51: Chapter 51 Samadhi Fire Refining Silicon! Array Micro-carving Photolithography! Academicians are stunned: This is unscientific!

Jinghua City, National Microelectronics Center.

This was the heart of the Huaxia semiconductor industry, a precision facility where even the sound of breathing usually carried static electricity, but at this moment, it was permeated with a low pressure that felt like the end of the world.

On the large screen in the conference room, the latest sanctions from the US Department of Commerce were scrolling by. It was not just a prohibition order; it was more like a blockade—a complete cutoff of high-end lithography machine supplies to Huaxia, not even allowing the sale of a single screw.

"A total cutoff..."

An elderly Academician with thinning hair took off his glasses, his trembling fingers tracing aimlessly on the tabletop.

"Without EUV lithography machines, our 7nm and 5nm processes are completely cut off. Huawei's new phone launch is in a month, and our chip inventory will only last three days."

"Can we push through using multi-patterning technology?" a young engineer asked, his eyes red.

"We can't," the old Academician shook his head, his voice bitter. "The yield rate is too low, and the cost is so high that even selling a kidney wouldn't cover it. They intend to beat our industry back to the Stone Age."

Despair flooded everyone present like a tide.

Just then, the door to the conference room was pushed open with a "bang."

"The Stone Age?"

A young man wearing a casual hoodie and carrying a stainless steel thermos walked in, followed by two old men in ancient costumes who looked exactly like they had just run off a film set in Hengdian.

Jiang Chen took a sip of goji berry water and laughed heartlessly.

"That sounds great. It just so happens that these two elders of mine specialize in Stone Age craftsmanship."

Ten minutes later, in the top-tier cleanroom.

This place had the strictest cleanliness standards in the world; even a single speck of dust could ruin a wafer.

But now, that rule had been broken.

Elder Huoyun of the Artifact Refining Hall stood with his hands behind his back, not even wearing a cleanroom suit (because he disliked how ugly the clothes were, so he just cast a Dust-Repelling Spell), circling the billion-dollar immersion lithography machine with a look of disgust on his face.

"This is it?"

Elder Huoyun patted the heavy casing of the lithography machine, producing a dull "thud-thud" sound.

"Such a big iron cabinet, occupying hundreds of square meters, requiring electricity and water, just to carve a few lines on a board the size of a fingernail?"

The chief engineer nearby nearly had a heart attack: "Old gentleman! Don't pat it! Those are precision optical components! If they vibrate even a little, they'll need half a month of calibration!"

"Tch, delicate."

Elder Huoyun curled his lips: "This kind of trash magical treasure, if it were in the Taichu Realm, wouldn't even be fit for outer disciples to practice with. Low efficiency, high energy consumption, and clunky. It's only you mortals who treat it like a treasure."

"Alright, Uncle Huoyun, say less."

Jiang Chen quickly mediated, turning to look at the other old man who had been staring blankly at the silicon wafer—the Head of the Array Hall, Elder Xuan Ji.

"Uncle Xuan Ji, how is it? Can you carve the patterns on this?"

Elder Xuan Ji stroked his beard, a trace of disdain flashing in his eyes, which seemed to contain a vast sea of stars.

"You call this a pattern?"

Elder Xuan Ji pointed at the dense transistor circuit diagram on the microscope screen: "This is clearly just gibberish! Disorganized! Lacking any aesthetic beauty! Spiritual energy (electrons) running through this would have to take at least eight hundred unnecessary detours! This kind of design is simply an insult to the Great Dao of Arrays!"

"Can you optimize it then?" Jiang Chen's eyes lit up.

"Optimize?"

Elder Xuan Ji sneered, with the arrogance of a top student looking at a failing student's test paper.

"This old man does not need to optimize trash. This old man will rewrite the rules."

He extended a hand: "Bring the materials. I want the purest Essence of Earth (silicon)."

The chief engineer had originally refused.

Letting two old men in ancient costumes wreak havoc in the cleanroom? This was simply treating the country's future as a joke!

But under Lei Keming's "physical persuasion" (taking out a pistol and slamming it on the table), he tearfully brought out a box of uncut, high-purity single-crystal silicon rods.

"Watch."

Elder Huoyun took the silicon rod and weighed it in his hand: "The purity is okay, but there are a few too many impurities. Watch as this old man purifies it!"

"Whoosh!" A mass of crimson flames emerged from Elder Huoyun's palm without warning.

That was no ordinary fire; it was the True Fire of a master artifact refiner—the Samadhi True Fire (although his cultivation was suppressed, the temperature was still as high as several thousand degrees).

"Ah! Fire! Quick, get a fire extinguisher!" the chief engineer screamed, but was held down by Jiang Chen: "Calm down! This is a scientific experiment! That is... um, plasma high-temperature smelting!"

In the terrified eyes of the crowd, the hard silicon rod instantly melted into a crystal-clear liquid, floating in mid-air. The impurities within it turned into black smoke and were instantly vaporized by the high temperature.

In less than a minute, a mass of liquid silicon, pure and flawless, even faintly radiating spiritual light, took shape in Elder Huoyun's hands.

"Compress!" Elder Huoyun let out a low shout, pressing his hands down into the air. The liquid was instantly flattened and stretched by an invisible force, turning into a wafer as thin as a cicada's wing, with surface flatness reaching the atomic level.

"This... this flatness..." The chief engineer looked at the data on the detector, his eyes nearly popping out: "Surface roughness... zero? How is this possible! This is an absolute plane!"

"It's this old man's turn." Elder Xuan Ji stepped forward.

He didn't use any photoresist or lasers. He simply took a carving knife out of his sleeve.

It was a nano-scale carving knife provided by Jiang Chen, polished from star sand from the Taichu Realm.

"Initiate the array." Elder Xuan Ji closed his eyes slightly, and his immense divine sense instantly enveloped the wafer.

In his field of vision, this small silicon wafer was a vast expanse of land. He intended to set up a peerless array on it that could harness the power of heaven and earth (electron flow).

"Swish, swish, swish—" The carving knife moved. It was so fast that its shadow couldn't be seen, leaving only a trail of afterimages. There was no draft, no modifications. Each stroke resulted in the perfect arrangement of hundreds of millions of transistors.

"Add a Spirit Gathering Array here to help them dissipate heat."

"Add a Spirit Travel Array here to make the electrons run faster."

"Add a Sumeru Array here to fold the space; this is called... 3D stacking technology, right?"

Elder Xuan Ji muttered to himself as he carved, his movements flowing like clouds and water, filled with a strange sense of rhythm.

The scientists nearby were already stunned. Although they couldn't understand those strange runes, they could feel the breathtaking precision. It was a height that human industrial civilization could not reach for hundreds of years—manual micro-carving at 0.1 nanometers!

Half an hour later. "Done!"