Chapter 149: The Legendary Old Man

"I am already old, please spare me!" This was Ni Guangnan's reply after receiving Huang He's phone call.

His words were filled with a profound sense of desolation.

To avoid the awkward situation he had previously faced with Chen Jin, Huang He had spent three whole days thoroughly investigating Ni Guangnan's background. He discovered that while Ni Guangnan's portrayal in his past life had perhaps been somewhat mythologized, about fifty percent of it was accurate, and his life journey was indeed extraordinary.

He had originally been an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. After developing a computer-related patent, he was approached by Liu Chuanzhi, who was then a mere fledgling youth. Liu commercialized the patent, made a massive fortune, and thus laid the foundation for the future Legend Group.

In the beginning, Legend Group operated under a dual-star model: Liu Chuanzhi managed operations and distribution, while Ni Guangnan led product research and development. Up until around 1990, Legend remained a healthy enterprise running on both legs, doing a roaring trade and developing numerous products.

However, starting in 1990, Ni Guangnan and Liu Chuanzhi had a falling out. The reason was that Ni Guangnan wanted to research and develop chips, completely altering Legend's status as little more of an assembly plant, and transforming it into a fully independent enterprise integrating research, development, and production.

Liu Chuanzhi's vision, however, was entirely different. He was acutely aware that developing chips required a massive influx of capital—something the Legend of that era simply could not afford.

More importantly, even with capital investment, there was a high probability of yielding zero results.

Even if results were produced, they would likely lag behind competing foreign products.

Even if the products proved practical, they could still face foreign embargoes. Therefore, by any metric, independent research and chip manufacturing was a losing venture. It was far better to import foreign chips... or rather, to buy components—chips, motherboards, memory, and hard drives—and simply assemble them. There was no need to undergo the grueling and laborious process of in-house research and production.

This was the famous ideological clash between Legend's "technician-industrialist-merchant" route and its "merchant-industrialist-technician" route.

The conflict ended with Ni Guangnan's defeat and expulsion from Legend. In time, Legend transformed into the infamous "Conscience of the American Empire." Years later, Liu Chuanzhi's daughter took Didi's database—containing the travel data of hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens—to list it on the US stock market, sparking a colossal controversy.

Thus, as the ancients wisely said: dragons beget dragons, phoenixes beget phoenixes, and the son of a rat knows how to dig holes. Naturally, whatever the Conscience of the American Empire spawned would also be a conscience of the American Empire.

Yet, returning to Ni Guangnan: after being forced out of Legend, he never abandoned his dream for the chip industry. He continuously gave speeches and promoted the cause within the industry, attempting to persuade the state to relaunch its chip strategy.

Ni Guangnan's efforts were not without effect; for instance, the recent 863 Program genuinely initiated a national chip strategy. Concurrently, a company named Ark approached Ni Guangnan in 1999, hoping to collaborate on chip manufacturing.

This was not an empty check written merely to chase government subsidies. Two years after initiating their partnership—in 2001—Ni Guangnan unveiled Ark's very first independently developed computer chip.

However, unlike traditional computer chips that were bound to the Windows operating system, Ni Guangnan deliberately chose the completely open-source, unrestricted Linux system as his platform to break Intel's technological barrier in Windows-based chips, successfully developing the Linux-based Ark No. 1 chip.

To support Ark No. 1, the government specifically purchased ten thousand custom-built computers equipped with the chip. Yet, within a mere month, every single one of these computers was returned, and Ark No. 1 was inevitably sent back as well. Not only did the Ark Group suffer devastating losses, but Ni Guangnan also publicly announced that he would take full responsibility for the failure of Ark No. 1. He resigned from Ark and retreated to his small courtyard to seclude himself.

At this moment, Ni Guangnan was experiencing the second most desolate period of his life. It was only natural that he would reject Huang He's request.

"Teacher Ni!" Huang He said earnestly, "You cannot give up. If you give up, China's chip industry will stagnate for twenty years! If you give up now, won't all your previous persistence become a joke?"

"What is the use of saying all this?" Ni Guangnan replied over the phone, his tone dejected. "The dominance of foreign countries is already established. Even if you gave our chip industry twenty or fifty years, we wouldn't be able to catch up. I will never see the dawn of the future in my lifetime. I have already caused one company to lose hundreds of millions; I don't want to waste the money of entrepreneurs like you anymore."

With that, Ni Guangnan did not give Huang He a chance to speak further and directly hung up the phone. He sat alone on a somewhat worn-out sofa in his home, his gaze vacant.

"Is someone asking you to come out of retirement again?" Ni Guangnan's wife asked curiously as she wiped her hands and walked over.

