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

February 26th.

It was still dark outside when the alarm clock rang.

In Hangzhou at the end of February, it gets light late in the morning; at six o'clock, it's almost as dark as midnight.

He lay there for a few seconds, then got up.

When I was washing up, my face in the mirror looked no different than usual.

I squeezed out a bit of toothpaste, and the tap was turned on to its lowest setting, so the water flow was very thin.

After washing the towel, I hung it back up, but there was only one towel left on the towel rack.

On the table under the mirror was a half-empty bottle of facial cleanser, the cap not tightly closed.

He tried to twist it, but it didn't work. Oh well.

The kitchen lights were off in the Binjiang residential complex, and the microwave clock showed 06:17.

He took a carton of milk from the refrigerator, tore it open, and took two sips.

The milk was cold, and there was a milky taste in my mouth after drinking it.

I put it back; I hadn't eaten breakfast.

The luggage was packed last night.

A 28-inch black suitcase stands in the entryway.

The suitcase contained not much: a few changes of clothes, a spare pair of shoes, and a toiletries bag.

I brought a light windproof jacket; the temperature in Nairobi at the end of February is around 15 to 25 degrees Celsius.

It's cool in the mornings and evenings, but hot at midday.

The dark blue document bag wasn't put in the suitcase, but in the backpack, on the back side.

The passport was tucked into the outer pocket of the document bag.

The cover is dark red; Shen Nan changed the notebook when he renewed it last year.

He changed into a dark gray coat and zipped it up.

I paused in the entryway before leaving and glanced at the living room.

The living room wasn't big, and he hadn't spent much time there in the past two months.

One of the cushions on the sofa was crooked, but he didn't go to fix it.

The glass of water I drank from last night was on the coffee table, with a little water left in it.

The curtains weren't drawn, and the streetlight shone through the gaps in the curtains, casting a narrow, bright line on the floor.

This image would flash through his mind when he was away on business, and then he would forget about it.

He closed the door and locked it.

The sound of the latch snapping in was crisp in the empty corridor.

Go to the company first.

It takes about 20 minutes by taxi from Binjiang to the headquarters of Weiguang.

The driver was a middle-aged man, and the radio was playing the morning news at a very low volume.

The morning in Hangzhou outside the car window is slow to start; the streetlights are still on, and the horizon has a slightly grayish-white glow.

There weren't many cars on the elevated road; occasionally a taxi would pass by, its taillights flashing briefly in the gray light.

He sat in the back seat, not looking at his phone, but staring out the window.

A thin mist hung over the direction of the Qiantang River, making the river's outline appear and disappear in the fog.

When we arrived at Weiguang, it was a little before seven o'clock, and the parking lot was almost empty.

There were only two or three cars parked there, all belonging to security guards and property management staff.

He didn't take his suitcase upstairs; he left it in the taxi's trunk and had the driver wait downstairs.

I only carried a backpack up there.

The elevator reached the seventh floor, and when the doors opened, there was no one in the hallway.

It's the same as when it came on the first day of the Lunar New Year, the eighth day of the first lunar month.

The floor had just been mopped, the radiators were humming, and the emergency exit indicator light at the end of the corridor was lit up green.

He walked down the corridor to the office door, took out his key, and opened it.

I inserted the key, turned it, and pushed the door open.

A familiar, dry smell of heating wafted out, tinged with a hint of dust.

It smells exactly the same as when I first opened this door two months ago.

Nothing has changed in the office.

The desktop is empty; I tidied it up before I left yesterday. Only the watermark around the bottom of the cup remains.

The folder on the left is there, with two pieces of paper inside.

The two papers have the same organization name; I saw them yesterday.

The dark gray coat that was on the back of the chair had long been taken back; the chair was empty.

The water cups were on the shelf in the tea room, washed and upside down.

A sliver of morning light shone through the slats of the Venetian blinds.

He put his backpack on the table and turned on his computer.

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

The three icons on the desktop are still in the bottom right corner.

Lv4 folder.

