Chapter 169: The Dark Factory Shocks the Entire Internet; Its Production Efficiency Is Faster Than a Money Printing Machine

Chu Xuan's execution capabilities were pushed to the limit.

In half a night, every blind spot in the Xinghai No. 1 factory had been fitted with military-grade high-definition night-vision cameras.

Even the finger joints of the robotic arms were not spared; they were forcibly strapped with micro-GoPros.

At twelve noon the next day, a livestream room titled "xinghai su1 Boring Car Manufacturing Daily" went live simultaneously across all major platforms.

The livestream didn't even have a promotional trailer; the cover was just a pitch-black screenshot of the factory.

But less than five minutes after the broadcast started, the backend cloud server triggered a red alert.

The number of online viewers shot up like a rocket, instantly breaking the one-hundred-million mark.

The comment stream was as dense as an impenetrable wall, covering even the black screen underneath.

"Come see the aliens revolt! I heard they're building Gundams in there!"

"Lu Jingming, come out and walk a few steps! Stop hiding things; have you been controlled by silicon-based lifeforms?"

"Refund! Give me back my hard-earned money! You can't build cars, so you're resorting to mysticism, right?"

Chu Xuan stood in the broadcast room, watching the screen full of curses and conspiracy theories.

He used a crumpled tissue to frantically wipe the oily sweat from his forehead, his hands trembling as if he had Parkinson's.

"L-Lu, Boss, the narrative is getting too skewed."

Chu Xuan swallowed a mouthful of dry saliva. "Isn't our livestream title a bit too arrogant?"

Lu Jingming leaned back in the large executive chair, fiddling with that green plastic lighter with one hand.

"Arrogant? I'm just providing some science education for these bumpkins."

He flicked his thumb, making a crisp "click" sound as he flipped open the metal cover.

"Switch to the main camera and push the feed out."

Beside him, Xia Weiliang was barefoot, squatting on the edge of her gaming chair.

With a "crunch," she bit through the strawberry-flavored candy in her mouth.

"A bunch of ignorant frogs at the bottom of a well; open your eyes and watch carefully."

She rolled her eyes dramatically and slammed her hand down on the Enter key.

The black screen, previously blocked by comments, instantly lit up with a ghostly green night-vision image.

In the footage, there wasn't a shadow of any living person.

The huge factory didn't have a single incandescent light on, and it was so quiet it made one's scalp tingle.

There were only crisscrossing infrared rays and LiDAR scanning nets.

In the boundless darkness, they wove a cold and precise, deep-blue web.

The next second, the dead silence was broken.

The mechs moved.

There was no deafening sound of hammering iron, nor the shouting of workers pushing carts.

Dozens of giant mechanical arms, gleaming with cold metallic light, hung down from the dome tracks with a roar.

They wove and shuttled through the air, their movements as silky smooth as a cyber-ballet.

Stamping, welding, installing the trackless maglev chassis.

"Sizzle," several blinding welding sparks flashed by.

That black-brick solid-state battery, touted to have a range of over a thousand, was precisely slapped into the slot by another set of mechanical arms.

It was a perfect fit, with not even a millimeter of error to be found.

In the upper right corner of the livestream, a conspicuous red number suddenly popped up.

It was a countdown.

60, 59, 58...

"Holy crap! Is that a countdown? Building a car in one minute?"

"This is absolutely impossible! Porsche's super factory takes dozens of minutes per car; he's playing a fast-forward recording!"

The skepticism in the comments didn't even have time to flood the screen.

With a crisp "ding," the red countdown hit zero.

At the end of the production line, a brand-new silver-grey xinghai su1, as smooth as mercury, slid slowly down the conveyor belt.

Immediately after, a red light flashed above the conveyor belt.

The countdown for the second car began its merciless ticking from 60 again.

The livestream room instantly fell into a dead silence that lasted for half a minute.

In front of over a hundred million people's screens, not a single person even typed a punctuation mark.

This wasn't building cars!

This was simply a money-printing machine that had come to life, frantically spitting out money right there!

Half a minute later, the comments exploded like a nuclear blast.

"This production efficiency... my grandma isn't even this fast on a sewing machine!"

"Musk just tweeted yesterday mocking them for being stuck in production hell, and today Xinghai comes up with a dark factory? His face must be swollen from the slap!"