"No!" Ni Guangnan shook his head. "I am already old and can no longer keep up with this era. Why would I come out of retirement?"

"You're only sixty-three, you're not old yet!" his wife said with a smile. "Why don't you invite the person over to talk?"

"I won't!" Ni Guangnan shook his head stubbornly.

"You're just putting up a front now. In a few months, once you calm down and the frustration of failure passes, the dream in your heart will surface again. When that happens, you'll go running all over the country for projects, giving speeches, and chasing investments just like before. Won't you just be slapping your own face?" his wife teased.

"You underestimate me too much. How could I ever do such fickle things?" Ni Guangnan's face flushed as he retorted.

"No, old man, haven't I understood you all these years? You were never someone fickle. On the contrary, your entire life is buried in this pit of chips, and you can forget about ever crawling out."

"You don't have much time left. Do you really want to waste it like this?"

"..." Ni Guangnan fell silent. However, his eyes kept rolling, gradually regaining a hint of luster. He suddenly grabbed the phone and prepared to call back, only for the earpiece to deliver the automated prompt: "The number you have dialed is unreachable, please try again later."

"Alas, in the end, this old man has been abandoned after all!" Ni Guangnan wailed, then slumped back onto the sofa to continue brooding. His wife shook her head helplessly and trotted off to dance.

As time passed, Ni Guangnan drifted into a hazy sleep, until he was startled awake by a round of knocking on the door. Lazily opening it, he saw a young man standing empty-handed on the threshold.

"I don't subscribe to milk, and I don't subscribe to newspapers!" Ni Guangnan said with a hint of vigilance.

"Then what about subscribing to chips?" the young man asked with a smile.

"Who are you? Did you come here specifically to mess with me?" Ni Guangnan asked, displeasure written across his face.

"Teacher Ni, have you forgotten? I called you this morning!" Huang He said.

"It's you!" A flash of surprise crossed Ni Guangnan's face, but he quickly darkened his expression and said, "I didn't invite you to my house!"

With that, Ni Guangnan made room at the doorway and tossed over a pair of slippers. Huang He happily changed into them and stepped inside.

"I'll give you thirty minutes. If you can't convince me within thirty minutes, get lost!" Ni Guangnan sat majestically on the sofa and tossed a small wooden stool toward Huang He.

"Alright!" Huang He nodded repeatedly. "Teacher Ni, let me first brief you on our company's situation. Jiangnan Group is currently an enterprise primarily engaged in leather manufacturing, blind box sales, and internet products..."

"Wait... What did you say? Your company manufactures leather?" Ni Guangnan asked in disbelief.

"That's right! Until last July, our company was still the largest leather factory in the Wenzhou region. Although we aren't anymore—we gave up a portion of our leather goods production so other companies took the top spot—we are indeed the leaders of the domestic blind box industry, the elites in the internet instant messaging software sector, and we're about to become number one in the industry!" Huang He boasted.

"You can leave now!" Ni Guangnan glared, his beard twitching in indignation. In this day and age, a shoemaker actually had the audacity to joke around with him.

"Teacher Ni, Nokia started out in the logging business. Me, a shoemaker, coming to work on chips is still far more reliable than a lumberjack doing it!" Huang He laughed.

"Sophistry!" Ni Guangnan muttered. However, instead of chasing him out, he asked curiously, "I am rather curious, how did you ever think of making chips?"

"Because servers are expensive!" Huang He sighed. "Didn't I mention that I have an internet instant messaging software business? That requires a lot of servers for support. Recently, I planned to build a network center in Caoxian and went to Compaq to buy servers, but those guys actually refused to sell to me and told me to wait half a year. It made me furious."

"Later, I wanted to buy servers from IBM, Microsoft, or Oracle, but their prices were more than double Compaq's. All the blood, sweat, and tears I earned over the past half-year would essentially be handed over to them just to buy a few servers. I refuse to accept that!"

"So I wanted to buy domestic servers, but you know as well as I do what the quality and performance of domestic servers are like; it's simply impossible to buy anything usable. Since I want them, I figured instead of giving my money away to others, I might as well build servers myself. That way, not only can I acquire servers at the lowest possible price, but I can also sell them in the future—who knows, maybe I can even stuff them into blind boxes! So, I decided to start a factory that builds servers."

"And the most crucial part of any server is the chip, so I want to make chips myself too. That's why I came looking for you!" Huang He flashed a cheeky grin. "Look, why don't you come help out at our company? Let's mess around for a few years and build domestic chips and high-quality servers together!"

"You're doing this for a reason like that?" Looking at Huang He's smiling face, Ni Guangnan suddenly realized his imagination was still far too limited.