Hong Kong films: From street thugs to Hong Kong financial tycoons

Today, a truly magical spectacle unfolded in the narrow, perpetually dark alleyways of Kowloon Walled City.

Those thugs and smugglers who usually made a living by collecting protection money and selling opium were now huddled like quails on both sides of the stinking sewer.

Their eyes widened in horror as they watched a group of burly men, all dressed in black suits and wearing tactical sunglasses, escort the three men out of the dilapidated tenement building as if they were a head of state.

The young man at the front, dressed in a well-tailored casual suit, had his hands in his pockets and was casually chewing bubble gum. His arrogant aura, which made him seem to disregard the Walled City, was a hundred times more arrogant than that of the Kowloon Detective.

Following behind him was a drunkard who reeked of nausea and whose hair was like a tangled mess of straw.

The drunkard was clutching a heavy silver briefcase tightly in his arms, as if it were his lifeblood. In his bloodshot eyes burned a mad flame of revenge.

It was Lu Qiu, the genius architect who was instantly awakened by Lin Yao's three million yuan in cash!

"This... isn't this that drunkard who owes 300,000 yuan in high-interest loans? How did he get involved with such a powerful figure?"

A thug in the shadows swallowed hard and muttered to himself.

"Shh, do you want to die? Didn't you see those gangsters from He Yi Sheng get so scared they wet their pants? That guy is definitely some powerful, all-powerful Yama in Central!"

Amidst the utmost awe and reverence from the crowd, Lin Yao and his entourage walked out of the walled city and returned to the luxury convoy parked by the roadside.

Sang Gou quickly stepped forward and opened the door of the luxury car. Just as he was about to invite Lin Yao into the car, a strong, sour smell wafted over as Lu Qiu approached.

Lin Yao frowned, pinched his nose in disgust, and took a half step back.

"sister."

Lin Yao turned to look at Thirteen Sister and pointed at Lu Qiu.

"Take him to the Peninsula Hotel, find a few people to scrub him from head to toe three times with steel wool, then find the best tailor in Hong Kong to make ten sets of clothes for him using the most expensive materials."

"Walking out like this, looking like a beggar, is an insult to the reputation of Yaosheng Capital."

Thirteen Sister pinched her nose and nodded with a look of disgust: "Don't worry, Yao, leave it to me. This smell is even stronger than the garbage cans in the back alleys of Portland Street."

At this moment, Lu Qiu no longer cared about what others thought of his appearance. He held the box full of three million in cash tightly, looking at the bulletproof luxury car in front of him, a car that was one of a kind in all of Hong Kong. The last bit of doubt in his heart completely disappeared.

Mr. Lin is right. In the face of capital, genius is nothing but a fart. But if a genius has a capitalist who is richer than a country and arrogant beyond measure as his backer, then he can overturn the whole world!

……

Three hours later, at the Peninsula Hotel, in the penthouse suite.

Lin Yao was comfortably leaning back on the sofa, flipping through the progress report on the renovation of Yaosheng Technology's factory that Chen Zheng had sent him.

The bathroom door opened, and a man emerged, dressed in a bespoke striped suit, with his hair meticulously combed and wearing gold-rimmed glasses, accompanied by a faint scent of high-end cologne.

Lin Yao put down the report in his hand, looked up, and raised an eyebrow. Was this still the same drunkard who was like a lump of mud three hours ago?

Although Lu Qiu's face was still somewhat pale from long-term alcoholism and his figure was slightly thin, the intellectualism, rigor, and sharp resilience of a top Silicon Valley elite, as well as the ability to bounce back from the brink of despair, that he possessed were fully on display.

With this outfit worth hundreds of thousands, he looks exactly like a Wall Street tech upstart who controls the lifeline of cutting-edge technology.

"Boss."

Lu Qiu walked up to Lin Yao, his back straight, no longer showing the dejection he had before. His voice was still a little hoarse, but it conveyed a resolute determination.

"Thank you so much, boss, for saving my life."

Lin Yao casually pointed to the sofa opposite him.

"Sit down. Now that your physical appearance has been cleaned up, it's time to see what's in your head and whether it's worth the money I've spent on you."

Upon hearing this, Lu Qiu was not angry at all; instead, a strong sense of confidence shone in his eyes.

He lacked everything except technical arrogance. In Silicon Valley, he was hailed as a once-in-a-decade architectural genius. If he hadn't been betrayed by white executives, he would have been a powerful figure in the industry by now.

"Boss, since you've spent a lot of money to buy a semiconductor foundry, you must be looking to enter the hardware manufacturing field."

Lu Qiu took a deep breath, quickly got into work mode, and began to speak eloquently.

"But if I may be frank, Hong Kong's current industrial base simply cannot support the manufacturing of high-end chips. If we only do low-end OEM manufacturing, not only will our profits be meager, but we will also face the constant threat of price wars from international giants."

"To truly break this deadlock, we must start from the upstream design stage, mastering our own underlying architecture and EDA software. Only by setting the rules can we avoid being held hostage by others!"

As Lu Qiu spoke, his eyes lit up, as if he had returned to the days when he was full of confidence and charisma in the laboratory.

Upon hearing this, Lin Yao not only showed no surprise, but clapped his hands with a half-smile, as if watching a monkey show.

"Well said. No wonder you're a chief architect from Silicon Valley; you have good foresight."

Lin Yao picked up the jujube and goji berry water from the coffee table, took a leisurely sip, and then pulled out a thick file folder tightly sealed with kraft paper from the leather briefcase behind him.

"Bang."

The file folder was carelessly tossed on the coffee table and slid to Lu Qiu's feet.

"However, everything you said is nonsense."

A smug smile crept onto Lin Yao's lips.

"Because I've already obtained the means to set the rules."

