Chapter 67 Desperate Situation? Lu Jingming laughed out loud in his office.

"Bang."

The heavy solid wood door shut tight, sealing perfectly.

The brass doorknob snapped back into place with a sharp, cold click.

This door firmly shut out the gloom and despair hanging over the hallway.

Outside the door, there was a deathly silence.

Old Li's legs went weak, and he slid down the wall to the floor.

He took off his thick-rimmed glasses and wiped his eyes haphazardly with the back of his calloused hand.

"It's over. This time, our Xinghai Technology is really going to fall apart."

There was an inescapable sob in the old man's voice, and his shoulders were trembling.

"Hundreds of thousands of units are waiting to be shipped! Without processors, those screens are just blind, useless pieces of glass!"

Niu Dazhuang kicked the white wall of the corridor, leaving a conspicuous gray shoe print.

The knuckles of his fingers gripping the pipe wrench turned white, and his eyes bulged like brass bells.

"Those shameless foreign devils!"

Dazhuang gritted his teeth, his chest heaving violently like a bellows.

"The Young Master must be devastated in there. I'm going in to keep him company!"

As he said this, he reached for the doorknob.

"Come back!"

Shen Qingqiu grabbed Dazhuang's arm, stepping in front of him in her high heels.

Her face, usually so aloof, was now deathly pale, drained of all color.

"Let him have some peace and quiet."

Shen Qingqiu stared fixedly at the solid wood door, her eyes behind her gold-rimmed glasses bloodshot.

"The pressure he's carrying is a hundred times greater than ours. What can you do by going in now other than add to the chaos?"

Chu Xuan paced around the hallway like a headless chicken, his parted hair ruffled into a mess.

"General Manager Shen, is there really no way out at all?"

He swallowed hard, his voice trembling like a leaf in the cold wind.

Shen Qingqiu closed her eyes and shook her head helplessly.

"This strike from Qualcomm has directly severed the supply chain for global foundries."

Her voice was dry and hoarse.

"Our domestic technology lags behind theirs by decades. This time, we've truly been choked at the jugular."

The air in the corridor seemed to have solidified.

The group looked ashen, as if they were holding a funeral service for Xinghai Technology in advance.

However.

Inside the private office, just one door away, the scene was entirely different.

The lights were off in the room.

A few fragments of light leaked through the gaps in the blinds, landing on the spacious mahogany desk.

Lu Jingming leaned back in his leather executive chair.

He wasn't shedding tears, throwing things, or worrying himself gray as the people outside imagined.

He stared at the chandelier on the ceiling, his shoulders beginning to tremble slightly.

From a low, muffled chuckle, he finally couldn't hold it back and threw his head back, laughing loudly.

The laughter echoed in the dim office, filled with an unbridled, wild intensity.

There was not a hint of despair in this laughter.

It was pure, unadulterated fanaticism, like a hunter seeing a fat pig fall into a trap.

"Paul, oh Paul, you really are a gift-giving boy."

Lu Jingming stopped laughing, wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes, and tossed his lighter onto the desk.

He had guessed that the Americans would impose sanctions, but he hadn't expected these bastards to move so quickly.

They even went so far as to make a global announcement.

This was practically a divine assist handed right to him!

At this very moment.

Deep in Lu Jingming's mind, the [Competitor Breakdown System] was no longer just ringing.

It was roaring and exploding like a madman!

"Ding! Qualcomm's total network ban detected; domestic netizens' nationalistic sentiment completely ignited!"

"Ding! President Xu of Wave Mobile is popping champagne in his office to celebrate, his mental state twisted in ecstasy and shock!"

"Ding! The national mobile phone industry group chat is being flooded with messages, producing intense emotional fluctuations over the fall of Xinghai Technology!"

These competitors thought Xinghai Technology was done for.

That ugly display of schadenfreude and kicking a man while he's down, combined with the indignation of hundreds of millions of domestic netizens provoked by the Americans.

All of it, in this instant, transformed into a massive stream of breakdown data.

A transparent holographic panel suddenly unfolded before Lu Jingming's eyes.

The balance of his Breakdown Value in the top right corner was rolling upwards crazily at a speed invisible to the naked eye.

Two million.

Three million.

Four million.

Bang! The number jumped fiercely, crashing through the five-million mark!

This was an unprecedented record since the system was bound.

The dazzling golden light made Lu Jingming's pupils glow slightly.

Lu Jingming reined in the smile at the corners of his mouth, his gaze becoming sharp as a blade.

Did the foreigners think that by grabbing hold of the chips, they could make him kneel and act like a dog?

That's because they didn't know he held a cheat system in his hands that could ignore the laws of physics.

"It's time to show these Silicon Valley big shots some real intensity."

