Chapter 128: Going Abroad for Exhibition

Looking at the sleeping Sun Hongming on the hospital bed, Du Qiu just felt a little unreal. A perfectly healthy person fallen ill just like that.

Not long after Wen Siqing came to send Sun’s wife home, Sun Hongming was wheeled out of the operating room.

Presently, Yuan Minhua arrived just in time to hear the doctor tell Du Qiu that Sun Hongming was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer.

This news shocked her to the point of not knowing what to do.

After arranging for Sun Hongming to be admitted into a private room, Yuan Minhua watched Du Qiu standing silently in front of the bed, seemingly full of self-reproach.

After a while, she stepped forward and said, “Mr. Du, no one wanted this to happen.”

“It’s my fault, take note and arrange for a full staff physical examination as soon as possible. Make it an annual routine from now on.”

“Oh, alright.”

Du Qiu took another look at the sleeping Sun Hongming and then turned to leave the room.

“Yuan sister, come with me, I have something to say to you,” he said to Yuan Minhua, who followed him out, and the two talked at one end of the corridor. It was late, and the corridor was deserted.

“Sister Yuan, are you hiding something from me?” he asked.

Startled, Yuan Minhua replied, “No, what could I possibly be hiding from you?”

“Yuan sister, you, Brother Sun, and Liu—Liu Yaofeng—are not only my good friends but also key partners in the company’s startup. I regard you as family,” Du Qiu said gravely.

Yuan Minhua, looking at Du Qiu’s slightly reddened eyes, felt her heart tremble and said, “Mr. Du, you…”

“Did Deng Chaofan threaten you, and you’re carrying this huge burden all by yourself?” Du Qiu demanded, staring at her.

“Ah, you know about it?”

In a deep voice, Du Qiu said, “Yuan sister, this is all targeting Dream Technology. How can you bear it alone? We are a startup team, and the company is in dire straits. Why does everyone think about carrying the burden themselves? Where is the team spirit?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Du, I thought it was a family matter and didn’t want to involve the company.”

Du Qiu waved it off and continued, “Don’t worry about it anymore. I have already alerted the police. Detectives will come tomorrow morning to take your statement. As for that Deng Chaofan, the police will set out to arrest him in your hometown overnight! How dare he set up an underground gambling den in the guise of futures trading and use fake transactions to create gambling debts to extort our company’s executives. Even if Deng Chaofan’s uncle has a bit of clout locally, he can’t cover for him, especially since he’s involved too.”

“Mr. Du, do we really not have to pay back my brother’s debt?” Yuan Minhua asked with a trembling voice. She had been tormented by this matter to the brink of madness. On the one hand, her parents pressured her with threats of death to sell out the company’s interests to save her brother, and on the other, there was the startup company and Du Qiu, who had treated her well. No one knew the mental journey she had undergone; ultimately, she rejected Deng Chaofan’s demand, planning to raise funds to repay her brother’s debt. But in a blink of an eye, Du Qiu had found out and resolved the whole issue.

“A bystander is clear-headed. Where is that debt even legitimate? Just report him to the police. With the rule of law in our society, Deng Chaofan certainly can’t get away with it,” Du Qiu said somewhat exasperatedly, “Didn’t you think to consult Lawyer Song from the legal department? Where did your usual smartness go?”

Yuan Minhua’s face flushed with embarrassment, “I didn’t think about it much. Back in my hometown, such debts are always repaid, and it never occurred to me that it could be illegal.”

Du Qiu replied, “Alright, don’t think too much about it. Now with Brother Sun ill, you are the housekeeper of the company. You need to manage the daily affairs of the company well. Arrange everything for Brother Sun properly. His wife isn’t someone who likes making a scene; she can’t speak about many matters, so help her directly. No matter the cost, apart from the company’s share, put the excess on my account.”

“Understood. You can rest assured, I will make sure it is well arranged.”

Yuan Minhua assured him before suddenly exclaiming, “Oh no, something’s wrong.”

“What is it? You startled me,” Du Qiu asked, puzzled.

“Next week, the company is going to Las Vegas in the United States for the annual exhibition. Originally, General Manager Sun was going to lead the team, but now that he is ill, what should we do?”

“Then let Chen Tao…” Du Qiu started to say Chen Tao’s name but stopped. Chen Tao’s situation might prevent him from leaving the country.

