Chapter 21: A famous quote from President Lu caused a competitor's stock price to plummet.

"Fifty million? A full double-sided glass body?"

Shen Qingqiu stood in front of the desk, her phoenix eyes behind her gold-rimmed glasses widening slightly.

As if she hadn't heard clearly, she took half a step forward in her high heels.

It was 2007, and the phones on the market were uniformly plastic.

Even the Fruit Generation 1 about to be released across the ocean had a back panel made of aluminum alloy and plastic.

A full glass body? It was absolute fantasy in this era.

"Lu Jingming, do you have any idea how backward current glass processing technology is?"

Shen Qingqiu took a deep breath, suppressing her anger as she laid out the facts to him.

"It's fragile, has a low yield rate, and any slight bump will turn it into a floor full of glass shards."

"Throwing fifty million into it might not even make a splash."

Lu Jingming sat in his executive chair, spinning a lighter in his hand.

"Plastic casings look too cheap; they don't do justice to the smooth system of the xinghai gen 2."

He stopped spinning the lighter, his gaze carrying an unquestionable arrogance.

"Just because other companies can't make it doesn't mean Xinghai can't. I want the transparency of glass."

Shen Qingqiu stared at him for a full five seconds.

If this were before, she would have definitely thrown the financial statements in this spendthrift's face.

But thinking back to that unreasonably smooth engineering prototype, she forced herself to swallow her rebuttal.

"Fine, you're the boss, you have the final say."

Shen Qingqiu gritted her teeth and snapped the folder shut.

"I'll find a way to scrape together the fifty million. Even if I have to sell everything, I'll allocate it to you."

Just as the female God of Wealth finished making her decision...

With a bang, the office door was burst open.

Chu Xuan ran in like a monkey, clutching a bulky laptop in his arms.

"President Lu! It's exploded! The whole internet has completely blown up!"

He had run too fast; his left foot tripped over his right, and he almost faceplanted onto the desk along with the laptop.

"What kind of ghost are you seeing in broad daylight?" Lu Jingming raised his eyelids.

Chu Xuan pushed the laptop screen in front of Lu Jingming, his face flushed with excitement.

"Look quickly! The video of Fatty Xu fainting at the launch event has been clipped!"

On the screen, a stickied post highlighted in red hung on the homepage of the Jifeng Forum.

Clicking it open revealed a GIF.

Fatty Xu was clutching his chest, collapsing straight onto the stage like a mountain of flesh.

Accompanying it were several eye-catching large characters: Bolang Mobile, a high-priced hand warmer!

The replies below were coming in so fast that one couldn't even scroll past them with a mouse.

"Are President Lu's eyes equipped with microscopes? He could tell the antenna design was defective right through the internet cable?"

"Fatty Xu bragged for so long, but his pants were completely stripped off by those few bullet comments from President Lu."

"This piece of junk dares to sell for over two thousand? Everyone, disperse quickly and go grab a xinghai generation 1 for self-defense!"

Not just the forums, but the digital sections of all major portal websites had completely fallen.

Several well-known digital influencers even tagged Xinghai Technology's official account directly in their posts.

Tens of thousands of comments were jeering wildly below, queuing up to ask Lu Jingming for his thoughts on Bolang Mobile.

"President Lu, our popularity right now is higher than the sky."

Chu Xuan rubbed his hands together, grinning like an old fox preparing to split the loot.

"The netizens are all waiting for you to make a statement."

"How about I draft a PR piece right away? We can say that Bolang Mobile's quality control is lacking, and we express our deep regret."

The more he thought about it, the more he felt kicking them while they were down was brilliant. He turned to grab a pen.

"What PR piece? That stuff is too pedantic and boring; nobody likes reading it."

Lu Jingming pulled the keyboard directly in front of him, his fingers hovering over the keys.

"Netizens like to watch a good show, so we'll serve them something substantial."

He logged into Xinghai Technology's official account and, without a half-second of hesitation, typed out a line of text.

Chu Xuan and Shen Qingqiu leaned over to look, and both were stunned.

In the posting box on the screen lay two sentences quietly.

There was no sarcasm, no defense, but it carried a domineering aura that seemed ready to overturn the entire telecommunications industry.

"Life and death are trivial; if you're not happy, let's fight."

"If our competitors are anxious, it means we're doing things right."

After typing the final period, Lu Jingming pressed his thumb heavily on the Enter key.

"Sent successfully."

He leaned back in his chair, took a sip of the green tea that was no longer cold, looking completely relaxed.

Chu Xuan's mouth hung open, and it took him a long while to snap out of it.

"President Lu... if this gets out, when the people at Bolang Mobile see it, they'll cough up blood from pure anger!"

How was this a response? This was a resounding slap in the face, delivered right in front of the nation's netizens, landing squarely on Fatty Xu's chubby face.

Lu Jingming set down his teacup, the corner of his mouth curving upward.

"Coughing up blood is exactly what I want."

