33: Chapter 33 The Madman Enters, Live Saw Battery

"Bang!"

A deafening roar shattered everyone's eardrums, exploding across the venue.

The two-story-tall tempered glass doors shattered into pieces instantly.

Thousands of sharp glass shards rained into the luxurious exhibition hall like a deluge.

The red carpet was blanketed in glistening fragments.

Several high-definition cameras mounted on tripods in the front row were knocked over on the spot.

The entire venue erupted in terrified screams.

A car, with only one headlight remaining and a bumper crookedly tied on with wire, charged in at a violent speed, its chassis grinding against the glass-covered floor and throwing off a long trail of sparks.

The vehicle executed a brutal side-drift, its tires scorching two black marks onto the red carpet before coming to a steady halt.

The front of the car was less than three meters from Wang Teng's podium.

Dozens of security guards in black suits drew their rubber batons and swarmed in from all directions.

"Everyone in the car, get out, hands on your heads!"

The front passenger door was kicked off from the inside, the deformed metal plate falling onto the carpet with a thud.

Da Biao jumped out, his thick arms wrapped in black riot gear, holding a half-meter-long solid rubber baton upside down.

He stepped forward, his military boots crushing a piece of glass with a heavy crunch.

"Stay right there. Anyone who takes a step forward, I'll break both their legs!"

The hands of the dozens of security guards holding their batons instinctively pulled back; no one dared to be the first to provoke him.

The driver's side door opened.

Lu Chen stepped out of the car, crunching over the broken glass. He wore plain, unbranded black casual clothes, and his hair was unkempt.

Chen Hao crawled out from the back seat, his work clothes stained with grease and rust, his hands covered in thick calluses and machine oil, and his shoe soles caked with yellow mud from the air-raid shelter.

The two of them walked among the suit-clad corporate bigwigs, looking completely out of place.

On the stage, Wang Teng saw Lu Chen's face clearly, stumbled back two steps, and hit the edge of the crystal display stand, his face turning deathly pale.

"Lu Chen! You're fucking insane!"

Wang Teng gripped the microphone and cursed loudly.

"You can't beat us in business competition, so you come here to make personal threats? This is causing trouble!"

He roared at the security guards on the perimeter.

"What are you standing there for? Call the police! Arrest him immediately!"

Lu Chen completely ignored the posturing security guards, walked to the edge of the front row of the audience, grabbed a mahogany leather chair, and sat down with a commanding posture.

He pulled a cigarette from his pocket and bit down on it, but didn't light it.

"Mr. Wang, don't get so excited."

Lu Chen patted the hood of the van, which was still emitting white steam.

"Didn't you just say in front of the whole internet that if we vocational students could build a battery, you would chew up the pure copper doors of this exhibition center and swallow them?"

He pointed to the door frame shattered on the ground behind him.

"I figured the door was too big and your mouth too small, so you definitely wouldn't be able to handle it."

"So I drove here myself, smashed the door, and brought it to you."

Lu Chen rested his arms on the armrests.

"Eat up. Just stand there and eat. Hundreds of thousands of people online are watching you."

The media reporters in the back row smelled blood; dozens of camera flashes merged into a sheet of white light, snapping photos of Lu Chen frantically.

Jason from the Morgan Consortium stood up, pressing both hands onto the table.

"Rude! This is a hooligan tactic with absolutely no bottom line!"

Jason rebuked him in stiff Chinese.

"Using violent means to crash the venue cannot cover up the lack of your technology!"

He pointed at the car.

"This car even had its internal combustion engine gutted. What did you rely on to drive here? Sliding down a hill?"

Lu Chen didn't respond to him, turning back to look at Chen Hao at the front of the car.

"Show him."

Chen Hao grinned, strode to the front of the car, gripped the edge of the severely deformed hood, and tensed his arm muscles.

With a harsh, screeching sound of tearing metal, he flipped the entire hood off and tossed it onto the open ground.

