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

It's 2 AM Beijing time.

An inconspicuous basement in the western part of Hangzhou.

The air was so murky it was almost dripping water.

Dozens of high-powered desktop computer cooling fans were roaring wildly, turning this 100-square-meter space into a sauna.

The aroma here is a mixture of the sweet and sour taste of Red Bull, the tarry smell of cheap cigarettes, and the sweaty smell of dozens of young male hormones fermenting.

"Hey Fatty, New York's sending a signal."

A boy wearing thick-rimmed glasses suddenly shouted.

His voice was hoarse from staying up all night, but it sounded particularly jarring amidst the clatter of the keyboard.

Fatty Wang, who was sitting in the boss's chair in the center of the room, suddenly opened his eyes.

He grabbed a wet towel from the table and scrubbed his oily face vigorously.

Those eyes, which were not large to begin with, were now bloodshot, yet they shone with an alarming brightness.

"Confirm command".

Fatty Wang exhaled a breath of stale air and stared at the encrypted pop-up window on the screen from across the ocean.

The pop-up window contained only one word:

【Burn】 (to burn).

That was Lin Che's order.

Simple, cold, with a kind of reckless madness.

Fatty Wang slammed the wet towel onto the table with a sharp "thud".

He sprang up from the chair, his fat body trembling violently with the movement.

"Brothers!"

Wang the Fatty roared, waving a half-empty can of Red Bull, "The boss has spoken! No sleep tonight! Throw out the 'nuclear bomb'!"

"Target: WeChat Moments."

"Tactics: Indiscriminate fission."

Slogan: Don't want to spend money? Just ask your buddies to cut your losses!

At his command, dozens of so-called "operations specialists"—who were actually part-time students from a nearby university—simultaneously pressed the enter key.

Crackle, crackle.

The sound was as dense as a torrential downpour.

Thousands of WeChat "big accounts" that had been nurtured for half a year, and tens of thousands of active WeChat groups, were simultaneously implanted with a red link.

That's not your average guy.

It was a meticulously designed virus built on the greed of human nature.

......

China is not completely asleep in the dead of night.

Shenzhen, an urban village near Foxconn.

Zhang, exhausted after finishing his night shift, lay down on the musty-smelling bed in the prefabricated house.

He habitually took out his phone, scrolled through his WeChat Moments, and prepared to go to sleep.

Suddenly, a striking red card popped out.

It was posted in the workers' group chat.

The headline is highly provocative: [Shocking! I just got a whole box of Qingfeng tissues for free! I only need 0.1 yuan more, brothers, help me cut the price!]

Xiao Zhang originally intended to slide across.

He'd seen plenty of these kinds of scams.

However, the words "0 yuan" and "Qingfeng tissues" hooked his gaze like a snare.

A box of tissues costs 30 yuan at the supermarket. That's the price of two meals for him.

"Really?"

As if possessed, Xiao Zhang stretched out his rough finger and tapped it.

Page redirection.

A giant spinning wheel effect, accompanied by the crisp sound of gold coins falling.

Congratulations! You're incredibly lucky! You've helped your friend save 29.9 yuan!

[You've also won a free order! Only 0.5% away from an iPhone 5s!]

iPhone 5s.

That golden, expensive gold, the kind that represents respectability and dignity.

Xiao Zhang's breathing became rapid instantly.

On the page, the golden progress bar was just a hair's breadth away from being full. Comments kept popping up at the bottom of the screen:

"Ms. Liu from Hunan just got an iPhone 5s for free."

Mr. Chen from Guangdong just withdrew 100 yuan.

These comments are obviously fake; they're just a piece of code that loops.

But in the delirium of two in the morning, they are the truth.

"Just a little bit more..."

Xiao Zhang muttered to himself.

A system notification popped up at the opportune moment: "Share to 3 groups to get a speed-up slashing attack!"

No hesitation.

They didn't even think about it.

Xiao Zhang's fingers seemed to have a mind of their own, quickly clicking "Share".

Workers' groups, hometown groups, family groups...

In that very instant.

In this country with 1.3 billion people, there are tens of thousands of "Xiao Zhangs" doing the same thing.

Greed, like a cold virus, spreads exponentially across social networks via fiber optic cables and base stations.

......

Tencent Building, Shenzhen.

2:30 a.m.

The WeChat security team's duty room was brightly lit.

The traffic monitoring graph on the big screen should have been a gentle wavy line.

But just now, the line seemed to have been kicked, and suddenly jumped up at a strange angle.

"What's going on? Is there an abnormal data usage?"

The shift leader frowned, put down his coffee, and asked, "Has another celebrity cheated on their wife? Or has the server been attacked?"

"It's not an attack."

The technician next to him typed rapidly on the keyboard, bringing up the data source. "It's... a large number of H5 page shares, the sources are very scattered, it looks like... group buying?"

"Group buying?" The group leader was taken aback. "What's that?"

"It seems to be a new model that Alibaba is developing, called something like 'Mini Group Buying'."

The technician retrieved several interception samples.

