Only Liang Sishen questioned Liu Jun when he was alone: “Is this money enough? You don’t plan to give up?”
“We’ve already put in so many days and nights. We’ve invested our whole hearts and souls – you could say we’ve worked ourselves to the bone. I’ve never thought of giving up. It’s like a child born after ten months of pregnancy. Even if it’s missing arms or legs, even knowing it won’t live long, what parent would bear to give up? Products are the same as children – none of us at the center would agree.”
“Are you the person in charge of the enterprise, or the big brother of your comrades? You know that giving up should be the best choice. You’re just doing something beyond your capabilities at an inappropriate time. Giving up isn’t wrong.”
“We can already see the mountaintop. Sister Liang, you haven’t been involved for very long – you wouldn’t understand our feelings. Not giving up is also everyone’s heartfelt wish.”
“Aren’t you worried that the factory people will rebel against you because you’re playing favorites?”
“Being rejected by PE was half due to our excessive investment in research eroding profits. The factory has long had complaints. I need to balance things desperately.”
“Isn’t this knowingly jumping into a fire pit with your eyes wide open?”
Liu Jun thought for a long time for reasons but couldn’t find suitable ones, so he could only answer with two words: “Yes.”
Liang Sishen looked at Liu Jun as if looking at a godly person. When she went home for dinner and told her husband about it, she felt that Liu Jun, as a manager, was too impulsive. Even Song Yunhui was completely puzzled upon hearing this, asking his wife repeatedly whether she might have misheard, perhaps Liu Jun was just making a statement to comfort the engineers who had worried about the Donghai No. 1 segment project for nearly two years, while secretly diverting the money elsewhere. After thinking it over, Liang Sishen felt this couldn’t be posturing. If it were posturing, a statement would suffice – such a comprehensive restoration would be a huge loss if exposed.
“What, he still hasn’t given up hope?” Song Yunhui held his chopsticks in mid-air for quite a while before laughing: “Knowing it can’t be done but doing it anyway – the stubborn temperament of technical management personnel has emerged. Good.”
“Official rhetoric and empty talk will kill Liu Jun. Someone needs to stop him. He’s now completely not a rational enterprise management person.”
“No need. Sometimes human potential can explode under pressure. Liu Jun is young and under pressure. Moreover, technical personnel need a bit of obsession to produce results. Good, I believe in him – I completely believe in him from this point on. Aren’t I also an obsessed person? For Donghai No. 1, I’ve given up promotions these past two years, persisting on this small peninsula, eating sea wind.”
“But people say you’d rather be a chicken head than a phoenix tail. Liu Jun is different from you – he’s squandering his own money, and he doesn’t have the strength to squander.”
“You’re looking at Liu Jun entirely from an investor’s perspective. However, a company’s strength, besides its immediate profitability and profit intentions, has many other factors. Tengfei is very high-quality because of that research center. What’s lacking is just opportunity – a market environment that allows them to develop their strength steadily. Society won’t always be so restless. After years of reform, the competitive order has become much healthier.”
“Has it become healthy? Not necessarily. It should be an evolution from the cold weapon era to the nuclear age – the destructive power is only greater. Liu Jun’s Tengfei will only become more like an egg before a stone if he continues such reckless behavior.”
“If he doesn’t care about his life and continues developing Donghai No. 1 only because he can’t give up, I quite like that. I’ll support him. I still believe more in products from such people’s hands. My Donghai No. 1 needs exactly this kind of devoted person.”
Liang Sishen glanced sideways at her husband and made a face: “Ugh, does it feel good to play savior? Not helping early, not helping late, just extending a hand at this dying moment makes your figure appear more resolute.”
Song Yunhui smiled and didn’t refute. At home, let her be the boss. Song Yunhui only instructed his wife to continue observing to see whether Liu Jun was posturing or truly committed in the next few days.
