She slowly raised her eyes, her gaze piercing through the cold bulletproof glass, calmly looking into Valery's mocking gray-blue eyes.

Academician Yan, who was standing next to him, was also furious, his face flushed with anger because of Valery's insulting words.

"Understood."

Mingzhao's voice was not loud, but it pierced through all the noise and oppression with exceptional clarity.

"I need a separate workspace and basic tools."

There was no request, only a statement.

After saying that, he stopped looking at the observer, picked up the cloth bag on the ground, turned around and walked straight to the corner of the work area.

A small, dusty cubicle filled with miscellaneous items.

Su Xuan was stunned for a moment, then immediately followed after him, carrying the metal box.

"Hmph! Ignorant fool." Academician Yan snorted heavily, his face ashen, as he watched Mingzhao's retreating figure.

But there was a hint of expectation in his eyes.

Valery picked up his glass again, took an elegant sip, and his mockery deepened.

"Look! Yan, that's stubbornness! Like a rock in the desert... um, what do you Chinese say? A rock in a latrine? Stinky and hard?"

Ha, that's so apt! It's destined to end in a bloody mess.

He gently swirled the wine in his glass; the crimson liquid reflected the cold smile in his eyes.

"I'm really looking forward to seeing what kind of quantum satellite he can hammer out of this pile of scrap metal. Maybe... he can make a beautiful scrap metal sculpture?"

Academician Yan did not respond to Valery's words, but instead gently stroked the chair with his large hand.

Scrap copper and iron... is it possible to succeed?

...

The lowest level of the base, where waste materials are piled up.

This place is even more sinister than the waste dump on the ground in Jiuquan, with huge abandoned rocket fuel tanks, twisted and deformed satellite frames, and mountains of dusty instrument debris.

These remains, resembling prehistoric behemoths, now exude a strong odor of residual chemicals and the smell of corroded metal.

The pale emergency lights flickered weakly overhead, casting an unsteady beam of light.

Mingzhao walked through this steel graveyard, with Su Xuan behind her, shining a flashlight. The beam swept across the cold wreckage, his face full of worry and confusion.

“Mingzhao, Academician Yan and that Soviet guy… they simply don’t understand that quantum entanglement communication is the cornerstone of the interstellar age, they…”

Su Xuan spoke up for Ming Zhao, his voice sounding particularly weak in the vast space.

"They don't need to understand."

Mingzhao's voice was calm and even as she focused her mental energy on perceiving the faint energy field and structural information remaining inside each pile of waste.

She stopped in front of a huge pile of metal plates covered in brown rust.

Those were the remains of solar panels from an early experimental satellite.

Although it is covered with scratches and some areas are dark, the core photoelectric conversion material is still relatively intact under the sensory perception.

It can even capture extremely faint responses to light of specific wavelengths.

“This is it.” Mingzhao squatted down and took out tools from the cloth bag. Su Xuan quickly shone a flashlight on them.

In the days that followed, the corner of the base, a small room of less than 10 square meters that had originally been used to store miscellaneous items, became Mingzhao's battlefield.

There is no sophisticated cleanroom, no liquid helium cooling equipment, and no nanoscale lithography machine.

There was only a rickety old wooden table, a pile of glaring incandescent bulbs, and various junk salvaged from a scrap yard.

That huge satellite solar panel was cut and polished, and turned into the core substrate for receiving photon signals.

A bulky, barely usable photomultiplier tube (PMT) salvaged from a decommissioned radar, along with the remains of several liquid nitrogen Dewar flasks, were re-welded and repaired.

There was even an oscilloscope with decent accuracy that was salvaged from a piece of scrapped medical equipment.

But the most critical challenge is to create a cryogenic cage that closely resembles the experimental environment of the interstellar federation era, in order to stabilize the fragile quantum state.

Mingzhao turned his gaze to a corner of the base's logistics warehouse, where several canisters of liquid nitrogen used for cleaning precision instruments were the only source of low temperature he could find.

"Su Xuan, help me."

Mingzhao's voice carried an unquestionable decisiveness.

There was no readily available cryostat. Mingzhao used thick brass tubing to bend and weld by hand, creating an extremely rudimentary but reasonably well-sealed cavity.

The photon detector core, modified from the cut solar substrate, and the bulky photomultiplier tube were carefully encapsulated inside.

Then, a multi-layered aluminum-coated polyester film and a rudimentary vacuum pump were used for vacuum insulation.

The final and most dangerous step: injecting liquid nitrogen!

Su Xuan wanted him to come, but Ming Zhao refused.

Mingzhao personally handled the operation.

Wearing thick asbestos gloves, she carefully opened the valve of the liquid nitrogen tank.

A chilling white mist instantly erupted, causing the temperature in the cubicle to plummet, and even breathing produced white vapor.

The icy liquid nitrogen flowed through the tube and into the homemade brass cavity. A thick layer of white frost quickly condensed on the outer wall of the copper tube, producing a slight crackling sound.

Mingzhao's spirit was highly concentrated, like the most precise temperature sensor and stress detector enveloping the entire device.

She needs to precisely control the flow rate of liquid nitrogen and the pressure inside the cavity to prevent a cold explosion.

At the same time, mental energy must guide the remaining gas molecules within the cavity, creating a weak field constraint at the microscopic level.

Minimize the interference of thermal motion on photon signals!

This requires Mingzhao to be completely focused, like walking a tightrope over a bottomless abyss.

Sweat trickled down her forehead, instantly condensing into tiny ice crystals in the cold air.

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