In his mind, the system notification sounds went off like firecrackers during Chinese New Year, crackling and popping.

[Ding! Detected that Fatty Xu woke up in the ambulance, saw the post, and fainted again. Break-defense points +10,000!]

[Ding! All executives of Bolang Mobile have fallen into collective panic. Break-defense points are continuing to skyrocket!]

This top-tier famous quote, carrying the genes of the future internet, swept across the entire web like a super hurricane.

When had netizens ever seen such a tough company president?

In the past, bosses of big companies always beat around the bush when they spoke.

Lu Jingming's line, "Life and death are trivial; if you're not happy, let's fight," directly hit the sweet spot of countless young people.

In just five short minutes, the number of replies under this post broke thirty thousand!

"Domineering! President Lu is awesome! This is the kind of backbone a real industrialist should have!"

"'If our competitors are anxious, it means we're doing things right!' This sentence is an absolute killer move. I'm going to engrave it on my keyboard!"

"Just for this sentence alone, I'll buy whatever Xinghai releases. I will absolutely not support those black-hearted big corporations!"

The carnival of public opinion ushered in its most frenzied monetization the next morning.

At 9:30 AM, the A-share market opened right on time.

Shen Qingqiu was sitting in front of her computer, checking the quotes from several domestic OEM factories.

Suddenly, a glaring green warning box popped up from the stock market software in the bottom right corner.

She clicked it open and gasped.

It had only been three minutes since the opening of the market for Bolang Mobile's parent company, Wave Communications.

The originally stable K-line chart looked as if it had been kicked off a sheer cliff, diving straight down.

A straight green line crashed cleanly to the very bottom.

"It hit the limit down."

Shen Qingqiu stared at the locked limit-down board on the screen, her voice carrying an unconcealable shock.

Tens of thousands of sell orders pressed heavily on the limit-down price, a green so intense it made one's heart race with panic.

Chu Xuan leaned over holding his coffee. Once he saw the figures clearly, his hand shook, almost spilling the coffee onto the keyboard.

"Holy shit... in less than ten minutes, six hundred million in market value has evaporated?"

He turned to look at Lu Jingming, who was still leisurely flipping through the glass blueprints, and swallowed hard.

"President Lu, your line from yesterday directly smashed right through Wave Communications' underpants!"

Yesterday's launch event scandal, combined with Lu Jingming's devastatingly sharp quote...

Completely destroyed the investors' confidence in Bolang Mobile, and the selling wave came with brutal force.

Lu Jingming didn't even raise his head, his finger lightly tracing over the blueprint.

"What does a drop in market value matter? This is just interest."

He rolled up the blueprint and casually stuffed it into an old black backpack nearby.

"Whether Fatty Xu lives or dies has nothing to do with us. Pack up, we're getting down to real business."

...

Three hours later, Donghai City International Airport.

Sunlight streamed through the massive floor-to-ceiling glass, spilling onto the polished marble floor.

A gentle female voice was coming through the terminal's broadcast system.

"Attention passengers traveling to Shenzhen, boarding has now begun for your flight..."

Lu Jingming, wearing a simple black T-shirt and carrying the old backpack, strode ahead in large steps.

Shen Qingqiu followed beside him in flat shoes, clutching a briefcase filled with documents tightly in her hand.

Though she had changed out of her professional attire, the shrewdness of the female God of Wealth between her brows had not diminished in the slightest.

"Slow down a bit."

Shen Qingqiu quickly caught up and lowered her voice, her tone filled with worry.

"I looked over the information on that Lanhai Glass Factory overnight. They are indeed on the verge of bankruptcy."

"But those guys are holding onto a set of grinding equipment imported from Japan, and they refuse to budge."

She tugged at the corner of Lu Jingming's shirt, her brows knitted tight.

"On Xinghai's current balance sheet, after deducting daily expenses and material reserves, we simply can't produce fifty million."

Shen Qingqiu patted the briefcase in her hand, feeling as if it were a hot potato.

"At most, this bag only holds five hundred thousand for travel expenses and deposits."

"You're running to Shenzhen with just this little money, and you want to buy out the entire factory's exclusive production capacity?"

She felt Lu Jingming must have gone mad.

Using five hundred thousand to leverage a heavily asset-backed OEM factory was simply more ridiculous than trying to catch a white wolf empty-handed.

Lu Jingming stopped in his tracks and turned to look at her.

The crowd in the waiting lounge bustled around them, but the smile in his eyes only deepened.

"Who said I was going to spend money to buy production capacity?"

Lu Jingming patted his backpack, which was filled with system blueprints.

"The five hundred thousand is just for our accommodation and meals for the next few days. We won't give them a single penny."

Shen Qingqiu was stunned.

"No money? Then what do you plan to use to convince them?"

Lu Jingming raised his eyebrows and turned toward the boarding gate.

"With what? Naturally, we'll exchange it for technology that will make their boss kneel down and call us daddy."