Chapter 110 Lenovo is desperate; the last struggle of a comprador enterprise.

The cold moon over Seattle had not yet set.

On the horizon in Yanjing, a layer of deathly gray-white just began to emerge.

In the top-floor executive conference room of the Lenovo Group headquarters building, the air was as heavy as if it had been filled with lead.

Sales Director Fatty Li slumped in his wide leather chair.

He had Bluetooth earbuds jammed tightly into his ears.

In his hands, he held two scorching-hot mobile phones, pressing them against his cheeks alternately.

"Director Wang! You are our biggest distributor in the East China region!"

Fatty Li's voice cracked, sounding like a duck with its neck stepped on.

"That batch of top-spec Saviors was shipped out last week, and now you're telling me you want to refuse delivery?"

A chaotic background noise of unloading cargo came from the other end of the phone.

"Refuse my ass!"

The East China distributor cursed on the other end, his spittle seemingly capable of spraying through the signal.

"That 4,999-yuan machine from Xinghai Technology has stripped your top-spec laptops down to their underwear!"

The distributor panted heavily, "Who buys bricks with fans in them anymore? Hurry up and refund me!"

"Hello? Hello, Director Wang!"

"Beep, beep, beep—"

Fatty Li stared at the hung-up screen and swallowed a mouthful of dry saliva.

His Adam's apple bobbed with difficulty, and his throat felt like it was smoking.

A dozen executives in suits and leather shoes sat in the conference room.

No one made a sound.

Only the rising and falling sound of mobile phone vibrations remained, like a death-knell watchman.

At the head of the table, Lenovo President Yang stared fixedly at the giant LCD screen opposite him.

On the screen was the recorded broadcast of the Xinghai Technology launch event.

The scene where Lu Jingming effortlessly dragged the blueprint from his phone onto the computer screen felt like a rusty knife scraping back and forth across his corneas.

"Bang!"

A heavy crystal ashtray was violently thrown by President Yang.

The ashtray smashed against the transparent explosion-proof glass door.

The glass emitted a shrill, muffled thud; although it didn't shatter, the vibration made everyone's eardrums go numb.

The ashtray bounced off and landed on the wool carpet, rolling twice.

"Trash! You're all fucking trash!"

President Yang kicked away the boss chair in front of him.

The chair's casters emitted a harsh screeching sound against the floor.

"We've been Microsoft's godson for twenty years! Everything we get is just squeezed-out toothpaste junk!"

He pointed his finger at Lu Jingming's sneering face on the screen.

The veins on the back of his hand popped out one by one.

"Some country bumpkin who makes mobile phones managed to come up with a fanless monster in just a few months."

President Yang gritted his back teeth, "Are you engineers, collecting million-yuan annual salaries, just eating for free!"

Public Relations Director Old Liu shrank his neck.

He reached up to tug at his constricting silk tie, cold sweat streaming down his neck.

"P-President Yang." He stammered.

"We still have 800,000 units of the older models in the warehouse, prepared for the second-half promotions."

Old Liu wiped his forehead with his cuff, "The distributors are all demanding returns now; if these are left in our hands, this quarter's financial report will be a huge disaster."

President Yang's eyelids twitched wildly.

He gripped the edge of the table tightly with both hands.

Compete with Xinghai Technology on technology head-on? That was pure suicide.

Even Gates in Seattle would be left staring helplessly at that underlying ARM translation architecture of theirs.

What could a comprador enterprise like theirs, which only knew how to assemble parts, use to fight back?

They could only play dirty and muddy the waters.

"Old Liu." President Yang turned his head, his gaze like a venomous snake in a gutter.

"The batch of marketing accounts you've been raising—it's time to let them out to bite."

Old Liu immediately straightened his posture.

"You mean, use smear campaigns?"

"No shit! Where in the business world is anything clean!"

President Yang spat.

"Go leak some intel for me. Say that the machine from Xinghai Technology has a serious underlying system vulnerability!"

His fingers tapped a rapid rhythm on the mahogany tabletop.

"Say they stole code from the Americans! Say that the ARM architecture blue-screens and crashes after running for half an hour! Say that their multi-screen collaboration feature steals users' bank passwords!"

Old Liu swallowed, looking troubled.

"This... isn't it too fake? They demonstrated it live in front of thousands of foreign media."

"Fake? How many netizens actually use their brains to investigate things!"

President Yang snorted coldly, "A lie repeated a thousand times becomes the truth. Go contact those big-shot digital bloggers."

"That 'Sharp-Tongued Review' with ten million followers—transfer five million to him via corporate account immediately."

