214: Chapter 215 The Fate of Great Powers and the Tragedy of Small Nations! The Favoritism of an Elderly Financial Group and the New Treaty of Spoils.

Facing this question from Shen Du, the septuagenarian head of the Korean chaebol unexpectedly showed no sign of being offended or angry.

On the contrary, the withered hands of Chairman Lee, which had been gripping his golden nanmu cane tightly, loosened slightly.

He looked at Shen Du, who was sitting composedly opposite him.

His chest rose and fell slightly, and a low, slightly hoarse chuckle, tinged with a sense of relief and self-mockery, escaped his throat.

"Mr. Shen, you started with a 'killer hand' capable of sweeping the entire board, yet you chose to pretend to the outside world that you were playing a terrible hand."

Chairman Lee shook his head, his cloudy yet sharp old eyes flickering with complex emotions: "Your ambition is far greater than I imagined."

Shen Du remained expressionless, not even lifting his eyelids, simply watching the old fox quietly, waiting for him to continue.

Chairman Lee leaned forward slightly. He directly threw out the cruel truth that he had analyzed over the past half-month in Shanghai, using the top-tier industrial insight of Samsung Group.

"The Cold Etching chips manufactured by Jiyuan Technology are indeed twice the physical size of those made with conventional processes. In the current semiconductor industry, where every manufacturer is pursuing extreme thinness and lightness, this should have been a fatal industrial flaw."

Chairman Lee's voice grew somewhat excited, carrying the technical fervor only a top hardware giant would possess: "But your process technology has broken physical common sense in a brutal way! Its power consumption and heat generation are shockingly low!"

"A chip twice the size sounds frightening. But in reality, the increase in area is merely the size of two little fingernails."

Chairman Lee professionally gestured in the air, hitting the nail on the head regarding the dimensionality reduction advantage: "Because it barely generates heat, when assembling terminal mobile phones or computers, we can completely abandon those space-consuming vapor chambers, copper pipes, and massive amounts of cooling materials!"

"With this increase and decrease, this so-called 'big chip' actually saves more internal space for batteries and motherboard configuration in terminal products!"

Chairman Lee stared fixedly at Shen Du, as if looking at a monster that had subverted an era: "Performance not only doesn't drop but rises, and it can maintain excellent stability in any extreme environment... Mr. Shen, in terms of hardware industrial design, this is simply an unreasonable dimensionality reduction massacre."

After analyzing this terrifying hardware dimensionality reduction advantage, the slightly fanatical, relieved smile on Chairman Lee's face receded rapidly like a tide.

He once again clasped his withered hands tightly over the dragon-head handle of his golden nanmu cane.

In those cloudy eyes, the fervor of a technician was instantly extinguished, leaving only the cold, sharp, and even somewhat crazy gambler's edge of the supreme leader of a multinational chaebol.

"Mr. Shen, I have already witnessed the miracle of hardware manufacturing with my own eyes in the laboratories in Korea."

Chairman Lee leaned forward slightly, his voice becoming low in his withered chest, as if afraid to disturb the air in this secret room: "But I risked the death penalty of being discovered by Wall Street today to come here by sea; it wasn't just to praise your craftsmanship."

He stared intently into Shen Du's bottomless eyes and threw out the question he most wanted to confirm, which was also the most fatal: "What supports the terrifying tens of millions of traffic for 'Starfire' and Meituan today is the massive server cluster you have built domestically."

"I mobilized all of Samsung's undercover channels overseas and checked all the shipping records of international customs and hardware oligarchs."

Chairman Lee's breathing became somewhat heavy, and his eyes flashed with extreme shock: "Your Jiyuan Technology has never purchased even a single core CPU from them."

Under the dim light of the secret room, this septuagenarian business tycoon enunciated every word, as if to nail each one into Shen Du's pupils: "Mr. Shen, I want you to give me the bottom line yourself. Are those server CPUs in your data centers, which are running at full speed day and night... completely reverse-engineered clones of the core architectures of Intel and NVIDIA?!"

In 2013, such an act of completely reverse-engineering and copying the underlying architectures of Western oligarchs was, in the face of the iron curtain of international commercial law and patent barriers, tantamount to courting death. It was a crazy, capital offense that could invite devastating sanctions at any time!

But there was no fear in Chairman Lee's eyes, only endless fervor.

"As long as you dare to nod and admit this heaven-defying feat..." Chairman Lee slammed the golden nanmu cane in his hand heavily against the blue brick floor, producing a dull, loud thud. He laid all his chips out on the table: "I, Lee, can give you the alliance answer you want right now!"

Facing this fatal question that, if exposed, would be enough to invite devastating sanctions from the Western world and even cause Jiyuan Technology to vanish into thin air in an instant, Shen Du's cold face showed not a ripple.

He did not show any panic at being exposed, nor was he in a hurry to give the answer of "yes" or "no."

Under Chairman Lee's extremely fanatical and tense gaze, Shen Du just slowly raised his hands, interlaced his fingers, and rested them steadily on the edge of the marble coffee table.

With an almost arrogant posture, he forcibly pressed the rhythm of the negotiation in this secret room, which was about to spiral out of control, firmly back into his own hands.

"I can answer this question for you."

Shen Du's deep eyes were as calm as an ancient well, his tone flat without a single fluctuation: "But before that, Chairman Lee, I also have a question that needs you to answer."

Chairman Lee's fingers gripping the cane tightened slightly. Clearly, he had not expected that on the verge of having his bottom card revealed, Shen Du could still so calmly exert counter-pressure. He did not speak, just stared at Shen Du, waiting for what was to come.

