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

The office door was left open after Chen Wei left.

The sound of footsteps passing by in the corridor could be heard intermittently.

The air conditioner was still humming, the temperature hadn't changed, but the air in the room felt like it had been replaced.

There was nothing on the desktop; Chen Wei had taken the folder and all eight pages of paper back.

Only the water glass that had been cold for a long time was still in the upper left corner, and the water vapor on the glass wall had dried.

He didn't move immediately.

I sat there for about two minutes, listening to the sounds coming from the hallway.

There was laughter coming from the technical department; the sound came through two walls, but I couldn't make out what they were saying.

Then he got up and closed the door.

When the door closed, the noise from the corridor was shut out, and the office became quiet again.

He returned to his seat and turned on his computer.

The standby screen lit up, and I entered the password.

The three icons are still in the bottom right corner.

He ignored the three icons and opened the Ark backend directly.

The homepage of the Ark backend features status panels for six accounts.

The six squares are arranged in two rows, and each square displays the account name, balance, and last transaction time.

He looks at this interface every day, hundreds of times.

But what I see today is different from what I saw before.

The square in the top left corner has a red border, indicating a BVI frozen account.

The balance has remained unchanged since the freeze, with the most recent transaction date being December 22nd of last year.

The other five have blue borders.

Blue indicates normal operation.

But the word "normal" is now in quotation marks.

He clicked into the details page of the BVI account.

The first column on the details page is basic information, and the second column is transaction history.

The transaction records are arranged from top to bottom, with the newest ones at the top.

The first four items refer to those four sums of money.

87, 114, 152, approximately 120.

The four numbers were at the top of the list, like four nails quietly driven in.

The date, amount, source entity, and red dots on Chen Wei's diagram correspond one-to-one.

When he used to look through the logs, he only saw the words "source unknown".

Now we know what comes after "unknown".

Whitecap, Kelvin Pacific.

Global Vector, Southern Crest.

BVI, Samoa, Luxembourg, Seychelles.

The four names are scattered across four offshore registrations and appear to be independent of each other.

Four shell companies, four paths, one network.

He flipped down.

Below the four sums of money, the flow of money continues to trace back to the beginning.

All transaction records prior to May 19th are normal and have a clear source.

Each transaction has a corresponding contract number and approval record.

The BVI account was clean before the first token payment was made.

The water flow was as normal as a straight line.

Starting May 19th, this account was no longer clean.

He exited the transaction log and clicked on the third column: transfer records.

The transfer records show the fund transfers between the BVI account and other accounts.

Chen Wei said that 230 million yuan was transferred to the Chengdu account in July and 180 million yuan was transferred to the backup account in October.

He found these two entries in the allocation records.

On July 12, 2022, RMB 2.3 million was transferred out to the Chengdu operating account for the purpose of CCPS second batch prepayment.

On October 8, 2022, 1.8 million was transferred out to the standby funds account for the purpose of purchasing GAN-7 hardware.

Each of the two records has an approval number next to it.

The approver's name was written in the column.

Lin Che.

He approved both transfers.

The approval note at the time was very concise: "Normal allocation, to be executed according to plan."

Seven words: signature date, approval number. The process is complete.

He was unaware that the BVI account had been compromised when he made the transfer.

He personally delivered the dye from one account to the other two.

They didn't even glance at the source details during the approval process.

He glanced at the two records for a few seconds, then exited the allocation page.

Return to the BVI account details page.

Scroll down, past the transaction details and transfer records, to the bottom of the page.

My gaze fell on a column that no one would normally notice.

"Transaction Feature Code".

This field displays the internal code for each transaction within the bank's system.

The encoding format is a 16-bit mixed format, with numbers and letters mixed together.

It looks like a string of random characters and makes no sense.

But he pulled out the codes of the four marked funds and put them together to look at.

第一笔：A3F7-2K9E-M1X4-P8B6

第二笔：A3F7-2K9E-N5Y2-Q7D1

第三笔：A3F7-2K9E-R4Z8-S3C9

第四笔：A3F7-2K9E-L6W3-T2H5

The first eight are exactly the same.

A3F7-2K9E.

Eight characters: four numbers and four letters, arranged in a mixed format.

The last eight digits are all different; they should be the serial numbers automatically generated by the bank system based on the transaction time.

But the consistency of the top eight is not a coincidence.

The four sums of money differ in amount, origin, registered location, and nominee shareholding structure.

But the first eight bits of the code are exactly the same.

This is what Chen Wei refers to as "specific coding features".

A fingerprint that marks funds.

No matter how many layers of outer shell it has, how many names it has changed, or how many countries it has traveled to, the first eight digits of the code will not change.

Trackers can pinpoint the location of the money simply by searching for these eight characters in the transaction history of any account.

Like a nail, it was driven into the lifeblood of Ark's finances.

The nail doesn't hurt, the nail doesn't make a sound, the nail just stays there quietly.

But every time a sum of money flows through it, it leaves a trace.

He then opened the transaction history of the Chengdu operating account.

I found the transfer record for 230 million and checked the transaction code.

The first eight digits are not A3F7-2K9E.

It's another set of characters that looks like it was regenerated by the banking system.

The transfer operation will generate a new transaction code, which is a standard rule of the banking system.

The code was updated during the allocation process.

But Chen Wei said the marker features would "spread".

Diffusion doesn't necessarily follow the path of encoding inheritance; it may involve other mechanisms.

The technical details should be in the table.

He didn't have time to look closely at the form Chen Wei left behind before it was taken away.

He needed Chen Wei to make a copy of that form and keep it.

We need to understand the mechanism of diffusion before we can make the next judgment.

He logged out of his Chengdu account and returned to the homepage.

Six squares are lined up in front of me, three of which have already been colored.

BVI, Chengdu operations, and reserve funds.

The blue borders of the three squares look no different from the other three.

The system does not indicate which accounts have been flagged because the flags themselves are invisible.

Only he knew that the three accounts were no longer clean.

The remaining three are currently clean: Hangzhou's daily operations, Changsha's special project, and overseas reserves.

But as long as money is transferred from the contaminated account to these three accounts in the future, even the clean ones will become dirty.

The longer the time, the wider the spread.

He stared at the six squares for a while.

It was dyed blue three times, but you couldn't see it on the screen.

The light outside the window has changed; the afternoon is almost over.

The light filtering through the blinds was a warm yellow, illuminating the screen frame.

Then I closed the Ark backend.

The three icons on the desktop reappeared.

Lv4 folder.

Abyss-v4.

Screenshot_20221226.

There are still no markers under the Abyss-v4 icon, and the folder is still empty.

He didn't click on any of them.

He opened the "Africa Exploration" folder.

The three documents are still there, the latest one having been modified last week.

The question mark next to it is still there.

The funding for the African SPV was originally planned to come from overseas reserve accounts.

The overseas reserve account is now clean and is not among the three that were contaminated.

However, after the African SPV is launched, it can initially be supported by overseas reserves.

What happens next?

If additional funds are needed from the Chengdu or backup account, the flag will be displayed.

The dye will flow from the Ark's account to the African SPV's account.

Then it flows from SPV into Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda.

It flows into mines, power plants, and data centers.

The flow of funds along the entire African route is completely transparent to the trackers.

Where he spent how much money, to whom he paid, what he bought, and how long the intervals were.

The tracker can see everything.

The secrecy surrounding the African route is no longer valid.

He looked at it for a few seconds.

The three documents in the "Africa Exploration" folder on the screen were arranged quietly, no different from before.

Then I closed the "Africa Exploration" folder.