The richest man started taking advantage of loopholes after joining Alibaba.

Shenzhen.

Huaqiangbei.

This is a place where even the air is filled with the smell of solder and silicone grease.

As the "heart" of China's electronics industry, this place handles hundreds of millions of chips, motherboards, and components every day.

Nowadays.

The air in SEG Plaza was exceptionally hot.

"That's it?"

A purchasing agent wearing a plaid shirt was slapping the counter, sweating profusely.

"Didn't we have five hundred tickets yesterday? How come there aren't any today?"

The shopkeeper was a shrewd Chaoshan man.

He pressed buttons rapidly on the calculator without looking up, and said:

"Don't even mention five hundred."

"Right now, you can't even find a single GTX 980 in the entire Huaqiangbei area."

"Just half an hour ago, a mysterious buyer swept up all the inventory on the market."

The buyer was stunned.

"They swept them all? That's tens of thousands of tickets! Who has such a big budget?"

The boss finally raised his head.

His eyes held a look of astonishment that seemed to have seen through the ways of the world.

"Who else could it be?"

"That crazy guy who just raised 10 billion US dollars."

................

Weiguang Building.

Underground warehouse.

Heavy trucks are unloading cargo.

Those boxes of graphics cards, emblazoned with the green NVIDIA logo, resembled heavy gold bricks stacked into a high wall.

Lin Che stood in front of the pile of goods.

He held a graphics card in his hand, his fingertips gently stroking the cold heatsink fins.

"Boss."

The hardware supplier stood aside, wiping away cold sweat, his face a mixture of fawning and bewilderment.

This is the third batch already.

"What... exactly are you trying to do?"

The supplier lowered his voice and asked mysteriously:

"Are we going to mine that... Bitcoin?"

2016 years.

Bitcoin has just experienced a surge, with its price breaking through $400.

For many speculators, there is no other reason than mining to hoard graphics cards.

Lin Che smiled.

He put the graphics card back in the box, a hint of mockery in his eyes.

"Mining?"

"Let others scramble for those petty profits that depend on the weather."

He turned around and looked at the warehouse full of computing power reserves.

In his eyes.

This is not a graphics card at all.

This is the oil of the future.

It is the ticket to the era of artificial intelligence.

It is the steam engine of the next industrial revolution.

"What I'm going to do."

Lin Che's voice was deep and resonant, echoing in the empty warehouse.

"It's about turning this computing power into the cloud."

"Turn into rain."

"To become the air and water that every internet company cannot do without."

The supplier couldn't understand.

But he understood the voice of money.

"Understood! Understood! Mr. Lin's insight is brilliant!"

"As long as you pay, I'll get you not only graphics cards, but even lithography machines!"

................

The hardware is in place.

It also needs a soul.

Beijing, Zhongguancun.

A corner of a run-down coffee shop.

Wang Jian pushed up his thick black-rimmed glasses, his hair was a mess like a bird's nest, and his T-shirt was already faded from washing.

He is a genius.

He's a madman too.

At his previous internet giant, he was considered a fraud by all the executives because he insisted on developing his own cloud computing technology.

They laughed at him for burning money.

They mocked him for daydreaming.

Ultimately, he was marginalized and became frustrated and unfulfilled.

"President Lin."

Wang Jian looked at the young man sitting opposite him, his voice a little hoarse.

"Do you really want to be a cloud?"

Do you know what that means?

"That means you have to burn through billions to build a data center before you even have a single user."

"This means you'll be facing technological blockades from international giants like Oracle and IBM."

"It means...you might die a horrible death."

He is a technician.

He doesn't make empty promises; he only lays out the harshest reality.

Lin Che took a sip of coffee.

very bitter.

But he liked the taste.

"Dr. Wang."

Lin Che put down his cup and took out a black card from his pocket.

That was the highest-level financial card of the Weiguang Group.

"At that company, they called you crazy."

"But here with me."

Lin Che pushed the card in front of Wang Jian.

"I call you Pioneer."

Wang Jian was stunned.

He looked at the card, then at Lin Che's sincere and fervent eyes.

"This card has no limit."

Lin Che's voice was soft, yet it was like a heavy hammer, shattering the long-frozen ice in Wang Jian's heart.

No matter what others say about you.

"No matter how much money we have to burn."

"I need you to build the underlying architecture of Weiguang Cloud within three months."

"It's not about saving money."

"So that in future wars, no one can hold us by the throat."

Wang Jian's hands were trembling.

His heart was already riddled with wounds due to long-term misunderstanding.

But at the moment.

A chilling feeling, like the saying "A scholar will die for one who understands him," surged up my spine to the top of my head.

He suddenly grabbed the card.

Her eyes welled up with tears.

"Three months."

Wang Jian gritted his teeth, his voice trembling with tears, yet also carrying a resolute and ruthless edge.

Give me three months.

"If it can't be built."

"I jumped off the roof of the Weiguang Building."

Lin Che smiled.

He stretched out his hand.

"No need to jump off a building."

"If we fail, we'll go begging together."

................

Three months later.

Guizhou.

Deep in the mountains.

This is the core area of ​​karst landforms, with continuous mountains and swirling clouds and mist.

A huge natural cave entrance was blocked by several heavy steel gates.

There are no signs here.

There were only fully armed security personnel and tireless patrolling drones.

"Boom!"

The massive ventilation system was running, emitting a low-frequency noise that sounded like the breathing of a giant beast sleeping underground.

Lin Che and Wang Jian walked on the suspended steel walkway.

feet.