"Given Samsung's current international technical barriers and financial scale."

"You have already built a very deep moat in the fields of semiconductor storage and wafer foundry. As long as you proceed step by step, within ten years, Samsung will be able to become the true chip hegemon of this world."

Shen Du leaned forward slightly, questioning him with words like knives: "If that is the case, why would you, at this critical juncture, risk the death penalty of completely offending Wall Street and the entire Western technological alliance? Why would you sneak into Shanghai to go all-in for a technology whose background you haven't even fully investigated?"

A mocking arc curled at the corner of Shen Du's mouth, directly laying the bloody reality of the current gap in their international scale on the table: "After all, even if my Jiyuan Technology holds the etching machine, wanting to be completely on par with Samsung in terms of comprehensive strength in the international industrial chain... there is still a full ten-year time gap in between. What are you in such a rush for?"

The private room fell into a deathly silence; even the air seemed frozen by Shen Du's extremely sharp questioning.

Facing Shen Du's blood-letting interrogation, Chairman Lee, who was pressing his hands tightly on the dragon-head cane, did not get angry at this near-flaying analysis.

On the contrary, a bitter smile, tinged with endless vicissitudes and self-mockery, slowly appeared on his face, which was covered in age spots.

"Great powers have the destiny of great powers..." Chairman Lee's hoarse voice echoed in the dim secret room, carrying a heart-palpitating heaviness: "Small nations have the sorrow of small nations."

These simple fourteen characters were like a sharp scalpel. Held by this septuagenarian old man, they cruelly tore open the glossy, glamorous skin of the Samsung empire in the international arena.

"Mr. Shen, the outside world thinks that I, Lee, am the absolute dictator of Samsung, the uncrowned king controlling the entire economic lifeline of the peninsula. But in this capitalist world that only recognizes man-eating, what is the truth?"

Chairman Lee raised his cloudy eyes and stared fixedly at Shen Du, his eyes churning with extremely suppressed humiliation: "The truth is, more than fifty percent of the profits and dividends earned by Samsung Electronics internationally are all ruthlessly sucked away by Wall Street and European and American family chaebols, like leeches behind the scenes!"

His withered fingers trembled slightly from excessive force, and the cane made a dull grinding sound on the blue brick floor.

"On the surface, we are the infinitely glorious chip hegemon. But in secret, we are nothing more than puppets raised by Western capital in the Asia-Pacific region, used to do the hardest and most tiring work, exhausting our heart's blood to open up markets, and finally having to pay tribute to them on time!"

Chairman Lee's chest heaved violently twice, and his breathing became somewhat heavy. He lowered his head and glanced at his own withered, vein-covered hands. His tone revealed a sense of sorrow as the sun sets, and deep unwillingness.

"I am old. How many more years can these old bones block the wind and rain for them in this position?"

This chaebol leader, who had fought for a lifetime in the semiconductor meat grinder, suddenly raised his head. In those aged eyes, a ferocity like a beast's death-throes instantly erupted: "If I don't take this gamble now, when I close my eyes, my descendants, and even the future of the entire chaebol, will only be able to kneel on the ground for generations, serving as blood bags for those Europeans and Americans to draw blood from!"

"Therefore, I cannot wait those ten years."

Chairman Lee leaned forward, like a desperate gambler pushing his entire life's fortune onto the gambling table. Enunciating each word, he handed over his final bottom card to Shen Du: "Instead of waiting to be harvested on the chopping block by Wall Street while in the midst of precarious turmoil, it is better to break the chains in advance and bet my life... firmly on this Mount Tai of China, which is rising from the ground!"

"Mr. Shen, do you really think I ran all the way here, coveting those architecture technologies you've reverse-engineered now?"

After completely dissecting his bloodiest weak point, a sense of extreme clarity and coldness appeared on Chairman Lee's weather-beaten face. His withered fingers tightly gripped the dragon-head cane, and his voice struck firmly in the dim secret room: "Wrong."

"Backwardness in architecture, or technological gaps, that is always just a matter of time."

Chairman Lee stared fixedly at Shen Du, an unmasked, extreme desire erupting in the depths of his eyes: "What I want is not the gold you dug up at all. What I want is that ability in your hands to 'make shovels' that is completely unconstrained by any Western patent barriers and can walk unrivaled in the world!"

"It is that set of Cold Etching Machine, and the related underlying material purification technology!"

This old man who controlled the economic lifeline of the peninsula cruelly pierced the biggest lie in the global technology circle: "Without a shovel of one's own, even if I, Samsung, dig up more gold in the international market and occupy a larger share, in the end, I will always just be a bottom-tier tenant farmer who pays rent to the Wall Street landlord on time every month!"

"I do not hope that the Samsung empire I created with my own hands will be someone else's puppet for generations."

Chairman Lee took a deep breath of the cold air in the secret room, like a madman offering up his entire life's fortune, completing his final statement of the night: "So I chose to travel thousands of miles, taking a cargo ship, sneaking over like a stowaway. I want to get rid of Western control; I only want this shovel."

The private room fell into absolute silence. Only the faint sound of airflow came from the ventilation duct.

Shen Du sat opposite the marble coffee table, his deep gaze quietly watching the elderly man on the verge of death before him.

At this moment, he completely saw the determination of this chaebol leader to burn his bridges, and deeply understood the profound despair and sorrow of a peninsula nation that is constrained by others and limited in resources when facing the blood-sucking of Western capital.

After a full half-minute of silence, Shen Du slowly loosened his fingers, which had been interlaced and resting steadily on the edge of the coffee table: "I understand."

"I can give you the answer you want very clearly right now..."