213: Chapter 214 The Awakening of Insects: Traveling by Sea! The Old Master of Samsung

In the office of the Samsung Chairman, the encrypted fax machine emitted a low mechanical whirring sound.

Shen Du stepped forward and pulled out a top-secret briefing that had just been spat out.

There was only a short line of text on the paper; this was the confirmed intelligence sent back by Hong Yun using her highest-level overseas secret channel:

"March 6th, Awakening of Insects. Chairman Lee of Samsung has abandoned his private jet and will secretly arrive in Shanghai by sea."

Shen Du scanned it and casually stuffed the note into the shredder nearby, accompanied by the faint rustling sound of blades tearing through paper.

In the bottom drawer of the desk, that dedicated line began to vibrate violently without warning.

Shen Du pulled open the drawer, picked up the receiver, and held it to his ear.

"What a grand gesture."

As soon as the call connected, the voice of Secretary Shen Hai, the Municipal Party Secretary, came through, carrying a hint of undisguised amazement:

"To think you could trick the true Samsung Chairman into coming to Shanghai without anyone knowing. Forcing the head of a multinational conglomerate to abandon his private jet and choose to travel by boat just to avoid Western radar—in terms of this spectacle, you are the only one in the entire domestic business world."

Shen Du leaned back against the leather chair, his expression calm:

"He was the one anxious to see me. Taking the sea route is nothing more than a token of allegiance he offered to save his own life."

On the other end of the line, Secretary Shen Hai paused for a moment, his breathing rhythm even slowing down slightly.

"You've kept this so top-secret."

Secretary Shen Hai's voice became extremely serious, revealing a sharp, probing tone typical of high-level officials:

"Shen Du, give me the bottom line. Are you truly planning to engage in substantive, deep cooperation with this group of Korean conglomerates?"

Shen Du lifted his eyes, his gaze passing through the large floor-to-ceiling window and landing on a giant cargo ship slowly passing by on the Huangpu River.

"Of course."

Shen Du picked up a metal nail file from the desk with one hand, his thumb gently rubbing its rough edge. Without any concealment, he gave a direct, affirmative reply.

"Shen Du, do you know the weight of this?" Hearing Shen Du's extremely crisp and affirmative reply, Secretary Shen Hai's tone instantly grew heavier:

"Chip manufacturing is a vital national asset that affects the whole situation. You are holding the last trump card of the domestic semiconductor industry in your hands, and you want to share the core foundry capacity and technology with the Koreans? If they bite back, you're playing with fire!"

Facing the stern warning from Secretary Shen Hai's official perspective, Shen Du's expression remained unchanged.

"Secretary Shen, your calculation is wrong."

Shen Du stopped rubbing the nail file. His eyes, like bottomless ancient wells, coldly dissected the cruel truth of the current domestic semiconductor market:

"Right now, domestic semiconductor foundry is almost entirely monopolized by Jiyuan Technology. Eating alone like this can make us wealthy in the short term, but it has already touched the sensitive nerves of international giants."

"Sooner or later, those Western oligarchs will set their sights on Jiyuan Technology. When that time comes, sanctions, supply cuts, and comprehensive blockades will rain down on us like a torrential downpour."

Secretary Shen Hai fell silent on the other end of the line, for he knew that what Shen Du said was the naked reality.

"What we lack now is not technology or capital." Shen Du leaned forward slightly, his tone revealing a sense of determination to burn his bridges:

"What we lack most now is time!"

"Before Li Jianfeng and his team can achieve autonomous mass production of all specialty gases and precision equipment and complete thorough domestic substitution, we need a lot of time to incubate. And during this period, if we want to continue doing international business, if we want to continuously earn US dollars from overseas to fund our R&D..."

A dangerous glint flashed in Shen Du's eyes as he threw out his true strategic plan:

"We must have an international force like Samsung to act as a white glove! As long as we tie them to our war chariot, even if Jiyuan Technology is sanctioned by the West, we can still use Samsung's shell and their massive global distribution channels to continuously sell our foundry chips to the whole world!"

"I am not selling out a vital national asset." Shen Du's voice was cold and resolute:

"I am using the Korean foundation to buy us the final time gap we need to develop."

On the other end of the line, Secretary Shen Hai remained silent for a long time. After a full half-minute, a long, heavy sigh came from the receiver.

As a high-ranking official who had drifted in the political seas for many years, how could he not understand the grand layout and dangerous calculations behind Shen Du's "borrowing a shell to go overseas, crossing the border in secret" strategy?

This was not just business. This was using capital as a means to forcibly tear open a path to survival through the iron curtain of international blockade.

"What a brilliant 'openly build the plank road, secretly cross the Chencang' maneuver." In Secretary Shen Hai's voice, the previous stern probing and defensiveness had completely vanished, leaving only heavy trust:

"Since you have already calculated this great game to this point and decided to borrow their shell, then I will never become an obstacle for you."

Secretary Shen Hai paused, his tone becoming extremely solemn as he directly revealed the official side's most solid trump card:

"Go ahead and do it. Starting tomorrow, the Municipal Party Committee will initiate the highest-level security and political-business separation plan. No matter how deep this cooperation with Korea goes, as long as it does not cross national bottom lines, the authorities will fully cooperate with you and provide you with the most absolute green light cover."

