Legend of the Cyber Heroes
Chapter 207 - 207 127 Back Skill

207: Chapter 127: Back Skill 207: Chapter 127: Back Skill In the early days when “radar” technology had just emerged, clouds, fog, rain, and haze all caused a certain degree of echo interference to radars.

The electromagnetic waves emitted by the radar would be partially reflected, absorbed, or scattered by these elements, resulting in unstable results.

However, as technology progressed, radars became more precise, their emissions often confined to a very narrow band of frequencies, and interference could be filtered out through modulation techniques.

By the 21st century, apart from a small amount of meteorological radars that deliberately confined electromagnetic waves to specific bands, most radars were not affected by cloud and fog interference.

However, the essence of “fog” is water droplet aerosols that use air as a dispersant.

If these “particles” were replaced with metal flakes, then the situation would be quite different.

Water molecules have a rather limited range of electromagnetic wave frequencies they can absorb and reflect, but metals can interfere with most electromagnetic waves.

A less dense aerosol cluster may appear to a microwave radar to be not much different from a small flying object.

And such a moving object, not identified as friend or foe, is very likely to be automatically deemed as “enemy” and, hence, fired upon autonomously.

This is nothing but a waste of ammunition on the air, and it also prematurely reveals one’s position.

Balbo immediately closed his eyes and ordered his troops to disconnect the microwave radar from the fire control system and switch to sonar radar instead.

Most war chariots are equipped with both functionalities.

But soon, Balbo opened his eyes in anger, the “angry” red light flashing from his Prosthetic Eye—a built-in emotion expression mechanism.

Communication obstacles.

This time, Iron Dust was unlike the usual, not a dense mass but dispersed over a broad area.

Thus, it couldn’t perfectly isolate all electromagnetic-based communications and active probing as usual.

Under these circumstances, communications could still occasionally function, and active detection only increased the likelihood of encountering decoys.

Additionally, because of the low density of Iron Dust, it also lacked the ability to instantly cause short circuits and could not be ignited.

However, for a large military force, this would interfere severely with the command system.

Before Balbo could react further, sporadic gunfire and flickering lights came from the front.

“Too late…” Balbo turned to the technical officer, “When did you discover this?”

“The communication obstacle up front was reported ten minutes ago.

The technical team was checking other things then,” the technical officer stood at attention and said, “Half an hour ago, we triggered an EMP mine, so some suspected that might be the cause.

But when I noticed the spread of the communication obstacle, and that its speed was positively correlated with the wind speed, I tested with an electromagnet.”

Balbo nodded, “You did well.

The commendation order has been uploaded to the internal system of the Gene Bank-armed forces.

Soldier, you’ll receive better treatment when you get back.

Transfer the data to me.”

“Yes!” The technical officer, ecstatic, immediately pulled up the statistical results he had prepared earlier.

Balbo reviewed the extent and subsequent data of the communication obstacle, and quickly downloading more accurate data from nearby meteorological monitoring stations and meteorological satellites in the sky.

However, the download speed was very unstable, fluctuating between a few hundred bits and several GBs.

“The range is vast,” Balbo mused, “to achieve a density that could interfere with communications but still remain invisible to the naked eye, it would require dozens of tons of Iron Dust.”

“Dozens of tons…

How is that possible?

Ordinary Jianghu people only carry a few sets; at most one hundred kilograms.

The regular stockpile of Green Forest Stronghold is at most a few tons, and that’s for long-term use by hundreds of people,” Balbo thought.

“What on earth is happening ahead?”

The most likely suspect should be the target they were tracking, the Hero who had assassinated the Vice Captain of the Mona Knight Order.

He should be one of the few people with a purpose in dispersing Iron Dust.

However, this was somewhat difficult to believe.

“Widespread low-density Iron Dust” is actually a very old tactic.

The problem with it, though, is that it’s too antiquated.

This tactic originated before the Sublimation War.

In that era, the global logistics, financial systems, and information networks were highly integrated.

An experienced hacker could conceal themselves, parasitize the vast system, continuously siphon resources, weakening the enemy while strengthening themselves.

Now, the difficulty of doing so has increased significantly.

Protector management systems have more measures against Heroes.

Most Heroes are also physically separated from Protector logistics systems.

Even if a master of Internal Strength with extraordinary abilities concealed a batch of goods and sent it to the wrong region, there was no way to actually receive the goods.

All logistics nodes—large warehouses—were under the control of senior executives of the Gene Bank forces, and most were located inside massive structures.

Even if there were truly a batch of goods in the warehouse corner that a master of Internal had erased from past and future, a Hero couldn’t get their hands on it.

