Chapter 147 DJI's founder was dumbfounded; this is my line!

Old Li's hands trembled as he pushed up his glasses.

Reflected in his thick, bottle-bottom lenses was a dark, hovering object.

The palm-sized black drone was hovering silently two meters above the ground.

There was no wobbling, no bobbing up and down.

It was as stable as if it had been nailed firmly into the air by invisible steel spikes.

There was no howling wind noise.

The anti-static plastic sheet beneath it didn't even ripple.

Old Li swallowed a mouthful of dry saliva, his Adam's apple moving with difficulty.

His throat felt parched, as if stuffed with dry hay.

"CEO Lu."

His lips trembled, his voice floating.

"This thing doesn't even have any wind noise; this violates aerodynamics!"

Lu Jingming had one hand in the pocket of his washed-out jeans.

His old sneakers made no sound as they stepped on the floor.

"Aerodynamics are written by people and calculated by them too."

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

"With anti-gravity algorithms and magnetic levitation motors, this thing doesn't need to cut through the air so rigidly."

Chu Xuan stood nearby.

The collar of his floral shirt—green background with red flowers—was wide open.

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

"Good heavens."

Chu Xuan's legs were shaking. "CEO Lu, you're not building a drone; you've built a ghost in broad daylight!"

The blueprints for this monster had just been sent to the foundry to mold the casing.

Word had quietly leaked out through the cracks in the supply chain.

Shenzhen, DJI headquarters building.

CEO Wang sat in his large executive chair, looking at the intelligence just handed to him by his subordinates.

His eyelids twitched wildly, and his scalp felt numb.

Xinghai Technology was scouring the world for micro-gyroscopes and brushless motor parts.

Lu Jingming wanted to build a drone.

This news was like a rusty saw, grating back and forth on CEO Wang's nerves.

DJI was currently in its takeoff stage, and its flight control algorithms were unrivaled in the country.

But when facing a tech behemoth like Xinghai, which could even pull the plug on the US backbone network...

CEO Wang's back teeth ached.

He yanked the tie from his neck.

"Book a flight. The earliest one!"

CEO Wang roared at his secretary outside the door, "Fly to Donghai immediately!"

Four hours later.

The VIP reception room on the first floor of Xinghai Technology.

The air conditioner was blasting white mist, keeping the room temperature at eighteen degrees.

CEO Wang, wearing a crisp suit, sat on the leather sofa.

He clutched a tissue in his hand, constantly wiping the cold sweat seeping from his temples.

Next to him was a top-tier laptop.

The laptop screen was on.

It was filled with his latest flight control algorithm PPT, which he took great pride in.

He didn't dare to go head-to-head with Xinghai.

He wanted to get a head start, bringing his algorithms to cling to this terrifyingly powerful thigh and secure a position as an exclusive supplier.

"Click."

The reception room door handle turned.

Chu Xuan pushed the door open and entered.

He wiped the greasy sweat from his neck with the crumpled tissue and grinned.

Lu Jingming followed behind him.

A washed-out black T-shirt, old jeans.

On his feet, he was wearing a pair of ten-yuan plastic flip-flops.

CEO Wang hurriedly stood up.

His thigh hit the edge of the coffee table, but he didn't even dare to rub it.

"CEO Lu, I've long admired your name."

CEO Wang extended both hands to greet him, his palms covered in sticky cold sweat.

Lu Jingming didn't reach out to shake his hand.

He walked right past him, pulled out a single sofa, and sat down.

He crossed his legs casually and leaned back against the chair.

CEO Wang gave two dry laughs and hurriedly turned to open the laptop on the table.

"CEO Lu, I heard that Xinghai is entering the drone market."

He swallowed his saliva, trying to regain some confidence.

"DJI is absolutely world-class in flight control algorithms. Please, take a look at our environmental obstacle avoidance data..."

"Turn it off."

Lu Jingming's voice was languid; he didn't even lift his eyelids.

"I don't look at PPTs. That stuff is all scrap paper for scamming venture capital."

The smile on CEO Wang's face froze instantly.

The finger he had on the mouse trembled violently.

It felt like he had choked on a mouthful of cold air, raising goosebumps.

"Then what do you mean?" CEO Wang asked, his voice wavering.

Lu Jingming stood up.

His flip-flops made a dull "thwack" on the floor.

"Keep your eyes open."

His gaze swept over CEO Wang's pale face like a razor blade.

"Follow me to the basement. Let me show you what obstacle avoidance really means."

The fifth basement level.

