After leaving Liu Jun’s villa, Cui Bingbing threw her bags of clothes and daily necessities aside and first threw herself into the arms of her close friends, seeking support. These friends weren’t the type like Qi Wei, who were duplicitous – when she called SOS, they dropped everything and warmly surrounded Cui Bingbing. But the result was completely unexpected for Cui Bingbing. Everyone criticized Liu Jun for his overly simple methods, but no one said Liu Jun’s attitude was harsh. As for Cui Bingbing’s departure, everyone disapproved. A friend raised a question only friends dared ask: “You’re already over thirty. A man like Liu Jun with good conditions, whom you also like – after this village, there’s no such shop. You’re arguing with him about attitude – do you not want to marry in this lifetime? Even if you know he’s got you figured out, you can only let him have you figured out. Marry first, then slowly strategize. This type of businessman has weaknesses all over – there are plenty of ways to subdue him. The only prerequisite is a marriage certificate.”
After one friend raised this, the others chimed in, telling Cui Bingbing not to act on impulse, not to lose the big picture for small issues. Cui Bingbing listened in confusion, also thinking about the issues of age and marriage. She was already among the older unmarried, and if she continued making trouble unreasonably, the only one who’d suffer would be herself. Cui Bingbing’s pride was almost completely crushed – it seemed that not marrying made her a failure. But amid confusion, Cui Bingbing grasped a glimmer of clarity and asked rather weakly: “Then why should I rush to get married?”
This question silenced all these eloquent female friends with bachelor’s degrees or higher. But soon, with several women together making a drama, the married friends gradually summarized the benefits of marriage. Concerning lifelong matters, Cui Bingbing devoutly took notes. When she’d almost filled a page, the friends stopped summarizing and looked at Cui Bingbing. Cui Bingbing then took out her work attitude, pulled out a highlighter, and said: “Let’s use the process of elimination. Look, as I cross out problems I can solve while single. Economic issues can all be crossed out – my income is more than adequate for life, and Liu Jun isn’t hugely wealthy either. Life issues – in modern society, as long as you have money, everything can be solved without depending on men. Social circles – mine are quite rich…”
Cui Bingbing crossed out items one by one, finally leaving only four: emotional protection through contract, children, social recognition, and stable sex.
“If I compromise to seek a marriage…” Cui Bingbing crossed out two more items – emotions and sex, respectively. “Then why should I rush to get married?”
A friend offered harsh but honest advice: “You can’t underestimate social recognition.”
“I’m strong enough. I have an independent personality and independent finances. I have the ability, and I want to pursue independent love-love without additional conditions, pure love. Better to be a broken jade than an intact tile.”
The friends all advised Cui Bingbing not to be idealistic. Whether male or female, at this age, everyone’s subconscious was already mixed with countless impure factors. Could people this age still produce pure love? The more realistic friends advised, the more Cui Bingbing gritted her teeth, thinking she absolutely wouldn’t compromise.
The married friends could no longer play through the night like before. When the time came, they scattered like birds and beasts. Almost as soon as the friends left, Liu Jun’s call arrived. Seeing the character “Liu” displayed on her phone screen, Cui Bingbing’s heart jumped wildly, and she slammed the phone face down on the sofa. But a text message notification immediately came in. Although Cui Bingbing wanted to spit on the phone, she couldn’t suppress her curiosity. She rationalized to herself, what if it was a text from some relative or friend? But it was still from Liu Jun: “I’m downstairs.”
Liu Jun wasn’t usually stingy with words, but he cleverly sent only these five characters, leaving Cui Bingbing with endless imagination. Did he want to come upstairs? Asking her to come down? Or was he simply gazing up forlornly from below, lacking courage for the next step?
Upstairs, Cui Bingbing’s mind was in chaos, but the second text immediately arrived: “Luo Qing returns.”
The two had recently snuggled together watching two “Mummy” movies consecutively, and Cui Bingbing’s memory of “returns” was fresh – she had even explored why an “s” was added. And it was precisely this “s” that evoked countless memories for Cui Bingbing. She cursed forcefully in her heart: “Scoundrel.”
