122: Chapter 122 Jiang Chen: Okay, I'll sell you the "censored version".

In the underground laboratory, the air conditioning was running at full blast, yet the air was thick with a stifling heat that felt like it could roast a person alive.

Academician Chen Shuyin was hunched over the holographic console, her ten slender fingers typing so fast on the virtual keyboard they left afterimages. As she worked, the once-flawless structural diagram of the Photonic Chip on the screen was undergoing a somewhat terrifying "mutation."

"Jiang Chen, are you sure you want to do this?"

Academician Chen Shuyin paused, pushed up the glasses on the bridge of her nose, her cool, aloof eyes filled with disbelief. "This isn't just technical castration; this is basically… technical murder."

She pointed to the optical paths on the screen that she had just modified, her tone complex:

"I've turned the photonic circulation loop, originally meant for heat dissipation, into a dead loop. Once powered on for more than five minutes, the heat accumulated inside this chip will rise exponentially."

"By then, it won't be a chip anymore."

Academician Chen Shuyin turned her head to look at the man behind her, who was wearing a wicked grin while holding a bottle of cola:

"It will turn into a small electric stove with temperatures reaching eight hundred degrees."

"Are you sure the American scientists won't be able to tell?"

Jiang Chen took a sip of his cola, let out a loud burp, and looked completely nonchalant.

"Don't worry, Old Chen."

He walked over to the console and added two strokes to the complex diagram. "They won't be able to tell. Because their thinking is still stuck in the electronic age."

"In their understanding, chip heating is normal; the more heat it generates, the better the performance."

"And…"

Jiang Chen pointed to the material parameters in the core area of the diagram: "Here, let's add a little something extra for them."

Academician Chen Shuyin glanced at the spot he was pointing to, her brow instantly furrowing into a deep frown.

"You want to replace the core medium, 'Stardust Crystal,' with… the isotope 'Hafnium-178'?"

"You're crazy!"

The female academician's voice went up an octave. She stared at Jiang Chen as if he were a terrorist: "Although Hafnium-178 can conduct photons, it is extremely unstable! Furthermore, its reserves on Earth are incredibly low; it can only be extracted in tiny amounts from nuclear waste piles!"

"You want them to use this stuff to build a chip? How is that any different from telling them to find a needle in a haystack?"

"That's exactly the effect I want."

Jiang Chen shrugged, smiling like a fox that had just stolen a chicken: "Just think about it. They spend hundreds of billions of dollars to buy the blueprints, only to find out they don't have enough material."

"To extract even this little bit of material, they'll have to turn their nuclear waste piles upside down and scour the world for mines."

"By the time they finally manage to scrape together the materials and build the chip, the moment they turn it on…"

Jiang Chen made an explosion gesture: "Bang!"

"Isn't that process of going from hope to despair, and then from despair to complete breakdown, much more satisfying than just refusing them outright?"

Academician Chen Shuyin looked at the man before her.

She suddenly felt that her previous understanding of the term "unscrupulous merchant" was far too shallow.

This wasn't just an unscrupulous merchant; this was clearly someone trying to drag the American national destiny into the abyss!

"Not only that."

Jiang Chen clearly didn't think that was enough. He rubbed his chin, a flash of cunning, icy light in his eyes: "Hardware traps aren't enough; we need to lock them out on the software side, too."

"Old Chen, doesn't our 'Photonic Architecture' require a specific cloud protocol to run?"

"Yes," Academician Chen Shuyin nodded. "That's a safety valve set to prevent computing power overflow."

"Then that makes things easy."

Jiang Chen snapped his fingers, his tone becoming meaningful: "In the 108th layer of the logic code on the blueprints, add a 'Quantum Key' verification program for me."

"Set the address of the verification server to our West Suburb Base basement."

"Without this key, the chip is just a pretty glass brick. If anyone attempts to brute-force it…"

He looked at Academician Chen Shuyin, signaling her to finish.

Academician Chen Shuyin sighed, her fingers flying across the keyboard as she entered an extremely vicious low-level command: "If illegal decryption is detected, the chip will automatically execute a logic self-destruct and send a high-voltage pulse to all connected hardware devices."

"Simply put—it fries the motherboard."

As the last line of code was entered, a brand new, seemingly flawless, but actually trap-ridden "Special Edition Photonic Chip Blueprint" was generated on the screen.

It was like a poisonous rose with thorns. Gorgeous on the outside, enough to drive any technology-hungry nation crazy. But only the creators knew that every single thorn on this thing was coated in deadly poison.

"Done."

Academician Chen Shuyin packed the data and saved it onto a black encrypted hard drive. As she held the drive, she felt it burning her hands. Inside this small box wasn't just technology; it was the American national destiny for the next decade, along with the hair and blood pressure of countless scientists.

"Jiang Chen, honestly."

Academician Chen Shuyin looked at him, her eyes somewhat dazed. "This isn't a castrated version. This is basically a scam version."

"If this thing gets sold, aren't we going to end up in prison for life?"

"How can you call it a scam?"

Jiang Chen took the hard drive, tossed it in his hand, and looked completely righteous: "This is called a commercial game."

"The blueprints are real, the theory is feasible; as long as they can solve the material problem, solve the heat dissipation problem, and then purchase the key service from me, this chip will indeed work."

"It's not like I said I wouldn't provide after-sales support."

He walked to the door and turned back to wink at Academician Chen Shuyin: "As for whether they can discover these traps…"

"Old Chen, you have to remember."

"When a person wants something too badly, their IQ drops to zero."

"Greed will blind them."

"Especially when faced with the temptation of something that can let them 'return to their peak,' let alone traps—even if it's a mountain of blades or a sea of fire, they will jump in without hesitation."

With that, Jiang Chen shoved the hard drive into his pocket and strode out. His back looked carefree, his steps light.

Leaving Academician Chen Shuyin alone in the laboratory, staring at the screen full of "logic traps," shaking her head helplessly.

"This man…"

"Is truly rotten to the core."

"However…"

The corners of her mouth lifted slightly, and she pushed up her glasses, a glint of amusement flashing in her eyes that she herself hadn't even noticed: "This kind of bad… is actually quite intoxicating."