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

4:00 AM. Majuqiao Industrial Park.

The deathly silence in Xinfutong's office, which was filled with the smell of mildew and stale smoke, was broken.

"I won't do it."

Xie Yu crumpled the sticky note that read "The world is rotten" into a ball and threw it into the trash can.

He put his worn-out headphones back on, pulled the hoodie over his head, and said, "I'd be crazy to work for you. Do you know what kind of project this is?"

He pointed to the jumbled old code on the screen.

"This acquiring system was written in Java five years ago. Its architecture is so outdated that it's like trying to do calculus with an abacus. You want me to figure out how to make it handle tens of millions of concurrent users at Weiguang? That's like trying to put a rocket booster on a low-speed electric car."

Xie Yu rolled his eyes, turned around and unplugged the main unit's power supply. "It'll explode, blowing everyone and everything to smithereens."

"If you don't do it, you'll go to jail."

Lin Che leaned against the dusty filing cabinet, holding the newly signed checkbook in his hand. His tone was as calm as if he were reading an instruction manual. "The legal representative of this company has just been changed to my name, but you are still the technical head. If Weiguang's funding chain breaks tomorrow, triggering systemic financial risks, as a core technical staff member, do you think the cyber police will arrest me first, or you, the coder?"

Xie Yu's hand, which was about to unplug the power cord, froze in mid-air.

He turned around, looking at the man in the expensive suit in disbelief: "You...you've kidnapped me!"

"This is a partnership."

Lin Che walked over, ripped off his headphones, and threw them on the table.

"Besides, who said we were going to use this crappy system?"

Lin Che took a USB drive out of his pocket and slapped it in front of Xie Yu.

That's the core interface documentation for Microlight.

"What we need to do is not repair this 'old man's car,' but remove its 'license plate' and weld it onto the 'rocket' with the faint light."

"I want you to rewrite the underlying gateway, abandon UnionPay's old channel, and directly connect to 'NetUnion'."

Upon hearing the words "Internet Connection," Xie Yu's previously cloudy eyes suddenly flickered.

For payment programmers, it's a legendary battlefield.

It is a national-level financial infrastructure, which is said to be able to handle the traffic of all non-bank payment institutions in China, with a concurrent volume of "hundreds of millions".

"Network Connect..." Xie Yu muttered to himself, his Adam's apple bobbing. "But the Network Connect's interface protocol is extremely complex, and its latency requirements are in the millisecond range. With just these few crappy servers?"

"I've already had the servers moved from the headquarters of Weiguang, and they're on their way."

Lin Che stared into his eyes, like a devil peddling forbidden fruit. "Plenty of hardware, plenty of Red Bull, plenty of money. I'll just ask you one question—do you dare to dig an underground tunnel to the central bank right under the noses of the four major banks within 48 hours?"

Xie Yu looked at Lin Che, then at the USB drive.

A sickly flush slowly appeared on his face, which had been pale from years of exposure to monitor radiation.

It was the kind of excitement a madman feels when he encounters someone like him.

"Oh shit."

Xie Yu grabbed the USB drive, plugged it into the computer, and pounded the keyboard with his fingers. "Turn the air conditioning to the lowest setting! Get me a case of Red Bull! If you dare cut off the power, I'll kill you!"

……

Countdown: 40 hours.

More than a dozen top-of-the-line blade servers were transported to this dilapidated building overnight and piled up in the corridor and at the entrance to the toilet, because the server room was simply too full.

The makeshift cooling system consisted of just a few industrial fans blowing wildly at the server rack.

"Buzzing—"

The loud wind noise made my eardrums throb.

Xie Yu sat cross-legged on the swivel chair, his hands seemingly playing a death metal tune.

The sound of the mechanical keyboard striking the keys was so dense that it formed a continuous line, with almost no discernible intervals.

He has already entered "working" mode.

Li Wenbo, along with several core technical personnel who had rushed from headquarters, found themselves relegated to assisting this disheveled young man.

"The message format is wrong! The 8583 message field definition of NetsUnion is different from that of UnionPay!" Xie Yu roared without turning his head. "Field 48 needs to be re-encapsulated! Escape all those damn special characters!"

"But the documentation says..." a senior architect at Weiguang tried to argue.

"Documents are for humans to read, code is for machines to run!" Xie Yu grabbed a can of Red Bull, tilted his head back, and chugged it down. He crushed the can and threw it behind him, where it had already piled up into a small aluminum mountain. "Change it the way I say! Hurry up if you don't want to die!"

Lin Che sat on a worn-out sofa in the corner, with a laptop on his lap, monitoring the rate at which the funds were being lost from the pool.

The countdown in the bottom right corner of the screen is like a Damocles' sword hanging over your head.

39:15:22

Cost of funds: 12 billion.

This isn't just writing code; it's burning money to keep warm.

Countdown: 24 hours.

It was already late the next night.

Xie Yu's eyes were bloodshot, frighteningly red.

His lips were chapped and peeling.

"Kernel recompilation failed!"

A large number of red error messages popped up on the screen.

"Hold!"

Xie Yu slammed his fist on the keyboard, sending several keycaps flying.

He grabbed his hair, letting out a beast-like growl, "Memory leak...where? Where is it?!"

