Chapter 65 Exorbitant Patent Fees? No way, not a single penny!

The air conditioning in the conference room blew cold enough to send shivers down one's spine.

Paul tapped his leather shoes against the mahogany tabletop, the soles scraping against the wood with a faint sound.

He exhaled a thick cloud of cigar smoke and looked at Lu Jingming through his sunglasses.

"Mr. Lu, I only have one minute of patience left."

The blonde lawyer beside him immediately stepped forward and handed an uncapped fountain pen to Lu Jingming's hand.

That thick English contract lay right in the center.

The black-and-white clauses were a predatory contract, like a guillotine blade pressed against the throat of Xinghai Technology.

Once the pen touched the paper, the empire they had fought tooth and nail to build over the past few months would essentially be renamed for the foreigners.

Shen Qingqiu bit her lower lip so hard that her dusty rose lipstick lost all its color.

She knew full well how vicious this contract was, but if they didn't sign, their million units of existing stock would be dead in the water by tomorrow.

This was a dead end.

Old Li stood nearby, breathing heavily, his eyes fixed intently on that fountain pen.

"Young Master, you can't sign it! If you do, we'll become nothing more than servants working for them!"

The old man's voice was choked with tears, but he was glared at fiercely by a white bodyguard standing nearby.

Niu Dazhuang gripped his pipe wrench and shuffled half a step forward, but was frozen in place by a single glance from Lu Jingming.

"That's right." Paul grinned in satisfaction as he watched Lu Jingming pick up the contract.

He assumed this young Chinese man had finally recognized reality.

In the face of the capitalistic cudgel from Silicon Valley, even the hardest bones had to kneel down and act like dogs.

Lu Jingming held the contract but did not take the fountain pen being offered to him.

He lowered his head and gently stroked the edges of the paper with his fingers.

A faint, cold sneer curled the corner of his mouth.

"President Paul, did you just say that if I don't sign this contract, I won't be able to buy a single chip?"

Lu Jingming lifted his eyelids, the light in his eyes as cold as shards of ice.

Paul shrugged, looking as if he had the other party completely cornered.

"On this planet, no one can bypass Qualcomm's baseband patents."

He pointed at his own nose, his tone arrogant.

"If I say stop the supply, your production lines won't even be able to assemble a single LED."

"Is that so?"

Lu Jingming nodded, seemingly quite satisfied with this answer.

He suddenly grasped both ends of the contract with his hands and gave his wrists a sharp twist.

"Rip—"

A piercing sound of paper tearing exploded in the deathly silent conference room.

The heavy contract, dozens of pages thick, was torn straight in half by his brute force.

Before anyone could react.

Lu Jingming quickly overlapped his hands, followed by a series of "rip, rip" sounds.

The predatory contract, worth billions of dollars, instantly turned into a pile of shredded paper.

The blonde lawyer's hand, still holding the pen, froze in mid-air, his eyes nearly popping out of his sockets.

"You're crazy! This is a legally binding confidential offer!"

Lu Jingming ignored him completely and stood up.

He strode around half the conference table and walked straight up to Paul.

He raised his hand and slammed the handful of shredded paper into Paul's face, as if scattering funeral money.

"Swish."

The scraps of paper drifted down, covering Paul's head and face.

One piece even stuck directly onto the lens of his expensive sunglasses.

The cigar in Paul's mouth fell onto his crotch with a "plop," making him flinch violently from the burn.

"Fuck! What do you think you're doing?!"

He scrambled to pat his crotch, his high-and-mighty composure shattered completely.

"You think you can take a cut of Xinghai's profits with some crappy, outdated chip?"

Lu Jingming stared down at him, his eyes filled with an arrogance that crushed everything.

"Who do you think you are?"

He extended his index finger and pointed it directly at the tip of Paul's nose.

"With that pathetic inventory Qualcomm has now, a 28-nanometer process, it generates so much heat you could fry an egg on it."

"It lags like a slideshow just running a small game. Putting that in my Full-screen Display is simply an insult to my machine."

Lu Jingming's voice wasn't loud, but every word was cutting, piercing into Paul's ears like steel nails.

"You want a five percent commission from me? You also want to share the Full-screen Display technology?"

He scoffed, his face full of disdain.

"You're trying to exchange a pile of industrial trash for my future technology? How shameless can you be?"

Paul's pale face instantly turned the color of a pig's liver.

He was the dignified President of Qualcomm, a god of wealth treated as an honored guest by politicians everywhere he went.

Today, he was actually being pointed at and called industrial trash by a young Chinese kid!

"Lu Jingming! You are courting death!"

Paul ripped off his sunglasses, his blue eyes filled with bloodshot rage.

"Security! Grab him for me!"

The white bodyguards following behind instantly changed expressions, reaching toward their waists.

Lu Jingming didn't even blink.

He suddenly raised his right leg and kicked hard at the leg of the solid wood chair Paul was sitting on.

