Chapter 31: Research and development is burning through cash too fast, so let's fleece the scalpers.

Shen Qingqiu unzipped her Hermès bag and pulled out a set of car keys.

She deftly pulled a business card from her cardholder and turned to walk out the door.

"I'm going to contact Neil Shen of Sequoia Capital right now. Even if we have to give up 15% of our shares, we have to fill this 800 million funding gap."

She was brisk and decisive, her high heels clicking rapidly as she strode away.

"What are you looking for venture capital for?"

Lu Jingming extended his arm, pressing it against the doorframe to block her path.

"Venture capital money is hot to the touch. It's easy to invite the wolf into the house, but getting it back out is hard."

He turned and walked to the whiteboard, picked up a black marker, and swiftly wrote five large characters.

"F-Code", "Full Payment Pre-sale".

Shen Qingqiu stopped, her brow furrowing slightly behind her gold-rimmed glasses.

"F-Code? What is that?"

Lu Jingming tapped the letters heavily with the tip of his marker, making the whiteboard thud.

"Priority purchase right. An identity identifier made of letters and numbers."

He turned around and looked at the puzzled executives.

"If you want to buy the xinghai gen 2, fine. But you have to use your speed to grab an F-Code on our official website first."

"After getting the code, you must pay the full amount into our official account within ten minutes for the phone to truly belong to you."

Chu Xuan listened, scratching his scalp, his face scrunching up like a bun.

"Boss Lu, isn't this rule too overbearing? We haven't even let anyone touch a real unit yet."

He spread his hands, his face full of confusion.

"Getting something for nothing is one thing, but setting up barriers? The netizens will curse our ancestors until the graves smoke!"

Old Li chimed in, his thick-rimmed glasses bobbing.

"That's right, Young Master. Even when buying a color TV these days, you have to plug it in and test it. Who would pay in full for a phone they haven't even seen?"

Lu Jingming wasn't annoyed; instead, he tossed the marker to Chu Xuan.

"Of course ordinary netizens won't buy it, and I don't expect to earn their deposits."

He braced his hands on the table, his lips curling into a cold, blade-like smirk.

"Chu Xuan, go book the headlines on all the digital forums for me and leak some news."

"Just say that the double-sided Corning glass process for the xinghai gen 2 is too difficult, the rejection rate is high, and production capacity is severely limited."

Lu Jingming held up three fingers, his eyes glinting with calculation.

"Tell the whole internet that the first batch of xinghai gen 2 is globally limited to only 30,000 units."

As soon as these words were spoken, Chu Xuan shivered violently, as if struck by an electric current.

He was an old hand who had spent years in internet cafes and knew this routine all too well.

"Hunger marketing! Boss Lu, you're digging a pit for the scalpers!"

Chu Xuan was so excited his face turned bright red, and he slapped his thighs loudly.

"As long as we slap the 'limited edition' and 'hard to get' labels on it, those scalpers who come running at the smell of blood will absolutely go crazy!"

Lu Jingming nodded with satisfaction.

"Go on, hype it up to the heavens. I want every scalper in the country to feel that grabbing a xinghai gen 2 is like grabbing a gold brick."

In Huaqiangbei, on the second floor of an old, crowded rental building.

The curtains in the room were drawn tightly, and a dozen bulky monitors emitted scorching heat.

The clatter of keyboards was chaotic, like rain hammering on a tin roof.

Brother Jin was walking around shirtless, chewing on a cheap, unfiltered cigarette.

He was a famous big-time scalper in the area, specializing in making a fortune by hoarding in-demand electronic products.

"Brother Jin, the announcement on the Xinghai official website is out!"

A subordinate with dyed yellow hair shouted at the top of his lungs, pointing at the red text on the screen.

Brother Jin took a deep drag of his cigarette, strode over in a few steps, and leaned in toward the screen.

"First batch limited to 30,000 units? Full payment rush purchase with F-Code?"

