Chapter 103 Success in both love and career, what's next?

The cabin of the Jetta was filled with the pungent smell of burnt rubber.

Lu Jingming held out his hand.

Palm facing up, he rubbed his fingertips together twice.

The gesture was as mercenary as a thug collecting protection money.

Shen Qingqiu leaned against the passenger seat.

She reached out and pushed up her gold-rimmed glasses, which had slid slightly down her nose.

A flash of fox-like cunning glinted in her eyes behind the lenses.

"Ten thousand yuan?" She let out a cold snort, her voice laced with clarity.

"The fifth clause of the contract is written clearly. All assets under the name of the Second Party are to be managed entirely by the First Party."

Shen Qingqiu leaned back, a crease forming in her white shirt.

"Your secret stash card was frozen by me last night."

Lu Jingming's mouth twitched violently.

"No, President Shen. That was my 'wife fund'!"

Shen Qingqiu didn't even look at him.

She reached out and pulled the car key directly from the ignition.

She tossed it casually into her cheap faux-leather bag.

"Now you have a wife, the funds belong to me."

She pushed open the car door and stepped out with her long legs.

Her black high heels clicked crisply against the asphalt.

Leaving Lu Jingming with nothing but a cool, retreating silhouette.

The next morning.

Sunlight pierced through the mist of Donghai City, hitting the glass curtain wall of the Xinghai Technology R&D Center.

In the top-floor conference room.

The air conditioning was blasting, with cold white mist puffing out of the vents.

Yet the air was filled with an irrepressible restlessness.

It was the excitement of pores expanding after catching the scent of blood—the scent of money.

Chu Xuan stood in front of the projector.

The top two buttons of his floral shirt were open, and his tie was long gone.

He clutched a thick stack of market research reports in his hand.

The papers were crumpled in his grip.

"Bam!"

Chu Xuan slammed a hand onto the conference table.

It shook Old Zhou's enamel tea mug so hard that the tea nearly spilled out.

"Brothers! We've beaten Apple to a pulp! Samsung Group withdrew from the European market overnight!"

Chu Xuan was flushed with excitement.

He clutched a crumpled tissue and wiped the oily sweat from his forehead.

His voice was cracking from shouting.

"Right now, Xinghai OS's market share in the global mobile sector has exceeded seventy percent!"

Old Zhou took a slurp of hot tea.

The scalding tea tumbled down his throat into his stomach.

"President Chu is right. At this rate, just by selling hardware and system licensing fees, we could count money until our hands cramp while lying down."

He touched the box containing his new dentures in his pocket.

The wrinkles on his face bloomed like a wild chrysanthemum.

Xia Weiliang didn't chime in.

She was wearing that yellowed, dirty white lab coat, still stained with some instant noodle soup from last night.

She was barefoot.

Squatting on the leather swivel chair like a monkey.

Her toes were gripping the edge of the seat cushion tightly.

She held a half-peeled ham sausage—a companion to instant noodles—in her hand.

"Crunch."

She bit off half the sausage and chewed, her cheeks bulging.

Her eyes were fixed on the laptop screen in front of her, showing no interest in the men's revelry.

Lu Jingming leaned back in the boss chair at the head of the table.

He was still wearing that faded black T-shirt.

He crossed his legs and propped them carelessly on the edge of the conference table.

In his hand, he held a one-yuan green plastic lighter.

His thumb pressed against the flint wheel.

"Click."

"Click."

The ghostly blue flame flickered on and off.

The faint light danced across half of his face.

The more Chu Xuan talked, the more energetic he became, flipping through the report in his hand with a rustling sound.

"President Lu, I suggest we don't launch any new projects for the next two years."

He pressed his hands on the table and leaned forward.

"Steady progress! Focus entirely on production capacity! Harvest all the profits from the mobile phone market!"

Chu Xuan's eyes gleamed with greed.

"In two years, Xinghai's cash flow will definitely exceed the US Treasury!"

The entire conference room went quiet.

Even Old Zhou stopped drinking his tea, staring longingly at the head of the table.

A trillion-dollar valuation.

As long as they held onto this big cake, everyone present would be a regular on the Forbes list.

Lu Jingming stopped his actions.

He threw the lighter onto the table, making a crisp plastic clatter.

He took his legs off the table.

Leaning forward.

He snatched the thick stack of research reports from Chu Xuan's hand.

Flipping through a couple of pages casually.

Then, with a sudden flick of his wrist.

"Thud."

The thick A4 paper scattered in mid-air, landing precisely in the trash can in the corner.

It made a dull sound.

Chu Xuan froze.

His hand, suspended in mid-air, stopped awkwardly.

"P-President Lu..."

He swallowed dryly, his voice sounding weak.