A chilling ruthlessness flashed in President Yang's eyes.

"Have him buy a machine from Xinghai Technology and secretly short-circuit the motherboard capacitor."

"I want to see the footage of the Xinghai computer smoking directly in a review video by tomorrow morning!"

Half an hour later, the rush orders from the paid internet trolls surged through the internet, flooding into various job-taking groups.

It was not yet dawn.

Several A-list digital influencers with tens of millions of followers simultaneously released long video posts in a tacit agreement.

The titles were more sensational than the last, all accompanied by blood-red exclamation marks.

《Unveiling the xinghai matebook Scam: The Price of Being Fanless is a Melted Motherboard!》

《Don't Be Fooled by 4,999: Compatibility Collapse, Can't Even Open Online Banking!》

《Behind Cross-Device Connectivity: Is Your Phone Photo Album Being Livestreamed to the Entire Internet?》

The trend on the hot search list changed instantly.

The entries that were originally full of praise for how awesome Xinghai Technology was were forcibly replaced by several eye-catching smear campaigns.

The comment sections were filled with unified, copy-pasted scripts.

"Too scary, I almost grabbed the launch edition, thanks to the blogger for the warning."

"Domestic brands are just unreliable, core technology still depends on the Americans."

Donghai City.

In the canteen of the Xinghai Technology industrial park.

Lu Jingming sat at a stainless steel table in the corner.

He was wearing that washed-out black T-shirt.

He held a meat bun in his hand, took a bite, and the juices overflowed.

Chu Xuan carried a bowl of soy milk and rushed over.

His signature center-parted hair was already a mess like a bird's nest.

He clutched a crumpled ball of tissue in his hand, desperately wiping the greasy sweat from his forehead.

"L-Lu, President Lu! They're playing dirty!"

Chu Xuan slammed his phone directly onto the stainless steel table in front of Lu Jingming.

The screen was playing that "Sharp-Tongued Review" video.

In the video, a Xinghai computer with its back cover removed was emitting acrid black smoke.

"The whole internet is flooded with smear pieces about us! They're saying our machines will explode!"

Chu Xuan was so anxious he slapped his thigh, "Even the aunties going to buy groceries are talking about how Xinghai computers will peek at bank card passwords!"

Lu Jingming didn't even look at the screen.

He swallowed the bun in his mouth.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a green plastic lighter.

He pressed his thumb onto the flint wheel.

"Click."

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

"What's the rush? Let the bullets fly for a while."

Lu Jingming casually snapped the lighter shut, pulled out a napkin, and wiped the grease off his fingers.

"Lenovo is panicking, which means our knife stabbed the right spot."

He curled his lips into a mocking sneer.

"Can the paid trolls stop the blind people online, or can they stop the users who are paying with real money offline?"

Lu Jingming stood up and threw the napkin into the trash can.

"Notify the production line, double the output today. I want to see how much more money this bunch of compradors can burn."

The scene shifts back to Yanjing.

In the Lenovo headquarters conference room.

Watching the data on the smear campaign entries rising rapidly in the background, President Yang's tense shoulders slumped slightly.

He picked up the cold tea on the table and took a big gulp.

The bitter tea grounds stuck to his teeth.

"This is not enough."

President Yang slammed the teacup heavily onto the tabletop.

The porcelain base hit the porcelain saucer with a crisp sound, making Fatty Li shudder.

The paid trolls could at most fool the netizens and disgust Xinghai Technology's reputation.

If they really wanted to kill off Xinghai Technology's computer business, they had to lock them out on a physical level.

Without offline display stores, no one could touch the real machine.

Then this broken plate of theirs could still be patched up and keep spinning.

"Sales Department!"

President Yang's voice suddenly rose, like a wolf driven to a dead end.

Fatty Li hurriedly took off his Bluetooth earbuds and yelled in response, "I'm here, President Yang!"

President Yang braced his hands on the conference table, leaning forward significantly.

His oppressive gaze swept over the group of sweat-drenched executives.

"Issue an internal death order notification immediately."

President Yang loosened the constricting silk tie; the veins on his neck popped out like earthworms.

"All channels! Every 3C digital store that has signed an agency contract with us!"

He stared fixedly at Fatty Li.

"Any counter that stocks Lenovo machines is absolutely not allowed to have any trace of Xinghai Technology!"

"Throw money at it! Raise the distributors' rebates to the bottom line!"

He stared at the group of executives at the conference table, his eyes bloodshot.

"Even if it means driving profits into the ground, you must lock Xinghai Technology's stores out of the malls for me!"