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

In the Architecture Department, Room 404, at a regular public second-tier university in Guangdong Province.

The air seemed to freeze completely at that moment. The Mediterranean-looking old professor's hands trembled, and he almost pressed his entire old face against the screen of Li Qiang's old, clunky computer.

A full 48 hours have passed since Fatty Wang left behind that million yuan in cash.

In those 48 hours, Li Qiang and his three colleagues worked like tireless animals, relying on boxes of Red Bull and instant noodles to painstakingly build a magnificent framework on this broken computer, a framework that would shock the history of Chinese architecture.

"How did you manage to conduct the stress analysis for this 18-story underground space?"

"The design of this inverted pouring technique and seismic resistance coefficient is simply brilliant. And the span of the main hall—it's supported entirely by antique-style mortise and tenon structures and hidden beams, without relying on a single modern steel column?"

The old professor became increasingly alarmed and agitated as he looked at the book, until his eyes finally filled with turbid tears.

"Genius! Absolutely a genius idea!"

The old professor suddenly turned his head and stared intently at Li Qiang and the other three poor students with dark circles under their eyes.

"This is a HK$10 million bounty project. Is the boss in Hong Kong really planning to spend real money to build a one-to-one replica of this in reality?"

"It's absolutely true, Professor!"

Li Qiang pointed to the silver briefcase on the table that hadn't been put away yet, the one million Hong Kong dollars deposit inside still gleaming.

"The fat director said that this is only a deposit of one million, and he requires us to deliver a complete set of construction drawings that can be directly handed over to the construction team to lay the foundation within thirty days."

"As long as the blueprints are fine, there's a final payment of ten million and a supervision contract worth tens of millions!"

Thirty days?!

Upon hearing this timeline, the old professor gasped sharply, his earlier excitement instantly turning into deep shock and anxiety.

As a seasoned architect, he was all too aware of the workload involved.

"Nonsense, utter nonsense!"

The old professor was so anxious that he kept slapping his thigh.

"Those capitalists in Hong Kong know nothing about construction engineering. This huge and complex real-life palace complex requires an astronomical amount of calculation just to determine the settlement coefficient of each load-bearing column and the seismic resistance data of the shear walls."

"Even if the four of you had eight arms and worked non-stop for a month, you still couldn't draw up a complete set of construction drawings. If even one set of data is calculated incorrectly, the resulting building will be a dangerous structure, and people could die!"

Li Qiang gave a wry smile, wearily rubbing his temples that felt like they were being pricked with needles: "Professor, we understand what you're saying. Drawing a complete set of construction-grade blueprints in a month is indeed a pipe dream, but... but this is ten million!"

Li Qiang's eyes were bloodshot, and his voice was hoarse but filled with an indomitable fervor: "This is the only chance for us ordinary college students to participate in such an epic infrastructure project in our lives. Even if we have to risk our lives for a month, we want to master these blueprints."

Looking at this group of young people who were as persistent as moths to a flame, the old professor fell silent. He pushed up his reading glasses, looked at the box of glaring Hong Kong dollars, and then at the breathtaking first draft of the divine blueprint on the screen.

A full half minute passed.

"Bang!"

The old professor slammed his hand on the table, as if he had made a decision against his ancestors. A look of madness, even more so than that of the young people, appeared on his wrinkled face.

"Four people certainly can't finish, but what if... there were four hundred people?"

Li Qiang was stunned: "Professor... what do you mean?"

"You little brats, you usually sleep in class, but now you're all got some guts!"

The old professor grabbed the phone from the table and roared in a booming voice, "To hell with graduation defense! This level of practical engineering is a million times better than writing a hundred worthless graduation theses."

"I'm going to knock on the dean's office door right now and drag all the elite students from our entire School of Civil Engineering, including all the third and fourth-year students, as well as those professors and lecturers who have nothing better to do all day long, over here."

"We suspended classes across the entire college and established a special task force. For the past month, hundreds of people in the college have been working tirelessly, even burning the midnight oil, to deliver the blueprints of the Celestial Master's Mansion to the boss in Hong Kong."

