His lips trembled slightly as he murmured to himself, his voice dry and hoarse, like sandpaper scraping:

"The radar... is out of order..."

Raven's final report, filled with fear and frustration, echoed clearly through the encrypted channel in the deathly silent command center:

"Mission M abandoned! Utter failure! Repeat, utter failure! The Ghost... it's real! It's invisible! And it... it took our picture! We've been exposed! Abandon the operation!"

"They took our photos..."

These words were like the last straw, breaking all the remaining arrogance and composure in the command center.

The technical supervisor stared at the screen filled with reports of "system normal," his hands trembling uncontrollably, cold sweat streaming down his forehead.

The intelligence analysts were pale and their eyes were vacant.

Several high-ranking officers, some with general ranks on their shoulders, were deathly pale, their lips tightly pressed together, their eyes filled with a profound shock as if their faith had collapsed and a deep-seated fear of the unknown power.

The reports of "raven" and "crow" can be interpreted as panic, while "vulture" might be a hallucination caused by a mental breakdown...

But the radars of three state-of-the-art fighter jets simultaneously went "blind"?

Is the radar image of the F-15 "Vulture" rolling out of control clearly recorded? And what about "Raven's" last words?

The chain of logic was utterly shattered. The only explanation left was that word they once scoffed at, but now felt as real as a nightmare: ghost!

A chilling, unprecedented sense of dread spread like a plague through the command center.

It is no longer the fear of a certain weapon, but the fear of an unknown force that completely subverts cognition and crushes the existing technological system!

It is the fear of having one's myth of absolute air supremacy ruthlessly shattered!

China?

How could they possess such technology?

The commander stiffly raised his hand, and with all his might, issued a final order to the communications officer, his voice hoarse and heavy:

"Notify 'Raven' and 'Crow'... to return directly to the home base. Order 'Vulture'... to make an emergency landing in Okinawa and undergo... a comprehensive psychological and physiological evaluation. All data from this 'Falcon' operation... must be sealed at the highest level. No one may access or discuss this data without my direct order."

After giving the order, he seemed to have all his strength drained away, and slumped down in the large command chair.

His gaze was fixed blankly on the three dots on the screen that represented a humiliating defeat, and the "radar clean zone" that symbolized absolute technological superiority and filled him with despair.

Beneath the command center's massive dome, only the faint hum of the operating equipment and a deathly silence, like that of a tomb, remained. The Stars and Stripes hung limply in the silent airflow of the air conditioners.

At the alternate landing site of the "Xuanying" base, the towering flames and thick smoke had been suppressed by the powerful water hoses of the fire trucks.

The twisted and deformed wreckage of the "Shadow" lay like a giant steel corpse on the wasteland at the end of the runway, belly up, wings broken off, the rear of the engine compartment charred black, still emitting wisps of smoke. The pungent smell of burning fuel and aviation fuel filled the air.

Rescue workers are frantically tearing at the severely deformed canopy with hydraulic shears and cutting tools.

Ignoring the firefighters' attempts to stop them, Zhang Meng, Su Xuan, Wang Tiezhu, and others stumbled and rushed to the wreckage, their faces covered in soot, tears, and endless anxiety.

"Old Zhao! Zhao Weiguo! You fucking hang in there!"

Zhang Meng roared hoarsely, futilely pounding on the scorching hot outer shell of the machine with his hands.

Mingzhao stood a little further away, the firelight casting flickering shadows on her serene face.

Instead of rushing towards the wreckage, she turned her gaze to a special engineering vehicle that had just come to a stop.

Several technical officers jumped out of the vehicle, carrying emergency data recording and downloading equipment with anti-magnetic shielding.

Their targets were the relatively intact black box beneath the nose of the "Shadow," which contained all flight data and the most crucial reconnaissance images, as well as the storage core of the specially designed reconnaissance pod under the fuselage.

Jiang Feng stood like an iron tower between the construction vehicles and the wreckage, directing security personnel to quickly set up a cordon, isolating all non-core technical personnel.

His gaze was sharp as an eagle's, sweeping over the chaotic scene and everyone who approached, including the base personnel whose faces were filled with grief and concern.

His earpiece was playing the initial report from his colleagues in the interrogation room:

"Captain Jiang, 'Mole' Zhao Youfu has broken down emotionally and has begun to reveal some of his contact information, but the core intelligence source and transmission chain have not yet been broken through. A specially made encrypted USB drive was found in his personal belongings, physically isolated, and we are trying to crack it."

Flames flickered, illuminating the wreckage, the anxious crowd, the cold and stern Ming Zhao, and Jiang Feng's rock-solid figure behind the cordon.

Screams of desperate attempts to save lives, the sizzling sound of metal cooling, the flashing indicator lights of the equipment downloading data…

Mixed together, they form a tragic and chaotic post-war scene. And deep within the twisted wreckage of the "Shadow," the data core storing irrefutable evidence of the "face-to-face" SR-71 awaits its final judgment.