58: Chapter 58 The sweetest fruit has ripened!

The moment these bold, bright red characters popped up simultaneously across all major platforms on the entire network, the whole internet was stunned.

If most people had a "watching a show" mentality toward a "young man's arrogant words" when Lin Yuan personally said "half a year" at the press conference...

After all, that was just the personal declaration of a young genius.

Even if he broke his word, the price would be mainly borne by him personally; at most, the country would lose some face, and there would always be room for maneuver afterward.

But now, things were different.

Once this front-page editorial from the highest-level official mouthpiece appeared, the nature of the situation was completely changed.

This was no longer just Lin Yuan's promise.

It was the country's promise.

It was a declaration sent to the whole world in black and white by this vast and ancient nation, using its credit, heavy as a mountain, as collateral—

The Six-Month Promise; we will witness it together with you!

The weight of these few words was tens of thousands of times heavier than everything Lin Yuan had said at the press conference combined!

On domestic social media platforms, after a brief dead silence, a tsunami-like wave of posts followed.

"My god... the state has actually stepped in..."

"To be honest, when Chief Engineer Lin said half a year himself, I was still skeptical, but now... even the Xia Country Daily has posted it..."

"Reason tells me it's impossible, but emotionally, I've completely surrendered! If the state dares to post this, it means the higher-ups really have confidence beyond our imagination!"

And those moderates who were previously wavering or rationally observing in the comments section felt the scales in their hearts tip at the same time upon seeing this editorial.

The reason was simple.

If a twenty-year-old young man talks big, you can treat it as youthful arrogance.

But when a country is willing to put its own credit on the gambling table, it is definitely not something that "arrogance" can explain.

Either they were crazy.

Or, they held a trump card capable of overturning the table, one that outsiders couldn't even glimpse.

And a normally functioning state machine obviously wouldn't go crazy.

...

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Blue Planet.

In the blond man's office, the atmosphere had dropped to the freezing point.

He sat alone behind his desk, and on the tablet in front of him, translation software was converting that editorial into English word by word in real-time.

"Witness together..."

He ground these words repeatedly between his teeth.

Every time he read them, the nameless irritation in his chest grew thicker.

He had been using the reason of "political showmanship" to convince himself.

But if it was just a show, why would a country stake its national fortune and credit?

There were ten thousand safer ways to put on a show.

Publishing a vaguely worded, encouraging editorial, writing some officialese like "fully affirming" or "forging ahead."

It could both soothe the people's hearts and leave plenty of room for retreat.

There was no need to roast themselves over the fire.

If they couldn't deliver the actual machine in half a year, this editorial would become a boomerang, precisely cutting down the prestige they had built up.

They couldn't possibly not understand this logic.

Then why did they still dare to do it?

The blond man closed his eyes for a moment, then suddenly pushed himself up from the desk, strode to the door, and pulled it open forcefully.

The assistant in the hallway was startled by him.

"Get Harrison over here."

"Sir, Dr. Harrison has already—"

"Now."

The solemn and manic command brooked no argument.

Upon hearing this, the assistant almost jogged away, disappearing at the end of the hallway.

A quarter of an hour later, Dr. Harrison pushed the door open and walked in.

Unlike his previous composure, his pace was noticeably half a beat slower this time, and there was something indescribable behind his gold-rimmed glasses.

The blond man didn't give him a chance to sit down and got straight to the point.

"Xia Country's official mouthpiece published an editorial. Have you seen it?"

"...I've seen it."

"The Six-Month Promise, inviting the whole world to witness it together."

The blond man walked around the corner of the desk, stepping toward Harrison one step at a time, each step landing extremely heavily.

"They can't all have gone crazy, can they?"

Harrison's lips twitched, but he didn't immediately respond.

"I'm asking you one last time."

The blond man was already standing in front of him, less than a meter away, an overwhelming sense of pressure washing over him.

"Half a year—is there even the slightest possibility? I want the truth!"

Harrison's Adam's apple bobbed twice with difficulty.

He had been asked this question more than once.

Every time, he had given a negative answer based on scientific standards.

But every time after giving an answer, the Xia Country people would use an even harder hammer blow to smash his denial into pieces.

First was that impossibly stable power output curve.

Then it was the simultaneous breakthroughs in the three core components.

Now, even the state had personally stepped in to endorse it.

A terrifying thought spun wildly in his mind—

If the Xia Country people were really just bluffing, why would they dare to gamble their national credit?

Unless... they really had something he couldn't see through.

But as soon as this thought emerged, he desperately suppressed it.

"...Impossible."

When these words were squeezed out of his throat, even he could hear the guilt and lack of confidence in them.

But he had to stick to his guns on this point.

"From a laboratory prototype to an engineered machine, the process problems that need to be solved in between are exponential..."

"There's also the mold manufacturing for components, the precision calibration of the optical system, the yield rate ramp-up across the entire chain..."

"Every single step requires repeated trial and error."

He spoke faster and faster, as if trying to convince the other man, or perhaps himself.

"Half a year... is absolutely impossible."

The blond man stared at him intently for a full ten seconds.

Harrison endured those ten seconds without looking away, but the shirt on his back was already soaked with cold sweat.

"It had better be."

The blond man finally withdrew that suffocating gaze, turned back to sit behind the desk, and picked up the blue folder on the table.

"You may leave."

Harrison felt as if he had been granted a grand pardon; he turned and walked out, his pace twice as fast as when he had entered.

The moment he walked out the door, he had to lean heavily against the doorframe to barely steady his weak knees.

Standing in the empty hallway, he closed his eyes.

His mind was filled with that impossibly stable power output curve and the young man's composed smile in front of the camera.

Impossible.

He muttered it once.

Impossible.

He muttered it again.

...

The global storm of public opinion reached an unprecedented peak within twenty-four hours after the national editorial was published.

Topics related to the "half-year Photolithography Machine" broke historical search records on major social media platforms worldwide.

Every second, thousands of new discussions were born.

Every discussion, whether supporting or opposing, objectively branded the keywords "Lin Yuan" and "building a Photolithography Machine in half a year" deep into the minds of more people.

And in this global storm of public opinion, Lin Yuan himself, who was at the eye of the storm, was actually the calmest one.

In the two days following the press conference, his routine was no different from before.

During the day, he appeared on time in the laboratory of Research Building No. 7, guiding the project's progress.

At night, he returned to his residence, washed up simply, and went to bed to rest.

The outside world was turned upside down because of him, and countless high-level officials of major powers spent sleepless nights because of him, but this had nothing to do with him.

All the seeds that needed to be sown had been sown by him.

All that remained was to wait for the billions of people on this planet to water the sweetest fruit for him with their shock and awe.

Soon, it was the morning of the third day.

The room was dim, with the curtains tightly drawn, cutting off all light from the outside world.

Lin Yuan woke up naturally from his sleep; he wasn't in a hurry to get up but, as usual, called forth that light blue screen in the depths of his consciousness.

The light screen unfolded silently.

The moment the line of numbers at the very top caught his eye, Lin Yuan was slightly stunned.

Then, the corners of his lips finally couldn't help but curl upward in an extremely relaxed arc.

[Current Lie: Build a Photolithography Machine with the team within half a year.]

[Total confidence: 100%]