Chapter 30: The underlying code for Starsea OS is complete; its smoothness is incredible.

Lu Jingming grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair and strode out of the office.

Chu Xuan was so excited that he kept rubbing his hands together, trotting along behind him.

Following Xia Weiliang, the two of them stormed into the No. 1 clean room laboratory.

The cold, white fluorescent lights glared off the stainless steel workbench, dizzying to the eyes.

Lao Li and Zhou Hong had even put their anti-static suits on crookedly, huddled over the table, staring at the desktop like a couple doting on their newborn baby.

Lu Jingming stepped forward and picked up the engineering prototype.

This thing had undergone a complete transformation.

The front and back of the body were completely covered in custom dark blue glass panels.

The edges had been meticulously polished into a curve; it felt cool and smooth in the hand, perfectly seamless.

Refracting the overhead lights, the glass back glowed with the deep luster of the ocean, exuding an elegance that took one's breath away.

In this year of 2007, where cheap plastic shells and peeling paint were the norm.

This texture was a complete game-changer—it felt like holding a work of art.

"Young Master, this glass casing is truly incredible!"

Lao Li swallowed hard, unable to take his eyes off it.

"It's a bit heavier than the flagship phones from the big manufacturers, but the heft is perfect. It'll definitely turn heads."

"Turning heads is just the shell's job."

Lu Jingming pressed his thumb against the power button on the side of the device.

"Whether a phone is good or not depends on its soul."

The screen lit up instantly.

There was none of that sluggish, hourglass-loading screen typical of Symbian OS, nor any jarring startup music.

It went straight to the home screen, crisp and clean.

A deep blue starry sky wallpaper.

On it, rounded rectangular app icons were neatly arranged, devoid of any unnecessary border decorations.

It was clean, transparent, and so refreshing it gave one goosebumps.

Lu Jingming pressed his thumb against the brand-new capacitive screen and gently swiped to the right.

A miracle occurred.

The image seemed glued to his fingertip by invisible adhesive.

The screen moved exactly as much as his finger did, with absolutely no visible lag.

The tactile resistance of the swipe was as smooth as silk, without a hint of hesitation.

Zhou Hong's breathing instantly quickened.

He snatched the phone, his eyes flushed with excitement.

The veteran chief hardware engineer's fingers trembled as he frantically swiped across the screen.

"Impossible... This is impossible!"

Zhou Hong gritted his teeth and, like a madman, tapped on the text messages—they opened instantly.

He pressed the physical Home button to return to the home screen, then opened the calendar—again, it opened instantly.

He opened over a dozen built-in system apps in one go.

Contacts, Gallery, Snake, Memo.

The background was stuffed full; if this were a Nokia flagship, it would have frozen and crashed to a black screen by now.

Zhou Hong gritted his teeth and swiped the home screen again.

The screen remained fluid as flowing water; he couldn't find a single frame of lag.

"This is the absolute trashiest, old-school X86 Architecture!"

Zhou Hong slapped his thigh, his voice cracking.

"With such poor hardware, how is it running at such a monstrous speed? This defies software logic!"

Xia Weiliang, barefoot on the anti-static mat, hummed proudly.

She pulled a half-peeled sausage from her pocket and took a bite.

"It's called the Tombstone Mechanism, you old fogey."

Xia Weiliang muttered vaguely, her cheeks bulging.

"All those background apps are forced to hibernate; only the one you're looking at is actually running."

She tapped the screen with her greasy finger.

"It isn't running fast; it just killed off all the trash hogging the resources. How could it not be smooth?"

Zhou Hong stared fixedly at the screen in his hand, and suddenly, tears welled up.

He had spent his whole life patching things up in big factories, suffering through the frustration of broken systems.

Today, he had finally seen the dawn of a true smartphone.

Chu Xuan watched from the side, dumbfounded, drool practically dripping from his mouth.

"Boss Lu, this is incredible! It's damn incredible!"

