Chapter 12: Competitors' Refund Wave Erupts, This Defense-Breaking Value is Too Good to pass up.

The rolling shutter door of the No. 1 abandoned workshop was being pounded by someone outside, making a "clang-clang" sound.

It shook off the years of old dust from the corrugated iron, causing it to fall down in flurries.

Niu Dazhuang shrank his thick neck, not knowing where to put the pipe wrench he was clutching.

"Young Master, the way they're knocking…"

He swallowed dryly, the flesh on his face twitching.

"Besides that young lady of the Shen family who went to study at Wall Street, there's absolutely no one else in Donghai City who would do this."

Lu Jingming sat in front of a rusty iron table, slowly and deliberately removing his goggles.

"She's come at just the right time. Our factory is so poor that all we have left is money, and we're just short of someone who knows how to do the accounts."

He tilted his chin toward the rolling shutter door.

"What are you standing there for? Go open the door and welcome our guest."

Niu Dazhuang pulled a long face, dragging his feet toward the main gate, muttering under his breath.

"You don't know her temper. If she sees us selling junk, she'll definitely tear this factory apart."

Accompanied by a piercing sound of metal grinding, the heavy rolling shutter door was slowly pulled up.

And at the exact moment this door opened, Huaqiangbei, a thousand miles away, was experiencing a magnitude-12 earthquake.

The afternoon sun was as scorching as an oven.

In front of the largest offline experience store for Jinshi Mobile, not even a fly could squeeze in at this moment.

Several hundred people had blocked the spacious street completely.

The glass door was plastered with white paper and black-inked refund slogans by angry customers.

"Refund our money, you unscrupulous merchants! Using double-sided tape to stick batteries in, are you treating us like monkeys?"

An old man wearing reading glasses held up a Jinshi Mobile that had been torn to pieces, shouting at the top of his lungs.

"Refund! If you don't give us a full refund today, we'll smash this shady store to pieces!"

Seven or eight security guards, arms linked, formed a human wall that was being pushed and shoved, clearly about to collapse.

In the general manager's office on the second floor, the air pressure was low enough to freeze someone to death.

Liu Jin stared fixedly at the scene below through the gaps in the blinds.

His fat face had turned the color of a pig's liver, and the fingers holding his cigar were shaking as if electrocuted.

"Crash!"

He turned around, grabbed the blue-and-white porcelain ashtray from the table, and smashed it hard on the floor, sending fragments flying everywhere.

The hot ash splashed onto Brother Biao's pant leg.

Brother Biao, like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, jumped two meters away and started cursing.

"Liu! Why are you taking your madness out on me?!"

Brother Biao pulled at the collar of his floral shirt, his eyes wide.

"My own stores are being stormed right now, and the counter glass has all been smashed to smithereens!"

"I'm taking my madness out on you?"

Liu Jin spun around, forced his way to Brother Biao in a few steps, and sprayed spit everywhere.

"If it weren't for your lousy idea to hire internet trolls to smear them…"

"Would I be caught by that little bastard Lu Jingming and have my sore spot rubbed raw in front of the entire internet?"

Brother Biao, sprayed with spit, didn't back down and grabbed Liu Jin's tie.

"You're blaming me now? You were the one who paid the 500,000 for the trolls!"

"Your crappy phones were stuffed with shoddy cotton. If not for that, would it have been exposed during the live stream?"

The two of them, like defeated roosters, clawed at each other in the spacious office.

Documents on the table were swept to the floor, and red wine bottles were shattered everywhere.

The refund wave brought on by this live stream was a devastating disaster.

It wasn't just the end-consumers causing a ruckus; even the primary agents below had all turned against them.

The phone calls demanding payment had the office landline smoking.

The mountains of shoddy knock-off phones in the warehouse weren't even worth selling as scrap metal by the pound anymore.

The capital chain was completely broken.

"It's over, it's all over."

Liu Jin pushed Brother Biao away, his legs went weak, and he collapsed onto the leather sofa like a pile of mud.

His eyes were glazed, his lips trembling, as if he had aged ten years in an instant.

"The Jinshi Mobile brand has been completely ruined today…"

Meanwhile.

In Workshop No. 1 of the Xinghai Electronics Factory in Donghai City.

Lu Jingming leaned back in an iron chair, holding an enamel mug, leisurely blowing the foam off his tea.

The system notification sounds in his mind were popping incessantly like firecrackers during the Lunar New Year.

[Ding! Complete despair from Liu Jin of Jinshi Mobile, Break Defense Value + 5000!]

[Ding! Worldview collapse from Brother Biao, Break Defense Value + 4500!]

[Ding! The Huaqiangbei knock-off camp falls into mass panic, refund wave triggers chain critical hits!]

[Current total Break Defense Value has exceeded the 100,000 milestone!]

Hearing these pleasant notification sounds, Lu Jingming couldn't suppress the smile in his eyes.

This was faster than robbing a bank.

"System, open the exchange store."

