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

The email body is very short.

There was no "Dear Mr. Lin," nor any polite small talk.

Only one line of cold, standard Song typeface:

[BP received. Meeting next Wednesday at 2 PM, 24th floor of Tencent Building. Please bring detailed data.]

The sender was: Tencent Investment Department

It wasn't even a private email address for an investment manager, but a shared departmental account.

Lin Che pushed up his glasses.

The blue light emitted from the screen reflected on his glasses.

Next to the email window, another terminal interface with black background and red text is flashing.

That's a system countdown in the Alibaba Cloud backend.

[Test cluster automatic reset countdown: 47 hours 58 minutes 12 seconds]

Every time the red numbers jump, it's like a noose tightening around the neck of "micro-group buying".

Lin Che's access to Alibaba's "Double Eleven Backup Cluster" was a temporary "48-hour high-pressure test".

When the time is up, the system will automatically execute the formatting command.

At that time, the transaction data, social relationship chains, and account balances of millions of users will evaporate instantly like steam.

Wait until next Wednesday?

At that time, all Tencent saw was a corpse.

Lin Che picked up his phone and opened "Flightradar24".

He checked the schedule for Air China flight CA1702 to Beijing tomorrow.

He didn't place an order, but just stared at the takeoff time for two seconds, as if he were confirming the caliber of a bullet.

Then, he put his hands back on the keyboard.

Click to reply.

There was no request to adjust the time, nor was there any explanation for the server crisis.

He typed a line:

"Sorry, I'll be in Beijing next week. Baidu's strategy department has scheduled the whole day for me. I'll be transferring at Shenzhen Bao'an Airport at 10 AM tomorrow, so I only have a two-hour window. I won't be able to wait for you if you miss it."

The cursor hovers over the "Send" button.

This is gambling.

They bet on Tencent's thirst for e-commerce traffic, on the anxiety Alibaba's IPO roadshow caused its competitors, and on the person sitting in the Shenzhen office not daring to take responsibility for letting go of the next unicorn.

"clatter."

Press the Enter key.

The email sending progress bar flashed by, like a bullet aimed at a penguin a thousand kilometers away.

........

Nine o'clock the next morning.

Alibaba Binjiang Campus, Director's Office.

The air was filled with the scent of expensive agarwood, which Li Mo had specially lit to suppress the formaldehyde smell from the newly renovated house.

Li Mo was editing a PowerPoint presentation on his computer screen.

That was the final draft of the roadshow that was about to be sent to Wall Street.

The data on "user quality" on that page was enlarged in font size. The proportion of low-end users, which was originally dragging down the overall performance, has now become a beautiful upward curve after Lin Che's "cleaning".

"Mr. Li."

Lin Che placed an A4 sheet of paper on the corner of the table.

Application for Time Off in Adjustment

"The stress test is complete, and the data is very stable. I'd like to take a few days of annual leave to go to the beach and relax."

Li Mo's gaze never left the screen.

He twirled the Montblanc pen between his fingers.

In his opinion, Lin Che had indeed done a lot of dirty work these past few days.

Not only did they bear the stigma of cleaning up users, they also had to stay up all night doing technical testing.

Now that Lin Che has volunteered to "disappear" for a few days, that's perfect.

The highlight of a roadshow doesn't need a subordinate who knows too much about the inside story standing by and stealing the spotlight.

"Go."

Li Mo picked up the pen and quickly signed the application form.

The brushstrokes are very smooth, and the last stroke is drawn very high, like the stock price chart of a company about to go public.

"Keep your phone accessible. If the investment bank has any questions about the data, you need to respond immediately."

"Okay, Mr. Li."

Lin Che took the order.

His gaze swept across Li Mo's desk.

There was a copy of "Built to Last" there, with a bookmark clipped to the halfway point.

The book cover features the famous slogan: "Build clocks, not tell time."

Ironically, the person reading the book was frantically tinkering with the hands that tell the time, while throwing away the actual clock-making parts as garbage.

Lin Che turned around and walked out of the office.

The heavy solid wood door closed behind him.

A "click" sound.

It also shut out the sweet, cloying scent of sandalwood, and the capitalist fairy tale about "consumption upgrade" that Li Mo was weaving.

Lin Che folded the "Time Off Request Form" and put it into his jacket pocket.

This is his passport.

With it, he is no longer an Alibaba employee who has abandoned his post, but a free person enjoying a legal holiday.

Even if this holiday is used to dig up the ancestral graves of my former employer.

.........

Xiaoshan International Airport.

Outside the glass curtain wall of Terminal 3, there is a gray cumulonimbus cloud.

Lin Che sat in a corner of the waiting hall.

It's very noisy around here.

The middle-aged man from the tour group next to me had taken off his shoes and was putting his feet up on his suitcase.

The children in the front row were screaming and waving a plastic Ultraman toy.

Lin Che put on noise-canceling headphones.

The world fell silent instantly, leaving only the sound of my own breathing.

My phone vibrated.

He picked it up.

A new email is displayed on the screen.

The sender was still that cold, official account, but the content had changed.

[Received. Tomorrow at 10:30 AM, 24th floor of Tencent Building. Please be sure to bring the actual data.]

There was no apology, no explanation, and not even a mention of the word "Baidu".

But they rescheduled.

The arrogant penguin bowed its head.

Lin Che locked the screen with a blank expression.

He opened the stock trading software.

His watchlist was empty except for a piece of code he had just added to his notes:

00700.

That's Tencent Holdings.

The current share price is still hovering around HK$100, and no one knows what kind of behemoth it will become in the future.

No one knows that the passengers on this plane today are about to inject a stimulant called "social e-commerce" into the veins of this behemoth.

"Attention passengers traveling to Shenzhen, boarding for flight CA1736 is now commence..."

The broadcast sound penetrated the noise-canceling headphones.

Lin Che stood up and slung the black backpack over his shoulder.

The bag contained a laptop and a business plan that would keep both Ma Huateng and Jack Ma up at night.

He followed the flow of people into the covered bridge.

Through the porthole, he saw the wing cutting through the thick clouds.

The originally gloomy Hangzhou sky was left behind.

Above the clouds, the sun blazed blindingly.

That's the southern sun.

That's Shenzhen.

That is the bloodiest and most fertile hunting ground for capital.

Lin Che pulled down the sunshade and closed his eyes.

Countdown: 24 hours.