Lu Jingming moved his thoughts slightly and clicked directly on the [Intermediate Tech Tree] section of the system.

Those gray, unaffordable semiconductor equipment icons that were usually dull.

Now, under the wash of the five-million fortune, they all lit up with blinding white light.

Like future soldiers waiting for inspection.

Lu Jingming didn't look at those fragmented sensor blueprints.

His gaze traveled all the way up, locking directly onto the very top of the tech tree, that core forbidden zone tightly entangled by black chains.

That was the industrial crown that had been monopolized by the West for half a century.

"Unlock."

Lu Jingming did not hesitate at all and issued the command directly.

"Hum—"

The five million Breakdown Value in the top right corner of the panel was instantly wiped out by more than half.

His entire sea of consciousness shook violently, as if some primordial beast had been released.

The black chains originally wrapped around the icon shattered inch by inch, dissolving into countless points of light.

A dazzling purple-gold beam of light shot up from the depths of the panel.

It lit up the dim office as if it were broad daylight.

"Ding! Congratulations, Host! Successfully unlocked the cross-era semiconductor core forbidden zone!"

A special USB drive with a deep blue metallic luster appeared out of thin air in Lu Jingming's palm.

The metal surface had a cold touch and felt substantial in his hand.

Lu Jingming looked down at the object in his hand, his heart pounding uncontrollably twice.

What was contained in this USB drive was not just a few simple lines of code.

It was the "Full Blueprints for the Xialong-class Mobile SoC Architecture."

Attached to it was the "Initial Concept Prototype of the Ultraviolet Lithography Machine"!

This set of chip blueprints, derived from the future Xiaolong architecture, even if it was just the first generation.

Its performance and energy efficiency ratio would be enough to pin Qualcomm's current 28-nanometer industrial trash, which they were so proud of, to the ground and rub it into the dirt a hundred times over!

Lu Jingming clenched the USB drive tightly in his palm.

His fingernails dug into the metal casing, leaving several white marks.

With this thing, the Americans' patent barriers were just a layer of window paper that would break at a single poke.

Choking our throat?

Today, I'm going to chop off your hands!

He took a deep breath and shoved the USB drive into his jeans pocket.

He turned and strode toward the heavy solid wood door.

Outside the door.

Old Li was still slumped on the floor sighing, and Chu Xuan was tugging at his parted hair while squatting in the corner drawing circles.

The atmosphere in the hallway was so oppressive you could wring sour water out of it.

"Click."

The sound of the doorknob turning was exceptionally crisp in this deathly silent space.

Dazhuang suddenly lifted his head and sprang up from the wall like a spring.

"The Young Master is out!"

Shen Qingqiu hurriedly walked up to meet him in her high heels.

She looked at Lu Jingming's calm face, and her heart gave a sudden pang.

She thought he was just holding back from breaking down in front of everyone.

"Lu Jingming, don't try to bear it all by yourself."

Shen Qingqiu bit her red lip, her voice so soft she was afraid of shattering his pride.

"At worst, we can sell a few of our overseas Full-screen Display patents to raise enough to pay the breach of contract penalties and refund the netizens. As long as the green hills remain, there's no need to worry about firewood."

Old Li also stood up, leaning against the wall, his old eyes welling with tears.

"That's right, Young Master. This time it's really not our fault; it's that the Americans don't play by the rules."

The old man sniffled.

"We can retreat to the low-end market, keep using MediaTek's crappy chips, and just muddle through for a while."

Lu Jingming looked at his subordinates, who were acting as if they were mourning at a funeral, and didn't say a word.

With one hand in his pocket, he walked through the crowd to the large tea table at the end of the hallway.

He pulled the glowing blue metal USB drive from his pocket.

With a flip of his wrist.

"Clap!"

He slammed the USB drive heavily onto the solid wood tabletop, creating a dull thud.

"Retreat from what? Sell what patents?"

Lu Jingming turned around, leaning his back against the edge of the table.

He looked at the stunned executives, a wild, arrogant curve playing on his lips.

Old Li was startled by the sound.

He stared at the strange USB drive on the table, his throat bobbing.

"Young Master... W-what is this? In our current situation, where can we go to beg for even one usable chip?"

Lu Jingming scoffed, his eyes instantly turning sharp as knives.

"Begging is for beggars. If others won't sell, it's because they don't have the fortune to earn our money."

He raised his hand and pointed to Old Zhou, who was standing at the back of the crowd with an ashen face.

"Go and call Old Zhou and Xia Weiliang here for me."

Lu Jingming tapped the USB drive on the table, his voice filled with a ruthless determination to overturn the entire world.

"Since the foreign devils have blocked the path, we'll just tread our own path out."

"Today, we're going to build our own 'heart' and really open the foreigners' eyes!"