Countless eyes in the venue, including the telephoto lenses of dozens of cameras, instantly locked onto the interior of the car.

It was empty; no complex machinery, no engine cylinders.

There were only a few rough purple copper cables, one end welded to a greasy, black van motor, and the other end wrapped around a rectangular black object.

Chen Hao didn't use any tools; he gripped the cables with both hands and pulled hard. With a flash of sparks, he yanked out the Solid-state battery wrapped in rough black rubber, turned, and walked heavily toward the podium.

Lu Chen took the black brick, which still carried static sparks.

Grabbing the battery with one hand, he slammed it onto the crystal display stand in front of Wang Teng, under the gaze of everyone in the venue.

The tabletop cracked with three massive fissures.

Wang Teng shivered violently, nearly collapsing to the floor.

"Take a good look."

Lu Chen pointed at the black brick on the stand.

"This is the battery you claimed was just casually slapped together by a bunch of vocational students on a twenty-thousand-base salary using scrap equipment."

Liu, the head of the large car manufacturer in the front row, pushed up his glasses and stood up.

"Factory Director Lu, are you joking? Just this lump of black rubber covered in pits and holes?"

"Just fifteen minutes ago, we connected this lump to that second-hand heavy-duty truck motor without any speed reduction device."

Lu Chen unscrewed a bottle of purified water and took a sip.

"This beat-up van went tearing around the Jiangcheng city highway loop for three full laps, three hundred and twenty kilometers."

"The actual power consumption dropped less than 0.01 percent."

The discussions of the hundreds of people in the venue erupted into chaos.

"0.01 percent power drop over three hundred kilometers?"

"That's absolutely impossible!"

"What kind of energy storage capacity does something the size of a brick have to have?"

Wang Teng's face turned from pale to a sickly flushed red.

"You're full of shit!"

He shrieked hysterically into the microphone.

"Even a middle school student knows that high-density lithium batteries are unstable; if the energy density is any higher, they must be equipped with heavy cooling armor and anti-collision buffer layers!"

Wang Teng looked at Jason for support.

Jason nodded immediately.

"That's right! Any high-energy battery without reinforcement will immediately undergo thermal runaway and explode a hundred times more violently than gasoline if subjected to physical impact or cutting!"

Wang Teng regained his confidence and glared viciously at Lu Chen.

"Don't believe his bullshit! This black brick is definitely a fake! With such a rough appearance without a protective shell, if it were really packed with high-density power, it would explode on the spot at the slightest touch!"

"This isn't a battery at all, it's just a model!"

Lu Chen didn't waste any more breath; he threw the half-bottle of water on the table and turned to look at Chen Hao.

Chen Hao understood immediately, walked quickly to the car, kicked over the rusted metal toolbox on the ground, and bent down to pull out an industrial-grade portable chainsaw with sharp teeth.

He carried the chainsaw to the front of the stage and handed it to Lu Chen.

Lu Chen took it with one hand.

Jason's face turned ghastly, and he shrieked uncontrollably.

"What are you doing with a saw!"

His body instinctively dove under the table.

The dozens of bosses and reporters in the front row finally realized what was happening.

"Run!"

"He's going to saw the battery!"

The crowd fell into a panic; chairs were knocked over as everyone scrambled to push their way back.

Wang Teng's legs went completely weak, and he scrambled and crawled toward the corner of the stage, clinging to the display screen stand.

"Lu Chen, you're crazy! Stop! People will die!"

Wang Teng's shrill screams echoed through the venue.

Lu Chen stood still, his eyes cold to the extreme.

He yanked the starter cord with one hand.

"Vroom!"

The industrial chainsaw immediately erupted with a violent roar.

The saw blade with its sharp steel teeth spun at high speed, whipping up a strong gust of wind.

It blew through Lu Chen's hair.

Lu Chen pressed down with one arm.

Holding the vibrating, roaring chainsaw, he forced the blade down onto that fully charged, solid-state black brick battery!

He cut down hard!

Sparks flew instantly!