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

Zhichun Road, Haidian District.

Yingdu Building.

Two o'clock in the morning.

In Beijing's folding space, this is the entrance to another dimension.

Even late at night, the building was still brightly lit, like a reactor running at full speed.

The CEO's office at Toutiao.

Zhang Yiming sat in an ergonomic chair, holding a can of sugar-free cola in his hand.

It is not open.

The condensation on the aluminum can dripped through his fingers and onto the desk. He didn't wipe it.

His eyes were fixed on the MacBook screen in front of him.

A video is playing on a loop on the screen: the Water Cube, a deep blue background, Lin Che standing in the center of the stage, with the rotating "Micro-Light Brain" behind him, and the chilling slogan - "Understanding yourself better than you understand yourself".

"Smack."

Zhang Yiming pressed the space bar. The screen froze on Lin Che's extremely aggressive smile.

"Is this what you call 'just a publicity stunt'?"

Zhang Yiming's voice was flat, revealing no emotion.

The vice president of product sitting opposite him kept his head down, not daring to respond.

A week ago, when Weiguang Cloud won the bet against AlphaGo, there was still internal discussion at ByteDance about whether it was just a PR stunt.

After all, Go is far removed from business.

But tonight, when Microlight Brain was launched and the news of its $5 million funding round spread throughout the venture capital world, no one could laugh anymore.

"Visual recognition, label reconstruction, dopamine flow."

Zhang Yiming pushed up his glasses.

The blue light from the screen reflected off his glasses, obscuring the emotions in his eyes.

"Lin Che not only understands technology, he understands human nature."

"Mr. Zhang," the vice president began cautiously, "Weiguang's main focus this time is 'You May Like,' which clashes with our recommendation algorithm logic. However, they haven't done news and information, so... it shouldn't threaten Toutiao's core user base for the time being?"

"Core base?"

Zhang Yiming slammed the Coke can heavily on the table.

"If you only focus on the news, you've already lost."

He stood up and walked to the whiteboard.

The whiteboard was covered with formulas and code. That was the recommendation algorithm logic that Toutiao was so proud of.

But tonight, Zhang Yiming felt that this was not enough.

"Users' attention span is constant."

Zhang Yiming picked up a pen and drew a circle on the whiteboard.

"There are 24 hours in a day. Aside from sleeping and working, the remaining 4 hours are a battleground where internet giants fight for supremacy."

"WeChat took up 2 hours, games took up 1 hour, and the remaining 1 hour was originally ours."

"But now, Lin Che has arrived with his 'Micro-Light Brain'."

The pen tip made a piercing noise as it scratched across the whiteboard.

"He doesn't do journalism because journalism requires thinking."

"What he wants to do is... a purer kind of thrill."

Zhang Yiming turned around, his eyes as cold as a sophisticated calculator.

"Investigate. Use all your connections to investigate what product Lin Che is going to launch with this $5 million. I don't believe he just wants to create a 'shopping guide website'."

The vice president quickly took notes: "We've already sent people to inquire, but the level of secrecy is extremely high. I heard... they're acquiring a large number of music copyrights."

"music?"

Zhang Yiming was stunned for a moment.

My brain is working at lightning speed.

Algorithm + visual recognition + music.

These three keywords collided and combined in Zhang Yiming's mind.

Suddenly, a bolt of lightning flashed.

He thought of Musical.ly, which was just starting out abroad, and Kuaishou, which was barely surviving in China.

Damn it.

Zhang Yiming rarely lost his composure. But at this moment, his pupils suddenly contracted.

"He wants to cut short videos."

"And it's not like Kuaishou's 'record life' videos, it's... short music videos."

If so, then Microlight Brain's "visual tags" and "recommendation algorithm" are the nuclear weapons tailor-made for this product.

"quick."

Zhang Yiming grabbed the internal telephone on the table, his fingers turning white from gripping it so tightly.

"Notify Zhang Lidong, Chen Lin, and all engineers at T3 level and above in the algorithm lab to assemble in the conference room in ten minutes."

"Mr. Zhang, it's so late..."

"Is it too late?"

Zhang Yiming glanced at the pitch-black night outside the window.

"We are already a generation behind."

"If we don't act now, we will have nowhere to go in three months."

……

……

Ten minutes later.

The largest conference room at Toutiao.

Dozens of sleepy-eyed executives and key technical personnel were urgently recalled.

But the moment they saw Zhang Yiming's expression, everyone snapped back to reality.

They had never seen this rational CEO with such a stern expression.

"Stop all non-core projects at hand."

Without wasting words, Zhang Yiming issued wartime orders directly.

"The weighting of 'Huoshan Short Video' has been reduced. We need to start from scratch."

He projected a few lines of text onto the projector.

Project code name: A.me

Core logic: Full-screen immersive experience + algorithm recommendation + music beat matching

Zhang Yiming stared at the elites below the stage.

"Welight has a first-mover advantage, the halo of AlphaGo, and $5 million in funding."

"But we have the best recommendation engine."

"Two weeks."

Zhang Yiming held up two fingers.

"I want to see a demo, and the product should be launched within a month."

"Lin Che wants to be the dealer? Then we'll flip his table."

This is a race.

In the wilderness of the internet, the second place gets no meat to eat and not even soup to drink.

……

……

at the same time.

The rooftop of the Weiguang Technology Building.

The wind was strong in the early morning, making the hem of my clothes flutter.

Lin Che stood by the railing, looking down at the night view of Beijing.

The city beneath my feet is an ocean of light. Under each lamp lies a soul yearning to be filled.

AlphaGo's popularity is slowly waning.

But this is just the beginning.

That "man vs. machine" battle was simply to prove the power of AI to the world and to obtain a ticket to the next era.

Now, the ticket is in hand, and the money is in the account.

The real massacre has only just begun.

"Boss."

Shen Nan draped a coat over Lin Che's shoulders.

"I just received news that Toutiao seems to have started making moves; Zhang Yiming held an emergency meeting late at night."

Lin Che did not turn around.

He looked in the direction of Zhichun Road. That was where the headquarters of Toutiao (ByteDance) was located.

The two buildings stand facing each other across half of Beijing.

They looked like two cowboys about to draw their guns.

"Zhang Yiming is a smart man."

Lin Che lit a cigarette. The embers flickered in the wind.

"He will definitely realize what we're going to do, he'll guess what we're planning to do, and he might even do it more thoroughly than we do."

"Then we..." Shen Nan said with some worry.

In its previous life, Douyin's rise was terrifying; it was a true traffic monster.

"Don't be afraid."

Lin Che took a deep drag of his cigarette, letting the nicotine spread through his lungs.

"He has the algorithm, but I have 'time'."

"I got a head start of three months."

"More importantly..." Lin Che's lips curled into a cruel smile, "I've blocked all the paths."

"Copyright, internet celebrities, and filter technology."

"When he finishes making the gun, he'll find..."

Lin Che flicked the cigarette butt into the air.

The red spark traced a parabola before plunging into the abyss.

"The bullets are all in my hands."