Amidst the deafening cheers, Mingzhao swiftly closed the notebook.

In that instant, his sharp gaze, like a drawn sword, pierced through the noise and precisely locked onto Old Zhao in the center of the crowd.

The test pilot's furrowed brow and the silent word "tremor" were like a cold pebble thrown into her calm heart.

Instead of immediately stepping forward, she turned around and walked steadily towards the data analysis room against the flow of people heading towards the track.

She was silently shut out of the boiling joy, and an invisible, heavier pressure gathered around her.

Su Xuan was the first person to notice her unusual departure.

The excitement on his face had not yet faded when he saw Mingzhao's calm yet cold back, and his heart tightened suddenly.

He immediately squeezed through the crowd and quickly followed.

"Comrade Mingzhao? What happened? The maiden flight was a great success!"

His voice was tinged with the breathlessness of excitement.

“The data,” Ming Zhao said succinctly, without stopping. “Old Zhao reported an anomaly.”

"Abnormal?" Su Xuan's smile froze, and a chill ran down his spine.

Beneath the perfect facade of the maiden flight, was a crisis indeed lurking?

He asked no more questions and followed closely behind Mingzhao, rushing into the brightly lit data analysis room, where the atmosphere had suddenly changed.

Inside, several technicians were excitedly gathered around the newly printed thermal drawings, pointing and discussing the astonishing data on stealth performance.

Mingzhao's arrival was like a cold wind, bringing the noise to an abrupt halt.

"All data recorded by the sensors throughout the maiden flight will be retrieved immediately."

Her voice was not loud, but it carried an unquestionable authority: "Key points: structural stress of the airframe, vibration spectrum of the skin, sensor readings near the engine compartment, with the timeframe locked in the late transonic and level flight phases."

The technicians exchanged bewildered glances, realizing the seriousness of the problem from Ming Zhao's grave expression and Su Xuan's tense demeanor as he arrived shortly afterward.

Excitement was quickly replaced by focus, the sound of keyboard tapping filled the air, and the huge tape drive began to creak and groan as it rewound.

Academician Zhang Meng calmed the excited crowd and Lao Zhao, and also keenly noticed the absence of Ming Zhao and Su Xuan, as well as the subtle change in the atmosphere.

His heart sank. He handed over the remaining celebration arrangements to his deputy and strode towards the data analysis room. Wang Tiezhu hesitated for a moment, then followed with mixed feelings.

Jiang Feng stood guard outside the data analysis room like a rock, his sharp eyes scanning the surroundings, and no attempt to approach or spy could escape his notice.

The huge oscilloscope screen lit up, and colored curves representing signals from different sensors began to scroll.

Mingzhao pulled up a chair and sat down, leaning slightly forward, his gaze like the most precise probe, rapidly scanning the jumping waveforms and data streams.

Su Xuan and the other technicians stood behind her, holding their breath, their eyes following her fingertips as they occasionally touched a tiny ripple on the screen.

Time ticked by. Only the hum of the machines and the rustling of papers filled the analysis room.

Most of the curves on the screen were smooth and fluid, confirming the success of the maiden flight and the good basic condition of the aircraft.

However, when Mingzhao zoomed in on one of the waveforms representing a specific acceleration sensor in the middle of the machine and slowed down the playback speed, a barely perceptible but regular sawtooth-like fluctuation, like an undercurrent beneath a calm lake, became clearly visible.

“This is it.” Mingzhao’s fingertip pointed to the almost submerged anomaly on the waveform. “It’s in the transonic range, lasting about 12 seconds. It reappears in the later stage of level flight, at an altitude of about 1 meter, lasting longer and with a slightly increased amplitude.”

Su Xuan leaned close to the screen, almost touching it, to barely make out the extremely subtle fluctuations.

"Trembling? The frequency is extremely high!" His voice was filled with surprise and doubt. "It's almost imperceptible to the naked eye and conventional instruments... Old Zhao felt it with his body?"

"An excellent test pilot is the most sensitive sensor of a fighter jet."

Mingzhao's gaze never left the screen; his fingers flew across the slide rule beside it as he mentally calculated frequencies and possible nodes. "High-frequency, low-amplitude oscillations. The root cause..."

She retrieved the flight attitude, speed, altitude, control surface deflection, and engine parameters at the same moment and conducted a cross-comparison analysis.

Zhang Meng and Wang Tiezhu also came up behind her.

Zhang Meng looked at the abnormal waveform that needed to be magnified to see clearly, her expression grave.

Wang Tiezhu's eyes widened, his expression a complex mix of barely perceptible "I knew it" and, more than anything, worry about the unknown malfunction.

"It's not pneumatic separation."

Mingzhao ruled out the most dangerous option, his tone as calm as stating a theorem, "Weak correlation with control surface operation. Mismatched engine vibration frequency..."

Her fingertips eventually rested on a key connection node of the airframe model, near the rear of the engine compartment.

"Preliminary assessment: Structural resonance. At specific speeds and altitudes, weak excitation from airflow disturbances or specific engine operating conditions can stimulate the natural frequency of this local structure, resulting in high-frequency vibration."

"Structural resonance?"

Wang Tiezhu couldn't help but speak up, his tone tinged with doubt, "Our static tests and wind tunnel tests have both passed! The strength is sufficient! How could this be..."

"Sufficient strength does not mean perfect dynamic properties."

Mingzhao interrupted him, her gaze still fixed on the data and models. "Design precision, internal stress distribution of materials, microscopic deviations in manufacturing and assembly... any tiny factor, when amplified under specific conditions, can trigger local resonance. Just like even the strongest string will vibrate when plucked at a specific frequency."

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