"Bang!"

A deafening crash rang out.

The heavy solid wood chair was kicked, sliding violently backward.

Paul lost his balance along with the chair, flipping over and landing on his back.

The back of his head hit the wooden floor with a heavy thud, and he let out a pig-like shriek.

"Boss!"

The blonde lawyer and the bodyguards panicked, scrambling over to help him up.

At this moment, the people on Xinghai's side all reacted.

Niu Dazhuang's eyes widened, and the pipe wrench in his hand swung with such speed it left a blur.

"What are you doing! You dare to act violently on our turf?"

Like a protective bear, he stood directly in front of Lu Jingming, flexing his muscles at the foreign bodyguards.

The dozens of security guards outside in the hallway heard the commotion.

They swarmed in, wielding rubber batons, and blocked the conference room door completely.

If the other side dared to make a move, they would definitely beat them until even their own mothers wouldn't recognize them.

Seeing this, the white bodyguards froze, their hands hovering at their waists, not daring to pull out their weapons.

This was China, not the US.

If a real fight broke out, the few of them wouldn't even be enough to fill the gaps in Niu Dazhuang's teeth.

Paul was dragged up from the floor by the lawyer and his team.

His exquisite silver-gray suit was completely wrinkled, his hair disheveled, and he looked as wretched as a tramp who had just been beaten up.

"Rude! Barbaric! This is an international crime!"

The blonde lawyer shielded Paul, shouting at Lu Jingming with a fierce expression but a cowardly heart.

"We are going to the embassy to report you! Xinghai Technology should prepare for massive sanctions!"

"Report us? Sure, we're ready anytime."

The Pizza Hut of Donghai City, who had been sitting quietly on the side, stood up.

He clutched his tattered briefcase, revealing half a gold tooth, and gave a sinister smile.

"This is Donghai City, this is Chinese soil."

The Pizza Hut of Donghai City walked to Lu Jingming's side and adjusted his black-rimmed glasses.

"Mr. Paul just used the threat of cutting off supply to force our side to sign an unequal treaty, which constitutes commercial extortion."

He tapped the voice recorder on his chest.

"I've already saved the recording. If a transnational lawsuit really happens, we can just hash it out in front of the global media."

Paul clutched his throbbing head, trembling with rage.

He stared daggers at Lu Jingming, his eyes full of malice from being humiliated.

He had originally thought this trip would be a triumphant harvest.

As long as he showed his trump card, these Chinese people would surely kneel and lick Qualcomm's shoes in tears.

He hadn't expected the other party to not take his trump card seriously at all!

"Lu Jingming, do you really think you're invincible?"

Paul pushed away the lawyer helping him, gasping for air.

"Without chips, your Full-screen Display is just a piece of black glass! Your Xinghai OS is just a pile of useless code!"

He gritted his teeth so hard they nearly cracked; he had no interest in maintaining his dignity anymore.

"Stop barking here; it's annoying to listen to."

Lu Jingming reached out to straighten his wrinkled black T-shirt, looking at him as if he were a bag of trash.

"Take your bunch of good-for-nothings and get out of China."

He pointed at the door, his tone carrying an unquestionable chill.

"If you're a second too slow, I can't guarantee that the pipe wrench in Dazhuang's hand won't smash into your heads."

Niu Dazhuang cooperated perfectly by tossing the pipe wrench in his hand twice, creating a dull, whistling sound.

Paul's eyelid twitched violently; he knew he had lost all face today.

If he stayed any longer, these unreasonable lunatics would really dare to beat them up.

He resentfully straightened his crooked tie and retreated out the door under the protection of his bodyguards.

When he reached the conference room door, Paul stopped abruptly.

He turned his head and stared at Lu Jingming's dark and indifferent face, issuing a warning.

"You will pay for your arrogance today! The most painful price!"

Paul's voice was hoarse, like a venomous snake flicking its tongue.

"From this second on, Xinghai Technology will be completely cut off from supply! I want to see what you use to build phones!"

Lu Jingming leaned against the corner of the table, looking at him with a half-smile.

"Good riddance. Remember what you said, and don't come begging me to buy your chips later with a thick face."

Paul and his people fled the Xinghai building in a sorry state, and the hallway returned to deathly silence.

But the people in the office had their hearts in their throats.

Old Li's legs went weak, and he slumped into his chair, his thick glasses fogged up completely.

"Young Master, you certainly let them have it, and it felt great. But once Qualcomm cuts off the supply, where else in the world can we get chips from?"

Shen Qingqiu also walked to Lu Jingming's side, her brows knit into a tight knot, her voice trembling.

"Lu Jingming, without the CPU as the heart, our one million units of real Full-screen Display stock will all have to halt production."

She stared at him, her tone filled with deep despair.

"You burned your bridges so thoroughly, what are we going to use to survive this dead end?"