Chapter 73 Okay, remember what you said today, and don't do it again.

"Beep—beep—" The harsh busy signal echoed under the office's mahogany ceiling, sounding like rusty metal being scraped.

Shen Qingqiu's hand froze in mid-air, still clutching the black receiver.

Her grip left white indentations on the plastic casing, and cold, sticky sweat seeped from under her fingernails.

Lu Jingming lowered his eyelids, the half-crushed cigarette still pinched between his fingers.

Shreds of yellow tobacco clung to his fingertips.

A hard bit of tobacco stem poked into his flesh, causing a stinging, numbing sensation.

He raised his hand, rubbing his thumb against his index finger to brush the tobacco away.

"Plop." The cigarette butt fell onto the wooden floor.

No one in the room moved to pick it up.

The air was thick with the smell of stale tea mixed with sour sweat, making one's chest feel tight.

Old Zhou held his head and slid down along the wall.

He landed on his butt, his trousers covered in a layer of white dust.

"It's over... This time, we're completely finished."

He pulled at his already thinning hair with both hands, scratching red welts onto his scalp.

"Once TSMC welds their doors shut, our blueprints will just be a pile of useless code!"

Chen Guoan sat in the leather sofa, his chest heaving like a broken bellows.

His military overcoat was open at the collar, revealing a yellowing undershirt.

"Those compradors! They've had their spines removed long ago!"

The old man slapped his thigh, kicking up a cloud of fine dust.

The fat old man beside him fumbled with a pill bottle he carried, poured two fast-acting heart pills into his mouth.

He swallowed them dry, choking until his eyes rolled back.

"The Americans really know how to pinch us where it hurts. We can calculate the lithography masks, but the furnace is in their backyard."

Chu Xuan squatted by the threshold, biting his fingernails on his right hand.

After gnawing one down to the quick, he spat out the nail fragment.

"Uh... Lu Jingming, we can't just let ourselves be suffocated by this, right?"

Chu Xuan's eyes darted around, sweat streaming from his temples and sliding into his shirt collar.

"If Taiwan won't take the order, what about... what about Europe?"

He stood up, gesturing wildly.

"I saw in the news that there are some small, near-bankrupt chip factories in Europe. If we secretly send the blueprints over..."

"Grease their palms with some black money, and have them secretly run the tape-out for us, would that work?"

Lu Jingming grabbed a tissue from the table and wiped the tobacco stains from his fingertips.

"Work? My ass."

He crumpled the tissue and tossed it into the trash can in the corner.

"The American Department of Commerce has spies watching the whole world."

Lu Jingming scoffed coldly, pulling at the collar of his black T-shirt.

"The moment you send the blueprints over, that little European factory will package them up and sell them to Silicon Valley."

Chu Xuan was speechless, scratching his messy middle-part hair.

"Then... we can't just sit here and wait for death, right?"

"Who said anything about waiting for death?"

Lu Jingming walked to the water dispenser and grabbed a disposable paper cup.

He filled it halfway with cold water and downed it in one go.

The cold liquid hit his stomach, jolting him awake.

"Living under someone else's roof and eating off their scraps—tasting that once is enough."

Crushing the paper cup, he turned around.

His gaze swept over the group of people in the room, who looked as if they were mourning the dead.

"If others won't do the foundry work for us, we'll set up our own stove."

Upon hearing this, Old Zhou's dull eyes widened.

He sprang up from the floor like a spring, hitting his knee on the corner of the coffee table.

With a loud bang.

He winced in pain but didn't have time to rub it.

"Lu, Lu Jingming, what kind of joke are you making!"

Old Zhou stuttered so badly his tongue felt tied, spraying spit everywhere.

"Set up our own stove? That means building an entire lithography production line!"

He gestured wildly in the air, like a madman directing traffic.

"The precision of the dual-stage system needs to be at the nanometer level! The curvature of the optical lenses is harder to grind than diamonds!"

Old Zhou panted, his Adam's apple bobbing.

"This is an entire heavy industrial system! Just throwing money at it is useless, boss!"

Shen Qingqiu hung up the phone receiver with a "click."

She took two steps forward in her high heels, her perfume scent diluted by sweat.

"Old Zhou is right."

She pushed up her gold-rimmed glasses, her eyes filled with exhaustion.

"Lithography machines are known as the crown jewel of industry. That company in the Netherlands, ASML, had to gather the best parts from all over Europe just to assemble one."

Shen Qingqiu bit her red lip.

"Xinghai is just a private factory; we don't have high-precision machine tools, and we don't have special glass technology."

The phone in Chu Xuan's pocket suddenly vibrated like crazy.

"Buzz, buzz, buzz," it vibrated right against his thigh, making him cringe.

He pulled it out to look, the cold light from the screen reflecting on his pale face.

"Those bastards..."

Chu Xuan cursed, his fingers swiping across the screen.

"Lu Jingming, the internet is blowing up. That Vice President Lin Jianye from TSMC leaked the fact that we asked them for foundry services and were rejected."

Lu Jingming walked over and glanced at the phone screen.

On Twitter, Vice President Lin Jianye's verified account had posted a status update.

"Some assembly plants in China don't know their place, trying to touch high-end production lines with junk blueprints. Rejected, and will never cooperate."

The comment section below was a frenzy of foreign netizens.

"God, these scammers finally had their life support cut off!"

