Chapter 155 While others use PowerPoint presentations to make money, Lu Jingming directly drives a mass-produced car onto the stage.

"Driving an actual car right onto the stage..."

These few words

fell like a cold, heavy block of iron, slamming hard against the stainless steel workbench.

The echo reverberated several times through the basement level four garage.

Chu Xuan's legs suddenly cramped up.

With a dull thud,

his kneecap slammed hard against the edge of a sheet-metal cabinet.

Even the anti-static rubber matting was dented by the impact.

"Ow, holy shit!"

Chu Xuan's face contorted in sheer pain.

The sharp breath he sucked in caught in his throat, making him cough violently several times.

Clutching his knee, he hopped around on one leg on the floor covered in iron shavings.

The crumpled, foul-smelling tissue in his hand

was messily wiped across his face to mop up his sweat.

"M-Mr. Lu!"

Chu Xuan stammered so hard his tongue almost knotted. "Next month? We're delivering an actual mass-production car next month?"

He slapped his thigh in sheer anxiety.

"Boss Jia can raise billions of dollars just by showing a PowerPoint and talking big!"

"Do we really have to run our production line into the ground like this? We're talking about a four-wheeled car here!"

Xia Weiliang walked over barefoot.

Her soles were coated in a layer of black soot.

Rolling her eyes, she chewed on a strawberry-flavored lollipop.

"Pah."

She spat the chewed plastic stick onto the ground.

"You're incredibly stupid."

Xia Weiliang poked Chu Xuan's shoulder with a finger stained with engine oil.

"When Boss Lu said we're driving an actual car, he meant having the fully automated robotic arms do die-casting overnight."

"It's not like you have to hammer it out yourself piece by piece. Why the hell do you care so much about the production line?"

Chu Xuan hissed in pain, rubbing his knee.

"Oh, my dear lady!"

His eyes went wide and round. "That's a metal shell flying around at hundreds of kilometers per hour!"

"If it drives onto the stage, the brakes fail, and it crashes into a wall, every single executive in our company will be lining up to sew prison uniforms!"

Lu Jingming leaned back in his worn-out swivel chair.

He slid his right hand into the pocket of his faded jeans.

He pulled out a plastic lighter with its green paint peeling off.

His thumb pressed down on the metal flint wheel.

*Click.*

A faint blue flame flickered to life, dancing in the musty air of the basement.

The firelight illuminated the sharp, white canine tooth on one side of his mouth.

"Brake pads?"

Lu Jingming stared at the flame, a mocking sneer escaping his throat.

"My magnetorheological chassis paired with an anti-gravity motor..."

"...does it really need primitive methods like clamping metal discs to slow down?"

Two months later.

Donghai City International Convention and Exhibition Center.

The auto industry's annual main event officially began.

Hundreds of high-power spotlights overhead baked the air inside the venue until it was scorching hot.

The eight thousand seats were packed to capacity.

The air was a thick mix of hairspray, cheap perfume, and the hot sweat rising from the crowd.

It was so stifling it made one's lungs ache.

In the front-row VIP section.

The leather sofa chairs were filled with prominent figures from the automotive industry.

The Greater China Region presidents of Germany's BBA, executives from Japanese joint ventures,

and the CEOs of several domestic EV startups that relied on storytelling to attract investment.

The Vice President of Toyota tugged at his tight Windsor-knotted tie.

It had left a red mark on his neck.

He turned his head to strike up a conversation with the Mercedes-Benz executive next to him.

"Old Henry, did you bring your notepad?"

The Toyota VP smirked, the flesh on his face creasing into mocking wrinkles.

He reached over and tapped the voice recorder in his suit pocket.

"When Lu Jingming presents his PowerPoint later, make sure to write down plenty of loopholes."

The German man named Old Henry pushed up the gold-rimmed glasses on the bridge of his nose.

A look of condescending arrogance shone behind his lenses.

He crossed his legs.

"He might be good at writing a few lines of code to make phones,"

Old Henry snorted. "But the physical resilience of a chassis isn't something he can just piece together with a few crappy chips."

He picked up the mineral water beside him and took a sip.

"I bet he'll roll out a clay model at most today, just putting on a show to fool amateur investors."

In the row behind them, Boss Li of an EV startup was chewing gum.

Hearing this, he leaned forward and chuckled along.

His teeth slipped, biting the soft flesh on the inside of his cheek.

"Hiss!" He gasped in pain, sucking in a breath of cold air.

"Right, right, right! Old Henry is absolutely right!"

Boss Li rubbed his cheek.

"Back then, when Boss Jia put out a PowerPoint, didn't domestic tycoons still scramble to invest their money?"

"Xinghai's show today is just to join the hype and grab some traffic."

Before the buzzing chatter in the venue could die down,

*Click.*

All the overhead lights in the exhibition center...

...were cut off without warning.

The surroundings instantly plunged into pitch-black darkness.

Before the executives in the front row could even adapt to the dark,

and without any of the deafening engine roar sound effects typical of car launch events,

the massive LCD screen covering the entire wall behind the stage...

...remained completely dark.

Not even Xinghai's nebula logo lit up.

There was no presentation of specifications.

No long, boring introduction of the company's heritage.

There wasn't even a host to warm up the stage.

"What the hell? Is it a power outage?"

The Toyota VP leaned forward.

His leather shoes made a harsh scraping sound against the wooden floor.

He reached out to grab the mineral water bottle beside him.

*Hum—*

An extremely low-frequency vibration tore through the darkness.

Vibration buzzed in everyone's eardrums, making them feel slightly numb.

Right after,

at the dark entrance of the passage on the right side of the stage,

a beam of faint blue holographic light shot straight down.

Dust motes swirled within the light beam, carrying an eerie sense of oppression.

The Toyota VP's hand trembled.

His fingertips knocked over the mineral water bottle.

The ice-cold water spilled out, dripping onto his custom-tailored suit trousers.

He didn't even bother to wipe it.

Underneath the beam of light,

a streamlined machine covered in a pitch-black camouflage cloth...

...slowly revealed its low-slung front end.

There was no sound of exhaust gas spewing from a tailpipe.

No high-pitched whine of an electric motor running.

Even the sound of rubber tires rolling over the wooden floor...

...seemed to have been swallowed whole by something.

The machine covered in the black cloth...

...was like a ghost floating in broad daylight.

It glided silently to the very center of the stage.

Right in the center of the holographic light beam,

it came to a steady halt.

The car body didn't even dip forward by a single millimeter from braking.

The entire gliding process...

...was so quiet it made people's scalps tingle.

It was as quiet as a silent funeral for the combustion engine cars of the old era.

In the eight-thousand-person venue,

it was so dead silent that the heavy breathing of several foreigners in the front row could be heard.

The shirt on the Toyota VP's back was instantly soaked in cold sweat.

It clung tightly to his spine, freezing cold.

His mouth hung wide open.

His jaw almost dropped to his collarbone.

His Adam's apple bobbed up and down with difficulty.

He swallowed hard with a gulp.

His back teeth ached with tension.

He stared intently at the quiet machine in the middle of the stage.

Fine red capillaries instantly webbed across the whites of his eyes.

His fingers trembled, clawing desperately into the seams of the leather seat.

His fingernails turned a pale blue-white from the sheer force.

"Where's the PowerPoint? Where's the clay model?"

The Toyota VP's voice cracked completely, shaking like a tattered rag in the freezing wind.

"They actually built a physical car?!"