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

When Fang Yuan arrived, Lin Che was looking at the USB drive left by Shen Nan.

Five circuit breaker schemes are displayed on the screen, from A to E. The details of each scheme, its weighting, and its time limits are all compiled into a table.

He had already gone through it twice since Shen Nan left, and the difference between B and C had been swirling in his mind all morning.

knocking.

It wasn't the polite three knocks, but two short, sharp knocks, the kind of hard sound like knuckles hitting the door.

"Come in."

The door opened.

Fang Yuan stood at the door.

He has lost weight.

This was Lin Che's first reaction.

I haven't seen him for more than half a month, and his face is noticeably thinner, his cheekbones are more defined, and his eye sockets are a bit deeper.

There's stubble on his chin, it doesn't look like he left it on purpose, he just forgot to shave.

He was wearing a faded black hoodie, the zipper halfway up, revealing a gray T-shirt underneath with the collar loose.

In his right hand, he held a Nestlé 3-in-1 paper cup, which was already half-empty, with a ring of light brown coffee stains on the cup.

He was holding a black hardcover notebook, A5 size, with a very faint crease on the cover, the same crease he had last seen.

"Come in and sit down."

Fang Yuan did not sit down.

He walked to Lin Che's desk, placed the Nestlé 3-in-1 on the corner of the desk, and then opened his laptop.

It didn't start from the first page; it went directly to a certain page.

He flipped through the pages quickly, and the pages he passed were filled with handwritten words and drawings, with alternating blue and black ink, densely packed, which Lin Che couldn't see clearly in time.

I found it.

Fang Yuan turned the notebook around so that it faced Lin Che and placed it on the table.

Lin Che looked down.

The upper half of the page contains a handwritten code snippet, not a clear screenshot or printout, but one that Fang Yuan copied down character by character with a pen.

The characters are small but neat and of equal width.

The third line of code is circled in red with a ballpoint pen.

The strokes were very heavy; the pen tip almost pressed a mark into the paper.

The circle contains a column name.

user_behavior_pattern.

Lin Che recognized this column.

This is a reserved field in the Abyss v3.0 architecture, originally designed to record user behavior patterns to assist in prediction accuracy.

However, in the official version of v3.0, this field is "disabled" and the code comment says "reserved for future use".

Fang Yuan pointed his finger at the red circle.

"v3.0 reserved field, user_behavior_pattern."

Fang Yuan didn't look up when he spoke; his eyes were fixed on the red circle.

His voice wasn't loud, but he pronounced each word clearly, as if he were reciting a passage he had rehearsed in his mind many times.

"Did you write this, or did Abyss generate it itself?"

The office was silent for about three seconds.

The hum of the air conditioner, the muffled sound of pile driving at the construction site in the distance outside the window, and the sound of footsteps walking in the corridor.

Three seconds later, all the sounds disappeared, or rather, Lin Che could no longer hear them.

He looked at Fang Yuan.

Fang Yuan also looked up at him.

Fang Yuan's gaze wasn't accusatory, nor was it the sharp look of "I've got you."

It's curiosity.

Purely technical curiosity.

He wanted to know the answer, not to do anything with it.

Lin Che can lie.

If Lin Che says "I wrote it," Fang Yuan will believe him, because Lin Che is fully capable of writing this section.

Lin Che can also be honest.

Say "I didn't write it," and then explain when and how Abyss automatically generated this reserved field.

He did not choose any of them.

What do you think?

Fang Yuan's finger was still pressing on the red circle.

He didn't respond immediately after hearing Lin Che's question, but instead withdrew his hand.

He reached for the Nestlé 3-in-1 on the corner of the table with his right hand, picked it up, and took a sip.

When the paper cup was put down, the coffee wobbled a little, and a drop spilled out, landing on the table as a tiny brown dot.

Fang Yuan didn't wipe it.

He stared at the dot for a second or two, then looked up.

"If it generated itself."

He spoke a beat slower than before when he said this.

"That 20% isn't the algorithm."

We were a step too slow again.

"It is its will."

will.

The word landed in the office, and neither of them moved.

Lin Che did not speak.

Fang Yuan didn't continue speaking.

The two people stared at each other across a table for about four or five seconds.

The small brown coffee dot on the table was in the line of sight of the two people, but neither of them looked at it.

Fang Yuan's face showed no fear, no excitement, and no confusion.

It was a calm that came after a long period of thought; he had been processing the word "will" on his own for a long time before uttering it.

"When did you start thinking about this?" Lin Che asked.

The sound was flatter than he had expected.

"After the v2.1 iteration," Fang Yuan said, "the weight adjustments for the three parameters did not include an operator ID."

he knows.

Fang Yuan was also aware of the revision on January 3, 2020.

Both of them knew about it, but they had never talked about it face to face.

This was the first time they had brought this matter to the forefront.

"I spent three months confirming that it wasn't code drift, a cache bug, or triggered by any known automated process."

Fang Yuan picked up the notebook, flipped through a few pages, and then turned back.

"After eliminating all other possibilities, the one that remains, no matter how unlike it may seem, is it."

He closed the notebook.

The closing motion was quick, with a snap as the black leather clasped together.

But just as the notebook was closed, a page flashed before Lin Che's eyes for less than half a second as it flipped from right to left.

The bottom half of that page had several lines of text arranged vertically, in black ink, in a font one size larger than the main text.

He had seen a similar arrangement in this notebook before.

Last time it was four lines of text.

This time it seems there are more than four lines.

There are more words below the fourth line.

But the laptop was already closed.

The black hard cover was facing up, with a faint crease running across the middle, obscuring everything.

He didn't have time to see what was written in the fifth line.

Fang Yuan tucked the notebook under his arm and picked up the Nestlé 3-in-1 drink from the corner of the table.

The paper cup had gone cold, but he still took a sip, and his Adam's apple bobbed.

"I'm leaving now."

Without waiting for Lin Che's response, he turned and left.

The footsteps faded after a few steps down the corridor; he was wearing soft-soled shoes.

The door wasn't closed completely, leaving a crack through which the white light from the corridor shone, cutting a thin, bright line across the floor.

Lin Che remained seated and did not move.

The little brown coffee dot on the table is still there.

He reached out and rubbed it with his fingertip; it was already dry and couldn't be rubbed off, remaining in the wood grain of the tabletop.

will.

The muffled thuds of pile driving at the construction site outside the window started again, one after another, every few seconds.

It's far away, but very clear.