The management personnel at the Tengda factory finally couldn’t bear it anymore. They found Liu Jun demanding an increased workload. Perfectly good brand-new equipment was sitting idle at nearly half capacity, entirely because liquid funds couldn’t keep up – no money to purchase raw materials meant no rice to cook. Idle capacity and insufficient employee working hours meant per-capita output couldn’t be raised, which related to everyone’s vital interests – wages and bonuses! But the boss wasn’t without money; he was putting money into the research center like a bottomless pit. Such favoritism made factory management personnel unable to tolerate it. Liu Jun spent nearly two hours doing ideological work, covering his conscience with a black cloth and telling many lies, all to explain the enormous profits of the research center’s current trial production work. Seeing the factory management’s half-believing, half-doubting faces, he simply patted his chest and told everyone to wait patiently for three months-three months as the deadline, with results coming quickly.
That evening, the Liu family dinner table was also serious. Upon learning that Liu Jun planned to use half of the newly obtained acceptance bills for Donghai No. 1 segment research, Cui Bingbing also held her chopsticks in mid-air for a long time, staring at Liu Jun silently.
“You’re happy, but what about your father, the company’s real investor? Have you asked your father? You’re torturing Tengfei to death. And I used my position for personal gain to get you so many loans – if something happens, have you thought about my consequences?”
“A’San, I’ve searched my mind but can’t find reasons to explain to you. Sister Liang also asked me for reasons this afternoon, and I couldn’t say. But honestly, I can’t not continue. Like Engineer Tan and the others, my head is full of Donghai No. 1. We have many ideas that need continued verification. If we don’t continue… if we don’t continue…” Liu Jun choked again, unable to find words. The couple stared at each other with big eyes and small eyes. Cui Bingbing neither helped with a word nor spoke negatively, but silently used her eyes to signal Liu Jun to continue thinking – she had to understand what was going on.
Liu Jun also wanted to explain properly to his wife – after all, this was a major decision. But he racked his brains. He couldn’t say that not continuing would be like harvesting his soul. Just then, the outside gate was pounded loudly – who knows who was so rude as not to ring the doorbell. Liu Jun instinctively panicked and hurriedly jumped up to open the door. Cui Bingbing was also startled, handed the small rice bowl to the nanny, and followed out to look. With big and small factory matters constantly arising, loud door-pounding at night wasn’t good news.
But it was Engineer Tan bouncing around outside the door, his hands dancing like he was holding conductor’s batons. “Liu Jun, today’s condition is excellent. Come quickly and look – my computer simulation output curves… look promising now. This time it’s not crying wolf. Come look quickly.” He grabbed Liu Jun toward the laboratory.
Seeing such a big man as Engineer Tan wearing a cartoon character’s brilliant innocent smile, gesticulating wildly, Cui Bingbing considerately asked: “Engineer Tan hasn’t eaten yet, has he?”
“Eat what, eat what!” Even though Liu Jun had caught up, Engineer Tan still grabbed Liu Jun’s arm with one hand, dragging him toward the laboratory as if the boss wasn’t walking fast enough. By the time Cui Bingbing turned around and quickly brought out a plate of pumpkin cakes to fill Engineer Tan’s stomach, the two had long disappeared. Cui Bingbing stood at the door holding the plate for quite a while. When she returned, she wasn’t in a hurry to eat but picked up her phone and sent Liu Jun a text message with simple words: “No need to explain. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll support you.”
But Liu Jun didn’t hear the text message alert at all. He and Engineer Tan and a group of others were staring at the big computer screen, watching the simulation demonstration.
“X condition group… mm, this one is here, why is this one… good… good… good… There is… then Y condition group…” Liu Jun knew these simulation modules like the back of his hand. Under Engineer Tan’s guidance, he verified item by item rather than looking at the results first. After examining all condition groups, he already understood in his heart where the inspiration appeared. Engineer Tan, with the assistance of Engineer Sun and Engineer Liao, had ferreted out a truly unexpected variable. This variable had always been the demon in everyone’s mind at the center. Everyone knew there should be something not considered, but they couldn’t find where that something was. Thus, time and again, output error values remained high under changing operating conditions. Today, embedding this hidden variable into the model produced the wonderful output curves that made Engineer Tan dance with joy.
Liu Jun closed his eyes and thought, then input an extreme operating condition parameter. Soon, the result appeared. Engineer Tan laughed heartily: “I thought of this early and verified it early. Liu Jun, think again, think again – see if you can stump me. Ha… you don’t need to input anymore. I’ve done this operating condition too. Right, Xiao Shuai, you all bear witness.” Engineer Tan rubbed his hands together, rolling his sleeves up and down, completely unable to sit still, jumping around behind Liu Jun, his mouth constantly reciting various operating conditions he had already tested.
