The world blazed into light.
An endless sea of clouds drifted beneath the heavens.
A mirror of sky, vast as mist!
Wang Yixue's beautiful eyes snapped wide.
They sparkled.
She felt she'd stepped into a fairy realm.
The holographic helmet's visuals were so vivid it felt as if she herself stood atop the clouds.
Her mind reeled, thrilled beyond words.
Much of the fear inside her melted away.
Wang Yixue gripped the control sticks on either side.
Calming down, she tried to regain command of the still-out-of-control jiangtian no. 1.
Just then—
a passenger jet appeared in the distance.
Its tail bore the Little Sun Country flag.
Captain Kotori Tarou set the plane to autopilot and dozed in his seat.
"ALERT!"
"ALERT!"
"..."
A shrill alarm blared.
Kotori jerked upright.
If not for his seatbelt he'd have smashed through the windshield.
He looked around in panic.
Beside him the co-pilot wore the exact expression of a kid caught by the teacher—pure fright.
"What's happening?"
Kotori swept his gaze until, through the windshield, he spotted a tiny red dot below.
The dot swelled fast, shooting straight up through the clouds.
A dark-red mech burst into view.
Four vectoring thrusters on its back spat blue flame, a conical shock cone trailing as it rocketed toward space.
The airliner shook violently.
They were so close—almost colliding.
A sound like tearing space threatened to rip the plane apart.
"N…nani?"
"Majika???"
"Someone slap me—I must still be dreaming!"
"Captain Kotori, the thing is—I don't think I'm awake either!!"
Kotori and the co-pilot gaped, eyes nearly falling out.
It was beyond belief.
Far beyond their wildest imagination.
Inside the cabin passengers panicked; only a handful glimpsed a red shape streak past.
Some terrified ones screamed,
"flying saucer—it's a flying saucer!"
"Yamete!!"
"Chotto matte!!!"
Cries rose and fell, chaos aboard.
Yet after the brief encounter the plane quickly steadied.
Kotori, still shaken, slumped in his seat, gasping.
His hands on the yoke trembled nonstop.
Only after a long while did he draw a steady breath.
"Quick—report it!"
"The Jiaopengji liner was attacked by a Gundam while transiting Xia airspace!"
"Fortunately I, Kotori Tarou, kept my cool and averted disaster."
The co-pilot's mouth twitched.
He subtly glanced at Kotori's soaked crotch.
baka—shameless to the core, he thought.
…Zhonghai City Military Research Base.
In Briefing Hall No. 1 the air was heavy.
Old Man Wang and Old Man Hua both wore thunderous faces.
Tong Yao—the computer prodigy—had led dozens of comms and coding experts, yet they couldn't crack the app on Wang Yixue's phone.
They couldn't even port or reinstall it.
The national team stumped by something so trivial—laughable.
Under the two elders' murderous stares Tong Yao felt grievously wronged.
The deeper she parsed the code, the more alarmed she became.
It wasn't any code they knew.
Incomprehensible.
Not a conventional programming language at all!
Tong Yao began doubting her "genius" title.
Whoever wrote this app had surpassed global standards by at least tenfold.
If she could meet the developer—even death would be worth it.
Old Man Wang, seeing the experts fail again, sighed,
"Forget it—mirror the phone to the briefing screen."
Just then Old Man Hua stepped over,
"My notice says the military satellite is in position—ready to patch in."
Tong Yao caught his meaning; her jade fingers danced across the keyboard.
Lines of code streamed by.
On the briefing-hall screen a caption appeared.
Everyone's hearts leapt to their throats as they stared at the tiny line.
[Tianshu satellite link connecting…]
Old Man Hua patted Old Man Wang's shoulder.
A silent promise: whatever happens, I'm here.
Old Man Hua knew.
Per the mech's last synced data,
pilot Wang Yixue—Old Man Wang's granddaughter—was almost certainly lost.
Hull temp over 200 °C; without heat tiles even the best coating would leave the cockpit at 100 °C!
He'd seen the mech himself—no insulation at all.
How could the pilot survive?
And the temperature had still been soaring.
Once the feed connected they might see Yixue's face baked beyond recognition.
Old Man Wang knew it too—
better than anyone—yet dared not show it.
In Earth's atmosphere
jiangtian no. 1 tore forward.
Friction blazed the frame red-hot, yet it held firm.
No matter how Yixue wrestled the controls she could only nudge its attitude slightly.
Speed stayed relentless.
HUD read: hull temp 501 °C, Mach 5.
The mech had left the mesosphere—closing on low-Earth orbit.
Fear ebbed, but she knew: at this rate she'd die in space.
She yanked off the helmet and groped the cockpit for an emergency-stop button.
Nothing.
She sighed,
"A cutting-edge mech without even an AI assistant?