137: Chapter 138. 1.5 Billion US Dollars Poured into the Ancient Land of Jiangnan! Heavy Machinery Flattens the Deep Mountains

The sultry heat of early summer was barely suppressed by the old vertical air conditioner inside the temporary worker shed.

As the yellowing fan blades swept the air, they emitted a dry, humming noise.

A full week of extreme data deduction.

The work shed was permeated with the stale scent of black coffee mixed with printer toner.

Spread out on the large plywood table were three oversized survey maps covered in dense contour lines and geological color blocks.

"The granite bedrock in the hinterland of the Qinling Mountains is indeed perfect."

Shen Du's eyes were filled with fine bloodshot lines.

He reached out to undo the top two buttons of his shirt, his rough fingertips pressing heavily onto the dark brown area of the first map:

"But look at the curvature of these provincial roads leading into the mountains. Once the factory is built, the seventeen-meter ultra-long heavy flatbed trucks coming in and out at high frequency later on simply won't be able to negotiate these hairpin mountain turns. Logistics efficiency is a dead end."

The German chief engineer standing to the side nodded silently and crisply pulled away the Qinling map, revealing the karst topography map of Qiannan, Guizhou, underneath.

"The natural depressions in Qiannan, surrounded by mountains, can perfectly shield against high-altitude wind shear and low-frequency vibrations."

The German expert tapped the paper with his knuckles, his tone conveying the rigor typical of a German:

"But the fatal flaw is water. The local surface is extremely water-scarce. To maintain the massive throughput required for the cleanrooms and cooling arrays, we would have to use directional blasting to tap into underground rivers. Not only is the engineering workload ridiculously large, but the pulse-like fluctuations in the water quality and pressure of the underground rivers would be a disastrous test of the filtration system's redundancy."

Two excellent physical havens were rejected one after another by the logic of industrial logistics.

Shen Du said nothing; his gaze shifted directly downward, landing on the survey map of the East China region at the very bottom.

"Western Zhejiang mountains, the foothills of Tianmu Mountain."

The German expert picked up a special red marker and drew a heavy circle on the map:

"Geologically, it is the oldest 'Jiangnan Ancient Land.' This crustal plate ceased violent movement hundreds of millions of years ago. It completely avoids all active seismic fault zones in the country."

He pushed a stack of rock core compression reports that still smelled of damp earth toward Shen Du:

"Although the topsoil layer is over thirty meters deep, as long as we use heavy pile drivers to punch through it, underneath lies an extremely hard igneous rock formation that has been connected as a single piece and hasn't shifted in hundreds of millions of years. As long as the machine tool's vibration-damping base is anchored directly into this layer of rock, the anti-resonance effect will be no less than that of the Qinling Mountains."

Shen Du's gaze followed the red circle in Western Zhejiang, moving rapidly northeast along the thick white lines of the highway on the map, finally resting on the Yangshan Deep-Water Port in Shanghai hundreds of kilometers away.

The distance was close enough, and the road network was solid enough. Once the special heavy equipment shipped from overseas arrived and was offloaded onto heavy-duty low-bed special vehicles, it could get on the highway overnight and drive straight into the heart of the deep mountains without any obstacles in less than six hours.

Shen Du reached out and grabbed the red marker from the table, his wrist exerting sudden force. The thick, hard tip of the marker made a heavy stroke across the contour lines of the Western Zhejiang mountains. Because of the excessive force, the tip left a deep indentation on the paper, even seeping out a few drops of scarlet ink.

There was no hesitation. The very second the German chief engineer signed his name on the geological survey conclusion, Shen Du pulled out his black encrypted phone.

After a brief busy signal, the overseas call connected. Shen Du gave only one crisp business instruction: "Activate Plan One; inject funds into the Western Zhejiang project."

Far overseas, Hong Yun, who controlled the top-secret offshore accounts, did not hesitate. Within a mere four hours, the massive initial reclamation capital of 1.5 billion USD transformed into strings of cold, massive data, passing through complex cross-border clearing channels and slamming without reservation into this Jiangnan Ancient Land.

With this terrifying cash flow equivalent to nearly ten billion RMB paving the way, those top-tier construction teams that had originally been deterred by the rugged mountain roads and complex geology instantly erupted with hair-raising execution.

In less than three days, hundreds upon hundreds of heavy diesel bulldozers and dump trucks, belching thick black exhaust, tore through the tranquility of the deep Western Zhejiang mountains like a flood of steel.

Hundreds of heavy hydraulic pile drivers worked in shifts, day and night, with the dull sound of hammering incessant. Countless special explosives were used in conjunction with excavation machinery, and in the most brutal physical manner, they forcibly leveled that remote highland, aiming straight at the extremely hard igneous rock layer dozens of meters underground.

Meanwhile, in the Shanghai Municipal Committee office, Secretary Shen Hai sat behind a large mahogany desk, holding a newly delivered "Western Zhejiang Infrastructure Progress Briefing."

Looking at the high-definition aerial photo attached to the briefing, showing the massive foundation pit that had been completely leveled by heavy machinery and where special alloy anti-seismic steel columns were already being driven into the ground, Secretary Shen Hai's back, which had been tense for months, finally leaned slowly against the chair.

As an extension of the high-level vision, the underlying strategic logic in Secretary Shen Hai's mind was cold and clear. Even if the country in 2012 could not yet produce a single top-tier architecture design company capable of truly competing with the West, and even if the blueprints for high-end chips were still lagging behind.

But as long as the heaviest and hardest part of the semiconductor supply chain—the physical manufacturing base—was firmly cast with heavy capital onto their own land, then the domestic semiconductor industry would effectively have a fallback blood pool whose physical neck could not be strangled.

Even if the road to catching up in the future was slow, the industry generation gap would absolutely no longer be unilaterally widened indefinitely by the West.

Secretary Shen Hai reached out to pick up the cup of strong tea beside him that had already gone cold. He didn't mind the slightly bitter taste, tilted his head back, and drained the tea in one gulp. Then, he steadily placed the celadon teacup back onto the mahogany coaster on the desk.

After arranging the reclamation matters in the Western Zhejiang mountains, Shen Du rushed back to the Jiyuan Technology headquarters in Shanghai overnight. Inside the president's office.

General Manager Chen Shengqiang stood before the large desk, his hands gripping a freshly printed spring quarterly financial report summary tightly. Because his hands were exerting too much force, his slightly rough knuckles were squeezed white.

"Mr. Shen, this is the financial flow for Xinghuo Software for April." General Manager Chen Shengqiang handed the folder forward, trying his best to suppress the surging emotions in his chest. But the voice he emitted still uncontrollably carried a trace of trembling.

Shen Du reached out to take the folder and opened it. In 2012, an era when 4G networks were just beginning to be tested and mobile data costs were still as expensive as gold.

Xinghuo Software, relying on the absolute traffic barrier it had built after spending massive bandwidth costs and fighting a bloody battle with the Beijing Capital Circle, finally ushered in a terrifying period of harvesting existing users.

The total revenue column at the bottom of the financial report was printed with a string of numbers with great visual impact: 1.8 billion.

The single-month revenue for April broke through 1.8 billion RMB. This meant that this super software, which combined social networking, live streaming, and Short Video into one, had smashed through the 60 million mark in average daily income for this month.