I Wanted to Ruin the Project, So How Did I End Up Leading the World?

[Era-spanning infrastructure building + unconventional technology + makeshift chip fabrication + everyone reads way too much into things + national heroes who are all bluffing]

Also known as: “I Only Wanted to Scam the Subsidies, So I Was Forced to Make a Chip,” “I Just Wanted to Ruin the Project, So How Did We End Up Ahead of the Whole World?” and “I Told Them to Make Chips on a Whim, and These Employees Betrayed Me?”

Lin Jiuquan becomes a rich young man returning to China in 1955 and binds to the [Research Failure Cash-Back System].

As long as a technology project he initiates fails, he won’t be held accountable, and the System will reward him with a hundred times the cash, lifespan, and attribute slots! But if it succeeds, he gets just two yuan.

To enjoy life, he deliberately picks the most ridiculous, most impossible projects and messes around with them!

“Use the most primitive methods to refine silicon!”

“Semiconductors don’t need a vacuum chamber. Go make them in a thatched hut!”

Who could have guessed that his workers, all desperately poor and grateful to him for giving them jobs, would work themselves to the bone out of gratitude?

Not only did they refine top-quality silicon using primitive methods, they even built an early etching machine in a thatched hut!

When gleaming golden chips are set before him, his superior grips Lin Jiuquan’s hand with tears in his eyes. Lin Jiuquan, meanwhile, sees the System rewards being deducted and cries harder than anyone!