Chapter 156 The Starsea SU1 Makes a Stunning Debut, Porsche Designers Are Stunned

The Toyota Vice President's trembling exclamation...

...didn't even make a splash.

It was instantly swallowed whole by the dense clicking of camera shutters from the audience.

The white flashes of light merged into a seamless sea of brilliance.

Inside the eight-thousand-person venue...

...hundreds of overhead lights baked the air until it was scorching hot, carrying a faint, burnt smell of heated plastic wire insulation.

It was so stifling that every breath made one's lungs feel dry and raw.

Lu Jingming stepped out from the shadows at the side of the stage.

He was still wearing that same faded black T-shirt.

The cuffs of his old jeans brushed against a pair of ten-yuan plastic flip-flops.

They made a "clack, clack" sound as he stepped on the wooden floor.

With his hands stuffed in his pockets, he looked so casual and lazy, as if he had just finished strolling through a night market.

He didn't even have a car key on him.

In the front-row VIP area...

...a blonde Mercedes-Benz regional president...

...nudged the Porsche Chief Designer next to him with his elbow.

"Look, Paul. This Chinese kid didn't even bring a car key."

The Mercedes-Benz president sneered, curling his lips.

"Does he plan to use telekinesis to open the car doors?"

"Or did he hide a cheap remote control under the chassis?"

Paul didn't respond.

He was a top-tier veteran who had spent twenty years drawing supercar blueprints in Stuttgart, Germany.

Right now, his eyes were glued to that pitch-black camouflage cloth.

His professional instinct was kicking in.

He couldn't help but feel that the silhouette propped up beneath the cloth had an unnervingly strange curvature.

"Something's not right," Paul muttered, swallowing dryly.

His throat felt like it was coated in sand.

"The curve of that hood is pressed down too low."

Frowning, he muttered, "This doesn't conform to the air intake and heat dissipation structure of an engine bay..."

Before his voice could even fade...

...Lu Jingming walked over to the machine covered by the black cloth.

He didn't even stretch out his hand.

He merely raised his left wrist.

On it was that ninety-nine-yuan black xinghai bracelet.

He was still a meter away from the car body.

"Beep—"

A low buzz emitted from the wristband.

From the load-bearing steel frame directly above the stage...

...the sound of mechanical gears violently engaging suddenly rang out.

"Whoosh!"

Several fully automated mechanical arms hidden in the shadows violently grabbed the four corners of the camouflage cloth.

A gust of strong wind whipped up from the ground.

The coarse black cloth was instantly ripped into midair by a burst of sheer force.

The resulting wind pressure...

...blew the ties of several executives in the front row right into their faces.

The xinghai su1.

Stripped entirely bare, it lay exposed beneath hundreds of high-power spotlights.

All eight thousand people in the venue...

...along with Chu Xuan, who was clutching a walkie-talkie in the backstage control room...

...held their breath.

It felt as if the oxygen had been sucked completely out of their lungs, leaving their chests tight and aching.

Parked in the center of the stage was a silver-gray shooting brake coupe.

The rigid, clunky air intake grille of a traditional fuel car?

It was nowhere to be found.

The front of the car was a perfectly smooth, downward-sloping curve, resembling the nose of a shark cutting through water.

The car paint was definitely not the typical pearl or metallic paint found on the market.

It was a holographic coating formulated by Xia Weiliang using superconducting waste residue.

When the spotlights hit it...

...there were absolutely no harsh, glaring reflections.

Instead, the entire car body seemed to ooze a layer of flowing liquid silver...

...carrying a faint, ghostly blue luminescence.

Staring at it for too long even made this metal shell feel like a living creature.

Paul's eyes bulged out violently.

A web of bloodshot veins burst across the whites of his eyes.

He gripped the armrests of his leather seat with white-knuckled intensity.

He was squeezing so hard...

...that the edges of his fingernails turned a deathly pale white.

His fingertips pressed deep, white indentations into the leather surface.

"This... this body shell..."

Paul's upper and lower teeth chattered violently, making a clicking sound.

He was an aerodynamics fanatic.

With just one glance, he could tell how ridiculously insane the car's proportions were.

The side of the car was as smooth as a pebble freshly washed by a river.

Traditional car door handles? None.

Side mirrors as large as floppy ears? Completely smoothed away.

Not a single air-catching protrusion could be found on the entire vehicle.

Beside him, the Mercedes-Benz president's hand went limp.

His water bottle slipped out of his grasp.

It hit the carpet with a soft thud.

Water spilled out, soaking the top of his leather shoes, but he forgot to even wipe it off.

"P-Paul..."

The Mercedes-Benz president's tongue was tied as he tugged at Paul's suit sleeve.

"This car of his doesn't even have side mirrors."

He swallowed hard in anxiety. "How is this supposed to pass European road safety regulations?"

Paul violently brushed his hand away.

"Regulations my foot!"

Paul's voice cracked completely, sounding like a broken bellows gasping for air.

"They have three hidden LiDAR sensors embedded in the roof! Plus holographic probes!"

He gasped heavily for air.

The sweat on his back had long since soaked his bespoke shirt, turning it into a soggy mess...

...clinging freezing cold against his spine.

"That uses Pandora's computing power to synthesize a 3D real-world view!"

Paul pointed at the car body, his hand shaking as if he had been electrocuted.

"That is ten thousand times more useful than your two crappy glass mirrors!"

The more Paul looked, the colder his heart grew.

A chill shot up from his heels straight to the crown of his head, making his scalp tingle.

The Porsche Panamera aerodynamic lines he was so proud of...

...in front of this car...

...looked as bloated as a four-wheeled manure cart from the last century.

Lu Jingming stood with one hand in his pocket.

He stood beside the liquid-silver car body.

With his right hand, he pulled out that cheap plastic lighter with peeling paint.

He pressed his thumb against the metal flint wheel...

...and flicked it down hard.

"Click."

The crisp, mechanical sound was exceptionally jarring in the quiet venue.

A faint blue flame suddenly flared up.

It carried the harsh smell of cheap kerosene.

The light illuminated one side of his sharp, gleaming white canine teeth.

Holding the lighter, Lu Jingming pointed at the foreign executives in the audience whose faces were as pale as paper.

"Not a bad toy, right?"

He curled his lips, his voice infuriatingly casual.

"Those aerodynamic lines your engineers scratched their heads raw to draw..."

He tapped the roof of the car. "...I generated them in just half an hour using computing power."

Lu Jingming casually snapped the flame shut.

The plastic casing clicked shut with a crisp snap.

"Still relying on hand-sculpting clay models to design cars?"

He let out a cold snort. "That's a gimmick from the Stone Age."

Paul could no longer hold it together.

His head was buzzing in chaos.

A century of pride in industrial car manufacturing was trampled into the dirt by these few words.

He suddenly stood up.

His thighs slammed hard against the back of the seat in front of him.

It hurt so much that he grimaced, but he couldn't care less.

Paul gasped heavily, his chest heaving as if it were about to burst.

He pointed at the silver-gray machine on the stage.

"This is impossible! Absolutely impossible!"

Paul roared at the top of his lungs.

His spit sprayed all over the back of the executive's head in front of him, who wiped it away with the back of his hand without even daring to look back.

"With this kind of fastback angle, the rear is completely flattened!"

Paul's eyes were as red as a rabbit's, staring dead at Lu Jingming.

"There won't even be any room for passengers in the back! Are you building a steel coffin to sell?!"

His voice cracked completely, screaming until his throat was raw.

"Even if you've smoothed out the entire surface, what is the drag coefficient?!"