"I kneel before the master! I just cancelled my order yesterday; can I still get back on board? I'll pay extra!"

At the same time, across the ocean.

In the spacious office on the top floor of the Tesla headquarters, the sunlight was still bright.

Musk sat in front of the panoramic floor-to-ceiling windows, the espresso in his hand already cold.

He stared intently at the livestream on his tablet.

Watching those red 60-second countdowns ticking down to zero with fluid grace.

The arrogance on his face finally shattered like a cheap mask.

With a "snap," it fell to the ground in pieces.

"Crack." With a slight, crisp sound, Musk's thick palm trembled violently.

The expensive bone china coffee cup in his hand was actually cracked by his grip.

The brown, cold coffee flowed down between his fingers, dripping onto his suit pants.

He didn't notice at all, just staring fixedly at the screen.

"This... this is absolutely impossible."

Musk's throat was dry and hoarse, as if he had swallowed a handful of hot sand.

"This level of mech coordination computing power, even NASA can't do it; how could a kid from the Dragon Kingdom pull it off?!"

The office door was pushed open violently.

The blonde assistant ran in, panicked, forgetting even to knock.

"Mr. Musk, Wall Street is withdrawing capital; they are frantically dumping our stock!"

The assistant's face was deathly pale, with a crying tone in his voice.

"Everyone is saying that Xinghai's money-printing-machine-like production capacity could drown the global EV market alive."

Musk slumped in his executive chair as if his strength had been drained.

His chest heaved violently.

He took out his phone, his thick fingers trembling as he opened Twitter.

He looked at the mockery he had posted yesterday, "Welcome to production hell."

Now, the comment section was filled with "60-second" countdown screenshots sent by netizens from all over the world.

Each image was like a loud slap, fiercely striking his proud face.

He gritted his teeth, the taste of blood seeping from his gums.

With humiliation, he pressed the delete button.

After deleting the tweet, Musk violently smashed his phone against the floor-to-ceiling window.

With a dull "bang," the screen shattered into a spiderweb.

He finally understood that in the face of pure industrial violence, any trick of capital was a joke.

In the blink of an eye, a week later.

At the Xinghai Technology headquarters, in that open plaza the size of four football fields.

Sunlight pierced through the clouds, spilling over a sea of silver-grey cars that stretched as far as the eye could see.

Ten thousand xinghai su1s were parked there in perfect unison.

The light reflected off the car bodies was so bright it was almost blinding.

There were no false promises, nor any "PPT car building" empty talk.

One-week delivery of in-stock vehicles—this was the most hardcore confidence.

Outside the plaza, it had long been packed solid by the cameras and microphones of major media outlets.

The first ten thousand prospective car owners who had won the lottery were flushed with excitement.

This wasn't just coming to pick up a car.

This was coming to witness a miracle in the history of human industry.

Chu Xuan had specially changed into a brand-new red leopard-print shirt today, looking joyous.

He held a megaphone in his hand, shouting at the top of his lungs to maintain order.

"Everyone, don't crowd! Follow the queue numbers! We have plenty of cars, enough for everyone!"

Xia Weiliang sat bored on the hood of a car nearby.

Barefoot, with a freshly unwrapped strawberry lollipop in her mouth, she looked down and scrolled through her phone.

At the very front of the crowd stood a tech geek wearing thick-rimmed glasses and a backpack.

He was so nervous that he rubbed his hands on his trouser legs, his forehead covered in sweat.

This was the first customer in the world to pay the full price for a xinghai su1.

The noisy crowd suddenly went quiet.

Everyone automatically parted to the sides, clearing a wide path.

Lu Jingming had one hand in the pocket of his faded jeans.

He was still wearing that wrinkled black T-shirt and old sneakers, walking over slowly.

He held a thin black NFC card in his hand.

Under the sunlight, the edge of the card shimmered with a deep blue luster.

That was the digital car key with the highest authority for the xinghai su1.

He didn't go up on stage to read some moving speech.

Nor did he arrange any fancy ribbon-cutting ceremony.

He just walked straight up to the tech geek who was so nervous he was about to faint.

Lu Jingming curled one corner of his mouth.

Revealing that half-tooth of aggressive, stark white canine.

He pushed the card in his hand forward, directly stuffing it into the tech geek's stiff palm.

"Congratulations."

His voice was laid-back, yet it carried an arrogance that completely overturned the old era.

"Welcome to the future."