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

The rain stopped.

The winter rain in Hangzhou comes and goes quickly. By 11 a.m., most of the clouds had dispersed, and the sun peeked out through the gaps, shining on the wet road surface and reflecting a layer of shattered silver light.

The glass curtain wall of the Weiguang headquarters had been washed by the rain and was much brighter than usual. When the sunlight shone on it, the whole building was shimmering.

Lin Che stood by the window and looked out for a while.

The hot water in my hand was no longer scalding; I took a sip, and it was lukewarm, just right.

He returned to the table and sat down.

He had looked at the status on his desktop many times, but each time it seemed a little different.

It's not that the things have changed, it's that his perception of them has changed.

Lv4, now there's a "Africa Exploration" folder inside. That folder, which had been empty since I returned from Beijing, is now full.

Abyss-v4 is still empty, but the meaning of "empty" has changed. Before, it meant "not started yet," but now it means "nothing needs to be put here."

Screenshot_20221226, the handwritten blue text, "National capabilities that need to be protected", is in the handwriting of the female member of the technical review team.

The empty space in the middle, where "if" used to be, is now in the recycle bin waiting to be cleaned up by the system.

A dark blue folder sits on the left side of the desktop, zipped up with the silver zipper pull facing upwards, containing an authorization letter bearing a red stamp.

There were two documents in the drawer: Chen Wei's Ark Summary and the Circuit Breaker Proposal.

That's all there is right now.

Everything on a table.

A year ago, this desk only had a keyboard, a mouse pad, and an uncapped pen.

Now there are three more icons: an empty space, a folder, two files in a drawer, and a screenshot.

He sat for a while.

No files were opened, no data was viewed, and no messages were sent to anyone.

Sunlight streamed in through the window, casting a warm-colored patch of light on the desktop, the edges of which overlapped with the corners of the dark blue folder.

A quiet morning.

Hangzhou after the rain.

The end of January.

Cut to the next scene.

the same day.

Microlight Headquarters.

Third floor.

Fang Yuan's workstation.

Fang Yuan wasn't on the fifth floor; his workstation was in the open office area on the third floor, in the row by the window.

The workstation was tiny: a 120-centimeter-wide table, two monitors, a keyboard, and a bunch of cables tangled under the table.

There was a computer case under the table, but the fan wasn't spinning and the machine was off.

There were few things on the table. On the left was a cup of Nescafé 3-in-1 coffee that had gone cold. The paper cup had coffee stains on the cup wall that had dried into a thin brown film.

Next to the paper cup was a small stack of printed papers, turned upside down, so the contents could not be seen.

On the right is a black hardcover notebook, A5 size, with the faint crease still visible on the cover.

There weren't many people in the open office area on the third floor at this time.

Most of the engineers went to lunch, and you could faintly hear the buzzing sound of people waiting for their lunchboxes in front of the microwave in the hallway.

Fang Yuan did not go to eat.

He sat at his workstation, with both monitors in front of him black and not turned on.

He wasn't looking at the screen.

He was looking at that notebook.

The black hard-cover notebook was closed and placed on the right side of the desk, parallel to the keyboard.

His right hand rested on the notebook cover, his fingertips gently pressing the crease.

He held a black ballpoint pen in his left hand, the cap unscrewed and the nib pointing downwards.

He sat there for about a minute.

He didn't move for a minute.

The pen was held in his hand, but he didn't put it down.

Then he opened his notebook.

When I opened it, the hard cover made a very soft creaking sound. The notebook had been used for a long time, and the corners of the hard cover were a little bit coming unglued.

It wasn't flipped from the first page.

Just like last time in Lin Che's office, he flipped directly to a certain page.

As I flipped through the pages, the densely packed handwritten text and diagrams flashed by.

Blue, black, and occasionally red.

Some pages were filled with arrows and boxes, some were full of numbers and formulas, and one page contained only a large question mark.

I found it.

That page.

The lower half.

Several lines of text arranged vertically, in black ink, with the font size one size larger than the main text.

Four lines of text.

He has already written four lines.

First line, second line, third line, fourth line.

Each row is spaced about one centimeter apart.

The handwriting isn't particularly beautiful, but each character is the same size and the spacing is the same.

It was written seriously.

It's about writing something important.

The four lines of text resemble four steps, from top to bottom, with each line written heavier than the one before it, and the last line being the deepest.

The content of the four lines of text is not clearly visible from this angle.

The text was too small, and the notebook wasn't open towards the observer, but towards Fang Yuan himself.

He held the pen up with his left hand, about one centimeter below the fourth line of text.

The pen tip hovered above the paper, not falling.

The warm air from the air conditioner vent blew down from above, hitting the paper and causing the edges of the page to curl up slightly.

Fang Yuan pressed down on the upturned corner of the paper with his right thumb.

Then the pen tip fell.

The black ink began to move across the paper.

One word.

Another word.

He wrote slowly, but each stroke was steady.

I couldn't make out what was written; I could only see the traces the pen tip left on the paper, one after another, black lines extending across the white paper.

It took about ten seconds to write.

not long.

A single line of text.

Fifth line.

It's finished.

The pen tip left the paper, leaving a tiny ink dot at the end of the last stroke.

Fang Yuan stared at the fifth line he had just written for about five seconds.

Five seconds later, he screwed the cap back on the pen and placed it on the table.

Then he closed the notebook.

The closing motion was a little slower than the last time in Lin Che's office.

It wasn't hesitation, but a slow closing. The left hand flipped the cover up from the back, while the right hand caught it on the front. With both hands exerting force at the same time, snap, it closed.

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

The laptop lay quietly on the desk, exactly the same as before.

But there was an extra line of text inside.

The fifth line.

Fang Yuan stood up.

I picked up the now-cold Nestlé 3-in-1, took the last sip, crumpled the paper cup, and threw it into the trash can next to the table.

Then he picked up the notebook and tucked it under his arm.

gone.

The workstation is empty.

Two black-screen monitors, a chair, and a bunch of cables.

The space bar on the keyboard gleamed slightly in the sunlight.

The small stack of printed papers, turned upside down, was still on the table; it hadn't been taken away.

Outside the window is Hangzhou after the rain. The sun is bright, and the water on the road is evaporating, emitting a thin layer of white steam.

The window of Lin Che's office on the fifth floor of the building across the street was also reflecting the light.

The two people were in the same building; one was on the fifth floor, and the other had just left from the third floor.

Fang Yuan took the laptop with him.

He also took the fifth line of text with him.

What he wrote, only he knows now.