Lu Qiu paused for a moment, glanced at Lin Yao suspiciously, and then looked at the file folder on the table.

The things that set the rules, the underlying architecture of EDA?

What a joke! The world's most advanced EDA technology is being kept tightly under the rug by a few American giants, treated as top secret.

Let alone Hong Kong, even if the whole country were to exert its full strength, it would take at least ten or eight years of hard work to even catch up with them. This young boss, no matter how rich he is, could not possibly conjure up such a national treasure out of thin air!

With a mix of disbelief and curiosity, Lu Qiu opened the envelope. Inside was a thick stack of printed paper, entirely in English and containing extremely complex logic gate array codes.

Lu Qiu casually pulled out the first page, glanced at it, and in that short second, his pupils, hidden behind his gold-rimmed glasses, instantly shrank to the size of pinpoints, and his muscles stiffened as if he had been electrocuted.

"This...this is..."

Lu Qiu's voice trembled uncontrollably. He grabbed the stack of papers, his hands shaking as if he were swaying. His expression shifted from confusion and shock to horror, and finally evolved into a kind of madness as if he had seen a ghost.

"Impossible... This is absolutely impossible. This wiring algorithm, this Boolean logic optimization method, completely bypasses all the current patent barriers in Silicon Valley?"

Like a madman possessed, Lu Qiu flipped through the code sheets in his hand one after another, muttering incomprehensible technical terms.

"My God, this logic gate data structure is simply a work of art! It's at least a whole generation ahead of the next-generation prototype that the American giant Synopsys is currently secretly developing—no, two generations ahead!!!"

"thump!"

Lu Qiu suddenly slid off the sofa and knelt down in front of the coffee table, spreading the pile of code papers on the floor as if he wanted to stick his whole face on them.

He is an absolute top expert in this field. It is precisely because he is knowledgeable that he understands even more what the code in front of him means.

This is something no human could write; it's like a divine technological marvel from the future.

If this underlying source code were developed into a complete EDA software...

Lu Qiu gasped, a chilling image flashing through his mind: the entire Silicon Valley chip design giant would be completely crushed overnight by this software, turning into a pile of worthless junk.

"Boss...boss..."

Lu Qiu struggled to lift his head, and the look in his eyes as he looked at Lin Yao was no longer filled with the previous technical arrogance, but only with the purest and most fervent worship.

"Where did you get this source code from? If this gets out, those American capitalists will definitely send troops to assassinate you!"

"Assassinate me? They might as well have ten times the courage."

Lin Yao leaned back on the sofa, seemingly unconcerned, and took out a windproof lighter to light a cigarette.

"You don't need to know where this blueprint came from. Just tell me, is it usable?"

"Yes, absolutely!"

Lu Qiu was so excited that her face turned red, and she hugged the pile of papers tightly.

"Boss, as long as we have this underlying architecture, I, Lu Qiu, dare to guarantee with my life that I can lead the team to package it into a fully-fledged EDA software that can easily outperform the rest of the world in just three months."

"When the time comes, those bastards in Silicon Valley who kicked me out, I'll make them kneel down and lick our shoes!"

Lu Qiu became more and more excited as he spoke, as if he could already see the day when his great revenge would be fulfilled.

"Three months? That's too slow."

Lin Yao exhaled a smoke ring, his tone revealing a dullness born of wealth and arrogance.

"Huh? Three months is already the limit I can estimate even if I don't eat or sleep..."

Lu Qiu was stunned. This was about developing groundbreaking industrial software, not buying cabbage at the market.

"That's the mindset you had when you were an employee in Silicon Valley. Now that you're with me, you need to change your mindset."

Lin Yao tapped the coffee table, his eyes as deep as a bottomless black hole.

"Developing software is nothing more than throwing money and manpower at it."

Lin Yao held up two fingers.

"I have already instructed Chen Zheng to deposit 500 million yuan of start-up capital into Yaosheng Technology's corporate account."

"Five...five hundred million?"

Lu Qiu's head buzzed. This was five hundred million Hong Kong dollars in 87! Startup capital for software development? That's enough money to kill all the programmers in Hong Kong several times over!

"Not enough? We can always add more."

Lin Yao waved his hand, interrupting Lu Qiu's shock, and continued, "This money is your allowance for the next few months. I want you to take this money and go all over the world poaching people for me."

"Top Chinese engineers in Silicon Valley, semiconductor experts in Japan, coding fanatics in Europe..."

"Anything you think will be useful, whether through coercion or bribery, just throw money at me. If you don't get double the salary, give me five times; if you don't get five times, give me ten times. Settlement allowance, luxury cars, ocean-view villas—you can have whatever you want!"

Lin Yao stood up, walked to the floor-to-ceiling window, and looked down at the bustling Victoria Harbour. His aura reached its peak at that moment.

"I need you to turn this god-level code into a marketable product within a month."

"A month from now, I will hold a global technology launch event in Hong Kong. In front of the world's media, I will slap that arrogant Western technology hegemon to the ground."

As Lu Qiu listened to this grand and ambitious plan, which could only be described as insane, his blood was boiling with excitement.

Using 500 million as pocket money to poach talent from all over the world? That's real money power at its peak! With such a super-rich boss backing him up without any limits, what's there to be afraid of in Silicon Valley giants!

"Done, boss! Give me a month, and I'll give you a world-shaking nuclear bomb!"

With red eyes, Lu Qiu clutched the original code tightly, roaring like a soldier about to go to war.

Lin Yao nodded in satisfaction; the engine of the technological empire had finally been fully ignited.

In the following month, as the man with the most cash in Hong Kong and even the world, Lin Yao's pace of life could finally be slowed down with a clear conscience.

He wanted to experience firsthand what kind of antics Hong Kong's high society could come up with from this monotonous life where he had nothing to worry about except spending money every day.