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

West of the city, on Wenyi West Road, old residential houses.

The meter on the wall was spinning rapidly, and the aluminum disc inside made a low buzzing sound, like a top that had been whipped.

The air was filled with the aroma of Master Kong braised beef noodles and the burnt smell from the long-term high-load operation of the server.

This is the new headquarters of "Weiguang Media".

That is, the "scrap metal recycling station" that Lin Che bought with that one-yuan coin.

"Boss, the server stress level is at the red line."

"Old Zhang, the outsourced technical director, shouted!"

He was a balding man in his thirties who used to work as an outsourcing engineer for Taobao. He was technically skilled, but lacked the education to get into a big company.

At that moment, he was staring intently at the monitor screen, his chopsticks hovering in mid-air, a drop of red noodle soup falling onto the Enter key on the mechanical keyboard.

He didn't wipe it.

Because the data on the screen was too frightening.

That was a heat map of Hangzhou.

Ten minutes ago, there were only a few scattered 300 million green dots on it.

Those were "old users" who were separated from Alibaba.

Ten minutes later, Lin Che ordered the launch of a standalone app called "Micro Group Buying".

The first promotion is simple and straightforward: Yantai Red Fuji apples, 5 jin per box, group purchase price 0.01 yuan.

There is only one condition: existing users must bring in new users. Once you have 5 new users registered and linked their mobile phone numbers, you can form a group.

In that very instant.

The green dot on the screen exploded.

It was like green spores suddenly bursting open, spraying out countless red lines in all directions.

Each red line represents a newly registered user.

The red lines intertwine and spread, covering the entire Xiasha University Town, the factory area of ​​Xiaoshan, and the old residential areas of Gongshu.

"The concurrent connection count has exceeded 50,000!"

Old Zhang's voice changed, "This doesn't make sense...we didn't vote GG!"

Lin Che sat beside him, holding the still-warm cigarette pack in his hand.

He watched the red network grow wildly on the screen.

"No need for GG."

Lin Che calmly said, "For the elites within the Fifth Ring Road, it's shameful to pull five people over five pounds of apples."

"But for most people, these are the days."

Those 300 million users, whom Alibaba defined as "traffic poison," have now become the most frantic salespeople.

They shared the link in family groups, square dance groups, and local part-time job groups.

Help me cut the price, and I'll give you a free apple!

This statement, like a virus, penetrated Alibaba's defense system and was replicated wildly in WeChat's vast private traffic pool.

Alibaba's logic is "centralized distribution": I give you traffic, you give me transactions.

Lin Che's logic is "decentralized fission": if you want to gain an advantage, you have to recruit more people for me.

These 300 million people are 300 million free ground promotions.

"Expand capacity."

Lin Che threw the cigarette pack on the table. "Put all the money I just earned into renting Alibaba Cloud's elastic computing resources."

"Use Alibaba's servers?" Old Zhang hesitated for a moment. "Won't that be discovered?"

"Won't."

Lin Che's lips twitched.

"For Alibaba Cloud, we are now valued 'major customers'. They only care whether we can afford to pay, not what we are doing."

In the dimly lit rented room, the sound of keyboards suddenly intensified.

That night, an undercurrent flowed unnoticed by the giants within the underground fiber optic cables of Hangzhou.

It originated from Alibaba's abandoned child, but in a corner unseen by Alibaba, it grew wildly into a gold-devouring monster.

A week later.

Alibaba Binjiang Campus, Building 2.

This is the core office area of ​​the wireless business unit, but Lin Che's workstation is no longer there.

He was reassigned.

Because of a "strategic misjudgment" in the "Laiwang" project, P7 product expert Lin Che was "assigned" to the Strategic Development Department.

It sounds very high-end.

In reality, this is a cold palace specifically used to house "deposed crown princes" and "retired senior executives".

There is no real power, no KPIs, and no budget.

Lin Che's new workstation is in the far corner of the office.

On the left is a buzzing water dispenser, and on the right is a mountain of cardboard boxes piled up by the administration department for waste printing paper.

The sunlight doesn't reach here.

Only a faulty fluorescent light overhead flickers occasionally.

Lin Che sat in an ergonomic chair, holding a cup of tea in his hand.

A Word document is open on the computer screen, titled: "Some Thoughts on the Second Half of the Mobile Internet Era".

The document is blank.

The cursor blinked on the first line and didn't move for ten minutes.

"Hey, Professor Lin, thinking about strategy?"

A voice came from the corridor.

Li Mo was wearing a brand-new P8-level white shirt with a crisp collar and silver cufflinks.

He was followed by two interns, carrying thick files, looking very confident.

Although "Laiwang" had never interacted with WeChat, Li Mo successfully shifted the blame to Lin Che and subsequently secured a deputy group leader position in the "DingTalk" preparatory team.

He is now a celebrity.

Lin Che looked up and adjusted his glasses.

"Mr. Li."

He was neither humble nor arrogant, and even had a touch of the dullness typical of a down-and-out person.

Li Mo stopped and looked down at Lin Che's blank screen.

"Take your time to think it over, no rush."

