Deep within the base, far from the roar of the wind tunnel and the rumble of the workshops, a heavy lead door isolates the outside world from the noise.

The materials laboratory behind the door is one of the core components of the project.

The air was thick with the pungent smell of chemical solvents, the burnt smell of high-temperature sintering, and a unique, indescribable odor mixed with dust from various metal oxides. The stark white light illuminated the makeshift cement test bench.

The table was cluttered with various crucibles, beakers, grinding bowls, and a heating furnace covered in scorch marks. Several old, peeling paint testing instruments emitted a low hum.

This is where the skins for stealth fighters were born, and it's also currently the biggest technological quagmire.

Sun, the head of the materials group, is a thin old man with gray hair and thick glasses. He is hunched over and carefully picking out a palm-sized, rough, black ceramic piece from a small sintering furnace with his hands covered in chemical burn marks.

The ceramic plate was covered with fine cracks, and the edges were even charred and curled. He placed it shakily on a simple RCS (radar cross section) test stand connected to an oscilloscope.

Buzz!

The test bench emitted a monotonous scanning sound. On the oscilloscope screen, the green waveform representing the radar echo fluctuated violently, with peaks far exceeding the adjacent baseline.

"The 127th time..."

Mr. Sun's voice was dry and hoarse, filled with exhaustion.

He took off his glasses and vigorously wiped the lenses with his sleeve, as if that would erase the glaring peaks on the screen.

"Ferrite substrate, with added chromium, manganese, molybdenum... sintering temperature 1150 degrees... results..."

He looked at the peak, shook his head with a wry smile, and the words he wanted to say stuck in his throat.

The RCS value is even higher than the benchmark! This means that this thing not only doesn't absorb radar waves, but actually acts like a radar signal amplifier!

Snap!

A young assistant next to him dropped an enamel mug, spilling warm water all over the floor.

His face was deathly pale, his eyes vacant: "Engineer Sun... what... what else can we try? We've tried every usable formula... we've long since run out of imported special graphite powder... the materials we can get domestically... that's all we have..."

His voice was choked with sobs.

The laboratory was deathly silent. The oppressive atmosphere weighed heavily on everyone's hearts, like a solid block of lead.

The corner was piled with failed samples of all shapes and sizes: cracked ceramic pieces, peeling coated panels, twisted metal mesh... silently telling the story of countless days and nights of futile struggle.

The stringent absorption specifications on the blueprints (absorption rate >99% in a specific frequency band) now seem like distant, unattainable stars hanging overhead.

---

The heavy lead door slid open silently.

Mingzhao walked in, followed by Wang Tiezhu and Zhang Mingyuan, whose expressions were still not very good.

She was escorted here on Zhang Meng's direct orders.

The shape problem was solved by the earthmoving machine tool. As long as the operation is carried out according to the values ​​that Mingzhao calibrated, there will be no problem.

But we must crack the tough nut of radar absorbing materials!

This was a death order Zhang Meng gave to Mingzhao: Success was the only option; failure was not an option!

There are many geniuses here; everyone is a genius. But currently, only Mingzhao possesses the exceptional speed in problem-solving and the forward-thinking mindset!

A talented person should be used as much as possible! This is Zhang Meng's principle.

The oppressive and despairing atmosphere in the laboratory was palpable.

When Sun saw them, especially Mingzhao, a faint glimmer of hope flashed in his cloudy eyes, only to be swallowed up by a deeper weariness.

He picked up the failed ceramic shard, handed it over, and said in a bitter voice, "Comrade Mingzhao...look, this is our latest sample...it still...doesn't work."

Mingzhao took the rough, cracked piece of black ceramic.

Unlike most people, her fingertips did not feel the roughness or temperature of the material. Instead, they moved with extreme subtlety, like the most sensitive sensors, gently brushing across the cracks and sensing the faint vibrations of the material's internal structure breaking.

At the same time, her gaze swept over the notebooks on the test bench, which were densely filled with various formula ratios, sintering temperature curves, and appalling test data.

She didn't ask about the process, nor did she look at Mr. Sun's exhausted face.

She walked straight to the oscilloscope that was still displaying towering peaks, calmly reached out, and began adjusting the knobs on it.

The operation alters the radar's transmission frequency and polarization.

"Hey! You..."

Sun Gong instinctively tried to stop him, but Zhang Mingyuan stopped him with a look.

On the oscilloscope screen, as Mingzhao made adjustments, the green waveform representing the echo intensity began to change strangely.

In a specific, extremely narrow high-frequency band, the waveform exhibited an extremely weak trough that was almost completely submerged in noise!

Although it's very faint, it definitely exists!

This tiny change was just noise to Sun Gong and the others, but Ming Zhao caught it precisely!

Her mental focus instantly locked onto a corner of the testing table, an open glass jar containing grayish-black powder.

That was coarse powder made from some kind of domestically produced natural magnetite, with a high impurity content. It was a filler that Mr. Sun and his colleagues had no choice but to add.

“This one,” Mingzhao said, pointing to the glass jar.

Engineer Sun was taken aback, then gave a wry smile: "That's... coarse magnetite powder, with too many impurities and uneven conductivity. We've tried it, and the results are very poor..."

Mingzhao ignored him and picked up a clean mortar and pestle from the side.

She scooped up a small spoonful of coarse magnetite powder and poured it in, then added with extreme precision trace amounts of several other seemingly unrelated metal oxide powders that Sun and his colleagues had long since abandoned, such as copper oxide and zinc oxide.

There was no weighing; it was all done by feel.

Then, she picked up the pestle and began to grind with a peculiar rhythm, with a specific tempo and force!

Tap...tap...tap...

The sound of the pestle striking the mortar was exceptionally clear in the quiet laboratory.

Her movements were slow, but each landing seemed to contain some kind of peculiar pattern.

As she ground the powder in the mortar, its color began to subtly change, gradually shifting from a grayish-black variegated color to a deep, uniform dark gray.

Wang Tiezhu stood at the door with his arms crossed, his face once again bearing that familiar, mocking expression, as if he were waiting to see someone make a fool of themselves.

"What a charade! Wave-absorbing materials are high-tech! Grinding by hand? Relying on intuition? If this thing works, I'll eat this mortar and pestle!"

Zhang Mingyuan also frowned, puzzled.

---

Mingzhao ignored the doubts and questions raised by those around him.

She ground the ink with focused concentration, as if performing some kind of sacred ritual.

A few minutes later, she stopped. The powder in the bowl had a uniform, dark gray color with a strange metallic sheen.

She poured the powder into a clean crucible and, without using a complicated sintering process, placed it directly into the old muffle furnace, setting a temperature that, in Sun's opinion, was ridiculously low and impossible to sinter into shape: 750 degrees Celsius.

"Nonsense! This temperature isn't even high enough to achieve ceramization!"

Mr. Sun exclaimed in disbelief.

Mingzhao did not explain.

She watched quietly as the temperature inside the furnace slowly rose.