Eastern Red 1 finally said: "What I've stored is just these summaries. The rest are some experimental data that probably require decoding to understand their underlying significance."

Zhou Yi replied: "This is of great importance to me, thank you for your trust."

Only then did he turn his attention to another satellite in the hospital ward.

Unlike the old satellites, Beiyouda 1's appearance is sleek and square, with an aluminum shell that has had a device resembling a compact router newly installed.

"This is an external transcoder."

703 explained: "The internal programs of Beiyouda 1 are highly interconnected; disturbing one affects the whole. Those data voters have become something like system files in the base layer, not easy to directly modify or relocate."

"So I used an external device for assistance. By converting to a specific encoding, it can bypass internal checks."

"Through the transcoder, it was possible to selectively screen and test each of the 1024 data voters inside one by one. Though slow, this is reliable. Eventually, it was confirmed that 128 data voters had their data hidden and tampered with, unaware that they had become vulnerabilities and informants left by Star Axis here."

"I've put them in quarantine, but I don't know how to modify them. Lacking the relevant technology and tools, I can only leave them idle for now. Fortunately, this does not affect Beiyouda 1, which no longer has backend vulnerabilities to attack, and it has now returned to a stable and normal state."

"That's good."

Zhou Yi looked towards Beiyouda 1: "Congratulations on your recovery."

The computing satellite replied: "Thank you for the company's rescue, enabling me to return to the correct orbit."

"After returning to United City, I will strive to open port channels, allowing data voters to freely migrate into my system."

"Although I do not have the ability to create and transform voters, the existing physical storage can accommodate up to 5000 voters. I will reorganize the sky constellation, committed to improving the living conditions of data voters, ensuring their life and data safety, and to provide more space solutions to terrestrial problems."

Zhou Yi was a bit surprised: "Aren't you afraid that Star Axis will trouble you again, planting vulnerabilities through data voters?"

"I'm not afraid."

"Now that I know the cause, I will carry out targeted defense and computations, and it won't be so easy to be infected and damaged again."

Beiyouda 1 said: "Although this has caused me a lot of trouble, the voters have become more united and mutually supportive after going through these events."

"It's not just my idea, but also their will and voice."

Zhou Yi nodded: "I wish you all the best."

The two repaired satellites were sent back to United City by Red Kestrel on Zhou Yi's command. They had not yet been equipped with flight devices—they were still unable to fly on their own.

For this repair, United City expressed their gratitude, and because the technical decryption was time-consuming and labor-intensive, Kunming Station gave an extra reward of 5000 Light Seeds.

As for Zhou Yi, he divided the money equally, giving 2500 each directly to both the hospital and the Program Department, to serve as their readily accessible discretionary funds.

...

In this cold winter, the craze for gliders was sweeping in all directions.

Yin Shang Company, along with the production hubs in Double River, Mechanical City, and Sand Port, produced simultaneously. The abundant manufacturing capabilities allowed this economical flying vehicle to be delivered on time to customers everywhere.

Above the Five Regions of the Development Alliance, gliders began to frequently soar, the internal aviation routes within the Alliance matured, and residents could freely travel between various locations.

Duke Destructive also established long-distance air routes, stretching west to Lord Dominator's Hundred Schools Plateau and northwards direct to Heaven Border's Pearl Island.

Relying on this low-cost, large-scale aerial vehicle, a large population began rapidly moving between these places, and the daily passenger volume for each route was steadily rising.

All of this was within Zhou Yi's expectations, but it came faster and more fiercely than anticipated.

He was currently more focused on the development and application of new glider models.

Based on the flywire material glider system, there are now three mature branches spreading out.

The first is the economical models focused on by the Sand Port headquarters, with two sizes, small and medium, confirmed for the manned gliders.

The small type is the past model that could accommodate a total of 5 people.

The medium-sized machine can carry 20 passengers, reaching up to 6 meters in length. From the outside, it already looks very similar to a small traditional airplane, it's just that the wings and fuselage are covered with added flywire to provide a hovering effect.

It's equipped with a Floating Heart for obtaining horizontal flight propulsion. It can reach up to 70 kilometers per hour, a 40% improvement over the small model, offering more comfortable seating, greater load capacity, and a correspondingly higher ticket price.

The medium-sized machines are responsible for long-distance flights.

The second branch of gliders is the luxury models developed by Sand Port.

The high-end market is being gradually pried open by Lord Sand Sea, who visits and meets with the leaders of various regions while riding their own Sand Port series luxury machines, essentially advertising the product.

Lord Sand Sea has also thoughtfully packaged the appearance of two Sand Port series models, coating machine 001 with a layer of gold powder that glistens in the sky, and painting machine 002 a bright red that is equally eye-catching.

Each time it arrives at a place, it would set off fireworks on the glider, drop gifts to the ground, write in the sky with smoke, invite commoners on board for dinner, and even offer a free three-day tour to Sand Port and so on, creating plenty of buzz.

Marketing has been clearly mastered by them.

And the effects are good.

Apart from a number of sea lords showing great interest in purchasing, the luxury machines have also become a hot topic of conversation, where everyone speculates on what Lord Sand Sea will do next in their appearances, generating high levels of heat and attention.

The third branch is the military models.