"Still want to make chips? Go home and play with mud."

Even the CEO of Qualcomm, Paul, liked the post and posted a smiley face emoji.

Fatty Xu from Bolang Mobile in China even posted a snarky comment on Weibo.

"If you take too big a step, you'll tear your balls. Some people should just learn their place."

Ridicule, contempt, schadenfreude.

All kinds of negative emotions surged along the radio waves like a tsunami.

Lu Jingming closed his eyes.

Deep in his mind, the dormant system was sounding frantic alarms.

The sharp mechanical sound made his brain buzz.

"Ding! Detected malicious ridicule from a TSMC executive, triggering a collective frenzy among Silicon Valley giants!"

"Ding! Domestic competitors are kicking us while we're down, and netizens are falling into a state of grief and anger!"

The number wheel of the "Mental Breakdown Value" spun so fast it left a glaring blur.

5.5 million... 6 million...

Just like a slot machine hitting the jackpot in a casino, it smashed through the 7 million mark.

A low chuckle escaped Lu Jingming's throat.

The laughter in the stuffy office carried a sinister chill.

Chu Xuan shivered and shrank back half a step.

"Lu, Lu Jingming, are you okay?"

Lu Jingming opened his eyes, the listlessness in them completely gone.

In its place was the ruthless intensity of a gambler pushing all their chips onto the table.

He focused his mind.

He smashed open the most tightly locked technological black zone in the system.

The 7 million Mental Breakdown Value instantly reset to zero.

In the redemption pool, a blinding purple light split the virtual darkness.

Lu Jingming felt his palm sink.

There was something hard and cold with a metallic chill in his pants pocket.

It had sharp edges, pressing against his thigh.

He reached in and pulled it out.

It was a heavy-duty mechanical hard drive, the size of a palm.

The frosted titanium alloy casing had no unnecessary seams, exuding the rugged feel of future technology.

"Clap!"

Lu Jingming flipped his wrist, and he slammed the hard drive onto the stainless steel edge of the conference table.

The loud noise made the tea cups on the table jump in unison.

Tea splashed onto the wood grain, spreading into a dark stain.

Chen Guoan shuddered, his reading glasses sliding down to the tip of his nose.

"What, what is this thing?"

The old man stood up, holding onto the armrest of the sofa, his legs a bit weak.

Lu Jingming braced his hands on the table and leaned forward.

His shoulder blades formed a sharp arc under his shirt.

He looked around at the people with their mouths wide open.

"Old Zhou just said that building this thing requires an entire heavy industrial system."

His long fingers tapped on the heavy-duty hard drive.

His fingertips tapped against the casing, making a dull "thud-thud" sound.

"Coincidentally, I specialize in curing all kinds of 'impossible'."

Shen Qingqiu's gaze was glued to the hard drive, her breathing rhythm disordered.

"What's inside is..."

She didn't dare to guess; this was beyond financial common sense.

Lu Jingming pulled out the silver data cable attached to the hard drive.

He pulled over the laptop on Old Zhou's desk.

He plugged it directly into the USB port.

The screen flickered twice, and an extraction package filled with garbled code popped up.

"They won't do the foundry work?"

Lu Jingming watched the file progress bar extracting frantically on the screen.

A wild, boundless cold smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

"Then we'll just rub together our own EUV lithography machine!"

The fat old man almost coughed up the fast-acting heart pills he had just swallowed.

"Cough, cough, cough... You, you're crazy!"

He pointed at Lu Jingming, his face full of disbelief.

"EUV? Even those monsters in Europe haven't overcome the wavelength attenuation problem of that light source!"

Chen Guoan couldn't sit still either.

He rushed to the computer in a few steps and pushed Lu Jingming aside.

The old man pressed his face close to the screen, his eyes almost popping out.

"Young man, you can eat whatever you want, but you can't just say whatever you want."

Chen Guoan's lips trembled, spraying spit onto the screen.

"If what's inside isn't the real deal, I'll risk this old life of mine today to beat you up!"

The extraction progress bar finally jumped to 100%.

A blueprint titled "Domestic EUV Full-Link Engineering Drawings and Light Source Compensation Algorithms."

It was dramatically revealed before the old men.

The complex laser generator structure, the nanometer-level displacement tracks of the dual-stage system.

Clear and precise, down to the torque of every titanium steel screw.

A strange, distorted cry came from Chen Guoan's throat.

Like a broken horn being stepped on.

The fat old man's legs went weak, and he slumped onto the edge of the computer desk, staring fixedly at the cross-section of the light source chamber.

Lu Jingming stepped aside, leaving the space for this group of crazed masters.

He turned his head to look at Old Zhou, who was still dazed.

His eyes held a touch of mischievous teasing.

"Chief Engineer Zhou, I've got the blueprints."

Lu Jingming put his hands in his pockets, leaning against the wall.

"Now, it's your turn to conjure up a heavy industrial system that can house it for me."

Old Zhou was like a rusty puppet, turning his neck inch by inch.

He looked at the screen, then at Lu Jingming.

His chapped lips opened for a long time before he squeezed out a cracked roar.

"Conjure my ass! This is something that can rewrite the fate of the nation!"

Old Zhou slapped his thigh, hopping on one foot in anxiety.

"Even if we sold all of Xinghai for loose change, we couldn't build a single lens from this!"