Chapter 296: The Calm Before the Storm
Xia Fei received a call from Pang Xing when he left the Admiralty’s headquarters, saying that he should head to the Sunset Villa without telling him a reason.
The lieutenant responsible for escorting Xia Fei back was kind enough to send him to his destination. Xia Fei immediately saw Pang Xing pacing back and forth anxiously when he arrived.
“What’s going on?” Xia Fei asked with a smile.
Pang Xing rubbed his hands and asked, “Were you disqualified from the wars.h.i.+p event?”
Xia Fei replied, “Well, my wars.h.i.+p is completely destroyed, so even though I won the last event, I lost the qualification to take part in the next round, but I still can partic.i.p.ate in the upcoming search event and the final round.”
Pang Xing let out a sigh. “I don’t know which servant went and told the young lady about it, but she’s extremely sad because of it. She was already on edge when she saw you being flanked by nine people, so she couldn’t accept it when she learned that you got disqualified even though you won the event. She’s in the study now. You should cheer her up; I know that you can do it.”
Xia Fei nodded and followed Pang Xing up the mountain.
They b.u.mped into Avril’s father, Newman, at the main hall as soon as they stepped out of the lift. He seemed to be in a hurry. His secretary was behind him with his briefcase while he was on a phone call.
Newman was startled. He told the person on the phone to hold on for a second then took the initiative to approach Xia Fei and greeted him. Xia Fei greeted back politely, too.
The procedures were as uniform as computational code. It was neither surprising nor disappointing as if they were just mere strangers.
After watching Newman leave, Pang Xing said awkwardly, “He’s always been busy, but he doesn’t dislike you.”
Xia Fei nodded indifferently. The same awkward situation was going to happen again in the future. He must get used to it. He could not blame Newman, either. After all, he had killed the man’s brother, even though he had only done it to protect Avril. It was obviously going to leave a huge scar in his heart still.
Phantom once asked Xia Fei, “What would you do if Avril’s father were hurting her?”
Xia Fei responded with a gesture. It was a common gesture for all humans, the gesture to kill.
Avril was writing and drawing in the study in a serious manner, with a hand holding her cheek. She seemed to be in deep thoughts.
Xia Fei went up to her with a smile. “What are you writing?”
Avril subconsciously hid the notepad with her hand to stop the person from looking at it, but she smiled when she realized that the person was Xia Fei. She jumped up from her seat and dragged him to the couch by pulling his arm.
“I was calculating the score of the partic.i.p.ants in the Golden Finger Cup,” Avril said. Her eyes immediately dimmed. “I already finished the calculation. Even if you did well in the last two rounds, you’d still be ranked only above three hundred.”
Avril obviously sounded disappointed. Xia Fei was extremely touched. It felt great to be cared for by someone. He only knew how it felt when he was being cared for.
“Don’t bother; let me tell you a secret.” Xia Fei smiled.
Avril immediately wore a serious and curious look when she heard the word ‘secret’. She opened her eyes wide like a pair of glittering stars and nodded softly.
“The truth is, I didn’t take part in the Golden Finger Cup to become the champion. I’m only planning to use it as an opportunity to promote a product I invented. It’s called the energy-s.h.i.+eld booster,” Xia Fei said.
“A booster? What does it do?” Avril asked curiously.
Xia Fei briefly explained the functionalities of the booster. Avril nodded and asked, “It sounds very impressive. Did you invent it on your own?”
Avril was very happy. She was proud of Xia Fei for being able to invent such an advanced device.
“That’s right. I might have lost the chance to win the Golden Finger Cup, but I’ve managed to promote my product nicely. If you don’t believe me, you can see how many people are asking the specifications of my wars.h.i.+p on the internet. After the wars.h.i.+p event, a few days from now, the organizer will disclose the specifications of every wars.h.i.+p. My energy-s.h.i.+eld booster will definitely make a name for itself by then.
“So don’t you worry, I’ve already achieved my greatest goal. I don’t really care about the t.i.tle,” Xia Fei said.
Avril’s eyes suddenly glittered. She quickly opened the search engine of the interplanetary internet.
The threads discussing the specifications of Xia Fei’s wars.h.i.+p were everywhere, exactly as he said. Everyone was guessing the secret weapon Xia Fei had used to take out nine opponents by himself. They were slowly losing their patience as the organizer was taking their time to disclose the specifications.
“It’s really the same as you said. Your plan worked. That’s great; I should congratulate you in advance.” Avril laughed pleasantly. She had always been an extrovert, so she might feel down easily, but it would go away quickly, too. She would immediately forget about the stress she was under when she heard some good news. It was also what Xia Fei liked about Avril. It was easier to amuse an extrovert girl, who was less likely to argue about trivialities.
“You must buy a lot of things for me once you get rich.” Avril acted coquettish.
Xia Fei replied, “Not a problem, but I don’t think there’s anything you lack.”
