Rebirth: Starting from Lighting Up the Tech Tree

Chapter 20 Making the Move

The day after the final, Zuo Cheng did three things.

The first thing was to come up with a plan for how to use the 50,000 yuan seed fund.

Fifteen thousand was allocated to basic expenses after the incubator opened—office equipment, internet, printing supplies, and other miscellaneous but necessary items. Ten thousand was for legal and official fees for patent applications—two invention patents plus one software copyright, the costs of which were higher than he had anticipated. The remaining twenty-five thousand was set aside as working capital to cover operating expenses for the next three months.

Not much, but enough. The biggest taboo in the early stages of a startup is spending money recklessly. In his previous life, he had seen too many teams move into luxury office buildings as soon as they received funding, only to burn through all the money without ever developing a product.

Secondly, I took the award certificate and the incubator entry notice to the Administration for Industry and Commerce to register the company.

Company Name: Huaxia 402 Technology Co., Ltd. Legal Representative: Zuo Cheng. Five Shareholders: Zuo Cheng, Chen Hao, Zhang Lei, Liu Wei, and Fang Ze. Shareholding structure: Zuo Cheng and Chen Hao each hold 25%, the other three each hold 15%, and a 5% option pool is reserved.

Liu Wei's name is on the shareholder list.

This was something Zuo Cheng had planned from the very beginning. Not being on the competition team doesn't mean he's not a partner in the company—Liu Wei was one of the original four members of 402, and no one can replace him in that position.

When Liu Wei saw the shareholder agreement, he was stunned for a long time. Then he said, "Brother Cheng, wait for me. I'll go and book the restaurant for the celebration banquet." He turned around and left, walking much faster than usual.

Zhang Lei whispered from the side, "Wei Zi must be touched, right?"

"Shut up." Chen Hao pushed up his glasses.

The third thing is to process a system message.

On the screen, the completion notification for the side quest "The Road to Startups" was quietly waiting for him.

Side Quest Completed: The Road to Startups

[BGI New Talent Cup - First Prize (Exceeded Expectations: Target Top Three, Actual First Place)]

[Reward Distribution]

[Unlocking the Blades: Systems Engineering and Project Management ✓]

[Points +6, extra +2 for exceeding the target, total +8]

Current points: 31

Current blade count: 6/???

Thirty-one points. Six blades.

Exceeding the target earns an extra reward—this is the first time Zuo Cheng has triggered this mechanism. The system is encouraging him not only to "complete" the task, but to strive for "doing his best."

The new "Systems Engineering and Project Management" module offers a completely different knowledge flow compared to previous technical modules. Instead of formulas and algorithms, it introduces a comprehensive methodology for complex project management—requirements analysis, architecture design, risk management, resource scheduling, and quality control. Each module is supported by numerous practical case studies and decision-making frameworks.

Zuo Cheng closed his eyes and digested the information for a full five minutes.

This knowledge complemented his management experience accumulated in his previous life—his previous life's experience was more practical and intuitive, while the knowledge provided by the system was more systematic and methodological. After combining the two sets of knowledge, his understanding of "how to manage a project well" deepened.

After digesting the new knowledge, he opened the main quest chain panel.

[Main Quest Chain - Breaking the Communication Barrier - Stage Three Unlocked]

[Step 3: Optimize the algorithm based on actual test results, so that its performance indicators exceed those of Lanwan Communication's existing solutions by more than 30% in all scenarios of 5G network deployment.]

[Duration: 37 days (including 7 days for excellent reviews)]

[Reward for Stage 3: Unlock the blade's "Communication System Architecture", +12 points]

Zuo Cheng carefully read the mission description twice.

The key phrase is "full-scenario deployment".

Phase two of the field testing was completed on only one experimental base station, covering a single-site scenario. Phase three requires full-scenario coverage—dense urban areas, suburbs, highways, indoor coverage, and underground spaces—and all typical scenarios involved in Lanwan Communication's 5G network must meet the standards.

The difficulty level jumped by an order of magnitude.

The channel characteristics differ in each scenario—multipath effects are severe in densely populated urban areas, Doppler shift is significant on highways, and signal attenuation is drastic in underground spaces. A good performance on a single site does not guarantee consistent performance across all scenarios.

But Zuo Cheng already had a plan.

The 72-hour field test in Phase Two provided him with a wealth of real-world data, including channel variation patterns under different time periods and user densities. Using this data as a seed, combined with his newly acquired knowledge of communication systems engineering, he could design a scenario-adaptive mechanism—allowing the algorithm to automatically identify the current scenario type and then dynamically load the corresponding parameter configurations.

In layman's terms, it's about giving the algorithm a "transformation" capability—it switches to tunnel mode when entering a tunnel, and to high-speed mode when on a highway, with each mode specifically optimized for particular scenarios.

The difficulty of this approach lies not in optimizing individual scenarios, but in ensuring the smoothness of scenario transitions—there should be no performance slump when switching from one mode to another.

Zuo Cheng drew a preliminary architectural sketch on his notebook, then took a picture and sent it to the team group.

"The core task of stage three is the scene adaptation algorithm framework. This is my initial idea; please feel free to add anything."

Chen Hao was the first to reply: "I'll handle the scene recognition module. We can train a lightweight classifier using real-world test data."

Fang Ze replied more succinctly: "Leave the smoothness of scene transitions to me. Mode switching is essentially a state machine design for embedded systems; I've done something similar in microkernels."

Yu Ying was also in the group—Zuo Cheng had added her to the technical discussion group after the finals. She said, "I can help with the calibration of channel model parameters for various scenarios; numerical analysis is exactly my forte. But my first draft of the paper is also in its final stages, and we might need to coordinate on a timeline."

Zuo Cheng replied, "The thesis takes priority. You should finish the first draft first. For stage three, we'll build the framework in the first two weeks, and then you can focus on parameter calibration in the last two weeks."

Yu Ying replied with a "okay".

Zuo Cheng put down his phone, turned on his computer, created a new project folder, and named it "Sky Dome Preparation: Scene Adaptive Algorithm".

Sky Dome—this was the code name for the strategic project Zhou Henian mentioned. Zuo Cheng didn't know the specifics of Sky Dome, but he had a hunch: the "full-scenario deployment" required in Stage Three was likely the technical prerequisite for the Sky Dome project. Doing Stage Three well not only completed the main quest chain but also secured his entry ticket to the Sky Dome project.

Killing two birds with one stone. Or even three birds with one stone—if the scene adaptation algorithm is mature enough, it could also serve as 402 Technology's first commercial product.

He began typing the first line of the architecture document.

It was late autumn in November outside the window, and the ginkgo leaves on the Huaqiao University campus were turning a brilliant yellow. A gust of wind blew by, and the golden leaves fluttered down to the ground.

Zuo Cheng did not look out the window.

All he could see was the ever-brightening golden vein on the technology tree, and the branch at its end that hadn't been lit yet.

Thirty-seven days.

Step 3.

The final hurdle. Once you cross it, the branches will shine.