The old professor's voice echoed in the corridor, carrying a tragic and heroic spirit of "never returning until victory is achieved."

"What's wrong with our ordinary universities? Today, we'll show the Hong Kong capitalists just how terrifyingly powerful the mainland's infrastructure boom truly is!"

An unprecedented, all-encompassing, intensive project involving millions of drawings has officially begun at this university in Guangdong Province.

……

At the same time, in Hong Kong, on Victoria Peak, at Yiu Shing Estate.

Forty-eight hours have passed since Lin Yao spent 2 billion to buy Asia Star Television and forcibly changed the programming.

The sun was shining brightly today. Lin Yao was wearing a loose white silk loungewear set and was lounging lazily on the super leather sofa in the living room, which could easily accommodate seven or eight people.

He held a cup of premium bird's nest in his hand, his eyes fixed on the color television set in front of him, which was airlifted from Japan and was currently the largest in all of Asia.

On the television, the popular dating show "If You Are the One," which premiered last night during prime time, is being replayed.

This is the third time the show has been rebroadcast in 48 hours, but the ratings are still incredibly high.

"I'd rather cry in a luxury car than laugh on the back of your bicycle!"

On the screen, a heavily made-up female guest with a mean-looking face raised her chin and uttered this shocking quote that resonated with the values ​​of Hong Kong in the late 1980s, without any mercy, to the plainly dressed male guest who had no house or car.

Immediately afterwards, the television broadcast a chorus of uproar and boos from the audience.

"Beautiful, just the right taste!"

Lin Yao watched the scene on TV and slapped his thigh in satisfaction.

"That guy, Sang Gou, is really reliable. The actors he hired are absolutely brilliant; they've really nailed the hate!"

"Ring ring..."

Just then, the dedicated phone next to the sofa started ringing frantically. Lin Yao picked up the receiver and immediately heard the excited voice of the acting director of Yaosheng Media, who was almost having a stroke.

"Boss, it's a hit! Our show is a complete hit!!!"

The acting station manager was babbling incoherently on the other end of the phone.

"The first episode of 'If You Are the One' aired last night, and today all the newspapers, magazines, and even the vegetable vendors in the markets in Hong Kong are talking about the female guest who said she cried in a luxury car."

"Public opinion in Hong Kong exploded. Countless people called our TV station's complaint hotline, cursing the female guest's ancestors to the eighteenth generation. Two of the hotline's phone lines even burned out!"

Listening to the station director's report, Lin Yao slowly took a sip of bird's nest soup, raised an eyebrow, and said, "Since you've been scolded like this, why do you sound happier than during the New Year?"

"Boss, you're a god!"

The acting station manager shouted excitedly.

"The harsher the criticism, the more people watch. When we rebroadcast this program at noon today, the ratings were actually three percentage points higher than the premiere last night. The whole of Hong Kong was cursing while watching TV."

"Those sponsors are pouncing on us like mad dogs. In just this morning, the title sponsorship fee and the airtime sponsorship fee for our program have already been driven up to 50 million Hong Kong dollars! 50 million! We used to earn that much in a whole year at Asia Star Television!"

"And that 'The Voice of Hong Kong' program you asked us to organize, the audition registration points are now packed with people, even the gangsters from Portland Street are lining up to register to sing."

"Shaw Brothers' TVB has completely collapsed. They pulled several long-running variety shows overnight and don't dare to compete head-on with us."

Upon hearing these numbers, Lin Yao simply gave a curt "oh."

"You're getting worked up already? You guys in the media need to work on your mental fortitude."

Lin Yao placed the bird's nest bowl on the coffee table, his tone carrying a dry, Versailles-like quality.

"In the era of internet traffic, we are not afraid of being criticized, but we are afraid of being ignored. Since this fire has already been started, let's add some more fuel to it."

Lin Yao's mind raced, and an even more outrageous series of hype plans instantly took shape.

"Send someone right now to film an exclusive interview with the female guest who was criticized the most, and make her cry a lot in front of the camera, saying that she was forced by the production team to read a script."

