An explosion at the press conference for Chapter 121? Fruit has entered its darkest hour.

The knuckles of Cook's hand, clutching the engineer's collar, turned a ghostly white.

"If it explodes, let it explode! Put it on the shelves for me immediately!"

The beastly roar still echoed between the cold walls of the laboratory.

Charles was choked until his eyes rolled back.

He clawed desperately at Cook's wrists, his fingernails leaving white marks on his boss's suit cuffs.

A strange "kaka" sound escaped his throat as he struggled to breathe.

Cook suddenly let go.

He shoved the white-haired chief engineer onto the stainless-steel workbench.

With a dull "thud."

Charles clutched his neck and began to cough violently.

Spittle sprayed onto the floor.

"Boss, this will ruin Apple's reputation..."

Charles gasped for cold air, his voice as raspy as sandpaper, "Forcing a magnetic charging power of several dozen watts will absolutely melt the battery separator!"

Cook didn't even look at him.

He reached up and straightened his disheveled silk tie.

Bloodshot veins in his eyes spread like a spiderweb, covering his sockets.

"Apple's reputation was smashed by Lu Jingming three days ago."

Cook gritted his teeth, making a teeth-grating sound.

"The global online launch event is in two days. Get that batch of white magnetic charging discs on stage for me!"

He turned and strode toward the laboratory's glass door.

His leather shoes clicked "da-da" on the anti-static floor.

"If you can't keep the temperature down, then throttle the frequency to death! Lock it at five watts upon startup!"

Cook threw out the death order without looking back.

"In any case, I want the whole world to see that Apple has physical hardware to fight back!"

Two days later.

California, Steve Jobs Theater.

The venue, which could hold thousands, was packed.

The top tech media reporters in the US had their cameras and equipment set up.

Flashbulbs flickered incessantly.

In the backstage lounge, the air was as heavy as a water-logged sponge.

Cook had changed into a well-tailored dark suit.

He stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror and took a deep breath.

He forced his wildly beating heart to calm down.

The Greater China Region executive held a tablet and swallowed dryly.

"Boss, the trending topics on foreign websites are all dominated by Xinghai's over-the-air charging."

His voice trembled, "They are all asking if Apple is obsolete since we can't even get rid of the charging plug."

"Obsolete?"

Cook sneered, a sarcastic curve forming on his lips.

"A bunch of pigs who don't even have basic common sense about physics. Lu Jingming is using their lives to conduct experiments."

He turned around and adjusted his cufflinks.

"Has Charles calibrated the infrared thermometer?"

"It's ready. The big screen will display the safe temperature of the magnetic charging disc in real-time."

The executive wiped the cold sweat from his forehead.

"Very good. Let's go."

Cook strode toward the dark passage leading to the stage.

The lights in the front of the stage suddenly dimmed.

A beam of cold white spotlight hit the center of the stage with a "swish."

Cook walked out of the shadows, holding a microphone.

Scattered applause broke out from the audience.

Most reporters were looking down, scrolling through news about Xinghai on Twitter.

Cook stood still in the center of the stage.

The 30-meter-wide giant screen behind him instantly lit up.

There were no flashy product images on it.

Only a blood-red nuclear radiation warning symbol.

The whole venue instantly went quiet.

All the reporters looked up, their eyes wide as copper bells.

"In the past few days, a ridiculous new concept has appeared in the industry."

Cook's voice was low, laced with a condescending hypocrisy.

"Someone claims they want to stuff thousands of watts of spatial microwaves into your bedrooms and living rooms."

He paced slowly on the stage, his leather shoes clicking on the wooden floor.

"They call this over-the-air charging."

Cook shook his head, a look of heartbroken distress appearing on his face.

"But they didn't tell you."

The image on the big screen flashed and changed into a forged infrared spectrum of microwave sintering.

A large area of glaring deep red covered the screen.

"The attenuation of microwave radiation is exponential."

Cook stopped and looked straight into the camera.

"To charge a mobile phone with a pathetic few watts from five meters away, the transmitter must release enough radiation to roast a cow!"

A burst of low gasps erupted from the media section below.

A few foreign reporters were so scared they touched the backs of their necks.

"Apple never treats user health as a joke."

Cook's tone rose sharply, as if he had transformed into a savior of the world.

"What we want is absolute safety. It is the grounded assurance that comes from physical contact."

He reached into his suit jacket pocket.

He pulled out a white, disc-shaped object, dragging a short white cable.

This was the semi-finished product Apple had rushed to create overnight—MagSafe.

"Magnetic physical safe charging. Precise alignment, zero radiation leakage."

Cook held up the white disc.

"Today, we will prove to the whole world in the most intuitive way what a true industrial standard is."

He turned to the side.

