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

Two kilometers north of Chang'an Avenue in Beijing, a super five-star hotel, 38 stories high.

You need to swipe a special room card to get to this floor. There are four security guards in black suits standing at the door, with earpieces in their ears, and they don't smile.

The venue was meticulously arranged. The long conference table was made from a single piece of walnut wood, and the chairs were custom-made. Each chair had a nameplate on the back engraved with the company name and the individual's name—the seats were not assigned randomly, but arranged according to market value.

The nameplates on the three chairs in the very center read: Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu.

Sun Zheng sat in the chair that Ali had taken out of the hotel closet that morning. His suit was platinum, and he had a small company badge pinned to his chest.

There was a glass of red wine in front of him, but he didn't touch it.

Qian Minghui was sitting in the chair at Tencent, looking at his phone. The screen brightness was turned down so low that he couldn't see the content clearly.

He was ten years younger than Sun Zheng, with neatly combed hair, a Windsor knot in his tie, long, clean fingers, and neatly trimmed nails.

Zhou Guoping sat in the chair at Baidu, with a stack of printed materials spread out in front of him and a laptop on his left, displaying several data dashboards on its screen.

He was the quietest of the three, and hadn't said a word since he came in.

The remaining chairs were occupied by vice presidents, strategy directors, and public relations managers from various companies, totaling about twenty people, all of whom were well-known in the industry.

The projection screen in the venue lit up.

The first image above is neither a data report nor a strategic plan.

It's that photo.

Lin Che secretly took photos in the storage room.

A crumpled green screen, a crooked fill light, network cables and a power bank on the ground, and a man wearing a 9.9 yuan hoodie in the very center of the screen.

The photo was displayed very large on the screen, large enough to see the loose threads on the sweatshirt.

Sun Zheng picked up his wine glass, swirled it twice, and smiled.

It wasn't a fake smile; I genuinely found it funny.

"As you all see," he gestured with his wine glass towards the screen, "our General Manager Lin couldn't stay at the financial poker table any longer, so he's gone live."

The people sitting in the back row laughed, but not loudly.

"I had someone check," Sun Zheng put down his wine glass and leaned back in his chair, "His so-called live-streaming room was just a converted storage room in the company. The lights were bought for a little over forty yuan on Taobao, and there wasn't even a decent camera. What happened to this guy's 50 billion?"

He glanced around the room.

"The 50 billion is just a figure on paper, folks," Sun Zheng's tone became a little more serious, but the smile on his lips remained. "As for the credit lines from the three major banks, in the current market environment, how much can he actually use? My assessment is—not a single cent."

Qian Minghui looked up at him, said nothing, and then looked down at his phone again.

Zhou Guoping flipped through the materials in front of him and found a page containing Weiguang's publicly available data for the past week.

"DAU has dropped by 31%," Zhou Guoping began, his voice soft and his pace slow. "The brand merchant churn rate exceeds 67%, and the top merchants have basically all left."

"Exactly," Sun Zheng chimed in, "His shelves are all empty. What's he selling? Those cheap 9.9 yuan hoodies?"

Another burst of laughter.

This time, even more people laughed. Someone in the back row was laughing so hard they coughed, and the person next to them handed them a glass of water.

Sun Zheng enjoyed the atmosphere.

He stood up, walked to the front of the curtain, with his back to the candid photo and facing everyone present.

"To put it bluntly," he said, hands in his pockets, "Lin Che is undeniably intelligent, but he has a fatal flaw—he doesn't know his own limitations."

He lowered his voice a little, as if he were telling a story.

"He's got some skills in finance, and we suffered losses, which I accept. But in e-commerce, everyone here knows better than I how treacherous the waters are. Do you think traffic alone can drive sales? Do you think setting up a livestream room will allow you to steal our users?"

He shook his head.

"Innocent."

Qian Minghui then interjected, "However, the gray-scale version of his credit-based purchase system is already running."

Sun Zheng turned to look at him.

"Gray testing? Gray testing means it hasn't launched yet, which means it hasn't fought the battle yet. Once it's actually launched, user complaints, bad debts, and regulatory issues—aren't any of those enough to give it a run for its money?"

Qian Minghui didn't say anything more.

Zhou Guoping wrote something in his notebook; the pen tip made a scratching sound on the paper, but no one could hear what he was writing.

Sun Zheng walked back to his seat, but didn't sit down. He placed one hand on the table and leaned forward.

"I called everyone here today not to make fun of Lin Che," he said, though his expression clearly showed he was mocking Lin Che, "but to drive in the last nail."

The projector switched to the second page, which showed a traffic scheduling solution.

The title above is straightforward: "Double Twelve Mega Sale D-Day Midnight Traffic Offensive Plan".

"Seventy billion of the 10 billion subsidy has already been distributed, and everyone has seen the results. Weiguang's users are flocking to us," Sun Zheng pointed to the numbers on the projector, "but there's still a group that hasn't moved, accounting for about twenty percent of Weiguang's remaining DAU. These are mainly loyal users in lower-tier markets and long-term users with high credit scores."

He paused for a moment.

"This group of people is the last blood of the glimmer of hope."

It's quiet now.

The sound from the air conditioner vent suddenly became clearer, a buzzing sound that gently turned the edges of the materials on the table.

"Tonight at midnight, Double Twelve officially kicks off. My plan is to concentrate the remaining 3 billion yuan budget entirely on this group of users. It's not about spreading resources thinly; it's about targeted, precise marketing, buying from one user at a time."

He made a gesture.

"Each person receives a subsidy of up to 50 yuan, which is credited directly to their account without any purchase and can be withdrawn instantly. 50 yuan can buy a user's ten-day retention, which means the cost of acquiring a single customer is less than 10 yuan—half the price of our normal advertising campaign."

Zhou Guoping stopped writing.

He glanced at Sun Zheng, his glasses reflecting the projected light.

"Mr. Sun," he said, his voice still flat, "thirty billion yuan invested in a platform with only 20% of its daily active users—that's the ROI—"

"It's not about buying ROI," Sun Zheng interrupted him, "it's about buying lives. His lives. I don't need how much these users spend on our platform; I need Lin Che to be completely wiped out, completely wiped out. Then his credit-based purchase system won't be able to operate, and if it's not operating, his 50 billion yuan will be dead money, and dead money is just worthless paper."

Zhou Guoping lowered his head and put down his pen.

Qian Minghui was still looking at his phone, but his fingers had stopped moving, and he didn't even notice when the screen went dark.

Sun straightened up, glanced around the room, and that smile returned to his face.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he raised his glass, "Lin Che has already backed down. His livestream from that storage room was a way of telling the whole world—he's out of cards. Tonight at midnight, I'm going to make sure he doesn't even retain that 20%."

He raised his glass.

"Don't leave him a single drop of blood."

The cups clinked together with a crisp, clear sound.

Zhou Guoping didn't raise his glass. He closed his laptop, the screen lighting up for a final moment—a small note he had just written:

"Credit purchase gray-scale data is unknown and contains variables."

The computer was closed, and the text disappeared into the black screen.

Nobody saw it.