Liu Jun looked up at a window, and although he had the key to that room, he didn’t want to go up today – going up would mean all previous efforts were wasted. But he also couldn’t give up on Cui Bingbing, waiting somewhat pitifully for her to respond in any way to the good news of Luo Qing’s return. But after waiting and waiting with no response, he could only smile awkwardly, knowing he couldn’t possibly get one, and sent another text: “It’s getting late, turn off the lights early and rest. Big brother is watching you, be good.”
Cui Bingbing was going crazy. Under Liu Jun’s vigorous recommendation, she had read Orwell’s “1984,” so “Big brother is watching you” became a code between them. Liu Jun often snuck to the bathroom door when she was inside and nearly undressed, mysteriously saying “Big brother is watching you,” causing laughter on both sides of the door. But how could Cui Bingbing laugh now? She wanted to throw punches – this person was too shameless. What did he mean? But she hated most that she wasn’t standing firm, being thrown into confusion by that scoundrel’s few words.
After sending three texts, Liu Jun felt much calmer. After pondering a while, he sent the last one and drove away: “Cool down for a few days, let’s find time to talk properly. I’m leaving, good night.” When turning the corner, he couldn’t help stopping to look back, seeming to see curtains moving in that window. He paused for a while, but still left. Attitude determinism? Attitude couldn’t solve problems. Attitude might mask the eruption of problems, but ultimately, solving problems still requires skill.
The next afternoon, Liu Jun welcomed Luo Qing’s joining with a small meeting. After a brief welcome ceremony, they immediately got to business. The business was precisely related to Song Yunhui, calling Liu Jun to observe the meeting. Donghai Group was preparing to independently develop a set of equipment, with many components needing to be contracted out to different manufacturers for research and development. Song Yunhui viewed this as a political task – even if the investment exceeded the cost of importing the entire equipment line, he accepted it, believing this was necessary for cultivating domestic manufacturing. At the coordination meeting, enterprise bosses came forward to claim projects. Liu Jun looked around – the low-difficulty ones weren’t his turn, as Donghai Group could complete them themselves. The high-difficulty ones suitable for him were hard nuts to crack. When Song Yunhui asked if he could do it, he shook his head once, then again, not daring to nod. For this, he saw disappointment in Song Yunhui’s eyes, though Song Yunhui also comforted him, saying that for this robotic system, Donghai Group had already consulted several universities and national-level research institutions, all of whom viewed it as a dangerous path. But if successful in trial production, the prospects would be unlimited. However, Liu Jun immediately threw cold water on Song Yunhui, saying that even if successfully developed, complete domestic production would be impossible.
Now he conveyed the meeting content to the production and technical backbones. This component was located in the precision molding stage of the later processes of Donghai Group’s tentatively designated Donghai No. 1 equipment. Due to complex operating conditions – high temperature, high dust concentration, high humidity, dense infrasound waves in noise, etc. – and the requirement for very high machining precision, manual operation was not only difficult to sustain in such environments but also, even when operated, precision was hard to guarantee due to human limitations, resulting in high defect rates. Since Donghai Group hoped their self-owned intellectual property, Donghai No. 1, would reach current world advanced levels, they naturally couldn’t make sloppy compromises here using semi-automatic, semi-manual operations. They wanted to use fully automatic robots.
Liu Jun wrote the robot working conditions he’d recorded yesterday on the whiteboard. As he wrote, he watched the faces of those present. He saw someone’s eyebrows becoming uneven, someone clutching their scalp, someone covering their mouth with their hand. All were experts, seeing the detailed working conditions, they already roughly understood this robot’s composition. Liu Jun then stated his preset robot composition. Just as he mentioned the positioning system, Engineer Tan, who had been clutching his head, simply buried his face on the desk surface. From under his arms, Engineer Tan groaned out a string of words indistinctly: “My God, four sets of servo motors synchronized, four sets, synchronized, and the set response time is so short… Manager Liu, please move the mathematics department over for me.”
