704: Chapter 699 Are they really going to give us a holiday?

[Execution Difficulty: Extremely High. Richter has an eccentric personality, hates all capitalists, and refuses any commercial cooperation. Ordinary financial incentives are ineffective against him.]

[Key Entry Point: Richter's only granddaughter, Emma Richter, is a cellist. She is currently worried about the repair costs for a 1711 Stradivarius cello named "di ke na".]

[Solution Two: A Legacy Across Time and Space]

[Item: ASML-3 spare core control units, brand new, three units in total.]

[Location: Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, Japan; Tanaka Industrial History Museum.]

[Holder: Tanaka Kenji, 89 years old, retired chairman of the Japanese industrial giant Tanaka Heavy Industries, and a fanatical collector of industrial failures. He believes these failed masterpieces embody the romance of human engineering better than successful products.]

[Execution Difficulty: High. Tanaka Kenji never sells any of his collection. To obtain spare parts from him, one must trade a "collectible" he cannot refuse.]

[Key Entry Point: Tanaka Kenji's greatest regret in life is failing to collect the original design blueprints for the attitude control engine of the Soviet "Buran" space shuttle.]

[Solution Three: Phoenix Nirvana]

[Organization: Cyber Blacksmith Laboratory, located in Tel Aviv, Israel.]

[Technology: This laboratory is composed of several top hackers and Engineers from former Mossad Technology Departments. They are dedicated to performing "soul transplants" on old precision industrial machine tools using modern AI control systems.]

[Project Code Name: "Project Lazarus". They have successfully revived a vintage Switzerland-made jig boring machine and a Swedish precision grinder, with performance even exceeding the originals.]

[Execution Difficulty: Extremely High. The organization operates secretively and never actively contacts the outside world. They only accept technical challenges from "peers" and take pleasure in it.]

[Key Entry Point: The laboratory's founder, code-named "Prophet," is currently attempting to crack a quantum encryption algorithm called "Nine-Square Grid," but has hit a bottleneck.]

Three paths.

Each led to a completely different country.

Each faced an eccentric individual with a vastly different personality.

Each one looked like an impossible mission.

An ordinary person receiving this intelligence would likely only feel deeper despair.

But a slight curve slowly formed at the corners of Shen Yan's mouth.

A dead end?

No.

This was clearly a grand gift from the system.

Creators, collectors, hacker geniuses...

These people, these technologies, these channels—their value far exceeded that of the printer itself.

Why choose just one of the three?

Shen Yan opened his eyes, which were filled with a bottomless calm.

He pushed open the office door and walked up to a worried-looking Wu Ya.

When Wu Ya saw him come out, she immediately went to meet him.

"President Shen, how is it? Do you... do you have any ideas?"

She asked cautiously, though in truth, she no longer held any hope.

Shen Yan did not answer her directly.

He took out his phone and dialed Chen Guangke's number.

"Guang Ke, do three things for me."

Chen Guangke was clearly stunned for a moment on the other end of the line, but he immediately replied, "Yan Zi, go ahead."

"First, use Ning Ke's connections to look up a 1711 Stradivarius cello called the 'di ke na'. I want to know where it is now and how much it costs to repair."

"Second, contact our channels in Ukraine. At any cost, get me all the data on the Soviet 'Buran' space shuttle's 11D122 engine, especially the original design blueprints."

"Third, find the world's top cryptography experts and tell them I'm offering a hundred-million-dollar bounty to crack the 'Nine-Square Grid' quantum encryption algorithm."

Shen Yan's speaking pace wasn't fast, but every sentence was like a heavy bomb exploding in Wu Ya's ears.

A cello? A space shuttle engine? Quantum encryption?

What on earth did any of this have to do with anything?

Did this have even the slightest thing to do with repairing a printer?

Wu Ya was completely bewildered. Looking at Shen Yan, she felt like she was listening to a foreign language.

She even began to suspect if President Shen's mind had snapped under too much pressure.

Hanging up the phone, Shen Yan looked at the dumbfounded Wu Ya as if he had seen through her thoughts.

He spoke calmly.

"Pass the word: the studio is taking a three-day break."

"In three days, I will have that machine running again."

"In three days, I will have that machine running again."

Shen Yan's voice wasn't loud, but it was like a reassuring pill dropped into the hearts of Wu Ya and all the technicians present.

Having finished, he didn't spare another glance at the dead steel beast and turned to leave.

Leaving a room full of people staring at each other in bewilderment.

Wu Ya watched Shen Yan's retreating figure, her mind in a state of chaos.

A cello, a space shuttle, quantum encryption.

Even if she wrung dry her proud MIT-educated brain, she couldn't think of any connection between these three things and repairing a twenty-year-old printer.

Has he gone mad?

Or did he possess information from another dimension that she completely couldn't comprehend?

A technician cautiously approached.

"Sister Wu Ya, what does President Shen mean? Is he really giving us a vacation?"

Wu Ya took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the stormy waves in her heart.

She chose to believe.

Even if such belief defied all logic.

"Do as President Shen says. Everyone, three days of paid leave."

"Come back to work in three days."

Her words were resolute.

This was her responsibility as the head of Phantom Power Studio, and her near-blind trust in the man named Shen Yan.

On the other side.

Chen Guangke hung up the phone without the slightest hesitation.

He didn't even ask "why."

Shen Yan's instructions were his sole code of conduct.

He pulled open a drawer in his office secured with a triple-coded lock.

Inside, there were no documents or cash, only three specially modified encrypted phones.

Each one corresponded to a completely different underworld.

He picked up the first phone and dialed a number.

"It's me."

A lazy and slick voice came from the other end—it was Ning Ke.

"Yo, President Chen, quite the rare guest. What wind blew you here today?"

Chen Guangke was concise.

"Look up a cello. 1711, Stradivarius, 'di ke na'."

"I want its current location, owner information, and all the requirements for its repair."

Ning Ke chuckled on the other end, as if he had heard something interesting.

"President Chen, you're really overestimating me. These are secrets of the antique world; for someone in the information trade like me, they're not easy to dig up."

Chen Guangke didn't waste any words with him.

"Ten million."

"I want all the data within one hour."

There was a three-second silence on the other end.

"Deal."

"I'll email it to you in half an hour."