The Ex-Wife-to-Be Is Acting Weird After Losing Her Memory - Chapter 53

Chapter 53: Song Without Words Three

Before the test race commenced, the organizers held a grand reception as per tradition. Zhen Zhen and her team arrived late. After settling her employees, she immediately changed clothes and rushed to the reception venue without taking much rest.

Last year, Tianfeng Technology, as the only Chinese automaker to enter the finals, won the Best New Company award as a dark horse. This year, the Lightning-S, which she led the research and development for, utilized a more advanced kinetic system, naturally attracting more attention from all sides.

Combined with her background as a young female entrepreneur, which aligned with the current trend of rising female independence, she became a target for interviews sought after by many media outlets.

The reception was held in the banquet hall of a long-established five-star hotel in the area. The moment Zhen Zhen and her team stepped into the hall, they received many glances, especially from the invited journalists, who quickly swarmed around her.

Among them were inevitably foreign correspondents from Chinese media. A beautiful female reporter in an evening gown didn’t bother with pleasantries and rushed to ask: “CEO Zhen, as the highly anticipated new model, how confident are you about Lightning-S in this competition?”

Zhen Zhen smiled, responding unhurriedly: “…The autonomous driving system and power system are both newly developed versions. I have great confidence in it and hope to do our best not to disappoint everyone.”

The female reporter nodded and added: “I heard the board election for the Zhen Corporation is at the end of the month. As a highly-regarded female entrepreneur in China, I wish you early success in your succession and hope you bring great honor to our fellow women.”

This was originally a goodwill blessing, but it suddenly drew a cold snort from someone nearby.

“Hmph, women.”

The speaker was a tall, burly white man with a thick beard, clad in a luxurious, custom-made suit, and several large rings on his fingers. Seeing everyone look his way, he shrugged arrogantly: “I’m not disrespecting women, but begging your pardon, racing… is ultimately a men’s competition.”

He then looked at Zhen Zhen in the crowd and smiled: “What’s more, your Chinese technology is far behind ours. Chinese people only know how to rely on throwing money to run a business. Pretty lady, I’m not targeting you, but if I were you, I’d be smart and take this pile of toys away from the arena, lest you embarrass yourself later.”

His words were full of provocation. Several Chinese reporters and attendees present showed obvious indignation. Someone recognized the man’s identity and began to whisper.

He was none other than Gary, the CEO of XA, America’s top driverless car company. In the technology competition of the past decade or so, XA had firmly held the top position. Many cutting-edge technologies were first proposed and applied by their labs. Gary, as the leader, came from a wealthy background and his smooth development fostered an arrogant personality.

Now, his thunder was being stolen by a Chinese person he looked down upon, especially a woman. This made Gary very unhappy, and he naturally spoke without much restraint.

After all, in this industry, Chinese automakers barely had much say. Moreover, LA was Gary’s home base, so an isolated outsider like Tianfeng would most likely have to silently accept a few sarcastic remarks.

Seeing Zhen Zhen remain silent, the smile on Gary’s face became more pronounced.

“Clink—”

A crisp sound of glass clashing suddenly broke the silence.

The red wine in the glass rippled. Gary looked at the graceful young woman standing before him. She had walked over at some point, elegantly holding a glass in one hand, lightly touching his glass with hers, and spoke calmly: “I usually can’t be bothered with showing off verbally.”

Under the room’s intense scrutiny, Zhen Zhen’s rosy lips curved slightly, and she said unhurriedly: “I prefer to meet you directly on the racetrack. Perhaps that will be a simple and effective way to clear up that prejudiced mind of yours.”

“How dare you…” Gary was stunned, seeing that the other party was not as submissive as he expected. Before he could speak again, Zhen Zhen had already tilted her head back and finished the wine in her glass.

“What do I have to be afraid of?” Her voice was clear and melodious, and she replied with a smile: “As you said, I am both wealthy and beautiful. Isn’t it normal for an excellent woman like me to refute an arrogant man like you?”

This time, not only the female reporter but also several guests from other competing teams standing nearby burst into laughter.

Gary opened his mouth, trying to say something more, but found himself speechless. Zhen Zhen showed him the empty glass and kindly reminded him: “You haven’t drunk your wine yet.”

After saying that, she turned and walked away without looking back, leaving Gary alone.

“That was so cool…” The female reporter’s eyes shone as she watched the young female entrepreneur walk away with such flair, praising her softly.

Zhen Zhen maintained her placid expression. She handed the wine glass to Xiao Chen and then quietly sighed.

Perhaps it was due to being influenced by association, but after spending so much time with Lu Jiayin, she seemed to have unconsciously adopted her style of rebutting people.

She had encountered prejudiced situations like this many times before. Most of the time, she chose to ignore them or counter them with more logical arguments. Never before had she responded like today, with such a nearly unreasonable yet incredibly effective attitude, directly shutting down the challenge.

“I really miss her…” A silent sigh escaped her heart.

With this little interlude at the reception, the atmosphere surrounding the confrontation between XA and Tianfeng Technology was ignited, spreading from the media circles all the way to the test track, attracting a lot of attention.

The LA test race schedule was divided into two parts. The first part was a practical driverless car test conducted on a simulated road, primarily used to evaluate the vehicle’s autonomous driving system and behavioral planning capabilities. The second part was the speed competition on the official track.