But Liu Jun said, “This is still just one of the difficulties of this equipment. Next is the working environment. This working environment has a complex gas composition, posing serious challenges to transmission and sealing equipment. From the rough data Donghai provided – not final data, they still need verification – our company’s current database has no experimental data collection. It looks like we need to start from scratch.” He stood up again and wrote the rough environmental composition analysis on the whiteboard.
Engineer Sun watched silently, then looked at Engineer Tan still buried on the desk groaning, all expression disappearing from his face.
Liu Jun then introduced his estimated R&D costs, the prospects after successful development, and the R&D subsidies Donghai Group planned to provide. Although Luo Qing had previously felt this project was a dangerous path, it had nothing to do with him – it was entirely the R&D system’s affair. But since Liu Jun mentioned budgets, costs, and outputs, he began taking notes. However, he currently had no concept of Tengfei’s specific annual profit figures, especially gross profit. When Liu Jun finished, he asked: “What percentage of the annual profit is the total funding?”
“At least eighty percent.” Engineer Tan howled again but was silenced by Engineer Liao nearby. Although the R&D center had always been informal, there still needed to be some order.
“Eighty!” Although Luo Qing didn’t yet understand management, he was still stunned by this figure. Such investment could be described in one phrase: “betting everything on one throw.” But Tengfei was an enterprise – how could an enterprise have such a gambler’s mentality? “What if additional funding is needed? What if it’s not successful?” Luo Qing controlled his pessimistic words, stopping the other sentence in his heart: Would failure mean death?
“We currently focus on complete machinery research and development, with servo motor applications gradually deepening. This joint development of Donghai No. 1 is a great opportunity we face. We must see that with Donghai’s strong financial support, if successful, our products will step onto a completely new level. On this new level, imitation and piracy will no longer exist – impossible to imitate, with absolute, hard-to-surpass, long-term advantages. Based on this, we can easily take down the three products in our target library. You all know these three products and what they mean. Do you have any opinions about this project? If not, I’ll return to my alma mater tomorrow to discuss joint development with experts. For this project, relying solely on our R&D center for independent development, our strength is insufficient.”
Engineer Tan finally raised his head, cleared his throat, and said, “Manager Liu, this is a long-term project, and I can’t predict the time investment. One year is too little; two or three years is very possible, and it’s also possible that after two or three years we still can’t produce results. What I fear most isn’t quickly seeing that we can’t do it, but rather working for a year and still seeing light ahead, but never reaching the finish line, while funding slowly depletes. Manager Liu, I sincerely say this project is a Great Leap Forward for our company’s current level. We’d better view this project with a scientific, realistic attitude.”
“You’re right – this is why I couldn’t agree to Manager Song. But undeniably, such a project has enormous appeal for us, technical personnel. It’s rare to have a state enterprise encouraging independent R&D regardless of cost…”
“But suitable servo motors use either German or Japanese ones. Even with independent development, it’s limited.”
“This is precisely the cold water I threw at Manager Song yesterday. Thinking about our gap with developed countries, we need to catch up on too much, so much that we don’t know where to start. But we can also see that a large gap means strong potential energy and large room for advancement. Coincidentally, this Donghai No. 1 opportunity is almost handed to us. Come, let’s dissect the sparrow, subdivide the work, and fight annihilation battles item by item. Don’t look at how arduous the project is – often when effectively broken down, we’ll find we actually can do it.”
Luo Qing was sent to hand over to Liu Shitang. Luo Qing was blunt, roughly telling Liu Shitang about the meeting. Liu Shitang became anxious: “A bunch of technical lunatics – those lunatics only see technology with their two eyes. As long as there’s an opportunity, they don’t count the costs. But we’re running a factory – where do we get so much money? Xiao Luo, do you know what the company’s annual R&D investment is, and what other companies invest?”
“I know – this is data Manager Liu takes pride in. Pitifully, I also know Manager Liu has been restraining his technical lunatic tendencies, since we’re not state-funded after all. But this Donghai No. 1 project has too much potential energy, too much attraction. I see Manager Liu is somewhat…”
Luo Qing didn’t finish, but Liu Shitang understood completely. For that, Manager Liu, probably only he could apply restraining external force. Over eighty percent R&D investment annually, possibly continuing for two or three years – this wasn’t madness, but death by madness.