Abyss-v4.

Screenshot_20221226.

They stood quietly lined up on the screen, their positions unchanged.

It's exactly the same as when I first turned it on on the eighth day of the first lunar month two months ago.

For two months, the positions of these three icons have remained unchanged.

But the things behind each icon are different from what they were two months ago.

He opened the "Africa Exploration" folder.

The three documents are still there, arranged by date.

He didn't open any of them.

He created a new document.

The cursor in the document blinked a few times on the first line.

The gray light from outside shone through the gaps in the blinds onto the keyboard.

He typed a line of text.

It's short, just a dozen or so words.

After he finished typing it, he looked at it again and didn't make any changes. Every word was exactly what he wanted to write.

Saved.

Filename: Memo_001.

This is the fourth document in the "Africa Exploration" folder.

The first three documents were research reports, and the fourth was action plans.

It went from three portions to four portions.

The preparation has turned into the departure.

He closed the folder.

The three icons on the desktop reappeared.

He glanced at Abyss-v4.

The icon remained there quietly, without any markings underneath, just as it had been two months ago.

I didn't open it.

He knew it was empty inside.

Fang Yuan has five lines of text and seventy-two hours of data, technical review materials, and a judgment standard that is taking shape.

There's nothing in this folder.

It was empty two months ago, and it's still empty now.

But what he needs to do now is not to fill up this folder.

What he was going to do was on another continent, 10,000 kilometers away.

We'll talk about the folder when we get back.

He pulled out two papers from the folder on the left and glanced at them.

A printed copy of Chen Wei's interview notes is on the left, while the chain of signatures for Shen Nan's memo is on the right.

The pencil circle next to David Leung's name is still there, very faint, and easily missed if you don't look closely.

I drew this circle the night before last; the pencil marks are faintly visible on the paper.

We'll deal with this after we get back from Africa.

He put the two papers back and closed the folder.

It was placed in the bottom drawer of the desk.

The drawer was locked, and the key was on his keychain.

He closed his laptop.

When the screen went dark, the three icons flashed once more and then disappeared.

He put the computer in his backpack and zipped it up.

The sound of the zipper was clearly audible in the quiet office.

Stand up and push the chair back under the table.

The chair wheel rolled on the floor with a soft thud.

I glanced around the office.

The desktop was empty, the drawers were locked, the blinds were closed, and the green light on the air conditioner panel was on.

It was about the same time as when he came on the first day of the Lunar New Year, the eighth day of the first lunar month.

That day, he opened the door and smelled the air that had been stuffy for two weeks. The coffee stains on the table had dried into a brown circle.

The desktop is now empty; the coffee stains have been wiped away.

A lot happened in those two months.

But from the outside, nothing in this office has changed.

He slung his backpack over his shoulder and walked to the door.

The bag isn't heavy, but you can feel the stiffness of the paper when the document bag is against your back.

I glanced back.

The office was quiet; the desk lamp was off, and only the morning gray light shone through the gaps in the blinds.

Green lights on desktops, chairs, blinds, and air conditioner panels.

They're all there, not moving.

Then he closed the door.

The door lock clicked in with a click.

The corridor was empty.

It was a little past seven o'clock, and most people hadn't arrived yet.

Footsteps echoed in the corridor; he was the only one there.

Occasionally, a water hammer sound would come from the radiator's water pipes, just like the one heard on the eighth day of the first lunar month.

The emergency exit indicator light at the end of the corridor was on, its green light reflecting off the gray-white wall.

He walked to the end of the corridor and pressed the elevator button.

The button lit up; it was orange and had a downward arrow.

He stood in front of the elevator door, the straps of his backpack draped over his shoulders.

I waited for about ten seconds.

There was no sound in the corridor except for the sound of water flowing in the heating pipes and the sound of a door opening and closing on a distant floor.

The elevator has arrived.

The door opened.

It's empty inside.

He went inside.

The door closed.

The author said:

We've arrived in Africa. Next stop: Nairobi. Keep reading, it gets even more intense later.