“It’s different,” Avril said. “It’s only meaningful if it’s from you. Besides, the thing I want is very expensive. You won’t be able to afford it for now.”
Xia Fei pondered for a moment. “Very expensive? What exactly do you want?”
Avril smiled mysteriously and whispered, “It’s a secret.”
…
Late at night, Xia Fei was working in his room again after he left Sunset Villa. The truth was, he actually wanted to stay at Avril’s place for the night. He was not afraid of admitting it, but he believed that Avril was not ready yet, so he had been sparing her time after time.
The Black Bat Radar was troubling Xia Fei as always. The complicated design ensured its powerful functionalities, but it too increased the technical difficulties to build it. Old Porter even spent a fortune on the most advanced smart machine tool, FN-105, and tweaked it manually, but it turned out that even the best machine tool in the Alliance was unable to meet the requirements. Not only was the efficiency low, it was overburdening the machine tool, too.
Xia Fei also discovered a new problem during the experiments. The current design of the Black Bat Radar was lacking in durability. Two out of ten devices in the first batch had already broken down. One of them was even destroyed completely and was beyond repair.
The complicated design meant the device was very fragile. If they did proceed to ma.s.s-produce the product, Xia Fei was clearly going to go bankrupt. Just compensating the losses was going to cost him his life. Imagine if the radar suddenly broke down when the wars.h.i.+p was in a battle and every person onboard died as a consequence or if they ended up losing the battle, Xia Fei would even be taken to the military tribunal and lose his life.
Either way, the radar was at most a concept idea. It was not ready to be released as a product, unless Xia Fei could significantly reduce the difficulty in producing the radar system and increase its durability. Otherwise, it would only be a mere decoration in the lab.
Xia Fei suddenly realized that producing a wars.h.i.+p like t.i.tan was a lot more difficult endeavor than he imagined. He was already in misery trying to design the radar system, it was only a part of that superwars.h.i.+p.
However, Xia Fei was looking forward to it, too. If he did succeed in producing such an insane wars.h.i.+p one day, his enemy would not even stand a chance against him. It was going to be an ultimate weapon of destruction.
Xia Fei received a call from Thuram in the middle of the night.
“Old man, what do you want, calling me so late at night?” Xia Fei asked.
Thuram answered, “Do you know General Pine Williams?”
Xia Fei replied, “Not really, I only met him once.”
Thuram nodded. “He asked me a lot of questions about you today. He even took six energy-s.h.i.+eld Boosters from me.”
Xia Fei was startled. He murmured, “That’s quick.”
Thuram was intrigued by Xia Fei’s response, so the latter proceeded to explain what had happened today.
Thuram burst out laughing after Xia Fei finished talking. “I think General Williams is very interested in the energy-s.h.i.+eld boosters. I’m afraid that he will immediately conduct experiments on them. Perhaps the military may actually buy a lot of them from Quantum Holdings. You should prepare its ma.s.s production as soon as possible, in the case that you don’t have enough supply when the demand increases.”
Xia Fei said, “That won’t be a problem. We only accept orders based on our production rate. Besides, the military hasn’t decided yet. We should wait and see.”
…
Xia Fei was living a carefree life when he was not partic.i.p.ating in any events. He would hang out with Avril, practice his abilities, research on how he could improve the Black Bat Radar’s design, and enjoy the sunlight of the capital ring.
The military did not show up again after taking a few energy-s.h.i.+eld boosters from Thuram. Thuram did inform Xia Fei that they were carrying out some experiments in their secret laboratory.
The requirements of the military were different from ordinary people. They had their protocol when testing a product, and any device with the military as its target audience would go through a long evaluation period. Not only were they going to test the product, they had to consider the safety factors regarding the factories and the workers that were responsible for producing the product.
Charlie gave Xia Fei a call, telling him that the military had sent representatives to Quantum Holdings to inspect the factories producing the energy-s.h.i.+eld boosters and their environment. Charlie was slightly nervous since the military was one of the highest authorities in the Alliance. Xia Fei told him to keep his cool and treat the military as a normal client.
Xia Fei also reminded Charlie to give the military’s representative some gifts. It did not have to be valuable. The local produce on Earth was a great choice, something delicious and interesting. Charlie was worried that it might affect the first impression of their company, but Xia Fei thought otherwise.
It turned out that the soldiers were quite fond of the tea leaves and local snacks given to them. They did not turn the gifts down when they heard that it was part of the social custom on Earth. After all, it was expected for a guest to suit the convenience of the host. Besides, the gifts were not valuable, so it was not a bribe, either.
The representatives spent two days on Earth. They inspected Quantum Holdings’ factories and had a technical discussion with the technical director, Porter. Who did they take Porter as? Even those who were in charge of technology in the military were incomparable to him. Quantum Holdings was never lacking in technical skills.
Two days later, two great incidents that shook the whole Alliance occurred all of a sudden.