Volume 1 Chapter 28 I Will Take Care of It

He did not look back.

The air in the conference room behind him felt as if it had been drained away, leaving a heavy, suffocating silence. Du Yuze could imagine the expressions of the technicians and engineers—shifting from ecstatic joy to despair, and now, ignited by his single sentence, flickering with a faint, hesitant ember of hope.

He did not walk far, merely ducking into a utility room at the end of the corridor. It was piled high with discarded blueprints and scrap parts, smelling of a mixture of machine oil and rust. He closed the door, leaned against the cold wall, and isolated himself in the darkness.

The list labeled "Gallium Arsenide" in his pocket felt like a red-hot iron brand.

"I will handle it."

The words had been spoken, but how could he possibly solve it? He was no deity; he could not conjure something out of thin air. He had heard the mantra that "it is better to buy than to build, and better to lease than to buy" until his ears were calloused. But now, others were unwilling to even lease to him.

His fingers tapped rhythmically against the wall, producing a dull, hollow sound.

[Task: Resolve the Gallium Arsenide wafer manufacturing problem.] He issued the command to the system in his mind.

A cold, mechanical voice responded.

[Insufficient permissions to generate a complete process flow directly. Initiating alternative strategy...]

[Scanning existing domestic materials database... Scan complete.]

[Scanning plant-wide personnel files and technical resumes... Scan complete.]

[Matching optimal technical lead with available resources... Matching complete.]

A stream of information flooded into Du Yuze’s mind.

[Target: Li Weiguo.]

[Position: Retired rehired consultant, Heat Treatment Workshop.]

[Technical Expertise: High-temperature smelting, vacuum heat treatment, crystal growth (early project experience). Nickname: 'Li the Ghost Hand'.]

[Current Location: South Warehouse No. 3, Old Heat Treatment Workshop.]

"Li the Ghost Hand"? Du Yuze searched his memory for the name, but found nothing. He was not part of the avionics team.

He pushed open the utility room door and stepped back into the light. Instead of returning to his office or the avionics team, he walked straight across the factory grounds toward the remote corner marked on the map.

South Warehouse No. 3 was the oldest part of the plant—a row of red-brick buildings with peeling plaster revealing the lime beneath. It had long been abandoned, with only a potholed concrete path leading into the depths. At the end of the path stood a solitary workshop, its chimney half-collapsed.

At the workshop entrance, an elderly man in blue work clothes was crouched on the ground, tinkering with a small vegetable patch. His hair was gray, his back hunched, yet his movements were nimble as he carefully staked a tomato plant.

Du Yuze walked over and stood still.

The old man did not look up, continuing his work as if he hadn't noticed him.

"Master Li?" Du Yuze ventured.

The old man’s hands paused, then continued their slow work as he replied, "The workshop has been closed for a long time. It’s no use looking for me. If you want heat treatment, go wait in line at the new workshop."

"I’m not here for heat treatment," Du Yuze said. "I’m here to ask you to come out of retirement and help us build something."

The old man finally straightened his back. He turned around, wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, and scrutinized Du Yuze with cloudy, narrowed eyes. His face was etched with wrinkles like a dried-up riverbed.

"Come out of retirement?" He snorted with a trace of mockery. "I’m an old man with one foot in the grave; what kind of retirement am I coming out of? The factory belongs to you college graduates now; why would you need us old timers?"

"We need you," Du Yuze said directly. "We are going to manufacture Gallium Arsenide wafers ourselves."

The mockery on Li Weiguo’s face froze. He looked as if he had heard the funniest joke of the century; he was stunned at first, then broke into a gap-toothed grin, laughing so hard he leaned back and dropped his bamboo stake.

"Ha... Hahaha! Build what? Gallium Arsenide? Kid, did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed?" He pointed at Du Yuze. "Do you even know what that is? You think this is playing with mud? You write a few formulas in a lab, draw a few blueprints, and think you can build anything?"

"Theoretically, it is feasible."

"Theoretically?" Li Weiguo picked up the bamboo stake and stabbed the ground hard. "Theoretically, these old bones of mine could live another five hundred years! Things on paper are cheap talk! Do you know what smelting is? Do you know what a vacuum is? Do you know that one ten-thousandth of a millimeter of impurity can turn millions in equipment into a furnace of scrap?"

His voice was low, but every word struck Du Yuze’s ears like a small hammer.

"Has that kid Shen Qingyun been fed some kind of voodoo by you young punks? This is pure fantasy!"

"Chief Engineer Shen doesn't know I’m here," Du Yuze replied calmly. "This is my own idea."

"Your own idea?" Li Weiguo looked him up and down again. "Which workshop are you from?"

"Avionics team, Du Yuze."

