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

The chief representative tried to suppress the thought of how he knew, but couldn't.

It was like a thorn stuck in his heart, making him restless. The deal was about to be finalized, and he should have been feeling triumphant, but those few words from the person opposite him gave him the illusion that someone had seen through his hand. He held his coffee, wanting to speak several times, but not knowing where to begin.

You can't just ask directly, "How did you know that this was decided in our internal meeting?" That would be like exposing yourself in public.

He held his coffee and spoke casually, but his words carried a hint of probing.

"Mr. Lin knows this area better than I thought."

"I know a little bit about it." Lin Che smiled, not taking the bait, but instead steer the conversation back to the assessment, "But I've been pondering your statement that it will only be valuable in 2024 for a long time."

The chief representative's gaze sharpened. He hadn't expected Lin Che to bring this up, and even less had he expected that Lin Che's next move wouldn't be to refute the conclusion, but rather to follow it and ask how the conclusion came about.

"How did you calculate this time?" Lin Che asked slowly, as if he were genuinely seeking advice. "Did you feed all the data you have now into the model and let it push forward until all the conditions are met, and that's the exact time?"

"You could say that," the chief representative replied cautiously.

"Then the only possible timeframe is 2024." Lin Che nodded, as if he had finally figured it out. "Because your model only recognizes what it has seen. It has seen the geological data from recent years, and it has seen the current electricity prices and policies, so it obediently uses these to calculate the future. The result is a future without any surprises."

The chief representative remained silent.

"But the future will never lack accidents," Lin Che said calmly. "Your model can calculate what time the sun will rise tomorrow, but it can't predict whether someone will set a fire tonight. It's not that it's inaccurate; it can only see the past and draw forward along that line. Anything that isn't on that line is treated as if it doesn't exist."

He paused, then added.

"You're calculating the norm. But the future of this land is anything but normal."

These few words, like needles, gently pried open the most crucial layer of that assessment.

The chief representative was a smart man. He immediately understood what Lin Che was saying.

Lin Che didn't say he was wrong, but he pointed out the limitations of his model: it could only extrapolate the future based on what had already happened. The premise of this model was that the future was merely a continuation of the past. However, if a variable never before seen in history appeared in the future, such as a policy that no one had anticipated, or a power investment that was implemented ahead of schedule, this sophisticated model would fail at that point.

He could even deduce the source of the other party's information. A top-notch team, a world-class algorithm, fed with the most detailed historical data in recent years. The more complete the data, the more confident the model, and the more it locks itself into the framework of history. They thought they were seeing the future, but they were just stretching out the past.

Unfortunately, they knew nothing about this.

He opened his mouth, wanting to refute, but found that Lin Che hadn't given him a target to refute.

Lin Che didn't refute a single piece of data in the report, not even a single percentage point. He was simply stating a very basic truth: the past cannot predict the entire future.

The reasoning itself is irrefutable.

You can't argue with someone about whether the sun will rise tomorrow, but you also can't guarantee that no one will start a fire tonight. Lin Che was referring to this second point. And the other party's model only considered the first point.

In this conversation, Lin Che once again did not reveal any of his cards. He simply laid out the boundaries of the other party's information sources, letting them see, think, and feel uneasy for themselves.

The chief representative felt a chill run down his spine as he thought about it. For the first time, he realized that his prized evaluation system might indeed have a blind spot he had never considered. And the person opposite him seemed to be standing right in that blind spot, seeing right through him.

But he ultimately didn't ask. To ask would be tantamount to admitting that his system had flaws. A man who had been in this business for nearly thirty years, who had won countless games with this system, was inherently unwilling to admit this. He preferred to believe that what he saw before him was nothing more than this Chinese man's bluff, a final act of mystification before his defeat.

He regained some confidence.

Once the third-party report is released, everything will become clear. At that time, all of this person's mystique will be exposed by a set of solid data, and the gentle slope he's been guarding will be proven to be nothing more than a useless piece of land that hasn't been ripe yet. He comforted himself with this thought, picked up his now-cold coffee, and took a sip.

Unbeknownst to him, while these negotiations were underway, across the ocean, another pair of eyes were also watching something related to this mine. A sum of money, flowing from overseas to Africa, had silently triggered a pre-placed marker. A line of data on the screen lit up, and someone wrote down its direction and time in the record. That was something else entirely, currently having no connection to this meeting room.

During the tea break between negotiations, the atmosphere became more relaxed than before.

The local official who had been observing from the sidelines strolled over to Lin Che, holding his cup. Throughout the entire negotiation, he had sat in the middle, unbiased, like a mere bystander. But now, he had taken the initiative to come closer.

He started by chatting about the weather and road conditions in a friendly tone.

Then, seemingly unintentionally, he lowered his voice.

"Mr. Lin," he said, "there's something I'm not sure if I should say."

Lin Che looked at him.

"Recently," the official said, choosing his words carefully, "someone privately told us that we need to be extra careful when choosing partners. I didn't ask what they meant, just took it as a reminder."

He left it at that, without revealing who the person was or what lay behind the word "caution".

"You're a sensible person," he patted Lin Che's arm, "and there are some things I can only say up to this point."

He spoke casually, as if he had just made a trivial remark, and then picked up his cup and walked away, as if he had simply fulfilled his duty as the host to remind him.

Lin Che did not press further, nor did he show any emotion.

He held the glass of water in his hand, but didn't drink it. The official hadn't said who had passed the message, and he had no way of knowing. But one thing he was certain of: at this critical juncture, someone would specifically use their connections to remind the local officials; the weight of those words was far from simple.

He quietly memorized those words, along with the name of the person who never showed up.