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

Lin Che unzipped his jacket.

It's not about taking something.

He unzipped the zipper and then zipped it back up.

He took his hand off his briefcase and placed it on the table.

Spread out your ten fingers, fingertips touching the table, palms suspended in the air.

The three people opposite him were looking at his hands.

Then look at his face.

He looked up at the head of national security.

The two people were separated by an oval table, less than two meters apart.

"Yes, I knew in advance."

Eight characters.

When he came out, his voice was flat, just as flat as the tone of the other person had used during their four meetings.

There was no trembling, no pauses, and no emphasis on any particular word.

Eight words, spoken in one breath.

After he finished speaking, he neither lowered his head nor looked away.

The air in the room seemed to freeze.

The wind outside the window has stopped.

Or perhaps it didn't stop, but from that moment on, the people in the room could no longer hear any sounds from outside the window.

The man on the left had his hand hovering above the keyboard, not falling.

His ten fingers maintained the arc they were in before typing, but he didn't touch a single key.

The woman on the right shifted her gaze from Lin Che's face to the head of national security's face, and then back again.

Her lips moved slightly, but no sound came out.

She closed her mouth and swallowed.

The head of the National Security Bureau did not make a move.

His expression remained unchanged.

The gaze behind the thin-rimmed metal glasses remained unchanged.

The sitting posture remained unchanged.

The dark blue folder in front of him was closed, and his hand rested on it, his fingers not clenched.

He wasn't shocked.

This was the first thing Lin Che noticed.

He had prepared for countless possible reactions from the other party: anger, questioning, silence, and probing.

He was not prepared to be "not shocked".

He confessed a fact that could change the entire nature of the conversation, and the other person's reaction was: no reaction.

It's as if Lin Che didn't say "I knew in advance," but rather "The weather is nice today."

The head of the national security agency looked at Lin Che for three seconds.

His breathing was even for three seconds, and his chest did not rise and fall noticeably.

Then he did something.

He pushed the dark blue folder aside.

It wasn't pushed away, but rather pushed to the left by about five centimeters, making room for a small space in the middle of the table.

The original documents for the SEC's investigation were also pushed forward.

The movements were very light, like tidying up a desk to make room for new things.

"I know."

Two words.

Light.

Like placing a piece of paper on a table.

Lin Che's fingers twitched slightly on the table.

It tightened up for a moment and then loosened up again.

"We confirmed this during our second meeting."

The tone of the person in charge of national security was neither smug nor critical.

It doesn't mean "I knew all along that you couldn't hide it from me."

It is a statement.

It's like reading out a conclusion that's already been filed.

"Archived" means that this matter no longer needs to be discussed.

the second time.

This is not the third time, and it's not this time.

is the second time.

Three months ago.

Lin Che recalled the second meeting.

That was three months ago, in the same room 607, at the same oval table, with only the head of the National Security Bureau sitting opposite him.

That time he asked a lot of questions about the timeline, down to the hour.

"What were you doing between 3 PM and 4 PM on July 14, 2021?"

"On the evening of January 3, 2022, you logged into the trading system several times."

At the time, Lin Che thought they were collecting information and building a timeline.

Now he understands.

That's not collecting, that's verifying.

They've already reached a conclusion: those questions, precise down to the hour, aren't about finding answers, but about seeing if his responses match the data they have.

If it matches, then the conclusion is valid.

It was established three months ago.

"What we want to know today is..."

The person in charge of national security removed his hands from the folder and placed them crossed on the table.

This was the first time he had used this posture in the four meetings.

The first three times, his hands were either on the folder or on either side of the desktop.

Holding the object crossed in front of you is a gesture of listening.

"How did you know?"

Four words.

It's not "How did you know?", the "you" is omitted.

"How we know" is a technical question, not a moral one.

He didn't care "why you did this".

What he cares about is the method.

The entire scope of the meeting has changed.

The question has changed from "whether you knew in advance" to "how you knew in advance".

The former is qualitative, the latter is problem-solving.

The qualitative assessment has been completed; it was finalized during the second meeting three months ago.

They sat there for three months.

Lin Che spoke up himself.

He spoke up today, so they can move on to the next step.

Lin Che looked at the National Security official's hands, which were crossed on the table.

Her fingers were neatly trimmed, she wasn't wearing any rings, and her nails were clean.

There is a faint pen mark on my left index finger, probably left from holding a pen for a long time.

Those hands flipped through his files, drew question marks in the folders, and clicked through the tables row by row.

Now his hands are crossed on the table, waiting for him to say the next thing.

No rushing, no forcing, just waiting.

The man on the left finally placed his hand on the keyboard.

He pressed a key, and a new blank document appeared on the screen.

The cursor is flashing in the upper left corner.

He was waiting to be recorded.

The woman on the right closed her laptop.

It wasn't turning off the phone, but closing the screen gently without making a sound.

She placed her hands on the closed laptop and looked at Lin Che.

She doesn't need a computer anymore.

She will listen to what follows.

All three of them were waiting.

In room 607, only the sound of water flowing from the radiator and the electrical hum of the fluorescent light tubes overhead could be heard.

The two sounds blended together, a deep hum.

Lin Che once again placed his hand on the zipper of his briefcase.

This time he pulled it open.

The zipper teeth separated one by one, the sound particularly clear in the quiet room 607.

The contents of the bag were neatly arranged, with the folder labels facing up, and at the bottom were thirteen pages of unsigned printed manuscript.

He took the first folder out of his bag.

Edit logs and timestamps.

Place it on the table with the cover facing up.

"I didn't know this through any insider information."

The head of national security shifted his gaze from Lin Che's face to the folder on the desktop.

He glanced at it but didn't reach out.

Lin Che reached his hand back into his bag and pressed the edge of the second folder.

Historical prediction records.

Of the twenty-three articles, nineteen were completely accurate.

"I found out through an AI system."

He took out the second folder and placed it next to the first one.

The two folders were placed side by side on the desktop, about fifteen centimeters away from the two national security documents in the middle of the desktop.

The man on the left finally placed his fingers on the keyboard and pressed a key.

A cursor popped up on the screen.

"Its name is Abyss."

As the three words were spoken, the man on the left tapped a few times on the keyboard.

Five letters appeared on the screen.

A, b, y, s, s.

He finished typing, paused, and waited for the next sentence.