"This is the strategic plan that the Marketing Department spent three all-nighters putting together."

Lu Jingming curled his lips.

Revealing one side of his sharp, white canine teeth, his expression filled with undisguised mockery.

"Steady progress, my ass."

He knocked his knuckles heavily on the table twice, making the table vibrate.

"I'd even find this pile of waste paper too rough to wipe the table with."

Lu Jingming stood up.

His gaze, like two blood-stained knives, swept over everyone in the conference room.

The crowd, who had just been fired up, instantly felt a chill run down their spines under his stare.

Chu Xuan shivered in fear and hurriedly stuffed the crumpled tissue back into his pocket.

"Do you think that just because we've crippled Apple, a phone maker, I'm satisfied?"

Lu Jingming supported himself with his hands on the table.

Staring down at Chu Xuan.

"What is a mobile phone? It's just a toy you stuff in your pocket."

He sneered.

"Why does the American Department of Commerce dare to block our network? Why do those animals on Wall Street dare to cut off our capital chain?"

Lu Jingming extended his index finger and pointed at the ceiling.

"Because true digital hegemony is not in mobile phones."

He turned his head and looked at Shen Qingqiu.

Shen Qingqiu was wearing a crisp white shirt today, with the collar buttoned up tightly.

The gold-rimmed glasses rested steadily on the bridge of her nose.

She held a cup of coffee, not drinking, quietly watching Lu Jingming vent his anger.

"Qingqiu, you spent so many years on Wall Street. You tell them."

Lu Jingming lifted his chin slightly.

"The financial institutions, research institutes, and military bases around the world... whose system is installed on the iron boxes sitting on their desks?"

Shen Qingqiu put down her coffee cup.

The porcelain base clinked against the glass tabletop with a crisp sound.

"Microsoft."

She spat out the two words, her voice icy cold.

"X86 Architecture chips, plus the Windows system. They monopolize over ninety percent of the global PC desktop market."

Shen Qingqiu pushed up her glasses, a cold light flashing across the lenses.

"As long as Gates and Ballmer are willing, they can release a single patch."

"The entire NASDAQ server network could be paralyzed in an instant. This is the trump card the Americans have to flip the table."

The temperature in the conference room seemed to drop a few more degrees.

The oily sweat on Chu Xuan's forehead hadn't even dried, and goosebumps broke out on his back.

He rubbed his neck vigorously.

"But... President Lu."

Chu Xuan's voice changed pitch, revealing an uncontrollable panic.

"Mobile phones and computers are two different things! The moat on the PC side is deep enough to drown people!"

He slapped his thighs in anxiety, making a loud sound.

"There are tens of millions of application software programs in there! If our Xinghai OS tries to force its way in, we won't even be able to make the boot screen compatible!"

Old Zhou nodded along.

"That's right, President Lu. Lenovo Group, which sells computers domestically, has been a comprador for Microsoft for so many years and hasn't dared to even think about it."

Old Zhou sighed, the chrysanthemum-like wrinkles on his face collapsing.

"For us phone makers to go and build computers, it's like... an ant trying to shake a giant tree."

"An ant?"

Lu Jingming laughed, the sound echoing in the empty conference room.

He turned to look at Xia Weiliang in the corner.

"Weiliang, you've eaten my ham sausages all morning, have you figured out the trick?"

Xia Weiliang swallowed the last bit of the ham sausage.

She jumped off the chair barefoot.

She brushed the crumbs off her hands and walked to the conference table.

"Figure out the trick my ass. X86 Architecture is a pile of shit."

She pulled a lollipop from her lab coat pocket, tore open the wrapper, and popped it into her mouth.

The plastic stick wobbled against her lips.

"Bloated, power-hungry, and it generates so much heat you could fry an egg on it."

Xia Weiliang rolled her eyes.

"As long as you give me enough computing power, I can use our ARM architecture to forcibly translate that whole set of X86 instruction sets."

She kicked the table leg with her toe.

"I can even keep the loss within three percent."

The entire conference room was deathly silent.

Chu Xuan's mouth hung open; his dentures didn't fall out, but his jaw was about to hit the floor.

Using a mobile phone chip architecture to run computer-grade applications?

How is that any different from using a tractor engine to pull a Boeing passenger plane?

Lu Jingming clapped his hands.

The crisp sound of clapping broke the solidified air.

"Did you hear that? There's your ready-made butcher's knife."

He loosened his collar, his eyes full of crazy calculations.

Lu Jingming turned to look at Old Zhou, his mouth curling into a chilling arc.

"Old Zhou, stop drinking that crappy tea of yours."

His fingers tapped a death-knell rhythm on the table.

"Go bring up that dismantled Microsoft host from the server room. Today, we're going to have a physics lesson."