75: Chapter 75 The SSS-level "God" in the Junkyard

The battle-damaged car skidded wildly on the muddy dirt road.

This vehicle had recently smashed through the explosion-proof glass doors of the convention center; its front bumper was completely dented and deformed, and the right headlight was shattered.

Yet, driven by the high-density Solid-state battery in its chassis, it still unleashed beast-like power.

Da Biao gripped the steering wheel tightly and jerked it to the left, narrowly avoiding a large pothole. Mud splashed two meters high, slamming against the windshield.

"Boss, this road is too terrible."

Da Biao complained while pressing the accelerator, "Where exactly are we going to pick up this 'Immortal'?"

Lu Chen sat in the passenger seat, holding the military tablet left behind by Wu Dong.

The screen didn't show a map; there was only a blinking red dot indicating the distance. This was the absolute coordinate provided by the system.

"We're going to Beishan in the neighboring city," Lu Chen said, staring at the screen. "I'm looking for someone who can manage the air."

Da Biao was stunned and tapped the brakes.

"Beishan? Isn't that the largest heavy industrial landfill in the province?" Da Biao's eyes widened. "Even stray dogs don't go there. An 'Immortal' lives inside that place?"

"Just drive," Lu Chen said, putting away the tablet. "If he's not there, that 30,000-square-meter workshop in the north of the city will forever be a useless pit."

Da Biao stopped talking and floored the accelerator. The car, covered in mud, charged straight out of the borders of Jiangcheng City.

An hour later.

The vehicle stopped at the foot of a massive mountain of trash.

This was the Beishan heavy industrial landfill. As soon as the door was pushed open, a stench mixed with pungent sourness and metallic rust hit them directly in the face.

Black industrial sewage gathered in low-lying areas, forming streams that shimmered with nauseating, multicolored oil slicks.

Da Biao got out of the car, dry-heaved twice, and quickly covered his mouth and nose.

Lu Chen didn't even frown. He stepped onto the oil-stained muddy ground, his gaze sweeping over the seven-or-eight-meter-high mountain of electronic waste.

On the back of the trash mountain, next to the thickest sewage ditch, a strange man was squatting.

The person was wearing a tattered chemical protective suit that had originally been white but was now black and yellow. He wore an old-fashioned gas mask, and its two filter tubes were covered in thick, oily grime.

He held a broken screwdriver in his hand and was kneeling in the mud, tightening a screw.

Lu Chen strode over, and Da Biao, having recovered, hurriedly followed behind Lu Chen's side.

After getting closer, Da Biao saw what was in front of the strange man, and his eyes instantly widened.

It was a very rudimentary machine, one that could even be described as a piece of junk pieced together.

Several discarded cathode ray tube bases were welded together, with broken magnets stripped from motors tied around the outside.

In the middle was a piece of rusted copper pipe, with the ends of the pipe connected to a few rotten wires hooked up to a discarded battery.

The strange man tightened the last screw and reached out to press a red switch on the battery.

"Hum."

The machine emitted a dull, vibrating sound. Faint, dark blue electrostatic arcs flashed between the broken magnets.

The strange man grabbed a plastic tube connected to the sewage ditch and shoved it directly into one end of the copper pipe; the jet-black, pungent, white-foaming heavy metal sewage was sucked inside.

Only five seconds passed.

At the other end of the copper pipe, a drop of transparent liquid slowly oozed out, followed by a second drop, then a third. Soon, a thin stream of water formed a continuous line.

It had no color, no odor, and was crystal clear.

The strange man picked up a paint-chipped enamel tea mug from the ground next to him and extended it to the outlet, catching half a mug of water.

The next scene made the hair on Da Biao's body stand on end.

The strange man ripped off the gas mask on his head, revealing a bearded, grime-covered face. He lifted the enamel tea mug and tilted his head back.

"Glug, glug."

Half a mug of water was poured directly down his throat.

"Holy crap!" Da Biao couldn't help but curse. "Is this guy suicidal? That water is full of hexavalent chromium and lead; one sip could perforate his stomach!"

The strange man wiped the water stains from his mouth, turned his head to look at Da Biao, his eyes indifferent.

Lu Chen didn't look at the broken machine; his gaze was locked firmly on this strange man.

In his mind, the system's pale blue prompt box floated in mid-air.

[Name: Song Changming]

[Hidden Talent: World-Class Heavy Metal Pollution and Fluid Dynamics Purification Engineer (SSS-Rank)]

[Status: Extremely Misanthropic, Deeply Hostile Toward Capital]

Found him.

Lu Chen stepped over a flowing sewage ditch and stopped two meters in front of Song Changming.

"Stop playing in the mud here," Lu Chen said in a calm tone, without any pleasantries. "I am Lu Chen, the factory director of the Jiangcheng Chenguang Electronics Factory. Come with me. A monthly salary of one million. I will build you the largest and most top-tier biochemical purification laboratory in the country."