"Avionics team..." Li Weiguo chewed on the words, the sarcasm deepening. "A guy who works on circuit boards comes to tell me he wants to smelt steel? No, something higher-end—he wants to refine 'immortal pills.' Get lost, get lost, don't bother me with my gardening."

He waved his hand as if shooing a fly and turned to crouch down again.

Du Yuze did not move.

"Master Li, fifteen years ago, you were in charge of the directional solidification project for turbofan engine blades, weren't you?"

Li Weiguo’s back stiffened. Slowly, inch by inch, he turned his body around. This time, the mockery and impatience had vanished, replaced by a sharp, piercing scrutiny.

"How do you know about that project?"

"I checked the files," Du Yuze said.

"Checked the files? That project was sealed years ago. Besides the deepest cabinet in the archives, where would you check?" Li Weiguo stepped forward, his presence shifting entirely. He was no longer a gardener, but a lion whose pride had been touched.

"The project failed," Du Yuze continued, ignoring the question. "The failure report cited excessive impurities in the GH-series high-temperature alloy as the cause, leading to stray crystals during solidification."

Li Weiguo did not speak; he only stared at him intensely.

"But that wasn't the real reason." Du Yuze’s voice was soft, yet it reached Li Weiguo with crystalline clarity. "The real reason was that the 'Dawn Type II' vacuum induction furnace you used had a one-ten-thousandth-of-a-millimeter deformation in a butterfly valve of the vacuum pump between the 72nd and 78th minute of the heat treatment. It contaminated the furnace atmosphere. No instrument at the time could have detected that leak."

Li Weiguo’s body trembled violently.

The color drained from his face, leaving him deathly pale. His cloudy eyes welled with shock, pain, and disbelief.

That failed project had been the heartache of his life. He had staked his entire reputation and life’s work on it, only to receive a cold conclusion of "substandard materials." He had replayed the process countless times, doubting the equipment, the process, and even himself. The thought of a vacuum leak had crossed his mind, but he had no proof. How could one prove a deformation of one ten-thousandth of a millimeter? Who would believe him?

That event was the final straw that crushed him, turning him from a promising technical expert into an old man guarding an abandoned workshop.

It was a secret he had buried for fifteen years—a detail that would wake him up in the middle of the night.

How could this young man possibly know?

"Who... who are you?" Li Weiguo’s throat felt dry, his voice raspy like sandpaper rubbing together.

"My name is Du Yuze," Du Yuze said, looking at him. "I need your hands, and I need your experience. We don't have high-purity Gallium Arsenide, but we have high-purity Gallium and high-purity Arsenic. We don't have a ready-made wafer growth furnace, but we have the furnace body and vacuum system of the 'Dawn Type II' here. We can modify it."

"Modify it?" Li Weiguo muttered, his eyes vacant.

"Yes, modify it," Du Yuze said, his tone brook no argument. "Change the induction heating to the resistance heating required for the Czochralski method, redesign the thermal field, reinforce the vacuum system, add magnetic field confinement... We can start from scratch and build our own furnace."

"You make it sound so easy..." Li Weiguo offered a bitter smile. "Do you know how many failures that will take? Every failure burns money and time."

"Failure is the one thing we aren't short of," Du Yuze said. "Data from every failure is more precious than a lucky success. We need someone who isn't afraid of failure and can spot the problem amidst a pile of scrap. In this entire factory, that is only you."

Li Weiguo fell silent. He looked at Du Yuze. The young man didn't have the fanatical fervor of a scholar like Shen Qingyun, nor the blind excitement of other technicians. He was calm—as calm as if he were stating a fact that had already happened.

After a long time, he asked the most critical question: "How, exactly... did you know about that valve?"

Du Yuze met his gaze, a smile appearing on his face—the exact same one he had shown Shen Qingyun.

"I guessed."

Li Weiguo was stunned.

He looked at the young face and suddenly wondered if he had lived his past decades in vain. It seemed the world had changed into something he didn't recognize at all.

He let out a long, heavy breath, as if exhaling fifteen years of suppressed frustration.

He bent down, picked up a set of rusty keys from the ground, and wiped them off on his greasy overalls.

"Follow me."

He didn't say another word, turning to walk toward the locked iron door labeled "Heat Treatment Workshop No. 2." Du Yuze followed behind him.

*Click.*

The rusted lock cylinder let out a sharp sound and turned.

Li Weiguo used all his strength to pull open the heavy iron door.

*Creeeak—*

The door hinges groaned harshly. A beam of light pierced the darkness, illuminating the dust dancing in the air. Inside the workshop, rows of massive machines covered in thick layers of dust stood like sleeping iron beasts.

Li Weiguo stood in the doorway without looking back.

"Everything is inside," his voice echoed through the empty workshop. "If you want to die, I'll die with you once."