142: Chapter 142 Outsourcing Fees Sold by Weight!

"Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven..."

Song Changming dragged his mangled leg, inching his way toward the exit. For the first time, a clear twitch appeared on his marble-like face.

"Three. Two. One."

Beep.

A crisp electronic chime sliced through the deathly silence.

The massive frame of the Lithography Machine let out a hissing sound of air releasing. The isolation plate of the main exposure chamber slowly rose.

The conveyor belt turned.

A black anti-static tray was pushed out.

In the center of the tray lay a twelve-inch silicon wafer.

It was coated with green photoresist, gleaming with an eerie light under the cold white overhead lights.

There were no error messages, no abnormal shutdowns.

Wei Jianguo shoved aside the assistant next to him and scrambled over.

Wearing anti-static gloves, he didn't take the tray, but reached in himself, pinching the edge of the thin wafer.

His hands shook as if he had Parkinson's.

With the wafer suspended in mid-air, Wei Jianguo walked back to the inspection station. He took a minute and a half to cover the mere ten-meter distance.

Five thousand pairs of eyes in the hall tracked his hand, shifting bit by bit.

"Put it under the microscope, run the yield analyzer." Wei Jianguo said, enunciating every word.

The assistant carefully placed the wafer into the high-precision testing machine that cost half a billion to build.

The chamber door closed.

The green light turned on.

On the display screen, a yellow progress bar began to crawl slowly from left to right.

One second. Ten seconds. Thirty seconds.

Time was infinitely stretched at this moment; one could only hear the wheezing sound of Wei Jianguo's breathing, like a bellows in his throat.

Ding.

The screen flickered wildly as countless complex micro-circuit diagrams were magnified ten thousand times and projected onto the large screen.

Every circuit was perfect, without a single burr.

Rows of data scrolled madly on the right side of the screen, finally settling on two bright red numbers.

Wei Jianguo stood frozen in front of the testing station.

He didn't turn around; his anti-static hood fell to the floor.

"Old Wei, report the numbers." Lu Chen stood behind him, his voice steady.

Wei Jianguo reached out to steady himself on the edge of the testing machine, his knees slowly bending until he knelt heavily on the metal floor.

He suddenly turned around and tilted his head up.

Tears and snot streamed down his old face, flowing into his mouth.

"Film formation successful!" Wei Jianguo tore his throat out, letting out a shrill, inhuman howl.

"Line width, twenty-eight nanometers."

Wei Jianguo grabbed the recording board at his side and smashed it hard against the ground.

"Yield... one hundred percent yield. No breaks, not a single defective point."

Deathly silence.

A brief, suffocating silence.

Then, the entire Underground Level 3 exploded.

Five thousand veteran experts—some tore the hats off their heads and threw them into the air, while others hugged each other, crying and laughing.

The row of old men at the front, with their white hair, threw themselves onto the ground, pounding the metal floor with their fists.

"We did it. Twenty years—we've been led around like dogs by those foreign devils for twenty years. Today, we've finally produced it ourselves."

"Screw Morgan, screw New Jersey Mining. Cutting off supply? I'll smash you to death with rocks now."

Song Changming leaned against a metal counter, exhaling a long, murky breath. He patted his pockets looking for a cigarette but couldn't find one. His legs gave out, and he slid down to sit on the floor.

Wu Dong clutched a military tablet, standing at the doorway, covered in sweat.

He looked at the data on the screen, his calves cramping.

The world's first twenty-eight-nanometer Lithography Machine using pure amethyst lenses and bypassing traditional etching patent barriers. In this dilapidated, near-bankrupt Chenguang Electronics Factory in Jiangcheng, it had genuinely produced the first wafer with a one-hundred-percent yield.

This was nuclear-level data.

It meant that as long as the factory's production capacity could keep up, Chenguang Electronics Factory could immediately take over all domestic chip foundry services and effectively strangle the Americans.

Lu Chen stepped forward.

He reached out, grabbed Wei Jianguo by the back of his collar, and hauled the old man, who was kneeling and wailing on the ground, to his feet.

"Are you done crying?" Lu Chen looked at him.

Wei Jianguo wiped his face.

"General Manager Lu, you don't know what this means. If this wafer is taken out, the entire Silicon Valley won't be able to sleep tonight."

"No, it means we will make more and more money." Lu Chen patted the dust off his shoulder. "Continue preparing the materials. Tonight, I want to see one hundred of these. If one is missing, I'm docking your pay."

Wei Jianguo was stunned for a moment, then nodded frantically.

"Get to work! Everyone get your asses up and get to work!" Wei Jianguo roared at the experts who were still rolling on the floor.

Lu Chen turned and walked toward the door.

Wu Dong hurriedly followed.

"Brother, the data is fully backed up and encrypted. Director Li has arranged three lines of special police defense outside; not even a fly can get in." Wu Dong lowered his voice.

"No need to defend." Lu Chen walked out of the cleanroom, tore off his cleanroom suit, and threw it into the trash can.

"What do you mean?" Wu Dong was confused.

"Defend against what? We built this thing to slap faces. If we hide it, how will those old geezers at Morgan know the pain?" Lu Chen spat out the chewed-up cigarette butt. "Give me the tablet."

Wu Dong quickly handed over the tablet.

Lu Chen swiped on the screen a few times and pulled up the official Weibo account of Chenguang Electronics Factory. This account had only been registered yesterday, and its followers were just a few security guards from the factory.

"Upload a screenshot of the yield inspection report." Lu Chen instructed.

Wu Dong's fingers tapped rapidly, uploading the red-headed data sheet with the twenty-eight nanometer and one-hundred-percent yield figures directly into the image box.

"Brother, what caption should I add? Should I write a battle manifesto denouncing foreign corporate technology blockades?" Wu Dong asked.

"The fewer words, the more painful the slap." Lu Chen took the tablet.

He poked at the virtual keyboard with his index finger, typing one character at a time.

"—Let's do the math for the overseas giants: the equipment you sell for one hundred million dollars is too brittle even for me to use to crack walnuts. Starting today, Chinese chip foundry fees will be charged by the pound."

After finishing, Lu Chen clicked send.

Ding.

Sent successfully.

Lu Chen tossed the tablet to Wu Dong. "Let's go. Head to the surface and see if those billions have been sent out yet. I'm hungry; let's go to the cafeteria and have some noodles."

Da Biao followed behind Lu Chen, and the three of them strode into the elevator.

The elevator doors slowly closed.

No one knew that in these short ten seconds.

The background notification sound on the tablet in Wu Dong's hand went crazy, ringing incessantly.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

The system notifications froze up completely.

On the other side of the Earth, in Manhattan, New York.

Inside a temporary office on the 86th floor of the Morgan Building.

Anderson, CEO of the Morgan Consortium, was holding a glass of whiskey on the rocks, listening to his subordinate report the disastrous data regarding the total liquidation of two hundred billion in short-selling funds.

On his desk lay a top-secret document.

"Executive Notice on the Permanent Cut-off of Lithography Machine Source Materials to Chenguang Electronics Factory in China."

Anderson took a sip of his drink. Just as he was about to speak.

Bang.

The mahogany office door was kicked open by his secretary, whose face was as pale as a corpse, holding an iPad that was refreshing the page.

"Chief," the secretary's voice was shaking so hard he couldn't even enunciate the words properly. "That guy Lu in China, he... he just released a public statement."

Anderson frowned and put down his glass. "A statement begging for mercy? Is there any need to be this panicked?"

"No. It's not." The secretary shoved the screen in front of Anderson.

That inspection report with the one-hundred-percent yield in glaring red letters pierced straight through Anderson's eyeballs.