Chapter 74 System Task Completed, Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography Machine Blueprints (China)

The echo of the "bang" was still vibrating on the stainless steel table.

The unique chill of the titanium alloy casing spread along the tabletop.

Lao Zhou was the closest.

He clutched his chest and shrank back half a step, his leather shoe soles screeching against the floor with a harsh "creak."

Chen Guoan pushed up the reading glasses that had slid to the tip of his nose.

His rough fingers gripped the heavy mechanical hard drive.

He pulled out the silver data cable.

The old man poked at it three times before barely managing to align it with the USB port of that broken computer.

"Hum—"

The dusty fan inside the computer case roared like an old ox pulling a broken cart, emitting a blast of dry, hot exhaust air with a burnt smell.

The screen flickered twice.

It didn't pop up a standard file window, but rather a dark gray engineering interface that occupied the entire monitor.

The fat old man, Lao Zhao, grabbed the back of his chair and stretched his neck to lean toward the screen.

"What kind of file format is this? Why, why haven't I seen it before..."

Chen Guoan's hand, holding the mouse, was trembling.

The cursor clicked open the root directory named "EUV - Full-Link Blueprints."

Just one click.

The 3D models exploding like a waterfall on the screen and the dense, packed tolerance parameters nailed everyone's eyes to the display.

"Good heavens..."

Chu Xuan squatted in the corner, his center-parted hair plastered to his forehead.

The sound of him sucking in cold air was as loud as a water pump.

These weren't just a few conceptual sketches.

On the screen was a behemoth of a lithography machine, completely disassembled.

From the outermost radiation-shielding lead plates, all the way down to the internal dual-stage nano-displacement tracks.

Even the stress torque of the two-millimeter diameter titanium steel screw on the robotic arm carrying the wafer was clearly marked.

Chen Guoan let out a heavy, wheezing breath through his nose.

He shoved Lao Zhou, who was blocking his way, aside and pressed his face directly against the hot monitor.

"Dual-stage... it's actually dual-stage synchronous calibration!"

The old man's fingers frantically swiped at that area on the screen, his nails scratching against the LCD screen with a clicking sound.

"ASML in the Netherlands leaked rumors that they were going to work on this, and they couldn't even get a decent PPT together!"

He turned his head abruptly, the red blood vessels in his eyes about to burst.

"This wiring! This curvature compensation algorithm for the optical lenses!"

The fat old man, Lao Zhao, grabbed the collar of his military coat, leaning backward.

His hands trembled as he reached for the medicine bottle in his pants pocket.

"These specs... this light source wavelength... it's trampling the Americans' blockade line into the mud!"

Lao Zhou stood on the side.

He wanted to swallow, but his throat was as dry as if it were on fire, and he let out a hoarse cough.

"Mr. Lu..."

He turned his head to look at the young man in the black T-shirt leaning against the water dispenser.

"You, did you steal an alien's underwear or something?"

Lu Jingming bit down on an unlit cigarette.

He spun a plastic lighter around his knuckles twice before it dropped into his palm.

"Aliens don't wear underwear."

He spat out the tobacco shreds in his mouth, a cynical, cocky smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

"We Chinese drew this ourselves. Don't go giving credit to foreigners."

No one cared about the sour smell of sweat in the laboratory anymore.

Several old men, whose combined ages added up to hundreds of years, were like people who had been thirsty in the desert for three days and had suddenly spotted an oasis.

They were crying and laughing at those lens polishing parameters.

But the fanaticism didn't last ten minutes.

Chen Guoan slowly released his grip on the mouse.

He straightened his somewhat hunched back, and his military coat slid halfway down his shoulders.

The old man took off his reading glasses.

With his calloused fingers, he pinched the bridge of his nose hard.

"Young man."

He turned around, his gaze passing over the table full of waste circuit boards to look at Lu Jingming.

"These blueprints are a miracle."

Chen Guoan's voice was as hoarse as a leaky, broken gong.

"I've spent half my life in semiconductors, dreaming of seeing something like this."

He paused, his chest sinking, his tone revealing a bitterness of having to grit his teeth and swallow blood.

"But your stride is so wide you're going to split your crotch."

Chu Xuan chimed in from the corner.

"Elder Chen, we have the blueprints, can't we just make it based on them? We have plenty of skilled workers in the factory!"

He gestured, "At worst, we can work three shifts and file it out bit by bit with files!"

"You don't know a damn thing!"

Chen Guoan slapped his thigh, kicking up some dust.

"Do you think this is making an iron pot!"

He pointed to the material requirements marked in red on the screen, his fingers trembling with numbness.

"Look at this lens module! It needs Zeiss-level extreme ultraviolet special glass!"

"Look at this base for the dual-stage! It needs those German monsters' five-axis linkage high-precision machine tools to be milled out!"

The old man's voice grew louder as he spoke, moisture welling up in the corners of his eyes.

