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

The notebook lay open on the table, and the line of words visible only to Lin Che read the next step.

Last night, he decided to let his opponent finish the proposal himself, but he spent most of the night thinking about how to hand over the pen and how to get the other party to willingly sign the wrong proposal.

When dawn broke, he had figured it out.

"I'll concede in the next round."

Lin Che read aloud the line of text that had been written.

He Wei's pen stopped in mid-air. She thought the decision made yesterday was to hold back, so why did they suddenly want to change course?

"It wasn't a real concession," Lin Che noticed her confusion. "It was just for show. He wanted the price for the middle section, and I conceded. He wanted to include the northern section in his portfolio, and I agreed to that too. I acted as if I was convinced by his assessment, and that I realized my land really wasn't worth much, so I settled for second best."

"How exactly should you give way?" Shen Nan asked earnestly. "There's a trick to how much you should give way. If you give way too little, he won't believe you. If you give way too much, it will seem deliberate."

"I know what I'm doing," Lin Che said. "I won't give in completely right away, that would be too fake. I'll start by looking at the data in his report, acting like I'm half-believing and half-doubting, slowly being persuaded. I'll make him feel that he convinced me little by little with his own abilities. People believe in what they've earned themselves, and the more effort he puts in, the more he feels that he rightfully won this land."

"So you want him to enjoy the process of persuading you." He Wei understood the underlying meaning.

"Yes." Lin Che nodded. "The more he feels this is an evenly matched contest, the less likely he is to suspect foul play. Once he convinces me, he will be more convinced of this outcome than anyone else."

"But if you concede," He Wei still couldn't wrap her head around it, "wouldn't the core area then rightfully belong to him?"

"It's his." Lin Che nodded. "On paper, he's won. He'll feel that the outcome of this negotiation is decided."

Shen Nan, who was listening nearby, already understood about 70-80% of what was going on.

"You're trying to lead him down this path," he said, "to make him think he's got the core area and relax."

“Yes,” Lin Che said. “Once a person feels they have won, they stop thinking. They will stop thinking about why I gave it away so readily, and they will stop checking if there are any loopholes in the assessment. They will be busy celebrating and busy putting this land into their proposal.”

He Wei lowered her head and wrote down these few sentences. As she wrote, her palms began to sweat again.

She recalled what Lin Che had said yesterday: let him finish what he wanted to say. It turned out that this gesture was like handing him a pen, allowing him to write down everything he wanted to say freely.

"But he's not stupid." He Wei raised her head and asked the question that had been bothering her the most. "You gave up so readily, didn't he suspect anything? A person who has pieced together so many things suddenly backs down so easily on one mine. If I were him, I would have my doubts."

This is the crucial point.

Lin Che didn't answer immediately. He walked to the window and looked outside for a while.

“He’ll have his doubts,” he finally said. “So I have to give him a reason he can believe. A reason that makes more sense than the truth.”

"What reason?"

"identity."

The room fell silent for a moment after those two words were uttered.

"He knows what kind of company I am," Lin Che said calmly. "We've been targeted, and we're on the Entity List. A company like this coming here to compete for a prime mining area is already attracting attention. The local government is worried, our competitors are making trouble, and there's trouble everywhere."

He turned around.

"So, in his view, it was perfectly reasonable for me to back down. A Chinese company that is afraid of causing trouble, when pressured by a powerful opponent, and not daring to fight back because of its own status, would take a step back to seek stability. Isn't that normal? He wouldn't think I was cheating; he would only think that he had my weakness exploited."

"And we don't need to explain this reason," Lin Che added. "He already had it in his head. From the moment he sat down at the negotiating table, he was weighing my identity against me. I don't need to explain anything. As long as I back down, he'll make up the cause and effect for me himself: a company with an entity list background chickened out in front of the core area. He came to this conclusion himself, and he believes it more firmly than anyone else."

Shen Nan nodded slowly.

"The hardest thing to guard against is a person's own self-convincing thoughts," he said. "If we try to explain why we made concessions, they will become suspicious. But since the reason is something that grew out of their own head, they will only think that they understand everything."

"The more he thinks that way," Shen Nan continued, "the less he'll think about other possibilities. He attributes your concession to your status, and he covers up the flaws in his assessment himself."

"That's the most brilliant part," Lin Che said. "My biggest disadvantage, my identity, has become a shield for my concessions. He focuses on this disadvantage, but he can't see where the real killer move is. The more certain he is that he has my Achilles' heel, the more confidently he sticks his neck into the trap I've set."

"Once he includes the northern section in the plan and signs it off," Shen Nan continued, "he'll have no way out. By then, when the third-party report comes out, no one will believe him if he says he misjudged the situation. The written agreement is right there; he's the one who fought for it."

"The more fiercely he tries to grab it, the harder he will fall in the future," Lin Che said.

He Wei stared at him blankly.

She suddenly realized that from yesterday to today, Lin Che had quietly turned everything that seemed fatal upside down. Defending wasn't cowardice, it was a strategic move. Giving way wasn't defeat, it was setting a trap. Even the biggest hurdle—his identity—was used as bait.

She recalled Shen Nan's three-line message back in China before she left, saying that her identity was the biggest risk. At that time, everyone regarded it as a stone weighing on their heads. But in Lin Che's hands, this stone was placed under his feet, becoming a stepping stone to climb higher.

He uses what others fear. He uses what others avoid to fish.

He Wei finally understood why Lin Che had never panicked no matter how big the obstacles he encountered. It wasn't that he had no weaknesses, but that he could turn his weaknesses into hooks.

The clock on the table moved past one mark.

He Wei glanced at the time and softly reminded, "It's almost ten o'clock, we should go now."

Lin Che closed the notebook and put it into his suit's inner pocket.

He straightened his cuffs and walked towards the door.

"Remember this." He paused at the doorway without turning around, "Later on the table, the more readily I concede, the less you should show any reluctance. The more he feels he has won, the more secure the game will be."

He Wei gripped her pen tightly and followed. She suddenly felt a sense of anticipation for the next match. Her opponent, who thought he had victory in the bag, had no idea that he was about to win against a trap that had been dug for him long ago.

The door was pushed open, and light from outside shone in.