Song Changming threw the enamel tea mug in his hand onto the ground, making a crisp clanging sound.

He stood up. Although he was gaunt, he was over 1.8 meters tall. He looked Lu Chen up and down, then glanced at the battered car in the distance.

A dry, rasping laugh came from Song Changming's throat.

"One million?" Song Changming grabbed a dirty towel hanging from his chest to wipe his hands. "Three years ago, Ocean Heavy Industry in Shenzhen offered me an annual salary of 30 million to be their technical director. They provided me with a private golf course, and I traveled everywhere in a Rolls-Royce."

Song Changming pointed to the broken machine at his feet.

"Do you know why I would rather come here to pick up trash than stay on that golf course?" Song Changming's eyes grew sinister, his voice laced with undisguised mockery.

Lu Chen didn't respond, just watched him quietly.

"Because those black-hearted capitalists in suits didn't care at all about how awesome the ion adsorption technology I developed was."

Song Changming suddenly became agitated, pointing at the sewage ditch and shouting, "As soon as the equipment was turned on, they complained that the power consumption was too high and that the filtration consumables were too expensive! That president named Wang slammed a suitcase of cash onto my lab bench and told me to connect the sewage detection probe directly to the tap water pipe! He wanted me to fake the data to cover things up!"

Song Changming spat hard.

"I took a sledgehammer and smashed their newly bought imported filtration pump to pieces right then and there!" Song Changming sneered repeatedly. "Later, they teamed up with the entire industry to blacklist me... saying I was a lunatic."

Song Changming picked up the gas mask from the ground again, preparing to put it on.

"Don't try to throw money at me. You factory owners only have profit and subsidy fraud in your hearts."

Song Changming's face was filled with disgust. "Get lost while I haven't lost my temper yet. I, Song Changming, would rather drink poisonous water here for the rest of my life than ever change a single decimal point of data for you people again."

Da Biao clenched his fists and was about to step forward, but Lu Chen raised a hand to stop him.

The corners of Lu Chen's mouth curled up slightly, and a wild light flashed in his eyes. Instead of getting angry, he laughed. This kind of extreme temper was completely worthy of an SSS-rank talent rating.

Lu Chen took a step forward, his leather shoes crunching in the mud.

"You've misunderstood; I don't intend to discharge sewage," Lu Chen said, looking straight into Song Changming's eyes. "What I want to filter is the air."

Song Changming paused, the mask still in his hand, not put on his head.

"If you want to filter air, go buy dust removal membranes from foreigners. Why come to me? I deal with heavy metal ion stripping," Song Changming frowned impatiently.

"The foreigners won't sell to me, and even if domestic equipment is sold, the precision doesn't meet my requirements," Lu Chen said, his voice lowering, each word ringing with conviction.

He pulled a square-folded blueprint from his inner pocket.

It was the core heavy metal compound water curtain ratio scrap from the [Molecular-Level Air Purification System Plan].

Lu Chen held the blueprint between two fingers and handed it to Song Changming.

"I don't want fake data, because if there is even a single speck of dust in the air that exceeds the standard, my goods will become scrap metal."

Lu Chen stared intently at Song Changming. "I want to hand-craft a 28-nanometer extreme ultraviolet Lithography Machine within one month."

Song Changming's body stiffened abruptly.

"I need you to ensure that not even a single nanometer-sized speck of dust can fly into that 30,000-square-meter ultra-clean workshop in the north of the city," Lu Chen said, his tone filled with absolute control. "I want an absolutely dust-free vacuum dead zone."

Hearing the words "hand-craft a 28-nanometer Lithography Machine," Song Changming's eyeballs rapidly bloodshot and dilated.

He looked at Lu Chen as if he were looking at a madman who had completely lost his mind.

The country couldn't even manage 90-nanometer packaging, yet this electronics factory boss in front of him, who drove a beat-up van, actually ran to a junkyard claiming he wanted to hand-craft 28-nanometer extreme ultraviolet equipment?

Song Changming's breathing became heavy, and his gaze slowly shifted downward, landing on the blueprint between Lu Chen's fingers.

The ink on it was all hand-drawn, containing complex chemical equations and 3D fluid dynamics derivation diagrams.

Song Changming subconsciously reached out and snatched the blueprint away.

His oil-stained fingers pressed against the edge of the blueprint, and he brought it up to his eyes, staring fixedly at the strange equation in the first line.

What was drawn on the blueprint completely subverted common sense.

It utilized the natural adsorption properties of heavy metal ion aqueous solutions, combined with physical gravitational potential energy, to build a stripping network directly inside the building walls.

Song Changming's pupils contracted sharply, and his hands began to tremble uncontrollably.