Super Rich: Starting the game by going back ten years to buy Bitcoin

The red crosses are densely packed together in the combustion chamber.

A blinding red spot of light shone on Li Yichen's face.

He stared at the screen for a full ten minutes.

My fingers tapped on the table.

"Ling'er".

"Here I am, brother."

"Export this analysis report. I need it tomorrow."

"It's already saved to the USB drive."

Li Yichen unplugged the USB drive and held it in his hand.

The black outer shell is very light. But what's inside is enough to overturn an entire research and development department.

The next morning.

Li Yichen did not notify any management.

With Ji Yanran in tow, they drove the Yangwang U8 directly into the factory gate of Future Aerospace Group. Upon seeing the license plate, the security guard automatically raised the gate.

He parked his car in the open space outside the research and development building.

The R&D department is located in a separate building, with a conference room on the third floor.

More than fifty people sat on either side of a long table. They were all wearing white lab coats or blue overalls, with name tags hanging on their chests.

They received an emergency meeting notice at 10 p.m. last night, and everyone was to be present by 8 a.m. this morning.

Nobody knows what the meeting is about.

Zhang Feng sat in the front row, on the left. He held a thermos in his hand, rubbing the lid back and forth with his thumb.

Yesterday, Li Yichen asked him three professional questions in a row in the conference room, leaving him speechless. This matter is still stuck in his throat.

A woman in her early thirties was sitting next to him.

Short hair, neat and capable, glasses perched on the bridge of her nose, flipping through the test log from two days ago.

The name tag read: Liu Ruyan, Deputy Director of the R&D Department.

"Mr. Zhang, what's the new boss up to?" Liu Ruyan asked without looking up.

Zhang Feng unscrewed the cup lid and blew on the tea.

"have no idea."

The meeting room door was pushed open.

Li Yichen walked in.

He wasn't wearing a suit, just a black jacket, and he was carrying a laptop and a black USB drive.

There were no pleasantries. There were no opening remarks.

He walked straight to the projection area, opened his laptop, plugged in the data cable, and the big screen lit up.

What popped up on the screen made the backs of several senior engineers in the front row straighten simultaneously—

That was their reusable rocket project, which they had been working on for three years.

All core technical data was retrieved.

Every page was marked with red error notes.

Densely packed, a shocking sight.

The lid of Zhang Feng's thermos fell onto the table, rolled twice, and landed on the floor. He didn't pick it up.

"Everyone."

Li Yichen picked up the laser pointer on the table. A red dot landed in the upper left corner of the screen.

"These are your R&D data from the past three years."

He clicked the page-turning button.

A hydrodynamic simulation diagram of the combustion chamber appeared. Red crosses were marked on three key nodes.

"The simulation of the flow field inside the combustion chamber has an incorrect inlet boundary condition setting."

Li Yichen's voice was flat, his speech was slow, and he enunciated each word clearly.

"You used the steady flow assumption, but under variable thrust conditions, the flow field is unsteady. This premise is wrong. All subsequent simulation results are invalid."

An elderly engineer with gray hair in the front row opened his mouth, then closed it again.

Li Yichen turned to the next page. Turbopump efficiency curve.

"This curve." The red dot of the laser pointer traced along the curve. "Your efficiency data below 70% operating point deviates from the measured value by more than 15%."

He paused for a second.

"The reason is quite simple. The inducer blade design is flawed. The leading edge inclination angle is off by three degrees. This three-degree deviation directly leads to severe cavitation under low operating conditions."

Zhang Feng's hands began to tremble.

He has a background in powertrain systems. He personally led the team that designed the turbopump. The leading edge camber angle was off by three degrees—he had vaguely suspected this problem, but the team couldn't find it after two rounds of verification.

Now, he's been exposed in a single sentence by a "battery layman" in front of more than fifty people.

Li Yichen continued turning the page.

Landing control algorithm. More red crosses.

"Your landing guidance uses polynomial trajectory planning," he said, pointing to a piece of code on the screen. "This logic converges under ideal conditions. But once crosswind disturbances and engine thrust fluctuations are introduced, the convergence region shrinks directly to an unusable range."

He turned off the laser pointer and placed it on the table.

"To put it bluntly—the system you designed can only land in a windless laboratory. If you try to put it into a real environment, you'd be lucky to succeed even once out of ten times."

There was no sound in the meeting room.

There were more than fifty people. Not a single one of them spoke.

Some people were looking down. Some were staring at their fingernails. Some were biting their lips hard.

Three years. Thirty-five billion. The fruits of that labor were completely dismantled in twenty minutes by a twenty-four or twenty-five-year-old.

Every single error was accurate down to the decimal point.

Zhang Feng slumped in the chair. The back of his shirt was completely soaked, clinging to his skin and impossible to pull off.

He was saying behind his back yesterday, "An amateur is instructing an expert."

Looking back now, that statement was no different from slapping myself in the face.

Li Yichen glanced around the room.

"These are the questions."

He pulled a stack of documents out of his jacket pocket.

Ji Yanran immediately stepped forward, took the documents, and distributed them to everyone.

"Confidentiality agreement," Li Yichen said. "The highest level. The consequences of breach are clearly stated; read it yourself."

Liu Ruyan was the first to open the agreement.

She scanned the key clauses twice. The number of zeros after the penalty amount made her count them three times.

She picked up the pen on the table. She signed it.