He recited silently in his mind, and a deep blue holographic panel instantly unfolded before his eyes.

Those glittering 100,000 points were incredibly satisfying to look at.

He already had the base code for the first-generation system; what he lacked most now was hardware production capacity.

Lu Jingming's gaze swept quickly through the store list, locking directly onto an advanced blueprint.

[Consumed 100,000 Break Defense Value, successfully exchanged for "Second-Generation Intelligent Fully Automated Assembly Line Blueprint"!]

A stream of light flashed by.

A thick stack of blueprints with a futuristic feel lay quietly in the system's storage space.

With this thing, he wouldn't need dozens of workers holding soldering irons to hand-assemble phones through the night anymore.

Production capacity and yield rates would see exponential explosive growth.

"Boss Lu! We've won big! We've won big!"

Chu Xuan, holding that bulky laptop, rushed in front of Lu Jingming as if on wind-fire wheels.

He couldn't even catch his breath, pointing at the data on the screen, shaking wildly.

"The moment the live stream cut off, our official website's server was almost crashed by the traffic!"

"Our inventory is long gone, and now the entire internet is frantically placing pre-orders."

"Just the full-payment pre-order deposits alone have topped five million in half an hour!"

Lu Jingming took a sip of tea and placed the mug on the iron table with a dull "thud."

"Five million is enough to get you this excited? Have some ambition."

He stood up and stretched his body, his bones cracking like popping beans.

"Go tell the finance department to keep enough money in the account to cover the cost of materials."

Lu Jingming pulled out a crumpled cigarette box from his pocket, tapped one out, and stuck it in his mouth.

"Withdraw all the remaining money. Tomorrow, I'm going to the suburbs to look at land."

Chu Xuan paused, eyes wide.

"Look at land? We're not renting an existing factory anymore?"

"Renting someone else's territory means always having to look at their expression."

Lu Jingming clicked his lighter, exhaling a puff of blue-gray smoke.

"This crappy factory is too small; it can't accommodate my upcoming plans."

"I'm going to build a fully automated industrial park covering a hundred acres, and hold the entire technological lifeline of Donghai City in my hands."

These words, paired with his devil-may-care expression, somehow exuded an unquestionable dominance.

Chu Xuan got goosebumps, his eyes shining like two searchlights.

Following a boss like this, his life was worth it!

Just as the two were enthusiastically sketching out their grand blueprint, a crisp sound of footsteps suddenly came from the concrete ground outside the workshop.

"Tap, tap, tap."

This was the distinctive sound of high heels striking the ground.

The rhythm was fast, exuding a cold, murderous aura that warned strangers to keep away.

Lu Jingming raised an eyebrow, his gaze crossing over Chu Xuan's shoulder toward the open door.

A tall figure blocked the sunlight from outside.

The person was wearing a tailored black professional suit.

It outlined flawless curves.

Her long hair was neatly coiled behind her head, and a pair of rimless gold-framed glasses sat on the bridge of her nose.

The eyes behind the lenses were coldly scanning this smoky and messy abandoned workshop.

The broken parts on the floor, the smell of burnt plastic, and the scrap metal all over the table.

Shen Qingqiu looked at the mess in front of her, her beautiful brows furrowing tightly.

She had received news that the old factory manager was critically ill, resigned from Wall Street, bought a plane ticket, and flew back overnight.

She had thought she could help save the factory that had once raised her.

Instead, the moment she walked in, she saw this scene, which looked like a garbage dump.

"Lu Jingming, you've grown some guts, haven't you?"

Shen Qingqiu stepped forward in her high heels, walking up to the iron table, a cold fragrance instantly overpowering the smell of gasoline.

She stared down at Lu Jingming, who was still smoking.

"Uncle Lu is still lying in the ICU, and you've already started selling off the factory's scrap metal to get by?"

She grabbed a remnant of a shoddy motherboard from the table and slammed it heavily onto the surface.

"The finance director ran away with the funds, and the factory owes ten million in external debt."

"Tell me, is this trash all over the floor, which even a dog wouldn't look at, the chips you're using to make a comeback?"

This aura was so oppressive that Chu Xuan didn't even dare to breathe.

Niu Dazhuang, who had just opened the door, was now shrinking his broad shoulders, quietly hiding behind a pile of waste.

He was desperately signaling to Lu Jingming.

The meaning was clear: Young Master, you'd better handle this tigress checking the accounts yourself.

Lu Jingming wasn't flustered at all.

Instead, he leaned back in his chair, took a deep drag of the cigarette in his hand, and observed his furious childhood friend through the blue smoke.

"God of Wealth Shen, you've got quite a temper the moment you get back."

Lu Jingming stubbed out the half-finished cigarette in the rusty ashtray, a playful smile curling his lips.

He slowly and deliberately opened the drawer and threw out a thick stack of bank-stamped account statements.

"Don't just look at the trash on the floor."

Lu Jingming reached out and tapped the stack of statements, making a crisp sound.

"How about you take a look at this first, and then decide whether you want to apologize to me?"