"The laser target material for the light source generator requires military-grade precision chemical engineering!"

Chen Guoan walked forward two steps, his shoe sole catching on some discarded network cables.

"Mr. Lu."

He changed his form of address, the wrinkles on his old face bunching together.

"Of these hundreds of top-tier industrial categories, if one screw is missing, this machine won't light up."

He caught his breath, a smile that was uglier than crying tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"Xinghai Technology... is just a private factory that makes mobile phones."

"Even if you sold the factory and stripped your own bones to make soup, you still couldn't swallow this heavy industrial behemoth."

The room went quiet.

Only the buzzing of the computer case's cooling fan remained, sounding like a funeral knell.

Lao Li leaned against the corner, wiping the cold sweat from his forehead with his dirty cuff.

Dazhuang's pipe wrench clattered to the floor, hitting his own toe.

He grimaced in pain, but didn't dare to make a sound.

Yes.

No matter how incredible the blueprints were, without a national-level industrial backbone to support them, they were just a pie drawn on a piece of paper.

Shen Qingqiu stepped forward in her high heels.

"Lu Jingming..."

She pushed up her gold-rimmed glasses, her voice very low.

"Elder Chen is right. This exceeds our funds and production capacity. Even if Wall Street's money is thrown in, it wouldn't make a sound."

Lu Jingming didn't take the bait.

He looked down at the flattened cigarette butt on the floor.

He walked forward slowly and deliberately.

He stopped in front of Chen Guoan.

The distance between the two was less than half a meter.

Lu Jingming was half a head taller than the old man, casting a shadow directly over Chen Guoan's face.

"Elder Chen, did you misunderstand something?"

Lu Jingming rested both hands on the edge of the stainless steel table.

The sheet metal made a slight warping sound under the pressure.

The light in his eyes was scorching, as if hiding a freshly sharpened blade.

"Who told you I was going to use these broken assembly lines at Xinghai to build a lithography machine?"

Chen Guoan was stunned.

The fat old man forgot to chew the pill in his mouth, staring at him blankly.

"You, you're not building it yourself? Then why did you bring out these blueprints?"

"I find the chips sold by foreigners too hot to handle."

Lu Jingming pulled at the corner of his mouth, revealing half a canine tooth.

"That's why I invited all you grandmasters here."

He raised his hand and knocked three times on that heavy titanium alloy hard drive with his knuckles.

"Knock, knock, knock."

"These full-link blueprints, along with the light source compensation algorithms inside."

Lu Jingming stared into Chen Guoan's cloudy yet sharp eyes.

"I, Lu Jingming, don't want a single cent. I am handing them over for free."

The draft from the hallway squeezed in through the door gap, making Lao Zhou shiver.

"For free?"

Chen Guoan's withered lips opened, his voice cracking.

"Young man, do you have any idea that these blueprints could be traded for several mountains of gold on the black market!"

"You can't take mountains of gold into your coffin."

Lu Jingming withdrew his hand and shoved it into his jeans pocket.

"I only want one thing."

He turned his head, his gaze sweeping over the complex circuit wiring on the screen.

"After this machine is lit up, I want the first batch of Xialong-class chips it spits out to be entirely allocated to Xinghai."

Lu Jingming turned back, looking directly at this old man who had once shouldered the backbone of China's semiconductor industry.

The usual cynical, cocky demeanor had long since vanished.

What remained was a compelling sense of oppression.

"Elder Chen."

His voice was steady, each word hitting the concrete floor like a hammer.

"The special glass, high-precision machine tools, and precision optics needed to build this machine."

Lu Jingming narrowed his eyes.

"Can your old bones mobilize the strength of the entire nation to achieve this?"

Even the sound of breathing stopped in the laboratory.

Everyone's gaze was fixed on Chen Guoan.

The old man's shoulders suddenly stiffened.

He grabbed the collar of the old military coat that had slid halfway down and yanked it fiercely back onto his shoulders.

The muscles on his cheeks, covered in age spots, twitched violently.

The old tears swirling in his eye sockets finally couldn't be held back.

They flowed down the knife-carved wrinkles and hit the floor.

Chen Guoan stood up straight abruptly.

His originally hunched back straightened completely in that instant.

A sense of iron-blooded military might, born from rolling through mountains of corpses and seas of blood, exploded from this withered old man.

"Mobilize?"

Chen Guoan gritted his back teeth, a flame that could burn the sky erupting in his eyes.

He slammed his fist onto the table.

"If you dare to hand over our backbone, the country will dare to accept it!"

The old man turned around and grabbed the receiver of the red confidential hotline on the table.

His hand was shaking so much he could barely hold the plastic handle.

"I'm calling the highest level in Yanjing right now!"

He glared with bloodshot eyes, roaring toward the door.

"Even if I have to risk this old carcass, I'll make those foreign devils see whether the knees of the Chinese people are made of mud!"