Chapter 51

“What you meant was…” Gao Yue hesitantly looked at Ren Hong.

Ren Hong chuckled and said: “Apple isn’t going to sit still. The capital consortium behind them will not allow others to touch their cake. Distinctive and legitimate means of fair competition is only one of them, and is the so-called best policy. But profit will drive people to take unscrupulous means. Just because it won’t surface doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. In fact, it always exists.”

“Let’s see… What if I were one aspect of Apple to XlouS? Technically, I can’t do it at all, and if I can’t win by legitimate means, I’ll use an underhanded method! They will use any feasible means: huge sums of money to poach our corporate technology executives and key technical engineers, commercial espionage to steal technology, bribing our internal staff, etc.. There are far more shady means than that to contain us, such as using state means, etc.. In short, our adversaries will create a series of hurdles for us. It’s about facing a series of problems that could arise soon, which is why I refused to launch the new product until after our headquarters was built, because I can’t protect the technology from being stolen anywhere else.”

“No wonder you’re always stressing not to recruit foreigners, so you’ve already thought of these factors.” Gao Yue pondered. “Although there has been an improvement in preventing technology leaks, it’s also costing the company a lot of talent.”

“Heh~” Ren Hong smiled, “The technology is all here. We don’t need those people, ever.” He pointed to his head, his eyes emanating powerful confidence. He added, “There’s no shortage of outstanding engineers in China’s 1.5 billion population. Even if there was a shortage, I’d train a bunch of them myself.”

Ren Hong’s eyes exuded a deep thought. “This is why I share the soup with people. I moved Apple’s cake and gave them to someone else. As the saying goes, blocking someone’s path to wealth is tantamount to taking his life; fight one if you want one’s life. The saying works for a person or company!” He softly chuckled and continued. “But ultimately, our products are good enough and our technology is superior enough—that’s the prerequisite for everything.”

“I didn’t know that such a dark side existed in your inner world!” Gao Yue leisurely commented.

Ren Hong undeniably said, “The left side is light and the right side is darkness. In the world of extreme light on the left, even a trace of a moment of darkness is so apparent. Likewise, in the world of extreme darkness on the right, even a faint, momentary flash of a light is dazzling. It’s as if a singularity in yin and yang. That’s how I think.”

“Is this how you Scorpios think? So extreme…” Gao Yue softly said.

“Maybe.” Ren Hong shrugged, “But as the man at the helm of a giant company, that’s the kind of thinking he needs. To stand in extreme situations, to be able to see hope in the darkness as well as detect its potential threats to the light, and do the right thing and avoid harm.”

“So how do you think Apple will respond? And how do we deal with them?” Gao Yue curiously asked.

Ren Hong said, “If I knew, I would be God! In any case, we’ll counter every move. We just need to learn from the foreigners; keep a firm grip on the core technology to prevent it form being leaked and be ready to take on every challenge. But there’s another matter that needs to be addressed immediately.”

“What is it?” Gao Yue was taken aback.

Suddenly, Ren Hong carried the woman in his arms and stepped away from the window as she shrieked, “There’s always something to do in the morning when you’re full of energy. And I forgot to tell you that scorpions have another characteristic: that they’re hard to be satisfied in that area, especially in the face of a cute little fish.”

“I have to get to work soon!”

“I give you permission to be late!”

“Let’s do it tonight instead, honey!”

“Of course, we’ll do it tonight too!”

“Okay then. In that case…”

***

Bang!

A document was tossed on the glass-made conference table.

At that moment, the executives had gathered in the conference room of Apple’s headquarters. Tim Cook pointed to the document and shouted, “Three days! Three days! Just three days! S-1 sold 7 million units! In three days! XlouS received 20 million reservations worldwide! XlouS earned an average of over 10 billion USD a day.” Cook looked at the crowd. “This should have been Apple’s! But the reality is that 150 billion USD has evaporated. Our company’s market cap has fallen below the 500 billion USD mark. We’ve been overtaken by Alphabet, and we’re about to be overtaken by Facebook who is following closely behind us!”

“Why?” said Cook, looking at the executives and finally landing his gaze on the CTO.

These days, Tim Cook literally could not eat nor sleep. He tossed and turned in bed but just couldn’t fall asleep! The pressure from the board, public, and more was really overwhelming. Apple’s market capitalization evaporated to over 150 billion USD; an astronomical figure that shocked the world. And now, the internal board and outside shareholders were demanding Apple to come up with a countermeasure as soon as possible.

“If we stick to the original plan, we won’t even sell 2 million units of the iPhone 8S,” Cook quietly said, looking directly at the CTO.

“S-1’s technology is at least five to 10 years ahead of us. With their laser-hedge imaging technology, focused illusory screen display technology, etc.—I don’t understand how the team of engineers at XlouS did it…” the CTO spoke up.

“I want a countermeasure! Not a damn compliment to S-1, got it?” Cook couldn’t help but interrupt the other man. Silence fell in the room, and after a few moments, Cook said, “How’s the deciphering of the S-1 coming along?”

Everyone looked to the CTO who felt awkward and helpless. The latter replied, “No progress at all!”

“Dang it!” Cook lowered his head in silence.

The CTO continued, “The S-1 has been engineered with extreme technical secrecy. As soon as our engineers forcibly dismantled it, the internal components rapidly decayed until they disintegrated into scrap and even produced trace amounts of chemical changes and other substances. I can’t figure out how they’d do maintenance to the device. Are they that confident in the quality of the device?”

XlouS naturally had a solution, but no one else knew about it.

“A chemical reaction?” Someone raised a question: “Aren’t they afraid of hurting the consumer?”

“It’s a shame for us that it won’t!” The CTO helplessly responded. “The S-1 is so extreme in preventing technical leaks that our engineers can’t even do anything at the first layer of protection, not to mention the possibility of breaching the more advanced layers to follow.”

“Gentlemen! The idea of cracking this device is unrealistic and near impossible; we can’t even open the lid! No one is able to breach Real-time Online Translator or the voice assistant. We have to find other ways to crack XlouS’s incomprehensible and genius means of technological protection,” one of the executives said. “The only way we can survive this crisis is to get access to the core technology of S-1 and create our own wearable smart device. Obviously, we need to find another way…”

After a pause, he continued, “Since the core technology is in their hands, the only way of getting the technology from them is to dig deeper, bribe, spy, steal, through whatever viable means…”

“Do we need to resort to those methods?” Cook chimed in.

“Winners are never clean, Mr. Cook. And I don’t think the board would object,” the executive stressed.