XA’s participating vehicle was a cool, silver-gray race car named “Speeder.” After the test started, the road conditions were displayed on a large screen for the audience. The three-kilometer-long section simulated various environments such as traffic lights, pedestrians, and road obstacles. Participating vehicles needed to complete the entire track to finish the test.

As the starter waved the flag, the XA engineers started the vehicle. The silver-gray Speeder drew a beautiful arc and drove onto the simulated road. It proceeded as if in a world of its own, quickly avoiding the first obstacle—a trash can—and stopping steadily at the red light after driving several hundred meters.

It drove extremely smoothly and fluently throughout the entire course. Only when approaching the finish line did the “Speeder” pause for half a second because of a balloon floating in the air. It then crossed the finish line with a zero-error record, becoming the fastest car to complete the simulated road test so far.

When the screen showed the bright red elapsed time, the entire audience erupted in warm applause. The young Chinese female reporter, Xu Yang, frowned, instinctively glancing toward a spot below the grandstand.

Because of the good impression made at the reception, and because they shared the same gender, she had specially come today to cheer for Zhen Zhen. But after witnessing XA’s near-perfect performance, the reporter couldn’t help but feel a little uneasy. Xu Yang had heard from a colleague at a racing magazine that XA was the pioneer in applying SLAM technology to the driving domain. Through algorithms, they could achieve a near-synchronous response speed, making them virtually unbeatable in this field right now.

Could a new enterprise from China truly defeat the powerful XA?

Many people shared this doubt. Perhaps the organizers had heard this sentiment, as the name of Tianfeng Technology’s Lightning-S began to sound over the broadcast. Hearing this, a slight commotion broke out among the crowd in the grandstand.

Xu Yang fixed her gaze back toward the bottom of the grandstand. Following the announcement, that graceful figure appeared at the track entrance.

Because it was race day, Zhen Zhen was not wearing formal attire as usual. Instead, she had changed into a cream-white hooded sweatshirt and jeans. The hoodie was loose, making her look particularly youthful and vibrant. Her black hair was tied into a ponytail behind her head, gently swaying with her movements.

The cameras focused on this young East Asian face.

The Lightning-S, as its name suggested, was a sharply styled, streamlined sports car. The wine-red body glowed with a dazzling, wavy sheen under the sunlight. The car slowly drove onto the track, stopping before the timing section.

Following the starter’s signal, the red flash lightly glided out onto the track and moved forward.

Whether it was her own illusion or not, the first adjective that flashed through Xu Yang’s mind when observing the car’s trajectory was—smooth. Unlike the Speeder, which roared its engine and charged through like it was on a deserted road, the Lightning-S looked like a dolphin swimming in water.

Its prediction speed when avoiding obstacles was almost identical to the Speeder’s. In fact, when a reversing obstruction vehicle suddenly appeared on the road, the Lightning-S did not employ emergency braking. Instead, it smoothly slowed down, agilely slipped past it, and stopped in a safe zone to maneuver around it.

Seeing this scene, several XA engineers’ faces changed. Someone immediately began flipping through the information bulletin board published by the committee.

“LeGo…” A young man dressed like a tech enthusiast sat next to Xu Yang. He also held an electronic screen and was rapidly scrolling through its contents. “She actually didn’t use XA’s open-source algorithm but developed a new three-dimensional algorithm system… Wow, she’s a genius!”

At the same time, the completion time for the Lightning-S flashed on the big screen. The score of this driverless car, which was not highly favored by many, was actually tied with the current champion, XA’s Speeder, in the first segment.

Gary, the owner of XA, also stood below the grandstand. Seeing this, his expression instantly became extremely ugly. Ignoring the cameras still filming him, he threw the water bottle in his hand onto the ground. Several assistants quickly blocked the reporters trying to approach, escorting their boss back to the rest area.

Some spectators who had come to support Zhen Zhen cheered quietly. This was the first time a Chinese automaker had tied with the established company XA. The sense of shared honor infected the surrounding area, making the scene lively.

Compared to the relaxed atmosphere outside, Gary was completely furious in the rest area. He viciously used every insulting word imaginable to fiercely scold the engineers standing in silent submission, also smashing quite a few things to vent his anger.

“I spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year just to raise a bunch of useless people like you? You can’t even beat a woman?” He aggressively pounded the table. “Why can her car achieve this level, and yet none of you noticed?”

The technical director, who bore the brunt of the scolding, struggled to defend himself: “Since last year, Tianfeng stopped using our open-source algorithm. At the time, we applied for the research center to obtain their algorithm model…”

However, the matter was casually dismissed. XA, resting at the pinnacle of global technology, never imagined that Tianfeng had not only developed an independent algorithm but had also matched them in three-dimensional spatial calculation speed.

“Idiotic! Utterly idiotic!” Gary didn’t remember the incident, but even if he had seen the application at the time, his attitude would likely have been as dismissive as it was now. “Finishing one test track is nothing, but I want to see that woman kneel and beg for mercy in the afternoon’s speed race!”

Several XA technical staff exchanged glances, all showing a degree of helplessness. After a moment, a bespectacled man suggested: “Perhaps we can try to apply for that track. Her car is lighter, which will affect the speed during cornering. But the organizing committee…”

“No buts…” Gary said fiercely. “No matter what method you use, you must secure that track for me. Would the organizing committee be crazy enough to favor a Chinese person?”

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