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

Wanliu Academy, Haidian District, Beijing.

The study was dimly lit, with only a floor lamp on.

Lin Che sat in the ergonomic chair, his legs crossed and resting on the edge of the red oak desk.

He was holding a whiskey glass, the ice ball striking the glass with a crisp "ding".

In front of him was a monitoring wall composed of four 4K monitors.

On the central screen, Inke's data backend is being refreshed rapidly.

Real-time concurrency: 82,000,000

Bandwidth usage: 29.8 Tbps

Server load: 65% (healthy)

"Boss, that's eighty-two million."

Shen Nan stood by the desk, his voice a little dry.

He stared at the constantly fluctuating number, feeling as if he were staring at a money printing machine.

"Tencent Cloud has completely crashed. Right now, all the network traffic is pouring into our network."

Shen Nan swallowed hard, turned to look at Lin Che, his eyes filled with barely suppressed excitement.

"Should we... take the initiative to contact Douyu?"

"After all, if we keep pushing like this, our redundancy will run out. If we can use this as leverage to negotiate a good price with Tencent..."

"No."

Lin Che interrupted him.

He took a sip of the cold whiskey, the spicy liquid sliding down his throat and bringing a burning sensation.

"Shen Nan, you'll remember this."

Lin Che put down his wine glass and tapped his fingertips lightly on the table, the rhythm slow and steady.

In business, what comes to you on your own initiative is called "buying and selling".

"But when someone is dying, waiting for them to kneel down and beg you, that's called 'charity'."

"When buying and selling, you need to discuss the price."

"Giving alms doesn't require discussing prices. Whatever you give, that's what they have to eat."

Shen Nan paused for a moment, looking at Lin Che's profile, which was flickering in and out under the blue light of the monitor.

calm.

Even cold-blooded.

At that moment, he suddenly felt that the boss in front of him, who was even younger than himself, was just like an old hunter lurking in the grass.

He could already smell the blood flowing from his prey's wound, but he wasn't in a hurry to pounce.

He is waiting.

Wait until the prey has bled to the last drop and lost all strength to resist.

"But..." Shen Nan glanced at the time, "If we don't save them, Douyu might really die tonight. By then, Tencent Cloud will have reacted and mobilized resources to hold them off..."

"Tencent Cloud can't hold on."

Lin Che chuckled lightly, his eyes radiating absolute confidence.

"That's a physical congestion, like pouring water from the Yangtze River into a sewer. The only solution is to replace it with a thicker pipe."

"And now, I am the only one in all of China who holds this pipe."

The voice just fell.

The black cell phone that Lin Che had deliberately placed in the most conspicuous position on the upper right corner of the desk suddenly lit up.

The screen did not display a name, only an unfamiliar number from "Wuhan, Hubei".

But both people present knew who it was.

That was Chen Shaojie's distress signal.

Shen Nan subconsciously reached for his phone.

"Don't move."

Lin Che spoke calmly.

"Make him wait."

Shen Nan's hand froze in mid-air.

The ringtone echoed in the quiet study.

A sound.

Two sounds.

Third tone.

Lin Che stared at the flickering screen, as if he could see through it the anxious, desperate, and even collapsing face of the man on the other end of the phone.

He counted silently in his mind.

In my past life, during the S6 World Championship, as an ordinary viewer, I also cursed in front of my computer because of lag.

At that time, Chen Shaojie was in the prime of his life, standing at the entrance of Nasdaq, enjoying the cheers of capital.

And now.

Offense and defense can easily shift.

……

……

Wuhan, Douyu Command Center.

Chen Shaojie's knuckles turned white as he gripped his phone.

Each long "beep" sound was like a dull knife, repeatedly sawing and grinding against his nerves.

I haven't answered yet.

Why aren't you answering?

Was he sleeping? Or was he doing it on purpose?

Sweat streamed down his forehead and into his eyes, stinging painfully, but he dared not blink, afraid of missing the moment the call would connect.

The surrounding noise seemed to have faded away.

The shouts of the operations director, the ringing of the customer service phone, the beeping of the alarm... all the sounds became a blurry background noise.

In his world, all that remained was the monotonous sound of waiting in his ears.