Yuan Minhua picked up the conversation, “Yeah, Chen Tao could. But at the last discussion, he seemed to have an industry expo to attend in Yangcheng, there’s a schedule conflict.”

“Chen Tao can’t go,” Du Qiu said with a heavy tone. Looking at Yuan Minhua, he added, “Don’t think it’s just you who’s in trouble. The company’s enemies are launching a comprehensive attack, and Chen Tao has fallen into their trap. He won’t be able to extricate himself this time.”

Yuan Minhua was taken aback. “Mr. Du, are you saying Chen Tao has also been…”

Du Qiu didn’t go into detail, “I won’t explain the specifics to you. You’ll know in time. Just focus on managing the company’s regular affairs well, and continue to uphold good recruitment practices. I will give you a testing program. As long as you input the basic information of the selected person, the program will tell you whether this person is suitable for recruitment. At this point, we absolutely cannot allow spies to join the company.”

Yuan Minhua nodded, “Mr. Du, rest assured, I will do as you request. About the exhibition, maybe Liu Sichen could go…”

“He can’t leave. Tonight, Kosuke Yasushi, a corporate representative from Japan, was arrested by the police. With the court case and all of the company’s PR work, we can’t do without him being in charge. Forget it, I’ll go myself.”

“You’re going? Aren’t you always busy with research?”

“By the way, how did you even think of participating in this exhibition? Our products don’t seem to include consumer electronics, right?”

Yuan Minhua explained, “Mr. Du, the research center previously developed a household cleaning robot based on industrial robots, which is a consumer product. If we launch it at this exhibition, it will have an excellent promotional effect. Otherwise, General Manager Sun wouldn’t have personally led the team.”

Suddenly it clicked for Du Qiu, “Look at my memory; I forgot that this project has already been successful. Well, since that’s the case, I’ll go myself. I just hope it’s not too late to get a visa.”

“Don’t worry, we can go through the expedited process. With your status, you should be able to get the visa quickly. I’ll arrange for someone to handle it tomorrow.”

“Alright, it’s getting late. You should go back first. I’ll stay here,” Du Qiu said.

“That’s not necessary. I’ll stay here. Go back, your work is important,” Yuan Minhua insisted.

“It seems I should really improve upon the cleaning robot and create a care assistant robot for tasks like accompanying patients. Leave it to the robot to do that.”

Yuan Minhua laughed, “Good, good, great inventor, I’m waiting for you to create such an amazing robot. Then I can really enjoy life.”

“Sister Yuan, don’t laugh. This could really happen. Before I go abroad, I will improve on that cleaning robot a bit, add some synthetic skin, and make it look like a real person.”

The more Du Qiu talked, the more feasible it seemed. After all, a cold, unfeeling robot doing housework didn’t seem very human.

In the end, it was Yuan Minhua who stayed to look after Sun Hongming, because tomorrow morning she could start arranging for a caretaker for Sun Hongming and meet his wife to talk.

Considering it was too late, Du Qiu decided not to connect to Dreamland tonight and went directly to the company, plunging into the laboratory to work on adding skin to the robot.

The cleaning robot that Dream Technology had completed this time was entirely different from the current market’s cleaning robots. It was a true humanoid robot, something quite unlike those circular hunks of metal.

Its control system and perception system were derived from the Custodian robot, of course, in a greatly simplified version. It couldn’t be helped since many things were still unachievable.

Still, the developed humanoid robot was much more agile than the humanoid robots available on the market. Since it was a household robot, charging it was very convenient, and it could even be used directly while plugged in.

When the project team completed the design, Du Qiu had not yet finished the design and replication of the new smart chip. The research team chose a smart chip from Huawei. It was a fixed program, and the intelligence barely reached that of weak AI. The voice program and facial recognition were a bit more sophisticated, but this chip was more than enough to cope.

The chip’s computational power mainly supported the perception system’s information processing, which also made this cleaning humanoid robot perform better reactions than other humanoid robots.

The robot that Dream Technology was preparing to unveil at the exhibition had the cold appearance of machinery, merely coated in a beautiful finish.

Now, Du Qiu planned to cloak it in synthetic human skin, not the silicone skin you could find on TaoBao, but the type he previously researched from the fake female mercenary he had captured.

Du Qiu had done a study out of curiosity and successfully replicated it. Now, in the lab, he was ready to produce this kind of synthetic human skin and design a large-scale production process.