Chapter 109: Microsoft Executives Suffered Insomnia After Multi-Screen Collaboration Feature Was Released

As soon as the number 4,990 was dropped.

The roof of the entire stadium was nearly blown off by the cheers.

The roar of eight thousand people converged, making the steel framework of the dome hum.

The glass coffee table in the front row VIP area trembled, and the mineral water in the cups spilled out.

The Microsoft North America regional executive looked as if his spine had been pulled out.

His knees went weak, and he fell heavily back into his spacious leather seat.

His mouth hung open, and a wheezing sound like a broken bellows came from his throat.

His leather shoes were soaked through with mineral water, but he didn't even remember to pull his legs back.

His eyes were fixed tightly on the glaring red numbers on the giant screen.

This price was less than half of their Microsoft flagship machine!

The hardware costs of the X86 Architecture and the exorbitant system licensing fees became a huge joke in front of this machine.

The foreign media reporters in the audience went crazy.

SLR cameras, both long and short lenses, flashed wildly at the stage.

The white flashes merged into a single sheet, stinging people's eyes.

"Fuck! Send the draft! The Chinese have smashed the table of the PC industry!"

The chewing gum in the bearded foreigner's mouth fell directly into the hem of his shirt.

His hands trembling, he typed frantically on his keyboard.

Lu Jingming stood in the halo of light in the center of the stage.

The washed-out black T-shirt he was wearing shone slightly under the spotlights.

He had one hand in his jeans pocket, his gaze sweeping lazily over the audience.

"Don't be in such a rush to clamor."

Lu Jingming turned his head and leaned closer to the lapel microphone.

He tapped his knuckles on the table twice, the dull "thud-thud" sound drowning out the noise of the entire venue.

"I was backstage just now and saw people cursing on Twitter."

Lu Jingming curled the corner of his mouth, revealing half of his white canine teeth.

"Saying that the system we built at Xinghai is a cripple, not even able to touch the fringes of Microsoft's office ecosystem?"

The audience fell silent instantly.

Eight thousand pairs of eyes stared straight at the young man on stage.

Lu Jingming withdrew his hand from his pocket.

In his palm was a black Xinghai Mobile.

He weighed the phone in his hand twice.

"Those old fossils at Microsoft talk about some ecological moat."

Lu Jingming pressed the unlock button on the side of the phone with his thumb.

The screen lit up.

"To put it bluntly, it's just locking your files tightly inside that heavy iron box."

He took half a step forward.

Holding the phone in his hand, he aimed it directly at the metal trackpad of the xinghai matebook on the table.

The entire venue held its breath.

The camera lens instantly zoomed in for a close-up, and the image was projected onto the giant circular screen behind him.

"Snap."

The back of the phone was placed against the lower right area of the computer.

No cables were plugged in.

There was no unnecessary scanning or Bluetooth pairing operation.

"Buzz—"

A short, light vibration sound effect came from the speakers.

Immediately after.

On the right side of the computer screen, a vertical window popped up without warning.

That was the real-time operating interface of the Xinghai Mobile!

Even the 30% battery icon in the top right corner was projected exactly the same way onto the computer side.

"Open your eyes and look clearly."

Lu Jingming didn't touch the phone.

His right hand rested on the computer mouse, and the cursor slid directly into that virtual phone screen.

"Double-click to open the album."

He explained casually.

The mouse cursor opened a high-definition design drawing of several hundred megabytes on the virtual phone interface.

Lu Jingming pressed and held the left mouse button with his index finger.

He dragged it gently to the left.

There was no progress bar.

There was no slow, reading circle like with Bluetooth transfer.

That several-hundred-megabyte drawing seemed as if it had grown inside the computer all along.

"Whoosh."

It was dragged directly onto the computer system's desktop.

A collective gasp came from the audience.

Several digital bloggers in the front row stood up abruptly, hitting their heads against their seats.

Lu Jingming didn't stop.

He created a new Word document directly on the computer desktop.

The mouse dragged the drawing he had just moved into the document.

Then, with both hands on the computer keyboard, he typed a few lines of text rapidly.

"Finished editing. Throw it back."

Lu Jingming held down the document icon and dragged it to the right.

The document instantly crossed the physical boundary of the screen.

It landed steadily in the WeChat chat box on the phone.

Cross-device interconnection.

Hardware-level data sharing.

The Wall of Sighs between the mobile phone and the computer was shattered by Lu Jingming's drag and drop.

A gaping hole was blown right through it.

"What the hell! What kind of black magic is this!"

The bearded reporter howled at the top of his lungs, his eyes wide enough to tear at the corners.

"Two completely different underlying systems! How did he achieve seamless drag and drop!"

The Microsoft executive sitting in the front row clutched his head with both hands.

His fingernails dug deep into his scalp, pulling out several strands of blonde hair.

He felt as if his heart had been squeezed hard, and the blood supply was insufficient.

