Chapter 107 The Starry Sea MateBook Project Launched: A Fanless Monster

Ballmer's mocking Twitter post was screenshotted and went viral across major overseas tech media within ten minutes.

The image attached to the tweet was a scorched monkey holding a smoking motherboard.

The arrogance of the Americans could be smelled from across the ocean.

But inside the core shielded room on the third basement level of Xinghai Technology in Donghai City, no one had the time to pay attention to the barking from Seattle.

The air cooler was frantically spewing out white mist.

The room temperature had been forced down below sixteen degrees, and the chill was creeping up their pant legs.

Old Li was hunched over an anti-static workbench.

His thick, bottle-bottom glasses were almost touching the PCB board on the table, and he held a pair of precision electronic tweezers in his hand.

"The last ribbon cable, it's connected."

Old Li swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing with difficulty.

He straightened his back and wiped the cold sweat frozen onto his forehead with the back of his hand.

Right in the center of the workbench, a silver-gray hunk of aluminum alloy sat silently.

It lacked the usual rough cooling vents.

It also had no heavy engineering plastic casing.

It was eerily thin.

The thickest part of the side was only half the diameter of a one-yuan coin.

Old Zhou stood nearby, holding his chipped enamel tea mug.

He stomped his feet to keep warm, wrapped tightly in a military overcoat, breathing out white mist.

"Old Li, this thing doesn't even have a fan vent. Can it really turn on?"

Old Zhou blew hot air into his hands.

"Don't tell me it'll just explode into popcorn the moment we turn it on?"

"Shut your crow's mouth."

Xia Weiliang was crouching on a swivel chair, barefoot.

The hem of her dirty lab coat was almost dragging on the floor.

She had a strawberry-flavored lollipop in her mouth, the plastic stick bobbing up and down.

"With the translation code I wrote, plus the ultra-low power consumption of the ARM architecture, who the hell needs a fan?"

Xia Weiliang spat out the plastic stick.

She jumped off the chair with her bare feet, stepping onto the cold floor.

"Power on, boot up."

Old Li took a deep breath.

His finger hovered over the fingerprint-power two-in-one button.

Trembling slightly, he pressed it.

One second.

Two seconds.

Three seconds.

There was dead silence at the workbench.

There was no roar of fans taking off like a traditional computer, no beeping sound of a motherboard self-check.

There wasn't even a faint buzzing of electricity.

The wrinkles on Old Zhou's face bunched up instantly.

He slapped his thigh in anxiety.

"It's broken, it's broken! It must have burned out!"

A few drops of hot water sloshed out of the tea mug in Old Zhou's hand, splashing onto the floor.

"I told you this laptop couldn't be built like a phone! There's not a sound..."

Before he could finish his sentence, "Hum—" the screen lit up without warning.

The narrow-bezel retina screen burst into a clear, bright light, causing Old Zhou to instinctively squint.

There was no classic four-color window logo from Microsoft.

In the center of the screen, the deep nebula animation of Xinghai OS appeared.

It was so silky smooth that not a single stuttering pixel could be found.

In less than three seconds, it entered the desktop environment.

Lu Jingming had been leaning against the cabinet in the back.

He was wearing that faded black T-shirt, his hands in his jeans pockets.

Seeing the screen light up, a flash of predator-like sharpness passed through his eyes.

He strolled over slowly.

His old sneakers made a faint friction sound on the anti-static floor.

"Just being able to turn on is useless." Lu Jingming tapped on the stainless steel tabletop.

"Gates and Ballmer are just waiting to see us make a fool of ourselves. Weiliang, put it under some stress."

Xia Weiliang grinned, revealing a row of small white teeth.

"I've been waiting for you to say that, Boss."

She pulled over an external keyboard.

Her ten fingers danced on the keycaps like a crazed spider.

The mechanical keyboard clattered like heavy rain hitting a tin roof.

"Didn't Ballmer say we couldn't even open Excel?" Xia Weiliang scoffed, "Today, I'm going to rub his face against the keyboard."

She slammed the Enter key.

Microsoft's latest stress testing tool on the external hard drive launched immediately.

Dozens of heavy application windows popped up on the screen instantly.

Data streams flooded the screen like a waterfall.

Old Zhou leaned in to look, his eyes wide as copper bells.

"Goodness... how is this screen not lagging at all?"

He had used a Lenovo computer in the security room before; just opening three web pages would make the mouse cursor spin in circles.

"Of course!" Chu Xuan said, wiping sweat from the side, his voice trembling.

He was wearing a blue floral shirt today, and the tissue in his hand had long since been crumpled into a ball of mush.

"Weiliang! You, you take it easy!" Chu Xuan stared at the data of the fully loaded octa-core processor, his voice cracking.

"The entire Adobe suite plus large-scale 3D rendering! You're going to kill it!"

The greasy sweat on his forehead was pouring down like a waterfall.

"This aluminum shell doesn't even have air vents; in a minute, it'll be hot enough to fry an egg!"

Xia Weiliang ignored him completely.

She switched to full screen and cranked a 3A masterpiece, known as a graphics card killer, to the highest quality.

The explosion light effects in the game were brilliantly blinding.

There wasn't a single dropped frame.

The massive and bloated x86 instruction set was chewed up and swallowed under the Xinghai Pandora underlying translation protocol, as docile as a dog with its teeth pulled.

For a full half hour, that blade-thin machine didn't make a single stuttering sound.

"Check the temperature." Lu Jingming spat out two words.

Old Li quickly grabbed the industrial-grade infrared thermometer gun from the side.

His hand trembled as he pulled the trigger.

The red laser dot hit the core area of the laptop, the center of the keyboard.

"Beep." A crisp electronic prompt sounded.

The numbers on the LCD screen jumped and then stopped steadily.

Thirty degrees.

The eye sockets behind Old Li's thick glasses turned red instantly.

His lips trembled violently, and his teeth chattered.

The thermometer gun slipped from his hand and hit the workbench.

"Thirty degrees... exactly thirty degrees."

Old Li's voice was hoarse, like sandpaper rubbing against something.

"Half an hour at full load, and it didn't even hit thirty-one degrees!"

The entire shielded room was dead silent.

All that could be heard was the whistling of the air cooler.

This number completely stomped the physical common sense of the PC industry from the past thirty years into the ground.

Chu Xuan swallowed dryly, his Adam's apple moving up and down.

As if possessed, he extended a finger.

He cautiously reached toward the workbench.

His fingertip touched the edge of the metal D-panel.

The icy sensation instantly shot through his entire body from his fingertip.

Chu Xuan shivered from the chill and jerked his hand back.

"What the hell..." He stared at the quiet machine, his eyes bloodshot.

"Did they really stuff an octa-core processor in this thing? It doesn't even get hot?"

Lu Jingming pulled that one-yuan green plastic lighter from his pocket.

He pressed his thumb against the flint wheel.

"Click."

A deep blue flame shot up, illuminating one side of his sharp canine tooth.

"Not only does it not get hot, but its battery can also last all day."

Lu Jingming released his thumb, and the flame instantly extinguished.

He turned to look at Chu Xuan, his mouth curling into a cold, emotionless smirk.

"Go prepare the venue for the launch event. Make it grand; book the Donghai Sports Center."

Lu Jingming tapped his knuckles against the cold metal machine, producing a dull thud.

"Also, send VIP front-row invitations to President Yang of Lenovo and Ballmer in Seattle."

He narrowed his eyes, his gaze like a venom-tipped blade.

"Invite them to come and see for themselves how Xinghai kicks their dining table to pieces."