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

The fill light was bought by Xie Yu from Taobao for 49.9 yuan, including shipping, and was delivered by Yuantong Express.

When it arrived, the corner of the cardboard box was dented, and the foam inside was broken into pieces like snowflakes, scattered all over the ground. The lamp stand was plastic, and it wobbled when screwed on, bending easily with the slightest touch.

The microphone is even cheaper, only 28 yuan. It has a USB interface and is plug-and-play. The packaging box is printed with the words "For Online Classes" and has a cartoon figure wearing a headset next to it.

When Xie Yu carried the things to Lin Che's office, his expression was complicated.

"I bought it."

Lin Che pulled the lamp stand out of the cardboard box, weighed it in his hand, and found it to be plastic and very light.

"Okay, come with me."

They didn't go to the conference room or the technical department; they went to the storage room at the end of the corridor on the seventeenth floor.

That room was usually used to store printer supplies and expired promotional materials. There was an A4 sheet of paper on the door with the words "Storage Room" printed on it, the ink of which had bleed through.

Lin Che pushed open the door and entered, a musty smell hit him.

Inside the room were piles of cardboard boxes as tall as a person, and several boxes of mineral water left over from last year's annual meeting, with a layer of dust on the plastic film.

In the corner, there was an old printer with electrical tape wrapped around its plug.

"Clear it."

Lin Che said two words, then turned and left.

Xie Yu stood at the door and looked at the room. It was about fifteen square meters, with no windows. The fluorescent light was an old-fashioned long tube light that took two turns to turn on and made a buzzing sound.

He called two people from the administration department to come up and move things, and he also helped, moving the cardboard boxes one by one into the corridor.

When he was carrying the third box, his hand got a bit dusty. He instinctively reached for a tissue to wipe it off, but then he checked his pocket and decided against it.

The storage room was emptied in half an hour.

There were still marks left by cardboard boxes on the floor, gray square imprints, one square after another. There were two bulges in the wall plaster, and a nail hole on the wall near the door, I don't know what was hung there before.

When Lin Che returned, he had a piece of cloth in his hand.

It's green, made of polyester, and when folded, it's about the size of a bed sheet. When unfolded, it's about two meters by three meters.

Green screen.

Xie Yu recognized it; it's used for keying in videos.

"Did you buy this on Taobao too?"

"Weiguang Mall, 19.9 yuan."

Lin Che unfolded the green screen, found a rope, tied both ends to the nails on the wall and the fire pipe above the door frame, and tightened the middle with the cable tie from the stamping machine.

The green screen was installed, but it wasn't flat; there was a bulge in the middle, and the bottom edges were curled up.

He ignored it.

The fill light stand was positioned to the left front of the green screen. Because the stand was too short, two expired copies of "Internet Weekly" were placed underneath it.

When the light was turned on, it was deathly white, the color temperature was obviously wrong, and it shone on the green screen with a lifeless blue hue.

The microphone was plugged into a laptop and placed on the ground, next to a power bank.

The entire "live broadcast room" is now set up.

Xie Yu stood at the door, looking at the scene, with a feeling he couldn't quite describe.

Fifteen square meters, no windows, a crumpled green screen, a 49.9 yuan fill light, and a 28 yuan microphone.

This is a company with 50 billion in its accounts.

The technical staff arrived one after another; Lin Che had called them to debug the live stream.

The leader is Zhang Lei, a backend architect. Before joining Weiguang, he worked for three years in video streaming technology at a major company and was poached by a high salary to work on the underlying architecture of the financial system.

When he entered the storage room, he first smelled a musty odor, and then he saw the green screen.

He didn't look well.

It wasn't anger, but something more subtle—a sense of humiliation.

The financial risk control system under his command processes an average of 30 million transactions per day, and its underlying architecture can withstand the concurrency levels of Singles' Day.

Now, let him come to this musty, smelly storeroom to set up... a live stream?

"Mr. Zhang, adjust the camera angle and cut off the fire pipe on the left side of the screen."

It was Lin Che who spoke.

Zhang Lei didn't move.

He glanced at the green screen, then at the twenty-eight-yuan microphone on the ground. His lips moved as if he wanted to say something, but he held back and squatted down to adjust the camera.