What is the office ecosystem that Microsoft is so proud of?

It's that users must turn on the machine, must endure long startup times.

Must open those bloated software step by step within their complex Windows system.

But what about now?

Xinghai directly turned the mobile phone into an organ of the computer!

Or turned the computer into another screen for the mobile phone!

Lu Jingming leaned against the edge of the table.

He flipped his wrist and pulled out that one-dollar green plastic lighter.

He pressed his thumb against the flint wheel.

"Click."

A deep blue flame flared up.

He stared at the pale-faced foreigners in the audience and sneered.

"In the future, when you have a meeting, just touch your phone to the computer."

Lu Jingming casually extinguished the flame and tossed the lighter onto the table.

"The computer's keyboard, mouse, and even speakers will all be at the phone's command."

He lifted his chin slightly, revealing an undisguised arrogance.

"Gates' Windows system? Keep it as a screensaver for your old relics."

Backstage lounge.

Chu Xuan tugged at his flashy floral tie.

His legs went weak, and he slumped onto the carpet.

The crumpled tissue in his hand fell to the side, and he didn't bother to pick it up.

"It's connected... The physical isolation was actually breached by this bunch of madmen..."

Chu Xuan swallowed dry spit, his throat parched.

He stared at the near-manic foreign reporters on the monitor.

Cold sweat kept breaking out on his back.

Xia Weiliang was barefoot.

Squatting on the edge of the leather sofa, her toes dug tightly into the leather cushion.

The piece of ham in her mouth had long been chewed to mush.

"What's this?"

Xia Weiliang rolled her eyes and kicked Chu Xuan's thigh with her toe.

"The Pandora Protocol already had channels reserved at the underlying level."

She hummed, "If it weren't for the time crunch, I could have even hard-wired the cross-screen call answering feature onto the motherboard."

Across the ocean.

Seattle, the top-floor conference room of the Microsoft headquarters building.

The surface of Lake Washington outside the window shimmered with cold moonlight.

The main lights in the conference room were not on.

The giant projection screen emitted a ghastly white light.

On both sides of the long conference table sat a dozen global directors in suits and leather shoes.

The air was as stifling as if it were stuffed with waterlogged sponges.

On the screen.

It was playing a real-time close-up of Lu Jingming dragging the file into the phone.

Ballmer sat at the head of the table.

His shiny bald head was covered in dense, oily sweat at this moment.

Sweat trickled down the wrinkles on his forehead and into his eyes.

Stinging his eyes, making them twitch.

But he didn't dare to blink.

His massive, hundreds-of-pounds body was stiff in the leather chair.

His chest heaved violently, like a broken bellows.

"Fake... This is definitely a Chinese trick!"

A bearded director slammed the table and stood up.

The coffee cup in his hand was knocked over, and brown liquid spilled all over the table.

"The bandwidth of NFC transmission cannot support this level of instant transfer! Let alone cross-system screen mirroring!"

Another technical executive's face was livid.

He stared fixedly at Lu Jingming's keyboard-tapping movements, his molars grinding.

"Don't you understand! They aren't transferring files at all!"

The technical executive's Adam's apple bobbed violently.

"That is system-level distribution and invocation! That computer's processor has been taken over by Xinghai's underlying protocol!"

He clutched his head with both hands, his voice filled with heavy despair.

"That machine... It's not just a computer anymore; it has become a super peripheral for that mobile phone!"

The conference room was deathly silent.

Only the faint whirring of the projector's cooling fan could be heard.

Moat?

Ecological barrier?

In the face of such crude and direct cross-device interconnection from Xinghai, it had all become a tedious, pointless process.

What do business office crowds need?

It's efficiency!

It's efficiency that has been given wings!

Who would still pay a high price to buy those heavy, overheating pieces of junk from Microsoft that still require data cables to transfer a file?

Ballmer's hands were shaking like a sieve.

He was clutching a solid gold Montblanc fountain pen tightly in his hand.

His fat knuckles were turning a deathly pale white from excessive force.

"Creak."

The body of the fountain pen let out a painful groan.

The threads of the pen cap were crushed out of shape.

"Bang!"

A dull thud.

The priceless fountain pen was snapped in two by Ballmer.

Black ink splattered out instantly.

Splashing all over his hands, with specks of ink smeared on the collar of his expensive white shirt.

He looked like a ridiculous and tragic clown.

Ballmer couldn't feel the pain in his palm at all.

He stood up abruptly.

The boss chair behind him was pushed back half a meter by the huge inertia, hitting the wall panel with a "bang."

In the overseas video conference at Microsoft headquarters, there was a deathly silence.

Ballmer clutched the broken fountain pen tightly, ink dripping down between his fingers.

"Book me a ticket to China immediately! Right now! Immediately!"

His throat emitted a beast-like heavy wheeze, and his eyeballs were filled with burst red blood vessels.

"If we are even one day late, our system market share will collapse!"