Love in the Courtyard: Starting with Engineers

When news of Lu Qing's arrest reached the US embassy, ​​Anderson was celebrating the "imminent victory" with CIA agents.

Upon hearing the telegraph operator's frantic report, Anderson's face instantly turned ashen. He gripped the telegram tightly, his knuckles turning white from the force, staring at the lines "Lu Qing arrested, contact person apprehended, manual intact," trembling with rage.

"Useless! A bunch of useless trash!" He kicked over the chair next to him, his roar echoing throughout the office.

"Li Yu! It's Li Yu again! I will make him pay!"

The agent was a bit calmer than him. He took the telegram from Anderson and said in a sinister tone, "Anderson, don't rush. We still have cards to play—three of those foreign trainees are our people. As long as we have them deliberately damage the machine tools during training and then leak the news to the media, saying that the machine tools from Longxing Factory are of poor quality, we can completely ruin their order."

Anderson's eyes suddenly lit up, as if he had grasped a lifeline: "Yes! That's it! I'll make Longxing Factory an international laughingstock!"

They were calculating their moves meticulously, unaware that Li Yu had already laid out a counterattack plan.

The next morning, the atmosphere in the training building of Longxing Factory was unusually heavy.

All the foreign students were gathered in the hall. Li Yu stood on the stage, holding a list in his hand, his eyes sharp as an eagle, scanning every face below the stage.

Behind him were three four-axis machine tools, each with a prominent seal.

Holding a megaphone, he loudly announced, "Ladies and gentlemen, I've called you all here today to announce two things."

He paused, then picked up a document and held it high: "First, according to the Special Operations Department's investigation, we discovered that three trainees in this training program were instructed by Country M to attempt to sabotage machine tools and tarnish the reputation of Longxing Factory. These three individuals have now been arrested in accordance with the law."

As soon as he finished speaking, three pale-faced students were brought in by guards. They still had their student IDs pinned to their chests; they were Anderson's accomplices.

The audience erupted in a frenzy, with students from various countries discussing the matter animatedly, their eyes filled with disdain and anger as they looked at the three men.

Li Yu's voice rang out again, drowning out all the noise.

"Secondly, in response to the long-standing technological blockade imposed on our country by the United States, and this malicious act of sabotage, Longxing Factory has decided to completely terminate all potential cooperation with the United States and its allies, and to share some of the civilian technologies of its four-axis machine tools with third-world countries free of charge!"

These words were like a bombshell, exploding loudly in the hall.

The trainees from Southeast Asia applauded excitedly, while the representatives from the Middle East stood up and shouted, "Great! Mr. Li is right! We support Longxing Factory!"

Li Yu raised his hand to suppress the applause and continued, "Not only that, we will also unite these countries to establish an international precision machine tool technology alliance, breaking the Western technological monopoly and enabling more countries to have the ability to independently manufacture precision parts!"

His words were firm and resounding.

When Anderson, who was far away at the US embassy, ​​heard these words through the bugging device, he almost spat out a mouthful of blood.

Sharing technology free of charge? Establishing a technology alliance?

This is absolutely catastrophic!

The reason why Country M can monopolize the precision machine tool market is because of its technological barriers. Now that Li Yu is sharing his technology with third-world countries, it's tantamount to directly taking away their livelihoods!

What devastated Anderson even more was that soon after, he received news that countries that had previously hesitated to buy Longxing Factory's machine tools were now lining up to sign contracts. Furthermore, several of America's allies were secretly contacting Longxing Factory, attempting to bypass America and privately order machine tools.

The orders for Longxing Factory not only didn't fall through, but actually increased compared to before.

Meanwhile, precision machine tool companies in the United States experienced a sharp drop in stock prices and a significant decrease in orders, plunging them into an unprecedented crisis overnight.

Anderson slumped into his chair, the bugging device slipping from his hand and falling to the floor, emitting a piercing static. He finally understood that his contest with Li Yu had been a complete defeat from the very beginning.

In the workshop of Longxing Factory, molten steel boiled again, and the bright red flames illuminated Li Yu's face.

He looked at the cheering students from various countries below the stage, at those faces filled with hope, and a faint smile appeared on his lips.

Revenge? No, this is not revenge.

This is China's confidence—the confidence to break through blockades with technology, and the confidence to deter all forces that covet China from taking any rash actions.

Li Yu picked up a newly printed charter of the technology alliance and signed his name.

Sunlight streamed through the window, illuminating the title page of the charter, where a line of large, gilded characters read:

Technology knows no borders, and a strong nation must have a way to achieve it.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the ocean, the military giants of the United States were frowning with worry as their stock prices plummeted. They were finally experiencing the backlash of technological blockade.

For the next period of time, Anderson and the M-country capital group lobbied Congress in an effort to recover the losses, urging the military to support the "monkey country" in southern China to launch a war against China's border.

Under their lobbying and concessions, the military provided a large amount of weaponry to the monkey country in southern China.

On the southern border, Zhang Qianjin was leading a squad of soldiers on patrol in the forest when, just as they reached a low-lying area, a sudden "boom" rang out and Zhang Qianjin was blown into the air by a landmine.

"Take cover!" Just after one soldier shouted, a group of soldiers from the Monkey Kingdom rushed out from all sides and opened fire on the group of people in the low-lying area.

News of the border attack reached the capital.

"Damn that monkey country! Since they're so restless, let's fight them! Fight them until they can't get up anymore!" said a square-faced major general with an upright expression.

On that day, a large number of armed forces were assembled on the border of the Monkey Kingdom.

Inside the Beijing Operations Command Center, battle reports from the southern front kept pouring in. The Monkey Kingdom's army, relying on artillery support from the United States, had arrogantly advanced to within three miles of the border. Soldiers in the trenches fought back under artillery fire, and the casualty figures continued to rise.

Anderson sat in the office of the US military advisory group stationed in the Monkey Country, looking at the victory reports from the front lines, and smugly swirled his wine glass: "Li Yu? He's just a lucky country bumpkin. Once we take the South, we'll dismantle his technology alliance, and all those machine tools and blueprints will be ours."

He had even drafted a press release and come up with the title: "The Demise of China's Industrial Myth".

Little did he know that at that moment, Longxing Factory was already in full production of man-portable thermobaric weapons, and trucks and trains were carrying them to the southern border battlefield, where soldiers from the Monkey Kingdom were hiding in bunkers and firing indiscriminately at the Chinese army positions.

Hidden in the dense forest outside the bunker were their mortar positions, and shells kept falling into the Chinese army's trenches, kicking up clouds of dust.

"Company commander! The enemy's bunker is too hard; grenades can't break it at all!" a soldier roared, his eyes red.

The company commander gritted his teeth, preparing to organize a suicide squad to charge, when he suddenly heard the roar of armored vehicles behind him.

A group of soldiers carrying individual thermobaric bombs arrived at the front of the position, aimed at the bunker in front, and launched a series of thermobaric bombs with a "whoosh whoosh whoosh".

There was no earth-shattering noise, only a dull "thump".

The next second, a bizarre scene unfolded—the reinforced concrete bunkers collapsed and deformed instantly, as if crushed by an invisible giant hand, and even the vegetation around the fortifications burst into pale blue flames. Even more terrifying, not a single gunshot rang out from inside the bunkers; only thick smoke slowly rose.

The Monkey Kingdom commander, hiding in the rear command post, was so frightened that he collapsed to the ground. The soldiers he sent out to scout returned and reported that the defenders in the bunker had either had their internal organs shattered by the shockwave or had died from suffocation due to lack of oxygen; not a single intact body could be found.