for 1/4 of the entire continent. Its northern border directly meets the Germanania Empire, and the two nations are currently at war. (40% of its territory belongs to union republics.)
Southern United Front: Located in the south-central and southeastern parts of the continent, its territory accounts for 1/4 of the entire continent. Its northeastern border directly meets the Germanania Empire, and it is in a state of full defense. Its northwestern border meets the Union of Soviet Republics, and the two sides are currently in an alliance. (An alliance formed by over a dozen small countries, intending to resist the massive invasion of the Germanania Empire with all their might.)
United Kingdom: Located in the southwestern corner of the continent. Due to immense pressure brought by the Soviets to the north and the United Front to the east, it is a kingdom alliance spearheaded by the United Kingdom to alleviate strategic pressure.