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

12:47 AM.

The core computer room is located on the second basement floor of the Weiguang headquarters.

This floor is usually off-limits to unauthorized personnel. The access control system uses both iris and fingerprint authentication. There are no windows in the corridor, the lights are always on, and the air conditioning is always on, with the temperature constantly set at 22 degrees Celsius.

But 22 degrees Celsius isn't enough tonight.

The server room has four rows of server racks, with twelve servers in each row, for a total of forty-eight servers. When running at full power, the heat dissipation is equivalent to forty-eight electric heaters running at maximum power at the same time.

The air conditioning unit was humming on the ceiling, the vents were already at their maximum, but the numbers on the thermometer were still climbing—23, 24, 25.

The fan wasn't spinning, it was howling.

Like dozens of dogs locked in an iron cage, barking together.

The on-duty engineer, Lao Chen, sat in front of the monitoring console wearing a short-sleeved shirt. His back was completely soaked with sweat. In front of him were three screens, each displaying a dense stream of data.

There was a bottle of mineral water to the right of the keyboard in front of him. It was open but he hadn't drunk from it. Water droplets clung to the bottle, which were from the air conditioner condensation.

His eyes were fixed on the screen in the middle.

The core workload panel of Abyss—the real-time computing status of the Micro-Light Brain—is running on it.

CPU utilization: 78%.

Memory usage: 81%.

Requests per second (QPS): 1,247,000.

One million two hundred and forty-seven thousand times. Per second.

This number has quadrupled in the past fifteen minutes.

The message that "you can buy things without spending money" is spreading at an uncontrollable speed.

It's not Weiguang promoting it; Weiguang hasn't even put it on the homepage recommendation list. The live stream entrance is hidden in a third-level page, and you have to search for it manually to find it.

It's being pushed by users.

Every user who activated the credit purchase feature became a dissemination node—they took screenshots and shared them on WeChat Moments, WeChat groups, Weibo, and tagged everyone they knew. The message, "Quickly activate Weiguang Credit Purchase, you can buy things for free," spread faster on social networks than any paid advertisement.

Users flocked in.

It's not that old users of Weiguang are coming back; it's that people who have never used Weiguang before are flooding in.

They downloaded the Weiguang APP, registered, completed real-name authentication, and activated credit card purchase—the whole process took less than two minutes.

Then they flooded into the live stream.

Then they clicked to buy.

Every time a purchase is clicked, Abyss has to do one thing—within milliseconds, it has to access all of the user's associated data, complete a credit assessment, and decide whether to approve the transaction.

A few milliseconds.

One million two hundred and forty-seven thousand times. Per second.

Old Chen's eyes were fixed on the QPS number; the number was still rising.

One million three hundred thousand.

One million four hundred and twenty thousand.

He picked up the walkie-talkie next to him, pressed the transmit button, and said with a slightly dry throat, "Control center, the temperature in the server room is 27 degrees Celsius. A temperature warning has been issued for area C of rack 4. I'm preparing to switch to the backup cooling circuit."

A voice came through the walkie-talkie: "Roger that, cut it."

He stood up and walked to the front of rack number four. He opened the rack door, and a wave of heat rushed out, scalding him so much that he took half a step back.

The fans inside the server rack were all spinning, and rows of green indicator lights were flashing, like a breathing wall.

He crouched down, found the switch for the backup cooling circuit at the bottom of the cabinet, and turned it on.

With a hum, the fan speed increased by one level, and the sound changed from howling to screaming.

The thermometer reading stopped; it neither rose nor fell.

Twenty-seven degrees.

Normally, the upper limit alarm value for the temperature in this computer room is 30 degrees Celsius. If it exceeds 30 degrees Celsius, the frequency will be forcibly reduced, which means that Abyss's computing speed will drop.

There is still a margin of three degrees.

Old Chen glanced at the walkie-talkie, said nothing, and walked back to the monitoring station to sit down.

-

The 15th floor is the temporary command center.

Lin Che is no longer in the live stream.

He came out of the storage room at 12:35. After the seventh batch of goods was delivered, he handed the microphone to a young man who had temporarily filled in at the operations department and told him to continue selling at the same pace as before.

The young man was 26 years old and used to work as a live streamer on Taobao. His hands were shaking when he took the microphone, but he spoke quite fluently after he started.

When Lin Che arrived at the fifteenth floor, it had already been temporarily converted into a wartime command center—everyone from the data team was there, Xie Yu was there, Xu Mingyuan was there, Chen Xuan was there, and even Zhou Ting was there.

No one went home, no one slept.

The data on the big screen is no longer DAU—the DAU metric has lost its meaning tonight because the numbers are changing too fast, and the concept of daily active users can't keep up.

The screen displays three sets of real-time data:

Group 1: Weiguang APP concurrent online users: 4,217 million.

Group 2: Number of users who have activated Credit Purchase – 1,823 million.

Group 3: Real-time GMV (Total Transaction Volume) - ¥2,147,000,000.

2.147 billion.

Xie Yu sat in the first row of chairs, his hands on his knees, staring at the third set of numbers.

This number jumps by a large margin every time it's refreshed, like a taxi meter, but instead of jumping in chunks, it jumps by millions.

wrong.

He blinked.

The unit of measurement has changed.