He clenched his fist and pumped it into the air.

"If we take this phone to a press conference, Fatty Xu will probably have to be transferred to the morgue overnight!"

The atmosphere in the lab instantly reached a boiling point.

Several engineers hugged and jumped for joy, while Lao Li just grinned foolishly.

With this casing and this system, Xinghai Technology would soon be able to shake the world.

"Hiss—"

The sound of the heavy fire door's pneumatic valve hissing suddenly interrupted the celebration.

Shen Qingqiu strode in, her black high heels clicking against the floor.

Her dark gray professional suit radiated a cold, unapproachable aura.

Her gold-rimmed glasses caught the light with a cold glint, and she held several freshly printed A4 sheets in her hand.

"Don't rush to pop the champagne yet."

Shen Qingqiu, face cold, slammed the papers onto the stainless steel table.

"If we can't solve the mass production costs for this phone, it will always be nothing more than a toy."

The heated atmosphere was instantly doused with a bucket of ice-cold water.

Lu Jingming raised an eyebrow, picked up the report, and scanned it.

"The glass yield rate is too low?"

Shen Qingqiu pulled out an iron chair and sat down, crossing her long legs.

"It's not just the glass. The new molds in Shenzhen are resulting in a defect rate of up to thirty percent for the double-sided Corning glass."

She extended a slender finger and tapped the report.

"And on top of that, there are no existing production lines in the country for the custom capacitive touchscreens you want."

Shen Qingqiu took a deep breath and read off a set of numbers that were nothing short of despair-inducing.

"The hardware cost per unit has skyrocketed to over eight hundred yuan."

Zhou Hong froze, and the smile on Lao Li's face stiffened.

Eight hundred yuan in hardware costs?

That was more than ten times the cost of the previous glue-potted knockoff phones!

"Even if we pour all the liquid cash currently on Xinghai's books into it,"

Shen Qingqiu adjusted her glasses, her tone serious.

"even if we run the assembly lines until they smoke, we can only produce at most one hundred thousand units."

Chu Xuan panicked, grabbing his hair and pacing in circles.

"One hundred thousand units isn't enough! Our online popularity is through the roof right now."

"If we can't have one million units ready for the initial launch, the netizens will absolutely spam our official website until it crashes!"

Hunger marketing might be effective, but only if you actually have the stock to sustain it.

If we don't have stock, we're just playing the customers for fools, and the reputation we've just built will instantly backfire.

The laboratory was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

One million units meant a cash shortfall of over eight hundred million.

Even if we packed up the entire Xinghai Electronics Factory and sold it to the bank, we couldn't borrow that much money.

Shen Qingqiu looked at Lu Jingming, a hint of helplessness in her eyes.

"We've overreached ourselves. How are we going to fill this funding gap?"

Everyone's gaze shifted back to Lu Jingming.

Lu Jingming, however, showed no signs of anxiety.

He leaned against the edge of the workbench, pulled a lighter from his pocket, and flipped it back and forth in his hand.

The metal casing clicked with a crisp sound.

"No money?"

Lu Jingming looked up at the dazzling fluorescent light on the ceiling, his eyes flashing with a cunning glint.

He slipped the lighter back into his pocket, a smile like an old fox curling the corners of his mouth.

"No money? That's easy to fix. We might not have money, but there are plenty of people out there with more cash than they know what to do with."

Lu Jingming straightened up and patted Shen Qingqiu on the shoulder.

"Go get ready. We're going to find those gods of wealth who are willing to hand us money and 'borrow' some pocket change."

Chu Xuan was bewildered and leaned forward to ask.

"Boss Lu, where are we going to find a god of wealth? Who in this day and age is going to hand us hundreds of millions for no reason?"

Lu Jingming turned his head to look at the darkening sky outside the window, his tone laced with ruthless calculation.

"Those scalpers who spend every day glued to their computers, hoping to make a fortune by reselling phones."

"It's time to make them bleed a little."