81: Chapter 81 I'm in the lead, you can do whatever you want.

In the entire press conference hall, thousands of people fell collectively silent at that moment.

In the front row, international reporters who were used to great storms held their pens suspended in mid-air; a drop of ink dripped from the tip, soaking into the paper unnoticed.

In the middle and back rows, executives from major semiconductor companies sat with their mouths agape, staring at the young face on the stage, their heads buzzing.

Before coming, they had naturally done their homework and even made the most daring private estimates.

But not a single person dared to think in this direction.

13.5nm wavelength, 0.55 numerical aperture, 8nm resolution, 800W average power...

What it meant when these sets of data were stacked together.

Of these big shots present—who had spent their lives in semiconductors and fought through the cruel market—which of them didn't understand the implications?!

Currently, the world's top commercial process was only 28nm.

28 nanometers!

That was a 'Wall of Sighs' built by foreign giants using hundreds of billions in funding and decades of time.

Yet Lin Yuan's machine had directly achieved a single-exposure resolution of 8nm!

How many generations did this skip?

Three generations?

Four generations?

No, this damn thing wasn't just a generational gap; it was a despair-inducing natural chasm!

A technical director from a leading domestic chip design company leaned back in his chair, both hands clutching the armrests so hard his nails bit into the leather.

His lips quivered violently as he squeezed out a few muttered words.

"This is still being called 'internationally leading'?"

"The higher-ups are being way too low-key. This 'internationally leading' must mean 'I'm leading, the rest of you do whatever you want'!"

A vice president from the same company heard this and turned to look at him, his mind already calculating frantically.

With a single-exposure resolution of 8nm, if combined with multi-patterning processes, how far could the process node theoretically be pushed?

5 nanometers?

3 nanometers?

Or the legendary 1nm limit?!

He didn't dare think any further, feeling the blood rushing to his head.

Two rows behind him was the head of the chip business for a major domestic telecommunications equipment group.

At this moment, this middle-aged man, known for his iron-blooded reputation in the business world, had his hands crossed tightly under his chin, sitting motionless, save for his Adam's apple bobbing repeatedly and with difficulty.

They had been held by the throat for so many years.

Chip supply cutoffs, operating system blockades, round after round of technical sanctions...

He would never forget that feeling of despair from having the throat of one's destiny throttled.

And now, this twenty-year-old young man on stage was telling him that Xia Country not only had its own Photolithography Machine, but its performance had directly left global peers behind by an entire era.

The middle-aged man suddenly felt an uncontrollable sting in his nose, and his eyes turned red instantly.

In the live stream, after dozens of seconds of terrifying silence, the bullet comments exploded with a frantic density that nearly crashed the servers!

"Holy sh*t! To be fair, with this data, is the official statement of 'internationally leading' a bit too damn modest? This is clearly a father beating his son!"

"8nm resolution? 800W power? This isn't a Photolithography Machine; it's a money-printing machine! No, it's a steamroller crushing Western tech hegemony!"

"From now on, I'll get angry with whoever mentions 'overtaking on a curve' again. We aren't even on the same road. It turns out the video from a few days ago wasn't a metaphor; it was a documentary!"

The bullet comments scrolled frantically in a white blur, every word an emotional release.

The collective excitement suppressed for decades could no longer be held back.

Now, the data was laid out before the entire world.

This technical route that had been mocked, questioned, and declared a "dead end"—

It truly was the future.

...

Meanwhile, The Other Side of the Ocean, in a top-floor office.

The blonde man stared at the screen, motionless, his breathing even stopping for a moment.

Those piercing figures were each clearly branded onto his retinas.

The silence lasted for a long time.

Finally, he turned to look at Harrison standing aside, his voice terrifyingly dark.

"Harrison... tell me."

"With our existing technical route, if we want to reach the level of the data they announced today."

He spoke each word deliberately.

"How long will it take?"

Harrison stood there, thinking seriously for a long while before speaking.

"...At least ten years."

Hearing this, the blonde man's fingers gripped the edge of the desk, his knuckles tightening inch by inch until a sharp 'crack' sounded.

Ten years.

While that twenty-year-old youth on the screen, who hadn't even graduated from university, only took less than two months!

...

At the press conference site.

Lin Yuan moved the microphone slightly away from his mouth, his deep eyes scanning the audience.

He saw the shock and dismay of the foreign reporters in the front, the trembling excitement of the domestic entrepreneurs, and the proud, gratified look of Chen Jingshan standing behind him.

He gave everyone in the audience a moment of silence.

He wasn't in a hurry.

Some things needed time to be digested.

Numbers themselves have no temperature, but when they crash into the cognitive framework of every practitioner and decision-maker, the resulting shockwave needs time to spread and permeate.

After about a few minutes, he brought the microphone back to his lips. His voice wasn't loud, yet it brought the entire hall, which had begun to whisper, back to silence.

"I've finished with the data."

He tilted his head slightly, a gentle and elegant curve forming at the corners of his lips.

"But just talking about numbers is ultimately a bit abstract."

"After all, talk is cheap."

He raised a hand, his slender fingers pointing lightly toward the direction behind him.

"So, I've prepared something more intuitive for everyone."

At the same second his voice fell, the giant LED screen behind him suddenly lit up.

A high-magnification scanning electron microscope photo instantly filled every pixel of the entire screen.

In the grayish-white image, nanometer-scale circuit patterns were clearly laid out.

The lines were straight, the edges sharp, and the arrangement was so precise it was breathtaking.

The width of every wire and the spacing of every transistor were controlled within a scale completely imperceptible to the naked eye, presenting an extreme, cold, almost surreal geometric order.

That mechanical beauty belonging to the pinnacle of the crown of human industry directly steamrolled the visual nerves of everyone present.

The hall fell silent once more.

It was a silence deeper, heavier, and more scalp-tingling than when they heard the data earlier!

Because data is abstract, just words spoken aloud.

But the photo before them was a solid, visible, undeniable physical existence.

"This... this is..."

A senior semiconductor reporter in the front row stared fixedly at the screen, his vocal cords tightening.

Lin Yuan's voice rang out at the right time, unhurried.

"What everyone is seeing now is a chip produced not long ago using our Photolithography Machine."

He deliberately paused for a beat before continuing.

"Precision: ten nanometers."

Ten nanometers!

As soon as these words landed, an uncontrollable wave of gasps erupted in the hall.

The corporate representatives leaned forward collectively, staring at the photo on the screen as if they wanted to press their eyeballs against it.

Xia Country had actually manufactured a ten-nanometer chip?

However, before everyone could recover from this strike.

Lin Yuan's next sentence followed immediately, completely detonating the entire venue.

"Additionally, let me add one more point."

His tone remained steady.

"This ten-nanometer chip is not a laboratory sample created by luck."

"After complete yield testing and engineering verification, this process..."

"...is already ready for mass commercial production."