The venue was utterly silent, the air terrifyingly still.
Affected by that suffocating silence, the tall, thin, bespectacled man giving the presentation onstage involuntarily stopped speaking, suddenly unsure whether he should continue.
At last, someone broke the silence.
"What's your name?"
The one who asked was Maybury, Intel's CTO, seated in the front row.
His gaze darted twice between the PPT on the screen and the man onstage before he finally asked the question.
Seeing an industry titan actually speaking to an insignificant nobody like himself, the presenter was instinctively delighted. But he quickly realized he was still in the middle of a presentation and nodded.
"...He Hai, an engineer in Huawei's R&D department."
He Hai?
Maybury silently spelled the name out in his head. He frowned and thought for a long time, but could not recall ever hearing or seeing that name before.
Finally, having gotten nowhere after racking his brains, he gave up wasting time on that insignificant question. His eyes locked firmly onto the man named He Hai as he lowered his voice.
"Your name isn't important."
He Hai: "???"
Wasn't it you who asked?
Without realizing what was wrong with his words, Maybury pushed up his glasses and continued unhurriedly.
"I noticed that you just mentioned carbon-based chips. Combined with the contents of this PPT, may I understand this as Huawei conveying a message to both academia and industry in integrated circuit design—that you have already made a breakthrough in carbon-based chip technology?"
Strictly speaking, the presentation was only halfway through, and the Q&A session was still far off. Maybury's decision to engage the presenter now was somewhat disrespectful to both the speaker and the other attendees.
But there were exceptions to everything.
At this moment, almost no one frowned at his behavior, because everyone wanted