It is a bottomless cave.

In the heart of that cave, there should have been stalactites and an underground river.

now.

Tens of thousands of black server racks were lined up.

They stood in neat rows, like a silent army.

Tens of thousands of server indicator lights flashed simultaneously, converging into a sea of ​​deep blue light.

That is an ocean of computing power.

"Utilizing the natural low temperature of the cave and the circulation of groundwater for cooling."

Wang Jian pointed at the server racks, his eyes filled with fervor as if he were introducing his own children.

"Our PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) value has dropped to 1.1."

"This is world-class level."

"Even Google and Amazon's data centers don't save as much electricity as ours."

Saves electricity.

This means a cost advantage.

This means that in the future "battle of a thousand live streaming platforms," ​​Weiguang Cloud can offer prices that will leave all competitors in despair.

Lin Che leaned on the railing, looking down at the blue sea of ​​light.

A cold wind blew in from the cave entrance, carrying with it moisture and the ozone smell unique to electronic devices.

It smells good.

"listen."

Lin Che closed his eyes.

"Did you hear that?"

Wang Jian was taken aback.

"What did you hear? The sound of a fan?"

"No."

Lin Che opened his eyes, a greedy smile curving his lips.

"This is the sound of money flowing."

"This is the sound of the old world collapsing and the new world being built."

This moment.

He is no longer a businessman.

He was a warlord who stockpiled weapons during a time of chaos.

Those flashing lights are the bullets in his warehouse.

Every GPU is like a cannon ready to fire.

................

control center.

This is the brain of the entire cave.

On dozens of huge screens, dazzling data was displayed.

Weiguang Cloud has officially launched.

Although it is not yet open to the public, the internal recommendation algorithm and logistics scheduling system have all been migrated to this cloud.

"Boss, look at this."

Wang Jian suddenly pointed to a corner of the screen and frowned.

That displays the recommendation algorithm logs for the Weiguang APP.

"What's wrong?"

Lin Che leaned closer.

"That's strange."

Wang Jian pushed up his glasses, a hint of confusion in his eyes.

"The logic we set for the algorithm is to recommend products based on the user's browsing history."

"but……"

He brought up a piece of backend code.

That piece of code was constantly modifying and reorganizing itself.

"It seems to be... evolving."

"After processing the massive amount of behavioral data from 200 million users on New Year's Eve, it began to find patterns on its own."

"Look here."

Wang Jian pointed to a line of data.

"It recommended a beer and diaper combination to a male user who had never bought diapers before."

"According to our logic, this is a flawed recommendation."

"but."

"The success rate... is 100%."

Lin Che's heart skipped a beat.

Beer and diapers.

This is a classic case in the field of data mining.

But that usually requires human analysts to discover patterns and then write them into code.

And now.

This newly born "micro-light brain" figured out this principle on its own without any human intervention.

"and."

Wang Jian's voice became somewhat hoarse.

"Its code execution efficiency is 20% higher than the optimized version written by our engineers."

"It's devouring data."

"And use this data to make yourself smarter."

on the screen.

That line of code, representing the core of the algorithm, is still constantly changing and mutating.

It's as if it has a life of its own.

It's like a fetus that's restless in the womb.

Lin Che stared at the cursor.

A chill ran from the soles of my feet straight to my head, but what followed was an even greater ecstasy.

Artificial intelligence.

In this life, he made advance arrangements for massive GPU computing power and fed the algorithm with real data from 200 million users.

The "singularity" that was originally supposed to appear a few years later.

It seems... it's ahead of schedule.

"It's alive?"

Lin Che asked softly.

There was no fear in his voice, only a kind of premonition like that of a creator.

Wang Jian swallowed.

"Technically speaking, it is still only weak artificial intelligence."

"But its learning speed..."

"Too fast."

"It's like a ravenous beast, frantically digesting every single byte of information."

Lin Che reached out and gently touched the cold screen with his fingers.

It's as if I want to touch that awakening digital soul through this glass.

"Then feed it well."

A ruthless glint flashed in Lin Che's eyes.

"Make all of Microlight's business data available to it."

"Logistics data, payment data, social data..."

"Feed it all."

"I want to see what it will grow into."

Wang Jian looked at Lin Che.

He suddenly felt that the man in front of him was even more terrifying than the evolving AI.

Because he wasn't afraid of losing control at all.

He was even anticipating things getting out of control.

"Boss... what if it..."

"There's no 'what if'."

Lin Che turned around, his back to the screen, and looked out at the deep cavern.

in the dark.

Those tens of thousands of blue lights were like dormant eyes, silently watching the crazed master and servant.

"Computing power is power."

"Intelligence is a weapon."

"While others were still hacking at each other with swords."

Lin Che opened his palm and then clenched it tightly.

"We have already built a nuclear bomb."

"Dr. Wang."

"Guard this place."

"This is the trump card of the glimmer of light, and also the center of the future world."

................

When we came out of the cave.

It was already dark.

In the deep mountains of Guizhou, the starry sky is dazzling.

Lin Che glanced back at the tightly closed steel gate.

Who would have thought.

Deep underground, in this desolate place.

A specter powerful enough to alter the course of human history is quietly awakening.

It is no longer just simple code.

It is a monster lurking in the shadow of computing power.

And Lin Che.

It's the one holding the chains.

At least for now.

"Let's go."

Lin Che got into the car.

"Back to the company."

"Now that we have enough ammunition, let's get the guns ready."

"It's time..."

"They've gone to harvest those pigs who do live streaming."