Liu Jun listened carefully to catch every word Engineer Tan uttered. Slowly, his fingers left the keyboard and covered his face. As if the screen was adjusted too glaring, his eyes under his palms felt burning and uncomfortable, tears uncontrollably overflowing from between his fingers. Because Liu Jun knew that the success of the simulation almost meant breaking through the most difficult barrier. Crossing this barrier, the ending appeared tangibly before their eyes, with measurable distance. Rather than their previous situation of being stuck in a bottleneck, looking at the ending, only knowing the ending stood far away on the horizon, but who could touch the horizon? They kept running toward the horizon’s direction, but the horizon was always in the visible distance, yet never reachable. Good, now it was good – they had broken through the most blind Brownian motion and finally walked out a linear trajectory. This step, how difficult it was to take!
Engineer Tan, behind him, was still chattering: “Weren’t we short of money for experiments a few months ago? So we sat on the grass listening to birds and talking abstractly. We played blind chess and talked abstractly. We said everyone shouldn’t be constrained by anything – even if what we said was moronic, no one was allowed to laugh, since it was blind chess anyway with no way to verify. But we old ones weren’t good enough – we lacked the imagination of the young ones. Variables we couldn’t think of, no matter how bored we were, fields our sleep talk wouldn’t touch, the young ones dared to say anything with wild imagination. Fantastic variables seemed like constants to them. Engineer Sun was the most diligent. He didn’t treat our boring nonsense as a game at all. He recorded each absurd assumption and went back to eliminate them one by one. Boss, can you believe it? A top scientist took absurd assumptions seriously, trying every way to verify them, only eliminating them when verification was truly impossible. Later, Engineer Liao joined in, then later I found out and demanded to join too. We used our spare time to quietly do this for four whole months, from spring to autumn, never giving up for a moment. Only then could we ferret out ghost-like variables one after another. Where does luck come from in this world? Only fools in this world can hit big luck. Why? Because only we fools keep hitting, keep foolishly hitting, finally hitting upon possibilities in low-probability events. Hey… boss, what’s wrong with you…”
“I’m fortunate I didn’t let down your efforts. Fortunate, fortunate.”
Everyone could hear the hoarseness in Liu Jun’s voice, everyone could guess Liu Jun was choking with his face covered. Everyone was shocked. Those who had been dancing stopped and looked at Engineer Tan, who looked at their emotionally overwhelmed boss. Engineer Tan, who had just been eloquent, suddenly got tongue-tied, not knowing what to say. A subordinate wrote “comfort” in his palm to prompt Engineer Tan. Just as Engineer Tan was about to speak, suddenly his throat hurt, and his eyes felt hot. Yes, it had been too difficult. From the beginning of the year until now, it has truly been an inhumane period. Earlier progress had been smooth, but after the Spring Festival, everything suddenly got blocked. They groped with difficulty in pitch darkness under others’ doubts. Without the boss’s understanding and support, they would have been scolded as good-for-nothings long ago. How could they have endured until now? The boss had never let them down, but they felt ashamed of the boss’s kind treatment. Combined, their psychological pressure was very inhuman.
Liu Jun wiped his face and stood up: “Come on, let’s go drink. My treat. I toast to Donghai No. 1’s eight generations of ancestors. Tonight we don’t return until drunk.” He pulled up Engineer Tan, saw that Engineer Tan also had teary eyes, laughed, but tears still couldn’t stop flowing. He didn’t care, loudly calling out each colleague present by name, greeting everyone to follow. Walking outside, he loudly called for his wife A’San to come drink together. The glass soundproofing was too good – Cui Bingbing didn’t hear, so Liu Jun called on the phone. Cui Bingbing walked out with her phone, puzzled, and saw a small group of disheveled, excited people. Even though Cui Bingbing didn’t understand technology and couldn’t guess what they had done, she immediately guessed their research had made progress. She couldn’t help but scream repeatedly – wasn’t she also a member of the Donghai No. 1 segment research project team?