Reborn in Tokyo: From Heiress to Global Tycoon

Chapter 188 Halftime

End of August 1989.

The headquarters building of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in Washington, D.C., USA.

Arthur Vance sat in a large leather swivel chair.

He wore a well-tailored white cotton shirt, his tie neatly pressed against the collar. His hands were clasped together on his stomach, his gaze passing over the open copy of the Wall Street Journal on the table, lingering on the bold headline on the front page.

The slightly pungent smell of ink permeated the air conditioning.

Sony Group announced its acquisition of Columbia Pictures through a joint venture. SA Entertainment has officially signed a withdrawal agreement.

Arthur's gaze lingered on the words "withdrawal agreement".

His previously steady breathing paused for a moment, and his eyes narrowed slightly.

The scattered clues quickly connected in his mind.

The $5 billion cash offer was never intended to be fulfilled from the start. The other party threw out this huge bait to lure him into using CFIUS's authority to issue an emergency freeze order. Subsequently, this freeze order became the other party's excuse of "force majeure" for not being able to deliver the funds on time, allowing them not only to smoothly withdraw from the acquisition, but also to use this letter of intent to blackmail the Sony Group, which was eager to break the deadlock.

A meticulously planned Aikido.

He himself, a senior investigator at the SEC, became a free henchman used by the other side to force Sony to comply and cover up their underlying semiconductor fundraising activities.

Arthur gritted his back teeth, and the muscles in his cheeks bulged slightly.

Damn it, they got away again.

This mastermind, lurking deep within Tokyo, possesses an unparalleled understanding of loopholes in US federal law and a masterful grasp of the workings of the bureaucratic system. He is undoubtedly an extremely difficult and formidable top-tier hunter.

The feeling of frustration churned in my chest for only a few seconds.

Arthur loosened his fingers and laid the crumpled newspaper flat on the table.

He leaned back in his leather chair. Reason had regained control of his mind.

Hollywood's massive lure has vanished. SA Entertainment has officially withdrawn from the acquisition, and the wall of political pressure erected by the Senate Commerce Committee and overwhelming public opinion has naturally crumbled. The executive order requiring a full review of the Columbia Pictures acquisition has thus lost its legal basis.

The chains that bound him broke.

Arthur immediately sat up straight, reached out his right hand, and grabbed the receiver of the internal secure telephone on the corner of the table.

"Received from the Seventh Investigation Team of the Enforcement Department."

He speaks very quickly, but his voice is steady.

"The Hollywood case is closed and filed. Everyone immediately switch focus and retrieve the Nasdaq's underlying trading logs. Thoroughly investigate those one hundred Cayman Islands accounts, and pinpoint those tiny accumulation data involving precision machine tool and semiconductor materials companies."

"They thought the game was over, but that's not up to them."

When the receiver is hung up, it makes a crisp "click" sound as it hits the plastic base.

The sunlight outside the blinds gradually shifted, completely shrouding the Wall Street Journal in shadow.

……

Across the Pacific Ocean.

Karuizawa, Nagano Prefecture, Japan.

A gentle autumn breeze swept through the dense larch forest, carrying a faint, damp earthy scent. The wind blew across the spacious second-floor terrace of the Saionji Villa, "Tingsho Sanso," causing the iron wind chimes hanging from the eaves to emit a delicate and crisp "ding-dong" sound.

The second-floor tatami room is softly lit.

Satsuki nestled in the soft silk bedding.

After days of remote command across time zones and intense mental exertion, the body of this minor had reached its peak of physical exhaustion. She frowned slightly, her breathing deep and even, curled up in her warm bed.

A very faint scraping sound came from the wooden floor of the corridor.

"Squeak."

Hmm... it's Shuichi...

Satsuki closed her eyes and recognized the sound of her father, Shuichi's, footsteps. So she turned over, snuggled comfortably into the smooth silk bedding, and buried her face even deeper.

The sliding door was pushed open silently.

Shuichi entered carrying a small silver tray. He was wearing a casual light gray linen shirt with the cuffs casually rolled up. On the tray was a steaming glass of milk and a document with the Sony Group's legal department logo on its cover.

He gently placed the tray on the low table next to the tatami mat, the porcelain cup making a very soft sound as it touched the tabletop.

"Satsuki, are you awake?" Shuichi's voice was low, carrying the gentle warmth characteristic of a father.

Satsuki stirred slightly in the blankets.

She slowly opened her eyes, rubbed the corners of her eyes with both hands, and slowly sat up. Her long hair, which had been neatly styled, was now loosely draped over her shoulders, carrying a hint of languor from just waking up.

"Father." Her voice still had a heavy nasal tone.

"Drink some milk first to warm your stomach."

Shuichi handed over the milk glass.