This was an indoor obstacle test field covering two thousand square meters.

The main lights were not on.

Only a few dim emergency wall lights were on.

In the middle of the field stood hundreds of densely packed, intricate steel pipes.

There were also moving iron balls suspended in mid-air.

It looked like a steel jungle ready to shred any machine at any moment.

Xia Weiliang was barefoot, squatting on the swivel chair at the control console.

The hem of her dirty white lab coat dragged on the floor.

She had a strawberry-flavored lollipop in her mouth.

The plastic stick bobbed with her breathing.

"Weiliang."

Lu Jingming, one hand in his pocket, stood outside the protective netting at the edge of the test field.

"Open CEO Wang's eyes. Don't let him make this trip for nothing."

Xia Weiliang rolled her eyes dramatically.

"What's the rush? I'm loading the environmental modeling data."

She spat out the plastic stick.

Her ten fingers flew across the mechanical keyboard, leaving afterimages.

"No GPS signal."

Xia Weiliang pointed to a monitoring screen nearby.

"There's not even a single bar of cell signal in this basement; it's pure blind flight."

She slammed her thumb down on the Enter key.

"It relies on visual AI and the onboard millimeter-wave radar for real-time calculations."

On the charging dock in the corner.

The black quadcopter shot out without any warning.

There was no roaring buzz of propellers.

Only a faint sound of vibrating air.

CEO Wang leaned toward the protective netting.

He pushed up his glasses, staring fixedly at the dim steel pipe forest.

The next second.

His eyes were instantly filled with fine red bloodshot lines.

His breathing stopped completely.

The black drone accelerated violently.

The numbers on the speedometer screen jumped wildly.

Fifty.

Eighty.

One hundred and twenty.

In the dense steel pipe forest, it surged directly to 120 kilometers per hour!

A black afterimage sped wildly between the obstacles.

It brushed tightly against the edges of the steel pipes without slowing down in the slightest.

At a corner.

It even defied common sense, performing a hard ninety-degree right-angle drift.

The fuselage didn't even have a single redundant tilting motion.

A moving iron ball suddenly swung over from the side.

The machine acted as if it had eyes.

It instantly sank five centimeters, sliding right past the bottom of the iron ball.

It was as agile as a cyber-bat weaving through the darkness.

Every dodge seemed as if it had calculated the future trajectory with perfect clarity.

CEO Wang gripped the wire of the protective netting for dear life.

His knuckles turned a deathly pale white.

The mesh left deep red marks on his palms.

He gritted his back teeth, and a sour, metallic, fishy taste seeped from his gums.

His head was buzzing.

Blood rushed to his head, and his scalp felt numb.

The sales pitch he had prepared.

Something about centimeter-level hovering.

Something about six-axis gyroscope assistance.

Now, it was all stuck in his throat, as if stuffed with a ball of dry cotton.

He was flushed red, unable to even let out a fart.

DJI's pride and joy, its flight control.

In front of this black bat, it was like a baby that had just learned to walk and was still tripping over flat ground.

"Swish—"

The drone came to a sudden stop.

With a faint current of air, it hovered steadily half a meter in front of CEO Wang.

Through the protective netting, the wind pressure ruffled his bangs, which were soaked in cold sweat.

CEO Wang's legs went weak.

His knees hit the steel pipe at the bottom of the protective netting with a dull thud.

He couldn't even feel the pain.

He gasped for cold air, his lungs aching.

He turned his head and pointed at the test field.

His finger was shaking as if it had been electrocuted by high voltage.

"This avoidance response speed!"

CEO Wang's voice completely cracked, like a broken acoustic guitar with a snapped string.

"This computing power requirement is simply a bottomless pit!"

He stared fixedly at Lu Jingming, his face full of terror and despair.

"Civilian chips simply cannot process this level of data stream!"

Lu Jingming leaned against the iron post of the protective netting.

He reached his right hand into the pocket of his old jeans.

He pulled out a plastic lighter with a layer of green paint chipped off.

His thumb pressed down on the metal flint wheel.

He rubbed it downwards hard.

"Click."

A crisp mechanical sound echoed in the dim basement.

A ghostly blue flame suddenly shot up.

The firelight reflected on the protective net.

It illuminated one side of Lu Jingming's sharp, white canine tooth.

And the unreasonable arrogance in his eyes.

"Civilian?"

Lu Jingming casually snapped the flame shut.

The plastic casing made a crisp clicking sound.

He curled his mouth, his voice languid and devoid of any fluctuation.

"I just cobbled it together with leftover router chips."