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

Not Hangzhou.

Not Beijing.

The room was small, about fifteen square meters, with the curtains drawn and the lights off.

The only light source was the laptop on the table; the white light from the screen shone on the table, casting everything around it as a dark silhouette.

The walls are white, but they look grayish in this light.

There was a small refrigerator in the corner of the room. The refrigerator's compressor would occasionally hum once, and then go silent again.

There was a dry smell in the air, like the smell of an air conditioner that had been running for a long time.

The table is a regular wooden table, the kind from IKEA, with a light-colored birchwood panel, and there's a chipped piece of paint on one of the edges.

There are only three things on the desktop.

A laptop, a glass of water, and a dark gray hard-shell folder.

There was a small label in the lower right corner of the folder. The label had no words on it, only a red dot.

The person sitting at the table was wearing silver-rimmed glasses.

The lenses of his glasses reflected the light from the screen, making it impossible to see his eyes clearly from the front; only two small white spots of light could be seen.

He was wearing a dark sweatshirt, the hood was not pulled up, and a section of the round neck of a gray T-shirt was showing.

Place the phone to the right of the keyboard, with the screen facing up.

The phone is ringing.

It wasn't a ringtone, but a vibration, buzzing as it spun a tiny arc across the tabletop.

He didn't answer immediately.

After it vibrated three times, I picked it up and slid to answer.

He didn't speak first.

The other side spoke first.

The voice on the other end was very low, as if they were in a place where it was inconvenient to speak loudly.

He held the phone to his ear, and the temple of his silver-rimmed glasses was slightly tilted as the phone pressed against it.

The other person spoke for about thirty seconds.

He didn't say a word.

Place your left hand on the edge of the table, and gently press your thumb against the edge of the table in a rhythmic motion, once every two seconds.

I've finished listening.

Then he spoke.

The voice was soft and flat, as if stating a fact that had nothing to do with him.

"Has the timeline of Ark been confirmed?"

The other person said something else.

This segment is even shorter, about ten seconds long.

As he listened, he tilted his head slightly, causing the lenses of his silver-rimmed glasses to fold at an angle, and a spot of light slid across the lens.

"Um."

Another period of silence followed.

The person on the other end seemed to be waiting for him to ask more questions, but he didn't.

The silence lasted for five or six seconds.

The refrigerator compressor hummed again during this period of silence.

Does he know we're watching?

After he finished speaking, the other person fell silent.

The silence lasted longer than before, about seven or eight seconds.

Then the person on the other end said a very short word, only two syllables.

After listening, he hummed in agreement.

This "hmm" was half a degree lower than the previous one.

It's over.

I put the phone back on the right side of the keyboard, and the screen went dark.

The room fell silent again, with only the hum of the laptop fan.

He took off his silver-rimmed glasses and wiped the lenses with the hem of his hoodie.

There was a tiny fingerprint on the lens, and he had to wipe it clean twice.

Put it back on.

Then he reached for the dark gray hard-shell folder.

The folder's clasp is metal, and it makes a very soft click when pressed.

Turn it over.

The folder contains three separate pages, and each separate page contains a file.

The label on the first divider page had a line of small, black text that he had seen many times before.

The label on the second divider page also had words on it, which I had seen many times before.

The third page.

He flipped to the third one.

The label for this page break is blank; there is no text on it.

However, there is a small, round red mark in the upper right corner of the label, just like the red dot in the lower right corner of the folder.

The third document was thinner than the first two, containing only a few pages.

He took the file out and put it on top of the folder.

The paper texture is different from the previous two; it's thicker, as if a different type of printing paper was used.

The first page is a printed table with a very simple layout, in black and white, without any distinctive headings or logos.

The table's column headers are Date, Event Type, Association, and Remarks.

Most of the lines have empty notes, with only a few lines containing text.

His gaze swept from top to bottom and stopped at the fourth line.

The event type column for that line reads "Parameter self-modification".

The related statistics list is filled with a string of abbreviations, which I can't understand.

In the remarks column, the last field is a date.

It was written with a red ballpoint pen, not printed.

The handwritten red characters were small but very clear.

The pen tip was pressed too hard, and the red ink bulged slightly on the paper; you could feel that tiny bump when you touched it with your finger.

2020-01.

He stared at those four characters for a long time.

The lenses of the silver-rimmed glasses reflected light again, this time not from the screen, but from a thin ray of sunlight filtering in through the gap in the curtains.

2020-01.

2020 October.

He turned to the second page.

The second page contains only a few lines of handwritten text, all written with a red ballpoint pen, the same pen used for the date on the first page.

The handwriting is very small and the spacing is very tight, as if it was written in a place where it was inconvenient to unfold.

He looked at it for about half a minute, then flipped back to the first page and looked at the date again.

2020 October.

It coincides perfectly with the time that happened.

He put the document back after the separator page.

Fasten the folder with the clasp, it clicks shut.

The folder closed again, its dark gray hard cover facing up, the red dot in the lower right corner sitting quietly.

He picked up his phone.

It wasn't a phone call.

I opened an app, but the interface was dark, so I couldn't tell what app it was.

The application loaded for one second and a list of conversations appeared.

There is only one conversation in the list, no avatar, no nickname, just a gray default human icon.

He clicked on it.

The previous message history in the dialog box is not visible; the screen is too dark, and I can only see a few lines of alternating gray and white bubbles.

I typed in some text.

His thumb moved slowly across the screen, pressing each character one by one.

After finishing, I paused for a moment and checked it over.

It paused for about three seconds.

send.

A "Sent" notification popped up on the screen, paused for a second, and then disappeared.

From this angle, we can't see who the message was sent to or what it contained.

A short white message bubble appears on the right side of the dialog box, about one or two lines long.

He turned off his phone screen.

Place it on the table, screen down.

The room fell silent again.

The laptop screen was lit up, the screensaver was activated, and a slowly moving geometric shape floated on a black background.

The owner of the silver-rimmed glasses remained seated in the chair.

A ray of sunlight filtering through the curtains drew a thin line on the table, passing through the edge of the folder and illuminating the bottom of the water glass, casting a small patch of warm light.

The dark gray folder sat quietly in front of him, with the red dot facing upwards.

He was looking at the light.

Or maybe they're not looking at anything at all.