Satsuki held the cup in both hands, feeling the warmth spread through her palms. She took a small sip, the rich milky aroma spreading in her mouth.

"Sony is moving very quickly."

Shuichi pointed to the document on the table and sat down opposite Satsuki.

"The Ministry of Justice rushed this morning with the final version of the 'CCD Underlying Patent Licensing and Priority Supply Agreement.' Akio Morita himself signed it. Once the official seal of Saionji Information System (SIS) is affixed, Sony Semiconductor's core image sensor technology will officially be open to us."

Satsuki put down the milk cup.

She picked up a cashmere coat draped over the screen, put it on her shoulders, walked to the low table, and opened the heavy authorization document.

My gaze swept over the complex Japanese legal clauses and patent numbers.

"For Sony, exchanging a basic license for a hardware technology for a controlling stake in Columbia Pictures is a worthwhile trade-off, preserving their content position in the format war."

Satsuki's gaze fell on Akio Morita's strong and powerful signature at the end of the document.

"CCD (charge-coupled device) is the bridge for humans to convert optical signals into digital signals."

"If we compare the future Saionji Information System to a huge living organism, Cisco's routers are the nerves connecting the limbs, and the University of Tokyo's supercomputer is the brain responsible for thinking."

She closed the file, her fingers tapping lightly on the leather cover.

"So Sony's CCD is equivalent to the 'eyes' of this huge machine."

"With these eyes, our system is no longer blind and can only process monotonous characters. It can see images, capture the changes in light and shadow in the real world, and transform every detail of the physical world into a torrent of 0s and 1s."

Shuichi looked at his daughter, a hint of heartache in his eyes.

"This piece of the puzzle wasn't easy to get." He reached out and tucked a stray strand of Satsuki's hair behind her ear. "Take advantage of these few days in Karuizawa and get some rest. Endo and Itakura are keeping an eye on things in Tokyo, so there won't be any major problems."

"Mmm." Satsuki nodded obediently, a faint smile playing on her lips. "I will. The larch trees here smell wonderful."

……

afternoon.

Sunlight pierced through the thin clouds and shone on the gravel driveway in front of "Tingsong Villa".

A black SUV rolled over the stones and came to a steady stop under the porch.

The car door opened. Amy Suzuki stepped out quickly, carrying a heavy black engineering laptop. She was wearing a simple white shirt and dark suit pants, and a fine layer of sweat appeared on the tip of her nose.

The bodyguard next to her stepped forward to take the heavy metal machine, which weighed over ten kilograms, but she shook her head and refused. She gripped the computer base tightly with both hands and quickly ran up the wooden stairs to the second floor. "Thump, thump, thump," the slightly hurried footsteps echoed on the wooden steps.

The moment I stepped onto the terrace, a gentle autumn breeze greeted me.

"Satsuki-chan!" Amy called out breathlessly, stopping in front of the white wicker round table.

Satsuki was leaning back in her wicker chair, holding a glass of iced black tea. She put the teacup down, the bottom of the glass clinking softly against the table.

She sat calmly in her seat, picked up a neatly folded, clean, damp towel from the corner of the table, and with a slight lift of her wrist, held the towel out into the air.

Amy understood immediately. She hugged the heavy metal object tightly, obediently bent down, and gently pressed her sweaty forehead against the cool towel in Satsuki's hand.

"No need to rush, Amy." Satsuki's fingertips felt Amy's body temperature through the towel as she gently wiped away the water droplets. "Take a deep breath. Machines need to cool down, and so do people."

Amy obediently remained bent over, letting the faintly scented towel brush across her forehead. She took a deep breath, her rapid breathing gradually calming down, her cheeks flushing slightly from the running and the touch.

"I want you to see the test results as soon as possible," Amy whispered.

"Let's begin then." Satsuki took back the towel and placed it on the corner of the table.

Amy placed the heavy laptop steadily on the wicker round table. She unzipped her backpack, skillfully pulled out the thick power cord, and turned to plug it into the socket in the corner of the terrace.

"Device connection is normal."

Amy pulled out a wicker chair and sat down. The screen lit up, its pale blue light reflecting off the lenses of her silver-rimmed glasses. Her expression instantly shifted to one of focused concentration, her fingers flying across the heavy mechanical keyboard.

The screen lights up.

A pale blue light shone on Amy's silver-rimmed glasses.

She retrieved the extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) theoretical model that she had previously obtained from Dr. Weber, an engineer in East Germany, and then pressed Enter to import the CCD sensor matrix limit parameters that Sony had just declassified today into the system interface.

Complex code and 3D modeling lines scroll and recombine rapidly on the screen.

"Data integration complete."

Amy stared at the screen and reported the results of her deductions to Satsuki, who was sitting opposite her.

