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

Shanghai-Hangzhou Expressway, returning home.

The GL8 is still the same GL8, and the air conditioner is still half broken, but there's a stack of document bags in the car now.

Xie Yu held the document bag on his lap. There were six exclusive sales agreements. He had visited six factories in three days, from Yongsheng Garment Factory to Xinyuan Knitting Factory in the next town, and then to three hardware and general merchandise factories on the edge of the Yiwu Small Commodities Industrial Belt.

All signed.

Lin Che's negotiation style was extremely brutal—he would investigate your private matters, report your debts, offer you a way out, and then force you to sign and put your fingerprint on the agreement.

Not a single factory manager could last more than twenty minutes.

Everyone in the car smells terrible; they haven't showered in three days. Their plaid shirts are covered in warehouse dust, roadside oil stains, and rust from some unknown factory.

Xu Mingyuan's shirt was missing its buttons and was held together with a cable tie he'd taken from the factory.

2:17 PM.

Chen Xuan's phone rang first.

It wasn't a phone call, it was an app pop-up.

The intense vibrations felt like a cell phone twitching.

She glanced down and her expression changed.

"President Lin."

Lin Che sat in the passenger seat with his eyes closed, as if he were taking a nap.

"President Lin!" Chen Xuan's voice rose a notch.

Lin Che opened his eyes.

"BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) has made an official announcement."

She handed her phone to the person in the front row; the screen was filled with red push notification banners, one after another popping up:

"The three giants have jointly launched a massive online cash subsidy program worth billions!"

"The biggest price war in history! Covering all product categories!"

"Double Twelve kicks off early! Get coupons for up to 500 yuan off!"

Xie Yu leaned over from the back row and saw the push notification; the color drained from his face.

"It's all over, it's all over, it's all over..." Xu Mingyuan began chanting.

Chen Xuan had already opened the backend data dashboard of Weiguang Mall, her fingers swiping rapidly, her face paling a little more with each swipe.

Traffic is declining.

Her voice was strained.

"How much did the real-time DAU drop?" Xie Yu asked.

"Only fifteen minutes after the official announcement... it's already dropped by twelve percent."

The car fell silent.

The sound barriers of the highway outside the window receded in sections, gray, just like the faces of everyone in the car.

The radio had switched stations by itself, and was playing GG's announcement: "Double Twelve is here! Billions in subsidies across the internet, get 50 off on orders over 100, and download to receive a 20 yuan no-minimum-spend coupon—"

Xu Mingyuan reached out and turned off the radio with a snap; he had used too much force, and the knob had come loose.

Xie Yu's phone also started vibrating.

Urgent messages kept coming from the Weiguang Mall operations department.

"Mr. Xie, the homepage UV dropped by 18% in just fifteen minutes!"

Search volume has plummeted! Users are all flocking to Taobao and JD.com!

"The subsidies are huge! They're giving every new user 20 yuan in cash, which can be withdrawn directly without any spending!"

Xie Yu held his phone, his palms sweating so much he could barely grip the plastic case and almost slipped it to the ground.

He looked at the passenger seat.

Lin Che sat there, his posture unchanged, his right hand on the car door armrest and his left hand on his knee.

No expression.

It wasn't the calm, expressionless kind; it was simply—no expression at all. Like the whole thing had nothing to do with him.

"President Lin," Xie Yu's voice was filled with barely suppressed urgency, "Shouldn't we go back? Go back now? Operations can't hold on anymore. This kind of 10 billion subsidy strategy... We do have 50 billion in our accounts, but if we follow suit—"

"Follow up on what?"

Lin Che finally spoke.

"Billions in subsidies! They're issuing coupons, we're issuing coupons too; they're offering discounts of 50, we're offering discounts of 60..."

"Then what?"

Xie Yu opened his mouth, but didn't say anything.

Then it's all about burning money.

Five hundred billion against one trillion, burned through in three months, leaving only an empty shell.

There's no need to calculate this.

"Have you ever thought about this?" Lin Che reclined his seat slightly, staring at a piece of fabric peeling off the roof, "What exactly is being distributed as subsidies?"

No one answered.

"Cash, real money. For every 20-yuan coupon issued by BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent), 20 yuan is deducted from their accounts. 100 million coupons would amount to 2 billion yuan. It's a one-off deal; once spent, it's gone."

He paused for a moment.

"So this style of play has a fatal flaw—it has a limit."

Chen Xuan's finger stopped on the data panel, and she looked up.

"Even the most money will eventually run out," Lin Che said slowly. "Ten billion sounds scary, but spread across all categories, all users, and the entire lifecycle, it won't last more than two months. And what about after two months? The moment the subsidies stop, the users will come back, because users aren't loyal; they only care about the cheapest deals."

Xie Yu frowned: "But our traffic over the past two months..."

"Your data usage will drop."

Lin Che's words were blunt and offered no comfort.

"A lot will drop, maybe more than half."

The car became even quieter.

Xu Mingyuan lowered his head, looking at his unbuttoned plaid shirt, and remained silent.