"Then we'll find a few writers to publish articles in our own newspaper. One group will frantically try to whitewash her, while the other group will relentlessly criticize her, completely splitting public opinion into two camps."

"I want this topic to dominate all of Hong Kong people's conversations this month!"

The station director on the other end of the phone gasped in shock.

Unbelievable! They exposed their own scandals and rehashed their own old stories, turning a variety show into a major social phenomenon discussion.

This mind-blowing approach to generating traffic has mastered the art of manipulating people's psychology to an extreme!

"Understood, boss. I'll arrange it right away!"

The station director hung up the phone, completely convinced.

The hall fell silent again. Lin Yao stretched. This was the mundane daily life of a super-rich man. He could come up with any idea and turn the outside world upside down, while he could just sit in his air-conditioned villa on the mountaintop and watch the show.

"Beep beep..."

Just then, the encrypted satellite phone that Lin Yao had placed on the table suddenly rang. Lin Yao glanced at the number; it was a transoceanic call.

connected.

"Boss, I hope I haven't let you down."

On the other end of the phone came the voice of Chief Trader Chen Zheng, which sounded somewhat tired but unusually excited.

After these forty-eight hours, Chen Zheng had clearly completed his mission in Europe.

"Old Chen, judging from your tone, things went quite smoothly?"

Lin Yao leaned back on the sofa, a slight smile playing on his lips.

"Everything went smoothly, as smoothly as it could have been!"

Chen Zheng stood on the runway of Eindhoven Airport in the Netherlands, looking at the three huge Boeing cargo planes in front of him, and took a deep breath.

"Boss, just last night, we completely took control of ASML, along with all the underlying patent portfolios."

"The $100 million in cash was settled on the spot. Philips originally wanted to use the board's veto power to block us, but I directly slapped the $5 billion withdrawal authorization letter you gave them in the face of their president."

Chen Zheng's voice was filled with the satisfaction of getting revenge: "I told them that if they didn't sell, we would use these five billion US dollars to acquire all their competitors and cut off all their supply chains."

"Those arrogant Europeans couldn't even last half an hour against a five billion dollar bargain; they signed on the spot!"

"well done!"

Lin Yao suddenly sat up straight on the sofa, and a truly fanatical light finally burst forth in his eyes.

This is ASML, the only true god that will monopolize the lifeline of global high-end chip manufacturing in the future!

Right now, it's just a startup team on the verge of starvation in a makeshift prefab house, but if we move them, along with their equipment, back to Hong Kong and pour in a bottomless pit of research and development funding...

"Old Chen, have you loaded both the people and the machines onto the plane?"

Lin Yao asked in a deep voice.

"Reporting to the boss, ASML's first-generation lithography machine prototype and all the blueprints have been packaged up, and the 52 core Dutch R&D personnel have also signed lifetime employment contracts with Yaosheng Technology."

Chen Zheng reported: "These European scientists, who are terrified of poverty, are so eager to bring you the tin roof of their labs overnight when they hear that we are offering them five times their annual salary and covering all their research funding. We have already started boarding the plane and expect to arrive in Hong Kong tomorrow morning."

"Great, that's wonderful!"

Lin Yao hung up the phone, stood up, looked at the beautiful view of Victoria Harbour outside the window, and couldn't help but burst into laughter.

His entertainment empire was merely a tool for earning pocket money and brainwashing the masses, while his financial empire was simply his ATM.

What truly allows him to act with impunity in this world and even confront Western hegemony head-on is the unparalleled technological empire that is about to rise from this tiny island.

"Lu Qiu's god-level EDA software, combined with ASML's lithography machine foundation..."

Lin Yao muttered to himself, his eyes as deep as a bottomless black hole.

"Those bloodsuckers on Wall Street, and those self-important tech giants in Silicon Valley."

"You never dreamed that a decapitation sword, powerful enough to uproot your entire industry chain, would be officially wielded tomorrow in Hong Kong, the financial port you look down upon!"