The others exchanged glances for a few seconds.

Then one by one, they all signed.

Including Zhang Feng.

After collecting all the signed agreements, Li Yichen took out the black USB drive from his pocket.

Plug it into the laptop.

The images on the big screen are changing.

An expanded file directory tree —

"Aurora Variable Cycle Rocket Engine V1.0"

The directory tree is densely branched, like a large, leafy tree. It covers everything from overall design to subsystem decomposition, from bill of materials to process flow, from simulation models to test specifications. Each branch contains detailed sub-files.

Liu Ruyan stared at the screen.

Her fingers stopped on the table, and she froze.

Li Yichen opened the core performance summary page.

The parameters jump down line by line.

Thrust per unit at sea level: 500 tons.

Liu Ruyan suddenly sat up straight.

Hiccup (vacuum): 480 seconds.

The old engineer in the front row opened his mouth.

Reusable times: 50 times or more.

Variable loop mode: 3 types.

The meeting room erupted in chaos.

Five hundred tons?!

"A 480-second contest? How is that possible?"

"Reused more than fifty times? The Raptor only used it a dozen times!"

Several young engineers stood up abruptly from their chairs.

Zhang Feng stared at the screen. His eyes were practically popping out of their sockets.

Li Yichen ignored the commotion below. He scrolled through the mouse and opened several 3D design drawings of key components.

Combustion chamber. Turbop pump. Nozzle. Thrust vector control mechanism.

Every drawing is accurate to the millimeter level, with clear annotations and a complete process route.

The design concept completely broke away from the traditional framework. The more Liu Ruyan looked at it, the more her scalp tingled – this was not an improvement on existing technology, but a completely new system built from scratch.

She suddenly raised her hand.

"Mr. Li."

Li Yichen turned his head and looked at her.

Liu Ruyan pushed up her glasses and pointed to the cross-sectional diagram of the combustion chamber on the screen.

"According to this drawing, the material used for the combustion chamber wall and turbine blades is labeled as 'TCC-7 type ceramic matrix composite material'."

She flipped through the documents in her hand.

"I've checked the relevant literature on this material, and currently only a very few top laboratories worldwide can produce it in small batches. It's simply not available in the commercial supply chain."

She looked up at Li Yichen.

"How do we solve the material problem?"

Li Yichen looked at Liu Ruyan.

This woman reacted quickly. Out of more than fifty people, she was the first to overcome the initial shock of the technology and grasp the real bottleneck to its implementation.

"Good question."

Li Yichen turned off the projector.

"I have resolved the materials issue through special channels. The core materials will arrive within a week at the latest."

Special channels.

The words echoed silently in the conference room. No one questioned them. But everyone was wondering—what channel could one obtain such military-grade controlled materials?

Li Yichen surveyed the entire room.

"Until the core materials arrive, the R&D department has only one task."

He held up one finger.

"We must thoroughly understand every page, every line, and every parameter in this technical document. The design and production preparation work for all non-core components should proceed simultaneously."

He paused for two seconds.

"Starting today, the 'Aurora Engine Project Team' is hereby established."

Li Yichen pointed his finger at Liu Ruyan.

"The project's overall leader is Liu Ruyan. She has full authority over research and development and production."

Another commotion erupted in the conference room.

Zhang Feng's face flushed instantly. He was the vice president of technology, far more senior than Liu Ruyan. But Li Yichen didn't even glance at him.

Liu Ruyan was stunned for less than two seconds.

She stood up from the chair, her back ramrod straight.

"Understood. I will never betray your trust."

Clean and concise. Not a single superfluous word.

Li Yichen nodded.

"One last thing."

He scanned everyone's faces.

"The Aurora engine is used to mount rockets. Ten of them are connected in parallel. It's a super heavy-lift launch vehicle."

He held up three fingers.

"The first test launch took place three months later."

The conference room fell into absolute silence. You could hear someone breathing.

"It can only succeed."

Li Yichen withdrew his finger.

"We cannot fail."

He unplugged the USB drive, closed his laptop, and walked out of the conference room with his things.

The door closed behind me.

Two seconds later, a tremendous murmur of discussion erupted inside.

Li Yichen led Ji Yanran down the stairs, through the research and development building lobby, and pushed open the glass door.

The sunlight hit my face.

He sat in the driver's seat of the U8, looking up at it. He didn't start it immediately.

The central control screen lit up automatically. Ling'er's chibi-style figure popped out and shook its head.

"Brother, is the meeting over?"

Li Yichen threw the USB drive into the armrest box.

"Ling'er." He stared at the central control screen. "Initiate comprehensive real-time monitoring of all personnel in the R&D department."

"Especially Liu Ruyan and Zhang Feng."

"Keep a close eye on all communication records, file transfers, and online activities."

"Even a single byte of technical information leaked—"

Ling'er's little figure stopped shaking, and her big eyes stared straight at the screen.

"Don't worry, brother."

"Not even a fly can get out."

Ji Yanran, who was standing to the side, was initially worried that there was a risk of the boss's technology being leaked, but after hearing Li Yichen and Ling'er's conversation, she knew that her worries were unnecessary.

Li Yichen started the engine. The car slowly drove out of the factory gate.

In the rearview mirror, behind the window on the third floor of the R&D building, Liu Ruyan was standing in front of the glass.

She held the first page of the technical document in her hand, watching Li Yichen's car slowly drive away.