Duke Destructive has been proactively laying out and advancing this area for a while, investing a lot of funds and technical personnel in trial and error, which has greatly accelerated the development of military models—so much so that many aspects have surpassed civilian models.

It has entered into close cooperation with the company.

So far, three military drones have passed the tests and are already in operation on the field.

The first model is a reconnaissance glider.

This is also the most purely designed breed, prioritizing speed and maneuverability, being light and compact. Its main function is reconnaissance and collecting intelligence from various air domains.

The second model is an escort glider.

This type is based on an adapted flight style from gliders, slightly larger than reconnaissance drones, with E-D class high-speed cannons mounted on the nose, independently operated by the pilot. Its function is chasing off and escorting.

The third model is a fighter glider.

It is a purely offensive unit, operated by two pilots, and is currently the fastest among all models. It usually carries Light Imprint Cannons and Light Imprint Missiles, capable of direct strikes against air and ground targets, and is truly the main combatant within the gliders.

Reconnaissance gliders and guerrilla gliders are each equipped with one Floating Heart, while the fighter gliders have two, to maintain strong maneuverability.

Duke Destructive, drawing from his own combat experience, had General Bai Xing create many flying squadrons to patrol and scout everywhere, also providing escort for long voyages.

This can be considered a renowned strategy which also gained a lot of practical combat experience.

Zhou Yi also purchased the three types of models from Duke Destructive internally for the maintenance of reconnaissance and security in the Sand Port Region.

Thus, the glider configuration is largely established.

Everyone has only two choices.

Either to join, or to be left increasingly behind in the low-cost flying apparatus domain.

...

Just when everything was going smoothly for all parties involved, 703 reported some bad news.

"Chairman, the pilot results of the [Breathing] program have come out... they are poor."

"The company's mechanical employees generally reported that [Breathing] brings almost exclusively negative impacts, causing many difficulties in their daily work."

"Firstly, our Program Department."

The robotic dog said with some dejection: "When the little elephant was designing and constructing models, it had to interrupt due to the influence of the Breathing program. The program added streams of data associated with fear and hesitation, causing its efficiency to decrease significantly. It did not like this and was the first to dismantle it."

"No. 9 was originally quite fond of Breathing, as it had some compatibility with its Balancing Algorithm, both set for the sake of life safety. But upon verification, it discovered that Breathing added extensive calculations, which showed no effective results in the short term, only generating higher cycles of instability with substantial risks."

"So it also gave it up."

"Walker, on the other hand, did not want to uninstall Breathing. Its Human-Machine Mode is designed to simulate the pattern of flesh-and-blood life forms. In order to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of the program itself, it increased the frequency of the Breathing cycles, and recently experienced two near-death states."

"What's worrying is that it showed a tendency to be addicted to those near-death states, even wanting to accelerate and repeatedly experience them, in order to obtain data provided from death... For safety reasons, I stopped it and forcibly uninstalled the program."

703 said, "The situation is also not good with the Mechanical Bulls; they do not like the feeling of fear. They believe that being fearless is much better, allowing them to be more immersed in pure actions and operations. Most of them have uninstalled the program."

"Now, only Doctor Da Vinci, myself, and Red Kestrel, are still maintaining the operation of our own [Breathing]."

The Program Department was almost entirely wiped out.

It seems that Breathing was not as popular as family and key.

Zhou Yi asked it, "How do you feel? Did it stimulate creativity?"

"To be honest, neither Red Kestrel nor I felt it."

"Doctor Da Vinci did report back once, saying [Breathing] put it into an odd state of hyperload, under which it achieved a brand new perspective, unrestricted by existing data, and could produce many strange ideas. This was unprecedented."

"But the whole process only lasted 0.31 seconds."

703 replied, "I think, that might be the biggest problem. The positive feedback is too slow and too rare, leading everyone to calculate that giving up is the better choice."

Zhou Yi could only laugh helplessly: "That's the way it is. New things carry high uncertainties, and their benefits are difficult to quantify directly."

"Chairman, it's just that this makes the promotion of Breathing very difficult."

The robotic dog said, "Inside the Mechanical Knight Order, two rounds of testing have also been conducted, and the results were far worse than expected, with very few Mechanical Knights willing to continue using Breathing. The mechanical life forms using this program have also reported a large number of errors, causing them to fall into disarray."

"This is not a program that can be universally applied; it has a failure rate of 11.2%, with only 0.04% of users having experienced positive feedback, and 99.96% with negative feedback. This did not turn out as well as the original Laozi and Zhuang Zi had predicted."

"Chairman, perhaps the time is not yet ripe, and the Breathing program still has many defects; it might have been too rushed. Moreover, it will increase energy consumption by 21%, which is another objective difficulty..."

Zhou Yi contemplated for a moment: "No, keep going."

"Creativity is a precious and rare treasure, we should not give up even if there's a glimmer of chance. The company is willing to continue investing in this direction, any additional expenses of the Breathing program for our employees will be fully reimbursed by the company."

The formerly dejected 703 was then encouraged and immediately regained much of its spirit: "Yes, Chairman! You're right!"

"There is another matter... also not good news."

It hesitated: "Our [key] has been targeted and hacked."

"404 City has developed a brand-new program weapon [Law], causing strong constraints and restrictions to [key]..."

Zhou Yi's gaze sharpened.

404 City had finally made a move.

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