He squinted his smoke-yellowed eyes, staring fixedly at the lines of text, his heart beginning to pound wildly.

"Good heavens, this isn't a phone, this is a damn money-printing machine!"

Brother Jin slammed the computer desk, shaking the ashtray next to it until it almost fell to the floor.

When the xinghai generation 1 was released a while back, he hadn't thought much of it, only to watch others make hundreds on every unit they resold.

Now, this gen 2 phone wasn't just double-sided glass; the system was also being rumored online to be god-like.

The most critical thing was that there were only 30,000 units!

"If I can get my hands on this, hold it for half a month, even with a 2,000 markup, rich people will be scrambling to buy it!"

Brother Jin's eyes were bloodshot with greed as he turned and roared at his subordinates in the room.

"Turn off all the bots we were using to grab game equipment! Rewrite the scripts!"

"Get me a thousand virtual IPs and keep a close watch on the Xinghai code-grabbing channel!"

A subordinate hesitated and turned to look at him.

"Brother Jin, this requires full payment within ten minutes. We don't have enough money in our accounts to cover it."

Brother Jin gritted his teeth, stomped his cigarette butt hard onto the concrete floor, and crushed it.

"Fortune favors the bold!"

He pulled out his phone and found a contact with a loan shark's number.

"Go mortgage those two apartments I have outside the border, and borrow 5 million in bridge loans with high interest from Brother Long."

"Even if I have to sell everything I own today, I'm going to pull this crop of leeks up by the roots!"

The same madness was unfolding simultaneously in scalper dens all over the country.

Those professional scalpers were like a school of sharks that had smelled blood, eyes red as they swarmed the Xinghai Technology official website.

At 2:00 PM, the F-Code purchase channel opened on time.

In the Xinghai Technology building, the finance office was terrifyingly quiet.

Shen Qingqiu sat at the computer, gripping the mouse tightly, her knuckles white.

She took a deep breath and pressed the refresh key.

The page on the screen froze for two seconds, and then data cascaded down like a waterfall.

"Beep, beep, beep, beep—"

The notification sound connected to the corporate online banking account suddenly started blaring sharply in the room like a crazed alarm.

Shen Qingqiu's eyes widened instantly, and her gold-rimmed glasses nearly slid down to the tip of her nose.

"Ten thousand orders... thirty thousand orders... one hundred thousand orders!"

Her voice was trembling uncontrollably as she jumped to her feet, knocking her chair back against the wall.

"Lu Jingming! The payment channel has crashed!"

Lu Jingming was leaning against the doorframe, holding a cup of hot tea and slowly blowing the floating leaves.

"What's the rush? This is just the beginning."

He took a sip of tea, his eyes as calm as a stagnant pool.

Chu Xuan was holding another computer nearby, looking at the user IP distribution in the backend, grinning from ear to ear.

"Boss Lu, amazing! You really called it!"

He pointed at the screen full of highly overlapping virtual addresses, stamping his feet in excitement.

"Ordinary netizens can't even access the page. These 800,000-plus full-payment orders, 90% of them were botted by scalpers using scripts!"

Shen Qingqiu felt her brain buzzing, completely losing the ability to think.

She collapsed back into her chair, staring fixedly at the long, dazzling string of numbers in the account balance.

"Ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, ten thousands, hundred thousands, millions, ten millions..."

Counting to the end, she gasped, feeling as if her heart was about to jump out of her throat.

"1.6 billion!"

Shen Qingqiu turned her head sharply, looking at Lu Jingming as if he were a monster.

"In less than half a day, we have 1.6 billion in cash sitting in our account!"

This money didn't just fill the 800 million hardware hole; it left us with a surplus double that amount.

And without paying a single cent in interest, without giving up even 0.01% of our shares!

Old Li stood in the corner, using a towel to frantically wipe the sweat from his forehead.

"My goodness, these scalpers are truly rich. Now our assembly lines can finally run at full capacity!"