"Sony's image sensor technology perfectly fills the visual recognition blind spot we previously had in digital modeling."

She pointed to a green curve on the screen that was rising exponentially.

"By introducing high-precision photoelectric conversion parameters from the CCD, the system's accuracy in capturing minute deviations in extreme ultraviolet beams has been improved by a full three orders of magnitude. This means that, theoretically, we now have the capability to monitor atomic-level processing errors."

Amy pushed up her glasses, shifted her gaze from the screen to Satsuki, and her tone became serious.

However, physical bottlenecks still exist.

She typed on the keyboard and switched to a red warning icon.

"High-precision optical monitoring inevitably involves massive amounts of instantaneous data processing. At the same time, extreme ultraviolet light sources generate terrifying high-energy particle bombardment during the excitation process."

"Our existing hardware computing power can withstand the data flow, but the purity and lattice flatness of the existing conventional silicon wafer material, which is the physical substrate that carries the transistors of the chip, cannot withstand this level of processing precision and energy impact."

"If the problem of substrate material is not solved, even the most sophisticated lens and the most sensitive electronic eye will not be able to etch a usable chip."

A brief silence fell over the terrace.

The only sounds were the rustling of the wind through the larch forest and the low hum of a laptop cooling fan.

Satsuki sat in the wicker chair and picked up the glass of black tea with ice in front of her.

The water droplets on the glass were icy cold. She took a small sip, and the ice cubes clinked together in the glass, making a crisp "tinkling" sound.

"Insufficient purity".

She put down her teacup, her gaze passing over the wooden railing of the terrace and looking towards the deep forests of Karuizawa. Her vision seemed to extend beyond the mountains, reaching the more distant coastline of the Sea of ​​Japan.

That was the last stronghold in the upstream of Japan's semiconductor industry chain.

"Shin-Etsu Chemical."

Satsuki uttered the name softly.

"This company possesses the world's highest purity specialty silicon wafer purification technology. Their single-crystal silicon wafers can achieve an astonishing purity of 11 nines (99.999999999%)."

She looked away and gazed at Amy.

"This is also the last stronghold we must conquer."

She picked up a notepad from the table and pulled out a pen.

The pen tip glides quickly across the paper, writing down a short instruction.

"Notify the investment department at the Tokyo headquarters."

Satsuki handed the note to Fujita, who had been waiting in the distance.

"Immediately initiate a process to penetrate Shin-Etsu Chemical's peripheral supply chain. Gather information on the equity structure of all their raw material suppliers, logistics agents, and equipment maintenance providers."

"Don't rush to touch the core; first, cast the net from the edges."

"Yes, Miss." Fujita took the note with both hands, bowed slightly, and withdrew.

All that remained on the terrace was the low-frequency hum of the laptop cooling fan.

Amy was still sitting in the wicker chair. Her hands were still resting on the heavy mechanical keyboard, and her gaze, piercing through her glasses, was fixed on Satsuki.

The physical impasse that had plagued digital modeling, the seemingly insurmountable wall of materials science, was effortlessly resolved by a simple sticky note. The moment her tense nerves relaxed, the aches and pains from staring at the screen for so long, and the fatigue from her brain working at high speed, rushed over her. She took off her glasses, gently rubbed her eyes, and her usually straight shoulders slumped slightly.

Satsuki took it all in.

She stood up and walked behind Amy. She reached out and placed her hands on Amy's slightly stiff shoulders through her white shirt, gently massaging them a couple of times.

"Alright, the simulation is over."

Satsuki's voice regained its reassuring gentleness.

"The machine needs to cool down, and your 'brain' should rest too. I've asked the kitchen to prepare your favorite strawberry daifuku and royal milk tea. Come inside and have something sweet."

Amy felt the cool touch on her shoulder and smelled that familiar, faint fragrance, and her tense body completely relaxed. She nodded obediently, like a golden retriever that had been stroked, and stood up very obediently, following closely behind Satsuki.

Satsuki turned her head back, closed the priceless Sony CCD underlying patent license, and casually placed it on a corner of the round table, mixed with the used scrap paper.

The two stepped into the Japanese-style room inside.

The glass sliding door slowly closed, isolating the area from the cool air outside.

The villa's terrace has returned to silence.

Below the courtyard, Xiu Yi was holding a pair of gardening shears, carefully trimming a pot of precious five-needle pine that had just been delivered by a special person, his movements calm and unhurried.

A gentle breeze swept across the spacious terrace, softly stirring the iced black tea on the table.

The water droplets condensing on the glass wall grew larger and larger.

Finally, it could no longer bear its own weight.

Water droplets slid slowly down the curve of the cup, dripping onto the wooden tabletop. The water stains quickly spread across the dry wood grain, forming a small, dark patch.

From the depths of the distant forest came a lonely bird's cry.