Tech Giants: Starting from Bankrupt Companies

135: Chapter 135 Trio. The Light of DawnThe phone vibrated; it was Su Chen.

”Are the four meetings over?” Su Chen’s voice came through the receiver, the background quiet.

”Just finished. Twenty minutes each, but the amount of information was overwhelming.”

”How does it feel?”

”Like choosing a future destiny,” Wu Yi said honestly. ”A 10 billion investment determines the company’s trajectory for the next ten years and might even influence the entire industry’s landscape. The pressure is immense.”

Su Chen remained silent for a few seconds. ”Remember what I told you? Don’t just look at policies.”

”I remember. Industrial clusters, talent attrition rates, ecosystem.”

”And security,” Su Chen reminded him. ”Of these four cities, which offers the strongest information security protection for the company? Which has the lowest foreign-related risks? You need to consider this.”

Wu Yi felt a chill in his heart. He truly hadn’t considered it from that perspective.

”Additionally, let me ask you a question,” Su Chen said. ”If you weren’t the General Manager of Xinghuo, but a 27-year-old PhD in materials science, which city would you choose to work, live, and settle down in?”

The question left Wu Yi stunned.

”I...”

”Don’t answer immediately,” Su Chen said. ”Use the answer to that question as an important reference. Because ultimately, what decides the company’s future isn’t land or policies—it’s people. A city that can attract and retain talent is a city worth investing in.”

”Understood.”

”Also, watch out for ’rats.’ The Network Security Department has confirmed that the background of the resume submitted by the HR Department is problematic. There’s a gap in his movement records during the last three months before he returned to the country, and several references he mentioned have recently received inquiry emails from unknown sources.”

Wu Yi gripped his phone tighter. ”Are you sure it’s a corporate spy?”

”Ninety percent sure. But we won’t move against him yet.”

”Why?”

”Because by leaving him, we can find out who is behind him and what they want to know,” Su Chen’s voice was chillingly calm. ”Sometimes, a spy you know about is safer than a group of lurkers you don’t.”

The call ended. Wu Yi looked at himself in the mirror, suddenly realizing that this ’battle of cities’ was only the competition on the surface. In the shadows, another war had already begun.

And Xinghuo stood at the intersection of these two battlefields.

December 15th, 3:00 PM.

Wu Yi sat in his office with four proposals spread out before him, each as thick as a brick. Outside the window, the winter sun of Beijing shone in at an angle, casting shadows of the window frame onto the desk.

He picked up a red pencil and crossed through the names of the four cities one by one.

Then he opened a new notebook and began writing the inspection plan:

First Stop: Chengdu (December 18-19)

Inspection Focus: Actual construction status of Tianfu New Area Science City, operational efficiency of the Chengdu-Europe Express Rail, feasibility of supply chain integration with Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group.

Second Stop: Xian (December 20-21)

Inspection Focus: Depth of cooperation with the Xidian University Materials Lab, military order conversion mechanism, local talent stability research.

Third Stop: Wuhan (December 22-23)

Inspection Focus: On-site verification of logistics costs, willingness for automotive industry integration, details of joint talent training programs with universities.

Fourth Stop: Zhengzhou (December 24-25)

Inspection Focus: Actual land status, credibility of construction progress commitments, assessment of government execution power.

After writing these, he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

Four images surfaced in his mind:

Zhao Qiming from Chengdu, smiling confidently while pushing up his glasses.

Zhou Jianguo from Xian, slamming the table and boldly declaring their ’thick foundation.’

Liu Min from Wuhan, calculating costs accurately to two decimal places.

Wang Lihong from Zhengzhou, saying ’We will return a miracle to you’ with utter sincerity.

Each image represented a possibility, a future.

And beyond these, there were more images:

In the Xingchen Military Industry workshop, the light in Lin Hao’s eyes as he touched the new material.

In the Dupont conference room, Marc Rosenberg’s fingers twirling that KGB badge.

In a cafe, Wang Mingyuan—or ’Crimson’—observing the Xinghuo building with a piercing gaze.

In the Red Flag crash lab, Zhou Jianjun’s trembling hands as he saw the test data.

All these images intertwined to form the current landscape of Xinghuo manufacturing: breakthroughs and blockades, light and shadow, cooperation and competition, loyalty and betrayal.

Wu Yi opened his eyes, picked up the phone, and dialed his assistant’s extension.

”Notify the representatives of the four cities: next week, the Xinghuo inspection team will visit them in sequence. Ask them to prepare more detailed information and on-site inspection routes based on today’s talks.”

”Understood, Manager Wu. Also, Engineer Liu from the Network Security Department wants to see you regarding the server attacks.”

”Have him come over in half an hour.”

Hanging up, Wu Yi walked to the window. Below, a Red Flag H8 slowly entered the parking lot—it was a test car sent by Hongqi Automobile, using Xinghuo’s new generation of civilian high-performance engineering plastic materials.