At the edge of the stage, a young demonstrator wearing an Apple uniform pushed a workbench up.

On the table sat the latest Apple phone.

Beside it was the lens of an industrial-grade infrared thermometer.

The big screen instantly split into two.

On the left was a high-definition live feed of the workbench.

On the right was the real-time thermal map and digital temperature captured by the infrared lens.

"Start," Cook nodded at the demonstrator.

The young man picked up the white magnetic disc.

He aimed it at the center of the phone's back panel, and with a "click," it attached.

The screen instantly lit up, showing a green charging animation.

On the thermal map on the right.

The initial temperature of the back of the phone held steady at 29 degrees.

The color was a deep blue, representing safety.

Cook stood with his hands behind his back, next to the workbench.

A satisfied sneer curled the corner of his lips.

The first minute, everything was normal.

The temperature had only risen by two degrees, stopping at 31 degrees.

Reporters in the audience began typing furiously.

Preparing to send out press releases about Apple's "safe counterattack."

In the backstage control room.

Charles stared fixedly at the monitor screen, his anti-static suit soaked through with cold sweat on his back.

He gripped a small medicine bottle tightly in his hand, his fingernails turning white.

"Is the throttling patch effective? Why is the reading on the power meter still skyrocketing!"

He roared at a programmer next to him, his eyes bloodshot.

The programmer was sweating profusely, his keyboard clattering loudly.

"Mr. Charles! The coil impedance is too high!"

His voice cracked, "The magnetic disc's electromagnetic induction triggered the fast-charging protocol, bypassing the throttling patch we hardcoded!"

Without the overbearing computational power scheduling of Xinghai's Pandora underlying protocol.

Apple's pieced-together hardware simply couldn't control the runaway current!

On stage. The second minute.

The demonstrator's face, which had been wearing a professional smile, suddenly stiffened.

He noticed the charging animation on the phone screen had frozen.

Even worse, the colors on the thermal map on the right side of the big screen began to change.

The deep blue was being swallowed by orange-red at a speed visible to the naked eye.

That white number was jumping wildly.

38 degrees. 45 degrees.

The smile on Cook's face froze.

He turned his head sharply, staring fixedly at the numbers on the screen.

His back teeth ground together, making a creaking sound, and the veins near his temples throbbed violently.

"What's going on?"

Cook lowered his voice, squeezing the words through his teeth, glaring fiercely at the demonstrator.

Cold sweat streamed down the young man's forehead.

He swallowed dryly, his throat feeling bitter and parched.

"Bo-boss, I don't know. It's out of control..."

The third minute.

Dozens of watts of runaway power were being forced into that white disc, which had absolutely no heat dissipation channels.

The orange-red on the thermal map instantly turned into a glaring deep red.

Even the center area began to emit a white glow!

55 degrees! 62 degrees!

The audience completely exploded.

Reporters in the front row stood up abruptly, knocking over the mineral water bottles at their feet.

"That's 62 degrees! The water is almost boiling!"

A reporter shouted at the top of his lungs.

On the workbench. The demonstrator's hand had been resting lightly near the edge of the phone.

Suddenly, a wave of overbearing heat surged up along the aluminum alloy frame.

The skin on the back of his hand instantly turned red from the heat.

A piercing pain shot through his fingertips.

"Ah!" The young man let out a scream, his hand twitching violently.

He pulled his hand back instinctively.

The phone lost its support.

With a "clatter," it slid off the tilted display stand and slammed heavily onto the stainless-steel workbench.

At the very moment of this violent impact.

Because the internal battery had already expanded, combined with the thermal expansion and contraction from the high temperature of over 60 degrees.

"Crack!" A crisp and shrill sound of shattering glass transmitted through the microphone across the entire venue.

That crystal-clear glass back panel of the phone.

Like an ice surface hit by a sledgehammer, it instantly shattered into a dense web of cracks.

Immediately after, "hiss—" a pungent burnt smell, accompanied by thick black smoke, rushed out frantically along the gaps in the motherboard.

Like a venomous snake, it bared its fangs under the cold white spotlight of the stage.

The entire Steve Jobs Theater was deathly silent.

Hundreds of reporters had their mouths wide open, their dentures almost falling out.

The camera faithfully broadcast this scene to tens of millions of viewers worldwide.

At this moment, Cook's hundreds of pounds of dignity were burned by this black smoke until not even ash remained.

His legs went weak, and his knees nearly hit the wooden floor.

The flesh on his face twitched violently.

The bloodshot veins in his eyes burst completely, and a desperate madness seeped from the corners of his eyes.

He turned abruptly. Toward the direction of the backstage control room, he let out a roar like a beast with its neck broken.

"Cut the broadcast! Cut the internet connection immediately!"