Li Wenbo, sweating profusely, said anxiously, "Why don't you take a break? You've been typing for 20 hours straight; your brain will go numb."

"Rest my ass!" Xie Yu whirled around, his eyes contorted with rage. "There's still half the routing table written! If we stop now, all the previous logic will be messed up! Give me a cigarette! Hurry up!"

Lin Che walked over, handed him a cigarette, and lit it for him.

"Don't rush." ​​Lin Che's hand was steady, and the flame didn't flicker at all. "You're making history. History doesn't stop because of a memory leak."

Xie Yu took a deep drag on his cigarette; the nicotine's stimulation calmed his trembling fingers slightly.

He stared at the tens of thousands of lines of code on the screen, and suddenly his eyes lit up.

"Found it... it was a pointer out of bounds error."

He threw away his cigarette butt and lunged back at the keyboard, yelling, "I knew it was you, you bastard! Die!"

Countdown: 5 hours.

The darkest moment.

Everyone was teetering on the edge of their physical and mental limits.

Li Wenbo had already fallen asleep against the corner of the wall, still holding his laptop in his hands.

Only Xie Yu was still knocking.

He slowed down, but each strike became heavier.

"President Lin..." Xie Yu's voice was so hoarse it was almost inaudible, "We've reached the last mile. We need to start conducting end-to-end stress testing. If we can't withstand it, all our previous efforts will be in vain."

Lin Che stood up and walked to the rows of roaring servers.

"start."

As the Enter key is pressed.

The simulated concurrent traffic of tens of millions of users instantly flooded into this new system.

"CPU usage is 80%..."

"90%..."

"98%!"

All the fans were roaring wildly, and the temperature in the server room soared instantly, with waves of heat hitting you.

"Warning! Database connection pool is full!"

"Gateway latency spiked to 500ms!"

Xie Yu's ten fingers blurred across the keyboard as he adjusted parameters in real time, much like maneuvering a ship about to fall apart in a storm.

"Hold on!!" he roared. "Anyone who dares to collapse, I'll tear them apart and sell them as scrap metal!"

It was a kind of tragic madness.

Countdown: 15 minutes.

All tests passed.

But the most crucial step is here—the live network switch.

The goal is to instantly switch the massive traffic of Weiguang Payment from the channels of the four major banks to this newly built "single-plank bridge" leading to the central bank's online payment platform.

If it fails, the data will be lost, and the glimmer of light will die instantly.

"Li Wenbo, wake up!"

Lin Che kicked Li Wenbo's shoe.

Li Wenbo suddenly woke up, wiped the drool from his mouth, and looked around blankly.

"Prepare to switch over."

Lin Che walked to the control panel.

On the screen, on the left is the bank channel displaying "403 Forbidden", and on the right is a dark network channel.

"Xie Yu, are you ready?"

Xie Yu slumped in the chair, his hands hanging limply at his sides, looking like a man who had just finished a marathon.

But his eyes were surprisingly bright.

"As long as the online payment system doesn't reject it, my code will be fine." Xie Yu grinned, revealing a row of teeth stained yellow from smoking. "President Lin, go ahead and press the button. Send those bank bastards on their way."

Lin Che stretched out his finger and hovered it above the red [Switch] button.

With this one finger, it's either hell or a new world.

All sound seemed to have vanished. Only the ticking of the wall clock remained.

00:14:59

Lin Che pressed down hard without hesitation.

"Click".

The image on the screen froze for a second.

This one second felt like an eternity.

The green data stream cascaded down like a waterfall, instantly filling the entire screen.

"It's connected!!!"

Li Wenbo let out a scream, jumped up, and hugged the server rack next to him, kissing it wildly.

"We're connected to the internet! We've bypassed the banks! Transaction success rate...100%!"

Cheers erupted in the cramped office.

Several key technical personnel broke down in tears, a release of their pent-up emotions after surviving a disaster.

Xie Yu stared at the screen filled with green, his lips twitched a few times, and he wanted to laugh, but suddenly his eyes rolled back and he slid straight off the chair.

"Xie Yu!"

Lin Che reacted quickly and grabbed him.

The kid had completely collapsed from exhaustion and passed out, but he was still clutching that half-empty can of Red Bull tightly in his hand.

Lin Che placed him on the tattered sofa and covered him with his own coat.

Then, Lin Che turned around and looked at the big screen.

There, the red countdown finally stopped ticking, freezing at 00:09:23.

Next to the countdown is a brand new, green, and upward-trending trading curve.

It is no longer subject to any single bank; it is directly connected to the heart of the national financial system.

Lin Che took his phone out of his pocket.

The signal is at full strength.

He dialed that familiar number—the number that had shut him out not long ago.

The phone rang twice before being answered.

"Feed?" Liu Guoqiang's voice carried a hint of sleepiness, perhaps also the contentment of waiting for news of victory. "Who is it?"

Lin Che looked out the window at the gradually emerging dawn.

Its daybreak.

"Good morning, President Liu."

Lin Che's voice was soft, yet it carried a chilling pleasure.

"This is Lin Che. I'm calling specifically to let you know that the system maintenance for Weiguang is complete."

"Also, please be informed that starting today, Weiguang Payment will no longer require your bank's interface."

"See you at the Internet Alliance from now on."