"Please answer...please...answer it..."

Chen Shaojie cried out humbly in his heart.

If this call doesn't go through, when the sun rises tomorrow, Douyu will no longer be a unicorn valued at tens of billions, but a joke abandoned by the times.

Investors will withdraw their funds, users will leave, and competitors will devour their corpses like vultures.

Just as he was about to despair and was about to hang up and redial,

Sudden.

The waiting tone in the receiver disappeared.

Instead, there was a very faint electrical hum and the crisp sound of ice cubes hitting a glass.

pass!

Chen Shaojie's heart clenched suddenly, the feeling like a drowning person grabbing onto the last piece of driftwood.

But when he opened his mouth, his throat seemed to be blocked, and he couldn't make a sound.

What should I say?

An apology? Begging for forgiveness? Or business negotiations?

Before he could think of what to say, a lazy voice came from the other end of the phone.

"Feed? Who?"

There was no emotion in that voice.

There was no surprise, no anger, not even a ripple of emotion.

It felt like receiving a harassing phone call from an insurance salesperson.

Chen Shaojie felt a burning pain in his cheeks.

He knew Lin Che was pretending to be stupid.

The entire internet is experiencing an earthquake. As the owner of Weiguang Cloud, how could he not know that Douyu has crashed?

But that is precisely Lin Che's brilliance.

He was forcing himself to speak.

I forced myself to tear my dignity apart and hand it over.

"Mr. Lin... Mr. Lin."

Chen Shaojie took a deep breath, his voice trembling.

"I am Chen Shaojie, Chen Shaojie from Douyu."

There was a two-second silence on the other end of the phone.

That silence is more painful than any insult.

"Oh, Mr. Chen."

Lin Che's voice finally carried a hint of laughter, but that laughter sounded chillingly cold.

"It's so late, what can I do for you? If you want to talk about the acquisition we discussed last time, I'm busy right now, I'm watching a game, although... I can't see very clearly, it's all spinning around."

Satire.

A blatant satire.

Chen Shaojie's fists were clenched so tightly that his nails dug into his flesh.

"President Lin, let's not beat around the bush."

Chen Shaojie gritted his teeth and spat out each word almost one by one.

"Douyu crashed because Tencent Cloud's backbone network was blocked."

"I need bandwidth now."

"Abundant, readily available, high-quality bandwidth."

"I know you do."

After saying those words, Chen Shaojie felt as if all the strength had been drained from his body.

He admitted defeat.

He bowed down to the "coal miner" he once looked down upon.

The sound of a lighter being lit came from the other end of the phone.

"Sizzle—"

Then came a deep inhale.

Lin Che didn't seem to be in a hurry. He slowly exhaled a puff of smoke before speaking.

"Mr. Chen, this is a difficult situation."

"As you know, graphics card prices have gone up recently, electricity prices have gone up, and tonight's data usage... you've seen it too, Inke is also struggling."

"My computing power is all reserved for VIP clients."

Lin Che paused, his tone revealing a businessman's shrewdness and mercenary nature.

"Even the landlord's family doesn't have any surplus grain."

Chen Shaojie closed his eyes.

He understood.

All that talk about running out of food or being in dire straits is utter nonsense.

This is blatant price gouging.

But he had no choice.

"Mr. Lin, name your price."

Chen Shaojie spoke into the phone in a low voice, as if he were talking to himself.

"As long as you can immediately take over the traffic and restore the live stream."

"I'll pay any price."

In the study.

Lin Che looked at the Douyu traffic curve on the big screen, which had completely dropped to zero, and a cruel smile appeared on his lips.

The fish has taken the bait.

Moreover, it was swallowed whole, hook and line included.

He gestured to Shen Nan.

Shen Nan understood immediately and opened a pre-prepared electronic contract on his laptop.

The contract was named "Douyu Live Streaming Emergency Rescue and Exclusive Strategic Cooperation Agreement".

The contract had already been on the hard drive for three days.

Lin Che spoke into the phone in a relaxed tone, as if he were discussing what to have for supper that night.

"Mr. Chen is straightforward."

"Since this is an emergency, talking about money would be vulgar."

"However..."

"You know the current bandwidth situation."

That's the price for seafood.