"But I don't intend to use cash to rob it back."

Lin Che pulled out the stack of sales agreements from the glove compartment and slapped them on the dashboard—six contracts, a thick pile.

"Eleven million units in inventory, with an average cost of six yuan and one jiao, plus one yuan and eight jiao for logistics costs from Ark Cloud Warehouse, resulting in a retail price of nine yuan and nine jiao. We make two yuan profit on each unit sold."

He tapped the contract cover with his fingernail.

"BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) loses 20 yuan per item sold, while I make 2 yuan per item. Their subsidies come from their own pockets, while my low prices are squeezed out of the supply chain. These are two completely different things."

Xie Yu understood, but one question stuck in his throat: "But they've already taken away the traffic, so even if the items are cheap, no one will see them—"

"Who said nobody saw it?"

Lin Che took out his phone, opened an app, and the interface was unfamiliar to Xie Yu—a gray, beta UI with two lines of text at the top:

"Weiguang Credit Purchase - Gray-Scale Beta Version"

"Weiguang Live Stream - Internal Preview"

Xie Yu's pupils contracted.

"Credit purchase," Lin Che held up his phone so everyone in the back could see, "users don't need to spend a single penny of cash. Those with a Weiguang credit score of 600 or higher can use it now and pay later, with zero down payment and interest-free installments."

"Isn't this... a blank IOU?" Xu Mingyuan asked.

"It's not a credit note. A credit note is a loan for you to spend, but you still spend cash," Lin Che put his phone back. "Credit purchase is where credit itself is currency. Users don't spend money; they spend their credit limit. I don't need to take a single penny out of my pocket to subsidize it because I create the credit out of thin air."

When he said the phrase "created out of thin air," his tone was similar to saying "the weather is nice today."

But Xie Yu understood the weight behind those four words.

The 50 billion yuan in cash is not intended for subsidies.

The 50 billion yuan in cash is the underlying asset and the anchor for bank credit lines.

With this 50 billion yuan as a foundation, Weiguang can release several times the credit limit to users.

BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) spends one dollar of real money, and Weiguang (a company name) can create three dollars of purchasing power.

That's not all.

"Live streaming module," Lin Che swiped his phone screen, jumping to another interface, "Factory live stream, real footage of the production line, 9.9 yuan hoodies coming off the sewing machine and being shipped directly. Users can place orders using credit in the live stream, and the factory will ship from the Ark Cloud warehouse on the same day."

He locked his phone and put it back in his pocket.

"Cash subsidies can buy user attention, but not retention. Live streaming can generate attention, credit-based purchases can generate payment power, and C2M can generate price advantages. All three combined..."

Lin Che didn't finish speaking.

He didn't need to finish speaking.

Xie Yu leaned back in the back seat and closed his eyes briefly.

Three days ago, when he was squatting in the dilapidated factory eating a boxed lunch, he thought the boss had gone crazy.

Now he feels like he's the one who's gone mad—it actually took him three days to understand it.

As the GL8 drove on the highway at a slow speed, large trucks kept rumbling past in the right lane, causing the entire vehicle to vibrate slightly.

Lin Che adjusted the passenger seat back to its original position, opened his laptop, and the screen lit up.

He opened the internal messaging app, found the tech department's group chat, and typed a message:

"The credit purchase and live streaming modules will be rolled out in a limited rollout tonight, with full data monitoring. Any anomaly reports will be sent directly to my phone."

send.

Then he opened another dialog box, the recipient was Lao Zhou, the person in charge of Fangzhou Cloud Warehouse, and typed another line:

"The integration of all six factories must be completed tonight, and the first order will be shipped via live stream tomorrow. I need to get from the sewing machine to the customer's doorstep in no more than 48 hours."

send.

He closed his laptop, leaned back in his chair, and looked at the gray highway ahead.

Chen Xuan's phone vibrated again, with a new data push notification: Weiguang Mall's real-time DAU has dropped by 31% compared to the same period yesterday.

She didn't dare to say a word.

Lin Che saw her expression in the rearview mirror, but didn't say anything.

Traffic is falling, and it will continue to fall.

Let it fall.

Six hundred kilometers away, the billions of yuan in subsidies from BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) are being burned across the entire internet, with real money flowing out of the three giants' accounts and into the wallets of hundreds of millions of users every second.

Very lively.

expensive.

But the bustling and expensive atmosphere was precisely the most primitive way of doing things in the old days.

Lin Che closed his eyes and went through all the steps in his mind.

Supply chain closed loop – complete.

Logistics network integration – to be completed tonight.

Credit Purchase – Available for limited rollout tonight.

Live stream – Available in limited rollout tonight.

The day BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) burns through billions and the subsidies stop.

The price of the faint light is still there.

Because that's not a subsidy at all.

That's the cost.

He opened his eyes, turned on his computer, and added a message to the tech group:

"Next week, I'll make sure their billions in cash don't even make a sound."

Outside the window, it was getting dark.

The GL8's headlights came on, two beams of light piercing the gray twilight, heading straight towards Hangzhou.