Lu Jingming put down his teacup and walked to the window.

The sunlight shone on him, but he didn't have a shred of the wild joy of sudden wealth; instead, he exuded a cold, murderous air.

"Old Li, take the money and go find the Lanhai Glass Factory in Shenzhen, and the capacitive screen suppliers."

Lu Jingming turned back, his eyes as sharp as an eagle's.

"Tell them, three shifts, the machines don't stop even if the people do."

"Before the release date, I want to see one million units of the xinghai gen 2 in stock, neatly stacked in our warehouse."

Old Li froze, his hand holding the towel suspended in mid-air.

"One million units? Young Master, didn't we agree that the initial release would only be 30,000 units?"

Chu Xuan laughed like a villain nearby, nudging Old Li with his elbow.

"Old Li, are you stupid? That was to fool those scalpers outside!"

"Now that we have this 1.6 billion in scalper funding, why would we only make 30,000? We'll just use their money to max out production!"

Old Li finally realized, his mouth dropping open wide enough to fit a lightbulb.

Using scalpers' money to build phones—this tactic was truly ruthless.

In that basement in Huaqiangbei.

Brother Jin was opening a bottle of cheap champagne, clinking glasses with his subordinates to celebrate.

"Brother Jin is awesome! We grabbed 5,000 spots this time, and the full payment has already been sent!"

The subordinate took a big gulp of alcohol, his face flushed with excitement.

Brother Jin crossed his legs triumphantly and blew a smoke ring.

"Once the day after tomorrow comes, the release date, and Xinghai has no stock to sell to ordinary people, they'll have no choice but to come begging us."

He patted his round belly and laughed wildly.

"By then, we'll sell them with a 2,000 markup per unit. These 5,000 units will be 10 million in pure profit just like that!"

These professional scalpers were still dreaming of getting rich, completely unaware that the sickle was already hanging over their necks.

Inside the Xinghai office, the atmosphere was enthusiastic.

Shen Qingqiu, however, suddenly calmed down, frowning as she looked at Lu Jingming.

"We have the funds, and the production capacity has caught up. But have you thought about one problem?"

She tapped the data report on the table, her tone serious.

"This 1.6 billion is all full payment from scalpers. According to consumer protection laws, they can apply for a no-questions-asked refund at any time before shipment."

Shen Qingqiu pushed up her glasses, her eyes full of worry.

"On the release day, if we suddenly dump one million units of stock into the market."

"The scalpers will realize they can't hype it up, the goods will be stuck in their hands, and they will definitely initiate a collective refund."

Once these words were spoken, the room fell silent.

Chu Xuan also realized it, his face turning pale.

"That's right! Boss Lu, if hundreds of thousands of people initiate refunds at the same time, our newly expanded assembly line will immediately have its capital chain broken!"

This was a deadly vicious cycle.

Using scalpers' money to build phones—if the scalpers withdrew their funds, the factory would go bankrupt on the spot.

Old Li was so scared that the towel in his hand fell to the floor.

"Young Master, so are we spending this money or not?"

Lu Jingming didn't rush to answer.

He pulled out a chair and sat down, grabbing a pen from the table and spinning it nimbly between his fingers.

"Spend it. Throw every last cent into the supply chain."

Lu Jingming looked at the anxious crowd, the curve of his lips widening.

He threw down the pen and leaned forward slightly.

"What if the scalpers collectively ask for a refund?" Chu Xuan was so anxious he was practically jumping.

Lu Jingming chuckled, a dangerous, cunning glint flashing in his eyes.

"Refund? Since the money has already entered our Xinghai pockets, do they really think they can get it back in one piece?"

He snapped his fingers, the sound echoing crisply in the office.

"Chu Xuan, go prepare a tyrannical system upgrade announcement."

Lu Jingming looked at the frantically jumping scalper IPs on the screen and slowly spat out one sentence.

"On the release day, I will prepare a huge surprise for these scalpers that will leave them unable to even cry."