“Preparing dozens of tons of Iron Dust” wasn’t that difficult for a Hero in the past, but it’s not so simple now.

“Could there be a Green Forest Stronghold straight ahead?

After the Hero breached into the Green Forest Stronghold, he wiped out all the Green Forest, then used all the Green Forest Stronghold’s metal and energy reserves to produce Iron Dust.”

“If we don’t consider the lifespan of a 3D printer, then it would indeed be possible to prepare in time.”

The 3D printers manufactured Iron Dust at a rapid pace.

A fine powder was sprayed onto the baseplate, shaped with the help of a magnetic field, with crystals formed by sonic interference, and instantly heated by a laser.

If a Green Forest Stronghold didn’t consider its metal reserves, it could indeed produce a lot in a short period.

He checked the data.

There indeed was a region directly ahead that was suspected to be the territory where the “Dust Storm Ghost” of the Green Forest forces were stationed.

Their great stockade was likely located there.

This was a bit troublesome.

The government had not previously planned a cleanup of the “Dust Storm Ghost.” Therefore, the “suspected range” marked on the map was somewhat large.

To request a Heavenly Punishment for such a big area would be wasteful of ammunition, not to mention it could hinder the troop’s march.

If tactics were mishandled, it was possible that the real target could escape just like that.

As he was pondering this, a line of fire suddenly rose at the edge of the horizon.

Then there was a flash in the sky, like specks of stars.

Only seconds later, the sound of distant thunder followed.

“This is…” Balbo almost cursed out loud, “Who launched the medium to close-range multiple warhead missiles!

These are meant for combating fighter jets.”

……………………………………

Taking advantage of the flash, Xiang Shan clearly saw the distribution of the surrounding troops.

He also threw out all the remaining metal foil airplanes he had on hand.

It wasn’t just idle boasting.

In earlier years, Xiang Shan, along with a group of buddies, played with paper airplanes in the wind tunnels of the Russian Federation, so his understanding of paper airplanes was not trivial.

However, these metal foil airplanes were designed with the priority to “fly further”—after all, the environment this time was different from the usual venues, without the persistent updrafts caused by the residual high temperatures from explosions.

These paper airplanes didn’t much consider the problem of radar reflection cross-section.

But this time Xiang Shan wasn’t acting on a whim.

All the paper airplanes had a bullet-reflective spherical object dragging at their front, resembling a little glass bead.

This thing was called a “Longbo Lens,” a spherical, multifaceted refractive lens that could form two mutually refractive and infinitely enlarging images on either side of the lens.

Simply put, in radar’s eyes, this thing glittered like gold.

In the past, if stealth fighter jets needed to participate in air shows, parades, training, and such, they had to ensure detection by radar so that ground crew could plan and manage accordingly.

But many stealth jets had the problem that their stealth performance was too good, such that even with known flight paths, it was difficult for radar to lock onto them.

During these times, stealth jets would externally attach the Longbo Lens, amplifying their signals to ensure they were observed by friendly radars.

And with these paper airplanes carrying the device flying by, in the observation of those radars, they were roughly equivalent to a mid-size unmanned aerial drone, a small War Chariot, or a Martial Artist charging over.

It was naturally going to trigger a response.

“It looks like the density of the troops isn’t very high and is within an acceptable range.

Thanks to those Broadcasting Clients.

They truly did something meaningful.”

Xiang Shan was constantly simulating the movement of the Metal Aerosol Clusters in his mind.

He released a temporary wind direction and wind speed detection device and had been calculating for quite some time.

Moreover, all the metal aerosol slow-release bombs were deployed by him.

He knew all the initial values.

Long term precise simulation was indeed not possible, but short term was feasible.

“Some areas collided with Aerosol Clusters, but there was no sound of gunfire.

However, logically speaking, the search network shouldn’t have such large faults.

This suggests that there are troops in that area, and they have already separated the microwave radar from the fire control system.”

“But not every unit received the command.”

“Possibility one, one of their squads discovered the aerosol and then reported it.

Possibility two, the mid-level command system discovered the aerosol, then issued an order.”

“The units that were still firing at Aerosol Clusters after the ‘issuance of the command’ are temporarily disconnected from the command center.

At that time, there must have been a large Aerosol Cluster between them and the command center.”

“Thus, the possible location of the command center…”

An array of areas appeared in Xiang Shan’s mind.

And these areas kept shrinking…

shrinking…

Then, not far in front of Xiang Shan, there was the sound of an exchange of fire.

Xiang Shan crouched down.

It had begun.