Chapter 136 A Massive Ecological Outbreak in the Surrounding Area; The Starry Sea Bracelet Sweeps the Market

"Out of Stock," the two blood-red characters flickered wildly on the giant screen of the presale backend.

Chu Xuan tugged at his sweat-soaked floral tie.

His leg muscles suddenly cramped.

His knees went weak, and he slumped directly onto the thick wool carpet with a dull thud.

He opened his mouth wide, his throat feeling as dry as if it were stuffed with sand.

His Adam's apple bobbed with difficulty, making a "gulp" sound.

His mind was blank.

"Thr—three seconds?"

Chu Xuan trembled as he dug the crumpled tissue out of his pocket, frantically wiping the greasy sweat pouring down his forehead like a waterfall.

"Five hundred thousand units in stock, and they were all gone in the time it takes to catch a breath?"

Lu Jingming leaned back against the leather executive chair, his faded black T-shirt slightly wrinkled.

He didn't even lift an eyelid.

His right hand reached into the pocket of his worn-out jeans, pulling out that one-dollar green plastic lighter.

His thumb pressed against the metal grinding wheel; he didn't light it, just twirled it back and forth between his fingers.

"It's only five hundred thousand units, what's there to be so surprised about?"

Lu Jingming curled the corner of his mouth, revealing one side of his sharp, white canine tooth.

"Tell the production line to max out capacity. Let them sell as much as they want."

Chu Xuan's legs were still weak.

He pushed himself up from the carpet with both hands.

"Boss Lu, we're practically making friends at ninety-nine yuan a pop."

His face scrunched up in distress.

"Even if we're using offcuts, the labor costs and microwave modules are right there."

"With five yuan in shipping costs subsidized per unit, the more we sell, the faster the dollars in our account bleed out!"

Lu Jingming's fingers paused.

He pressed his thumb down hard on the grinding wheel.

"Click."

A faint blue flame flared up, dancing in the cold air conditioning.

"What's a little shipping cost?"

Lu Jingming stared at the flame, his eyes filled with a calculation that could pierce the sky.

"We need to bind Xinghai's microwave receiver module tightly to the user's wrist."

He extinguished the flame, the plastic casing making a crisp sound.

"This is what we call occupying the physical terminal. With this foot in the door, they won't be able to leave the Xinghai ecosystem even when they go to the bathroom."

Lu Jingming's words soon turned into a terrifying torrent in reality.

Half a month later.

In a secret workshop on the third basement level of Huaqiangbei in Shenzhen.

The air was thick with the pungent smell of rosin and burnt soldering iron, stifling enough to make one gasp for breath.

Brother Qiang was shirtless, wearing a thick gold chain around his neck.

He had a half-smoked cigarette in his mouth, the ash falling onto the scratched wooden table.

On the table, dozens of violently dismantled black bands were piled up—all original Xinghai goods bought from scalpers at a high price.

A technician next to him was drenched in sweat, holding an industrial heat gun and blowing hard at a motherboard the size of a fingernail.

"Brother Qiang, this Xinghai stock is insanely weird."

The technician put down the heat gun and wiped the sweat from his nose with the back of his hand.

"I've dismantled over a dozen, and this is absolutely not the circuit logic of a normal band!"

Brother Qiang exhaled a cloud of thick smoke.

"What's so weird about it? Lu Jingming can build it for ninety-nine yuan."

He gritted his teeth, "If we switch to a public mold shell here in Huaqiangbei, we can bring the cost down to twenty yuan! We'll flood the market and kill him!"

The technician made a bitter face and picked up an undismantled Xinghai Band from the table.

The screen was lit, showing full battery.

"See for yourself."

The technician tapped the screen, swiping his finger across it.

"This thing doesn't even have a charging port; it's sealed completely shut."

"As long as you put it within five meters of that Xinghai microwave charging tower..."

The technician swallowed dryly, his voice trembling.

"It's like it's connected to a perpetual motion machine; the battery stays locked at full charge! I put it in the freezer overnight, and it didn't lose a single bar!"

Brother Qiang's eyelids twitched violently.

His hand holding the cigarette shook, and the ember almost burned his finger.

"Microwave power reception module? Isn't that stuff supposed to be installed in phones?"

"It's not just a power reception module!"

The technician moved the band close to a nearby xinghai matebook.

With a light "hum," the band's screen instantly turned into a secondary controller for the computer.

The technician pressed the touch area on the side of the band, and the music playing on the computer switched instantly.

He tapped again, and the phone nearby woke up, the flash lit up, and it took a "click" photo.

"He even crammed the underlying verification of the Pandora Protocol into it."

The technician's Adam's apple bobbed violently.