However, something strange happened.

These links did not trigger WeChat's automatic blocking mechanism.

Because their domain name suffixes are all disguised.

Some are labeled "Life Tips," some are labeled "Health and Wellness," and a few are even listed under the "charity crowdfunding" whitelist.

This was a foreshadowing that Lin Che had laid three months earlier.

Using his experience in the compliance department, he registered dozens of shell companies, applied for various seemingly harmless public accounts, and cultivated these "whitelisted" domains in advance.

This is what is meant by "the darkest place is under the lamp".

"Should we block it?" the technician asked. "The traffic is a bit high, which might affect the user experience."

The team leader glanced at the still-climbing curve.

If it were just a simple case of enticing people to share, it would have been blocked long ago.

But this scale... and it looks like an action from Alibaba.

This is a sensitive period in the battle between the two giants.

Alibaba is currently on a roadshow in the United States. If Tencent were to block Alibaba's "normal business activities" without a reason at this time, it would be accused of "monopoly" and "malicious competition".

The team leader hesitated.

"Let's observe first." He made a decision that conformed to the procedures of a large company, but was fatal. "Send an email to my superiors to report, and we'll make a judgment tomorrow morning."

This "wait until tomorrow" is a race against time, a matter of life and death.

In the world of the internet, six hours is enough for a virus to infect the entire world.

......

New York, 2 p.m.

Waldorf Astoria Hotel, Room 3206.

The rain was still falling outside the window, and the gloom was so intense it felt suffocating.

But in the room, Lin Che was looking at the computer screen with a cold smile on his lips.

Instead of stock prices, the screen displays real-time backend data for "Project W".

Real-time DAU (Daily Active Users): 5,230,000

New Users: +1,200,000 / Hour

Share Count: 8,500,000

The red numbers were jumping wildly.

This is not data.

These are millions of souls stirred up by greed.

"Buzz".

My phone vibrated.

The voice message from Fatty Wang had a background full of cheers and keyboard clicks, making it sound like a noisy market.

"Brother Che! It's blown up! Completely blown up! The server almost crashed just now, I just had five backup machines added! Tencent hasn't responded, they're probably confused by our fake accounts!"

Lin Che pressed the voice button and replied with only four words:

"Keep the fire going."

He closed the chat window, stood up, and walked to the French windows.

Rain streaked across the glass, blurring the view of Manhattan.

Behind him, the numbers on the screen were still soaring.

Behind every number is a click, a share, and an act of selling social relationships for a few dollars.

Some say that the essence of social interaction is sharing.

Lin Che shook his head.

He reached out his hand, through the glass, as if wanting to touch this steel forest.

"The essence of social interaction is utilization."

He spoke softly, his voice as cold as the rain outside the window.

"Don't go against human nature."

"When you learn to use greed, you possess the authority of God."

......

3 PM.

Tea break during the roadshow.

The Wall Street elites, who were originally discussing Yahoo's crash and Alibaba's data fraud, suddenly realized that something was wrong.

Several analysts specializing in emerging markets were huddled together, pointing and discussing in front of their phone screens.

"Hey, have you seen this app? It just climbed to number one on the App Store charts in China."

"Wei Pintuan? What is this?"

"I don't know, but the data is terrifying. My Chinese colleague told me that this red icon is all over China's social networks right now."

"Is this from Alibaba?"

Someone raised this crucial question.

All eyes turned to Mr. Ma and Mr. Xiao, who were drinking coffee not far away.

Mr. Ma maintained that enigmatic smile, neither confirming nor denying.

Just ten minutes ago, Lin Che had pushed the latest data to him.

Looking at the surge of 500 million daily active users, Jack Ma's hands were trembling.

But he had to pretend nothing was wrong, to act as if it were just a trivial "small explosion" within the Alibaba ecosystem.

"It seems that the young man's PowerPoint presentation wasn't just empty promises."

A Sequoia Capital partner whispered to his assistant, "Check the equity structure of this app. If it's a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alibaba, then today's valuation pullback is a joke. We need to buy in immediately."

"What if it isn't?" the assistant asked.

The partner glanced at Lin Che, who was standing behind President Ma.

The young man was leaning against a pillar, toying with a coin in his hand, with a look of amusement on his face.

"If it weren't for..."

A glint of shrewdness flashed in the partner's eyes.

"Then we've found a new unicorn."

The rumors began to shift.

The initial panic about "counterfeiting" is rapidly transforming into curiosity and greed for the "mysterious Eastern power."

Capital is like a group of sharks that have smelled blood.

As long as they have meat to eat, they don't care where the meat comes from.

Lin Che felt the gazes directed at him.

Those gazes no longer held the previous disdain and suspicion, but rather inquiry, ingratiation, and even a hint of fear.

He tossed the coin in his hand.

"bite."

The coin tumbled in the air before landing steadily on the back of his hand.

Face up.

That's a picture of Washington.

"It seems that the fire is not burning bright enough."

Lin Che put away the coin and looked out at the gloomy sky.

"Then let it burn through the sky."