"Thank you." A faint curve finally appeared at the corner of Shen Du's mouth.

"Shen Du..." Just before hanging up the phone, Secretary Shen Hai suddenly called out to him, his voice revealing a hint of an elder's expectations and deep emotion:

"For so many years, no company in the country has been able to truly gain a firm foothold at the international semiconductor gaming table. Those companies that touted themselves as the 'Light of the Nation' all had their backbones broken by foreign capital in the end."

Secretary Shen Hai's voice was slightly hoarse:

"I hope your choice this time is not wrong. I am waiting to see the day you completely overturn the table of those Western oligarchs."

"Click." The busy signal of the disconnected call rang in the office. Shen Du placed the phone back on its cradle and looked out the window. With this indestructible ultimate shield from the authorities, he was now completely invincible in this king-versus-king battle of the Asian semiconductor industry.

March 26th. Deep underground in Shanghai, inside a secret private room at the Yonglu "Tingquan Water Pavilion". The blue smoke of incense rose straight up in the absolute silence of the air.

Chairman Lee, the top leader of Samsung, sat alone at the yellow pear wood tea table. He held a cup of tea that had long since gone cold with both hands, his knuckles turning bloodless and pale from the force.

It had been a full half-month since the day of the Awakening of Insects, when he abandoned his private jet and secretly sneaked into Shanghai by sea. In these fifteen days of on-the-ground secret investigation, the capitalist arrogance that this conglomerate leader, who controlled half of the Asian semiconductor industry, was so proud of, had been crushed layer by layer.

Before coming to China, the technical team at Samsung headquarters was unanimously certain that Jiyuan Technology had at most achieved some accidental technological breakthrough in the packaging of low-end home appliance chips. But when Chairman Lee, through underground channels, personally obtained the actual test data for Jiyuan Technology's latest batch of memory and solid-state storage chips, his understanding was forcibly overturned.

That extremely high yield rate, which almost defied the laws of semiconductor physics, and the ultra-low power consumption that formed an absolute suppression of international mainstream products, were not some clever foundry tricks, but solid, bottom-level process crushing!

But what really made him feel like falling into an ice cellar, making even his fingertips tremble, was another piece of top-secret intelligence urgently sent from the Seoul headquarters last night.

Chairman Lee slowly placed the cold tea on the marble tabletop. Because of the uncontrollable trembling of his wrist, the tea rippled with fine, tiny waves at the rim of the cup.

The intelligence showed that to support the terrifying traffic of its "Spark" and Meituan platforms, Jiyuan Technology had already built the largest super-server cluster currently in the country. However, on the shipping ledgers of global hardware oligarchs like Intel and NVIDIA, Jiyuan Technology's procurement record was a glaring "zero"!

Tens of thousands of high-intensity concurrent computing server nodes—they had never purchased a single core chip from outside. How were they running? A suffocating answer gripped Chairman Lee's throat tightly.

Jiyuan Technology had not only created a cross-generational foundry process, but this bottomless monster had actually, right under the noses of Western capital, secretly hand-crafted a top-tier server underlying architecture capable of perfectly replacing the Western monopoly!

Faced with this cruel deduction, the conglomerate confidence that Chairman Lee was so proud of, and the last shred of arrogance belonging to foreign capital, were completely ground into dust.

He finally understood that the person he was facing sitting here today was not a foundry boss waiting for handouts of external distribution channels, but a technological tyrant capable of overturning the entire Silicon Valley table and reshuffling the global semiconductor order at any moment.

If Samsung could not be completely tied to this war chariot today, once the technological barriers that the West was so proud of were completely crushed by Jiyuan Technology's dimensionality-reduction products, Samsung would not even have the qualification to be cannon fodder in the future.

Inside the private room, all was silent. Even the faint peeling sound of the sandalwood incense burning in the corner was clearly audible at this moment.

"Click." A dull, metallic sound of a mechanism abruptly broke the dead silence. The twenty-centimeter-thick, military-grade anti-eavesdropping shielded door slowly slid open to both sides.

Chairman Lee's muscles tightened abruptly, and he subconsciously straightened his back. His bloodshot eyes stared fixedly at the gradually opening crack in the door, his breathing almost completely stopping at this instant.

Outside the door, there were no entourages of secretaries, nor were there any fully armed bodyguards in black. There was only Shen Du.

He was wearing a dark suit with a minimalist cut, one hand in his trouser pocket. With steady steps and without any hesitation, he crossed the threshold of the private room.

In this dark, secret room isolated from the outside world, this young hero who controlled the future lifeline of China's semiconductor industry and the Samsung Chairman who controlled half of the Asia-Pacific industrial chain, their gazes collided heavily without any evasion.

Shen Du stopped, looking down at the old man behind the tea table whose hands were trembling slightly from tension. He pulled his hand out of his pocket, pulled out the yellow pear wood chair opposite, and sat down directly.

Shen Du's deep gaze crossed the cold, leftover tea on the table, piercing straight into the other man's eyes, his tone calm:

"Chairman Lee, have you verified the bargaining chips in my hand?"