Li Mo smiled, reached out and flicked non-existent dust off the shoulder of his suit jacket. "Strategy is all about ten or twenty years. The company is keeping you around so you can think long-term."

The subtext is obvious: You're useless, just stay here and retire.

"Thank you for your concern, Mr. Li."

Lin Che nodded and took a sip of tea.

Li Mo left satisfied.

The leather shoes clicked crisply on the wooden floor, the sound fading into the distance.

After confirming that Li Mo had gone far away.

Lin Che put down his teacup.

His fingers lightly swiped across the keyboard.

Alt + Tab.

The blank Word document disappeared instantly.

Instead, a black window was shrunk to the bottom right corner.

That's the real-time data dashboard of "Weiguang Media".

New users today: 124,000

Today's GMV (Gross Merchandise Volume): 540,000 yuan

Net profit: 42,000 yuan

Earning 40,000 a day.

This is just the beginning.

In this forgotten corner, beneath the body deemed "useless," Lin Che is accumulating wealth at an astonishing pace.

Hidden away in the city.

Within a massive system, the safest place is not at the core, but on the periphery.

As long as no one is watching your KPIs, no one will care what you're doing on your computer.

Lin Che stared at the constantly fluctuating number, his eyes cold.

Li Mo thought he had locked Lin Che in a cage.

Little did he know, he had released a tiger back into the mountains and given it a Hello Kitty skin.

2014 3 Month 16 Day.

The weather in Hangzhou was lovely that day.

The magnolias are in bloom, and their white petals are falling onto the asphalt road in the Ali Industrial Park.

At 3 p.m., a major announcement ignited the entire park.

Alibaba Group has officially launched its IPO roadshow in the United States.

The valuation is expected to exceed $2000 billion.

The entire park was in an uproar.

In the office area, the originally subdued clatter of keyboards was drowned out by excited discussions.

Programmers no longer discuss code bugs, but rather stock option ownership.

Product managers are no longer preoccupied with interaction details, but are instead calculating how many houses they could buy with their stock holdings.

"Have you heard? The value of options for P7 and above has doubled!"

"Damn, I should have gotten stock options instead of cash!"

"This IPO will create at least a hundred millionaires in this building."

Cheers, gasps of amazement, the clicks of calculator keys.

The air was thick with the acrid smell of burning money, even stronger than the smell of servers in the rented rooms in the west of the city.

Lin Che walked downstairs to the smoking area alone.

There are a lot of people here.

Cigarette butts littered the ground, and the trash cans were overflowing with Red Bull cans.

Everyone's face was flushed with a sickly redness, a physiological reaction to being overwhelmed by enormous wealth.

Lin Che found a secluded corner and lit a cigarette.

He did not participate in those discussions about "buying a house and a car".

For him, who has been given a second chance at life, these stock options are just pocket change.

What he wants is not a piece of the pie at the giants' table.

He wants to be the one sitting across the table.

He took out his phone.

On the screen is a newly generated PDF file – “Micro-Group Buying: Business Plan for a Third-Generation E-commerce Platform Based on Social Sharing”.

The data is impressive:

In its first month, the number of users exceeded 500 million.

Daily active users (DAU) surpass Jumei.com.

Customer acquisition cost: 0.05 yuan.

This is a unicorn that has grown up in the shadows.

Now, it needs a buyer.

Or rather, an ally.

An ally that doesn't want to see Alibaba dominate the market.

Lin Che swiped his finger across the screen and scrolled to an email address in his contacts.

The suffix is: @Tencent.com

That was the private email address of the head of Tencent's strategic investment department.

In his previous life, Lin Che had obtained this business card by chance at an industry summit.

At that time, he was just a minor figure in charge of compliance, and the other party didn't even remember him.

But now, things are different.

Lin Che took a drag of his cigarette.

White smoke billowed out and drifted in the wind, enveloping the huge orange Alibaba logo atop the distant building.

The famous smiley face logo became somewhat blurry under the smoke, as if shrouded in shadow.

send.

Lin Che pressed the send button.

The email has been sent.

There were no lengthy pleasantries; the email body contained only one sentence:

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend." — Founder of Weipintuan (a group-buying platform).

After doing all this, Lin Che stubbed out his cigarette on the wire mesh on top of the trash can.

The fire went out.

It left a dark scar.

"bite."

My phone vibrated.

The reply came faster than I expected.

Lin Che picked up his phone.

There were only two words on the screen:

"Shall we chat?"

Lin Che smiled.

He looked up at the bustling building.

Those executives were still celebrating the upcoming IPO and basking in the glory of their stock holdings.

Unbeknownst to them, in the shadows beneath their feet, a truly colossal creature had already opened its eyes.

Furthermore, they have already set their sights on Shenzhen, Alibaba's arch-rival.

This is the real game of capital.

This is not an employment contract, and it is not stock options.

It's more like raising poisonous insects.

They used Alibaba's blood to nurture Alibaba's corrupt elements, and then sold them to Alibaba's enemies.

Lin Che straightened his collar, turned around, and walked into the building.

His silhouette blended into the frenzied crowd, like a drop of water merging into the ocean.

But this drop of water is poisonous.