The car came to a stop, and the driver got out to check the rear. Sunlight hit the car body, its streamlined silhouette reflecting a metallic luster.

Wu Yi suddenly remembered something Su Chen once said: ’Competition in manufacturing is ultimately a competition of materials. Whoever masters the materials masters the ”roots” of industry.’

Now, Xinghuo held those roots.

But this was only the beginning. The real challenge was how to make these ’roots’ strike deep into the soil and grow into a forest, rather than being a flash in the pan.

The phone vibrated again with an encrypted message from a number consisting only of digits:

”Nightingale has entered the forest. Crimson activated. Suggest raising security levels. Materials have been sent to the secure mailbox.”

Wu Yi deleted the message.

Outside the window, Shenzhen was operating silently in the winter sun. Traffic flowed like a web, and crowds bustled; everything appeared calm and orderly.

But beneath this calm, a war over materials, technology, and the future had already begun.

Time passed, and in the blink of an eye, it was the next day.

Shenzhen Bay Sports Center (Spring Cocoon), December 16th, 1:45 PM.

In the backstage lounge, Mobile Phone Product Manager stared at the countdown clock on the wall: 15 minutes and 27 seconds.

He closed his eyes and took three deep breaths, deliberately slowing each inhalation to five seconds and each exhalation to seven. This was a method he had learned from Jony Ive while working at Apple—not for calmness, but to compress his focus into an extremely sharp point.

”Manager Lu, final rehearsal,” Lin Wei’s voice came through the intercom, soft but firm.

Mobile Phone Product Manager opened his eyes without answering. He walked to the full-length mirror and checked his attire: a dark gray cashmere turtleneck with no logo; dark blue jeans with the hems just covering his shoes; and on his feet, those white Common Projects sneakers he’d worn for a year, already molded to his feet.

He wasn’t imitating Steve Jobs—he was using this method to declare: a true master needs no fancy clothes; the product speaks for itself.

The man in the mirror was 32, his gaze more than twice as sharp as when he left Cupertino a year ago. Back then, he thought he would work at Apple until retirement, becoming a figure like Phil Schiller. Until that meeting in the fall of 2016.

”Lu, users in the Chinese market don’t need such high screen brightness,” the Marketing VP had said in the conference room. ”They care more about price. If we drop 1 to 1000 nits, costs can be reduced by 15 dollars.”

”But outdoor readability will drop by 40%,” Mobile Phone Product Manager countered at the time.

”So what? They can look at their phones in the shade.”

In that moment, he understood: this company he had worked at for eight years no longer held ’ultimate experience’ as its primary pursuit. Profit, market share, and supply chain control—these were important, of course, but when they began to erode the soul of the product, he knew it was time to leave.

Three months later, he received a call from Su Chen. The two met at a cafe in Palo Alto and talked for four hours. Finally, Su Chen said: ”What I want isn’t cost-effectiveness; it’s redefining standards. Do you dare?”

He dared.

”Manager Lu, the audience is all seated, and the media area is full,” Lin Wei’s voice rang out again. ”Reporters from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, and Reuters are all in the first three rows. BBC and NHK broadcast vans are in position.”

Mobile Phone Product Manager picked up the engineering unit on the table—the final mass-production version of the Huaxing HX1 MAX. The body was space gray, the aluminum alloy frame having undergone seven rounds of anodization and two sandblastings, feeling as warm and smooth as jade. When the screen was off, the entire ’Kunlun Glass’ integrated seamlessly with the frame, as if naturally formed.

He pressed the power button, and the screen lit up. The peak brightness of 1 was dazzling even under the lounge lights. This was the first generation OLED screen from Spark Industry, with parameters so high that even Samsung engineers privately asked, ”How did you solve the burn-in problem?”

The answer was in the materials. The new organic light-emitting materials provided by Spark Materials had a lifespan three times longer than traditional materials. This was the first time a Chinese enterprise had achieved a breakthrough at the level of basic materials.

”Five-minute countdown,” Lin Wei said.

Mobile Phone Product Manager took one last look in the mirror and turned toward the wings of the stage.

All the lights in the hall went out.

The five-thousand-person stadium fell into absolute darkness, with even the emergency exit signs temporarily covered. A slight stir came from the audience, followed by an expectant silence.

Music began—not the ethereal electronic music common at Apple launches, nor the stirring symphonies of Samsung. It was a variation of ”Victory,” but the tempo had been slowed by half, each note striking the chest like a heavy drumbeat.

In the center of the stage, a giant ”Huaxing HX1” logo slowly lit up. It wasn’t the usual white or blue, but a dark gold, like the silhouette of a mountain peak catching the first light of dawn.

Mobile Phone Product Manager stepped out from the side of the stage.

No spotlight followed him, and no host introduced him. He simply walked to the center of the stage, standing beneath the logo, holding that phone in his hand.

In the audience, the sound of shutters rang out like a rainstorm. Flashbulbs illuminated him as if he were standing at a judgment seat, but he remained motionless, simply watching the crowd below quietly.