The other technician next to me is Xiao Wu, who has been with Weiguang for less than half a year. He is 24 years old and has a piercing in his ear.

He leaned closer and whispered to Zhang Lei, "Brother Lei, what are we doing? TV shopping?"

Zhang Lei ignored him.

Xiao Wu looked at the green screen again, then took a picture with his phone.

No one noticed that he took the picture.

The debugging took more than two hours.

The main problem lies in the streaming latency. The storage room uses the office area's WiFi, which has insufficient bandwidth, causing the video to become blurry as soon as it moves.

Zhang Lei temporarily ran a network cable from the switch in the corridor, which reduced the latency to less than two seconds.

The sound is also problematic. The 28-yuan microphone has a very small pickup range, and people can't hear it clearly if they stand a little far away. Moreover, the background noise is frighteningly loud, a buzzing sound that resonates with the fluorescent light in the storage room.

After much tinkering, Zhang Lei finally used software to add a layer of noise reduction, which made it barely usable.

"That's about it." He stood up, his knees cracking as he squatted for too long.

Lin Che walked to the green screen and stood facing the camera.

"open."

Zhang Lei pressed the stream test button, and a screen popped up on his laptop screen—

A man wearing a 9.9 yuan hoodie stood in front of a crumpled green screen. The lighting was stark white, and a section of fire pipe that hadn't been completely cut could be vaguely seen in the background.

The image quality is very poor, the bitrate is insufficient, and there are obvious color blocks on people's faces.

But Lin Che's eyes—

Zhang Lei glanced at the eyes in the picture and suddenly felt that the storage room wasn't so ridiculous anymore.

That wasn't the look of someone trying to gain sympathy.

"Save a screenshot," Lin Che said.

Zhang Lei took a screenshot.

The test ended, and Lin Che left.

The technicians started tidying up the cables, and Zhang Lei was checking the streaming logs, unaware that Xiao Wu had already posted the secretly taken photo to the WeChat group.

The photo was taken from the doorway, with a very casual composition—a panoramic view of the storage room, the green screen wrinkled, the fill light crooked, and Lin Che standing in the middle wearing a cheap hoodie, looking like a small vendor live-streaming his wares at a market.

The group is an informal group within WeLight, with over 300 members, used for gossiping.

The photo was sent out at 6:12 PM.

At 6:15, the screenshot was shared on Weibo.

At 6:23, a prominent financial blogger reposted a screenshot with the caption: "According to insiders, Lin Che, the founder of Weiguang Technology, is suspected of setting up a live-streaming studio within the company to prepare for live-streaming e-commerce? An insider claims that Weiguang's cash flow is extremely tight, and the 50 billion yuan credit line may be fictitious."

At 6:41, the topic became a trending topic.

#Microlight's capital chain breaks#

#Lin Che's Livestream Playing the Victim#

#Newly crowned richest man becomes online beggar#

The comments section exploded.

"Seriously? Is Microlight doing this?"

"Oh no, glimmer of hope is going to fail."

"The items I ordered from Weiguang Mall haven't arrived yet. Will they disappear with my money?"

"Hilarious! From being the richest man in China to becoming a live-streaming e-commerce seller, it took him less than six months."

Xie Yu was eating dinner in the cafeteria when he saw the trending topic. He had a piece of braised pork on his chopsticks, but the pork fell back into the plate, and the soup splashed onto his sleeve. He didn't bother to wipe it off.

He called Lin Che.

"Boss, something's happened! Someone inside leaked the photos, and now the whole internet is talking about them—"

"I saw it."

Lin Che's tone was very flat.

"Should we have our PR team clarify this?"

There was a two-second silence on the phone.

"Need not."

Xie Yu didn't understand.

"Let them laugh."

The phone hangs up.

Xie Yu stared at his phone screen, which still displayed the message that the call had ended.

Let them laugh.

He put down his phone and glanced at the trending topics page. The candid photo had been forwarded tens of thousands of times, with each caption more offensive than the last.

He suddenly remembered something Lin Che had said three days ago in that GL8.

"A subsidy of tens of billions is too primitive."

At that time, he thought "primitive" referred to business models.

Now he thinks it might also include—the same primitive way these people judge victory and defeat.