Two billion.2 billion.

2.3 billion.

2.47 billion.

It's not a million anymore, it's jumping by a hundred million.

His legs were going weak. No exaggeration, they really were weak; his knees couldn't support his weight, and he slid off the chair, landing on his bottom on the floor, but his eyes didn't leave the screen.

"Boss."

His voice was trembling.

Lin Che stood two steps to his right, his hands in the pockets of the 9.9 yuan hoodie, his chin slightly raised, looking at the big screen.

"Boss," Xie Yu pointed at the numbers on the screen, his index finger trembling, "that...that GMV..."

2.7 billion.

3.1 billion.

"Has it...broke 10 billion?"

"No," Lin Che's voice was flat, "only thirty-one."

"But this speed—"

"The speed will increase."

When Lin Che said those four words, his tone was almost the same as when he said, "The sun will shine tomorrow."

Xie Yu sat on the ground, looking up at the big screen with his mouth agape.

Three to four billion.

Three billion.8 billion.

Behind every 100 million are hundreds of thousands of credit purchase orders. Behind each order is Abyss's risk control review completed in milliseconds—penetrating user data, calculating credit limits, assessing bad debt risks, and deciding whether to approve or reject.

With 50 billion in cash anchored in its accounts and untouched, Abyss is leveraging this 50 billion in credit to stimulate purchasing power worth hundreds of millions.

But this is also the most dangerous moment.

Lin Che knew.

His eyes weren't on the GMV figure, but on another set of data on a small screen next to him—Abyss's risk control interception rate.

3.7%.

This number means that out of every 100 credit purchase requests, 3.7 were identified as high-risk users by Abyss and rejected.

3.7%.

This is a line.

If this figure drops below 2%, it indicates that risk control is being loosened, the bad debt rate will soar, and the 50 billion credit anchor may not be able to hold it up.

If this number rises above 8%, it indicates that the risk control is too strict, a large number of normal users are being mistakenly killed, the user experience is ruined, and the traffic will backfire.

3.7%.

just.

But how long this "just right" state can be maintained under extreme concurrency is unknown.

Lin Che stared at the number, his lips pressed into a thin line.

Four billion.3 billion.

The GMV on the big screen jumped—not normally, but it froze for a frame, and then the number suddenly jumped up by 200 million.

Old Chen's voice came through the walkie-talkie, tinged with static: "Control center! The temperature in area C of rack four is 29 degrees Celsius! Nearing the upper limit!"

Lin Che picked up the walkie-talkie next to him.

"Hold on."

Two words.

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the walkie-talkie.

"receive."

Four and a half billion.

Five billion.2 billion.

In the computer room on the second basement level, the thermometer jumped to 29.4 degrees Celsius.

Old Chen took off his shirt and sat shirtless in front of the monitoring station. The data streams on the three screens in front of him were twice as dense as they had been half an hour earlier.

The fans were screeching, the air conditioning units were running at full capacity, and the air vents on the ceiling were blowing cold air downwards, but it couldn't keep up with the heat dissipation of the forty-eight servers.

He stared at the QPS number.

Two million six hundred thousand per second.

This number has exceeded the maximum concurrency limit set during stress testing—the stress test was set to two million times per second, and it has now exceeded that limit by eight percent.

The system is still running.

It didn't collapse.

But he knew he was walking a tightrope.

A line of small, red text was flashing in the corner of the screen:

"Risk control module delay alarm: Average response time 14ms (threshold: 20ms)"

Fourteen milliseconds, leaving a margin of six milliseconds before the twenty-millisecond crash threshold.

Six milliseconds.

These six milliseconds represent the distance between the safety of 50 billion yuan in assets and disaster.

Old Chen's hands were on the keyboard, his fingers trembling slightly.

It wasn't cold; the server room was almost 30 degrees Celsius, unbearably hot.

Yes, I'm afraid.

-

Seven billion.

Eighty-three billion.

Nine billion.

Xie Yu was no longer sitting on the ground; he stood up, but not on his own. Xu Mingyuan pulled him up.

Xu Mingyuan himself was also unsteady on his feet, and the two of them leaned against each other like two wooden stakes about to fall.

Chen Xuan covered her mouth with both hands, her eyes wide open, reflecting the blue-green light of the screen.

Nine billion.

Nine billion.

Everyone stopped breathing.

10 billion.

The numbers have been skipped.

The GMV line has become an eleven-digit number: ¥10,014,000,000.

One hundred billion and fourteen million.

No one cheered in the command center.

No one applauded.

No one speaks.

It was so quiet that you could hear the hum of the air conditioner vents and Xie Yu swallowing with a gurgling sound.

Xie Yu opened his mouth twice, and only made a sound on the third attempt.

"Boss...boss..."

He pointed at the screen, his index finger still trembling.

"It's broken 10 billion..."

He paused for a moment, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down.

"But we...didn't spend a single penny..."

Lin Che didn't look at him.

He looked at the numbers on the small screen next to the large screen—the risk control interception rate.

3.6%.

It's stable now.

His shoulders relaxed slightly, so slightly that no one present noticed.

Only he knew that during those few minutes when the number jumped from 3.7 to 3.4 and then bounced back to 3.6, his heart rate exceeded 120.

10.3 billion.

It's still rising.