"This isn't a band for checking the time at all; it's a universal remote control for all Xinghai devices!"

Brother Qiang's head went "buzz."

Blood rushed to his scalp, making his skin crawl.

He turned to look at the mountain of generic bands piled in a cardboard box in the corner.

Those were all his inventory, worth millions in capital.

In front of the Xinghai Band, those things instantly turned into scrap plastic that even the junk collectors wouldn't want.

"Damn it! No matter how hard it is, we have to copy the motherboard!"

Brother Qiang's eyes were bloodshot, the whites of his eyes filled with red veins.

He snatched the thermostatic soldering iron from the technician.

"I don't believe it. A motherboard made of offcuts can't withstand the reverse engineering of our Huaqiangbei!"

Brother Qiang jammed the tip of the soldering iron directly onto the metal shield of the Xinghai Band, cranking the temperature to the max.

He tried to pry off the Pandora master chip that was sealed with black adhesive.

"Sizzle—"

Rosin turned into white smoke.

Just as the heat from the iron conducted through the motherboard to the bottom of the chip, a tiny "pop" sound suddenly erupted from inside the microchip.

Immediately after, a pungent black smoke shot out from the gaps in the motherboard, choking Brother Qiang until he coughed and tears streamed down his face.

"It's ruined! Brother Qiang, the motherboard is fried!"

The technician recoiled in fear, his knees hitting the table leg.

"Lu Jingming wrote a physical self-destruct program into the chip!"

The technician's voice cracked.

"As long as it encounters abnormal high temperatures or violent dismantling, the underlying encryption fuse shorts out directly!"

"We can't even read a shred of the code!"

Brother Qiang's hand trembled, and the scorching soldering iron fell to the floor, burning a black hole in the anti-static mat.

His legs went weak, and he slumped into the ash-covered chair.

Looking at the pile of smoking scrap, Brother Qiang's vision went black.

The fire in his chest to get rich through knockoffs was completely extinguished.

The Xinghai Band's unscrupulous dimensionality-reduction strike was like cancer cells.

In just half a month, it crazily occupied the physical terminals of domestic users.

Traditional watch factories and smart wearable device manufacturers, looking at the sales reports that were plummeting to the bottom of the earth every day, sat in their offices with their teeth grinding, but they had no power to fight back.

Time passed by another month.

Donghai City.

The top-floor office of the Xinghai Technology building.

The air conditioner was huffing out white mist, keeping the room temperature at a sobering eighteen degrees.

"Bang!"

The heavy solid wood door was slammed open by someone's shoulder.

The door panel hit the acoustic padding on the wall, bouncing back half a foot.

Chu Xuan rushed in like a whirlwind.

He was wearing a blue floral shirt with white clouds today, with two buttons undone.

He clutched a few shipping orders he had just pulled from the printer, the paper "rustling" in his grip.

"B—Boss Lu!"

Chu Xuan panted heavily, his face glowing.

He dashed to the desk in a few strides and slapped the orders onto the glass coffee table with a crisp "snap."

"It's a miracle! It's truly a miracle!"

Chu Xuan dug the crumpled tissue out of his pocket and frantically wiped the greasy sweat from his forehead.

"Monthly shipment volume! It broke ten million units!"

His eyes were wide, red veins jumping in the whites of his eyes.

"A ninety-nine yuan gadget, and it actually generated one billion in revenue!"

"Even though we subsidized the shipping, this user stickiness has made our competitors green with envy!"

Lu Jingming leaned back in his leather executive chair.

He didn't even glance at the sheet showing the ten million sales.

His legs were crossed, resting on the edge of the dark desk.

His right hand reached into the pocket of his faded jeans, pulling out that green plastic lighter.

His thumb pressed down hard on the metal grinding wheel.

"Click."

A faint blue flame flared up, dancing in the cold air.

Lu Jingming stared at the flame, curling the corner of his mouth.

Half of his sharp canine tooth gleamed with a cold light.

He extinguished the flame, the plastic cover making a crisp sound.

Putting his legs down from the table, Lu Jingming stood up.

His old sneakers made no sound on the wool carpet.

He walked to the side of the office, raised his hand, and pointed at the old wall-mounted air conditioner that hadn't been changed just to save trouble.

The broken air conditioner was making a "click-click-click" mechanical grinding sound, and the cold air it blew out carried a musty smell of years of accumulation.

"What's ten million bands?"

Lu Jingming's voice was languid, laced with an arrogance that could turn the world upside down.

"It's just a key to the front door."

He turned his head, his gaze like two bone-scraping steel knives, nailing into Chu Xuan's still-dazed face.

"The keys are collected."

Lu Jingming sneered.

"It's time for us to pay a visit to someone else's house."