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

Pushing open the door, Lin Che immediately saw the enamel mug.

The jar sat on the corner of the long table, its opening facing the door. Biluochun tea leaves were at the bottom of the jar, and steam was rising from it.

Old Zhou hasn't stayed in this room for more than forty days, but the jar seems to have never been moved.

It was a March night in Hangzhou. The plane had landed less than two hours ago, and he still carried the dust from Narobi's journey. But as he pushed open the door, the dust seemed to be dried by the lights inside.

Old Zhou came out from the inner room, holding a stack of printing papers in his hand. He paused for a moment when he saw him.

"I'm back."

With just those three words, Old Zhou put the paper on the table and looked him up and down.

"I'm already tanned enough in Africa, and I haven't adjusted to the time difference yet, so don't stay up all night tonight."

After saying that, he turned around and went into the inner room, the heat wafting behind him.

Xie Yu sat at the other end of the long table, the zipper pull of his thin black down jacket replaced with a cable tie.

Seeing Lin Che enter, he didn't stop writing with his 0.38 pen; he finished writing a line before looking up.

"The temperature control, delays, and alarms in the four cities over the past two months are all written in here."

He pushed the notebook half an inch toward Lin Che, and the edges of the pages were worn and curled.

"The latency in Wuhan has stabilized at 16.8, which is even lower than last month. The other three cities have not experienced any issues."

After saying that, he lowered his head again to write.

What needs to be said is written down on paper, and not a single word is added that shouldn't be said. That's Xie Yu.

Chen Wei closed the folder in his hand, the clasp snapping shut with a crisp sound unique to the room.

"I've been keeping an eye on the Ark line. I've checked the paths of the few lines you sent back from Narobi, and there haven't been any problems."

He paused, pressing his fingernail into the corner of the note, leaving an ink mark.

"I've been keeping track of what's happening back home. There are some things that will be clearer when you come back and talk to me in person."

As he spoke, he took out the few strokes of the inkstone from Narobi and placed them beside him, ready to be laid out at any time.

Lin Che hummed in agreement and sat down in the main seat, glancing at the items on the table.

The Lv4 folder, the screenshot, and the file bag I carried all the way back from Africa are all in their original places.

The file folder was bulging, containing things he had accumulated on this trip that he didn't need right now. He wasn't in a hurry to open it; those weren't things he needed at the moment.

He Wei placed a record of the incident next to him.

"The compliance report has been completed simultaneously, with no abnormalities."

She spoke in a very steady tone, her knuckles resting on the edge of the table without moving.

The lights were on, the tea was hot, and there was the sound of a keyboard clicking in the inner room.

The people in the room have all been with him for several years.

During his forty-plus days in Africa, he meticulously negotiated every inch of the negotiations. When he woke up in the middle of the night, his first thought was whether things had gone wrong back home. Now that he's back, he can tell after a quick look that nothing has gone wrong.

The person was in the same place, the jar was in the same place, and even the angle of the 0.38 pen rest was the same as before he left.

This is his territory.

On the very first night back in this territory, the contact left behind in China delivered two more things to my desk.

The first one is Fang Yuan.

This person's independent analytical framework never stopped during the days Lin Che was away.

Fang Yuan didn't touch the obvious suspicious points that had already been thoroughly investigated. He specifically picked out the discrepancies, such as one operation record not matching another, or one timestamp not matching another.

Since this point didn't match up, he kept digging deeper, inch by inch, and recently, he's made new progress.

The second thing is that person who has never shown his face.

Silver-rimmed glasses, an encrypted folder, and "January 2020" written in red pen—that's all you can trace at the other end of the line.

This person compiled a report outlining Weiguang's cross-border transaction history for the past year.

The money was transferred through clean channels, taking a roundabout route and avoiding the accounts marked by the authorities. However, the money still ended up in the eyes of this person after a year of moving in and out of the country.

The report is already on its way, heading to a certain institution.

The other end of the thread couldn't say for sure when it would reach that person, only saying, "Soon."

The two things placed together refer to the same place.

In the early morning of January 3, 2020, there was an unclaimed parameter modification, and the logs for the thirty-odd minutes before and after that were empty.

No one changed it, but the parameters changed on their own.

He Wei stood to the side, her palms sweating again.

She had seen Fang Yuan's line of reasoning, and she was also aware of the significance of the reviewer's report.

At this moment, besides Lin Che, only she in this room knows what these two things mean.

Old Zhou was checking his engine data in the inner room, Xie Yu was writing in his notebook, and Chen Wei was guarding the Ark's connection line.

The lights were still on, the tea was still hot, and everyone was doing their own thing, just like any other night when people were working overtime.

She was the only one standing in this warmth; her back felt cold first.

She looked up at Lin Che.

His face was expressionless, as if the two knives on the table weren't aimed at him, but rather two ordinary weekly newspapers.

Lin Che raised his hand, clenched the glass of water in his palm, but didn't drink it.

The water was warm, freshly poured by He Wei. As he held it for a while, the warmth gradually seeped into his palm, but he didn't move.

The room was warm, but he knew in his heart that only the room was warm.

He knew better than anyone which of those two knives were pointing.

That place is his root; everything he has grown there in recent years.

It was also the thinnest layer of skin on his body; wherever the knife fell, it hit its mark every time.

Someone else would be thinking about how to cover up the traces right now.

Wipe away the blank log on the server, the whiteboard in the office, the line of pencil writing on the back of the draft paper, and the knife will miss its target.

But those things couldn't be deleted, and he never intended to delete them anyway.

This time when he came back, he didn't go anywhere else to hide, but instead went back to Hangzhou, and his next stop is Beijing.

Where the roots are deepest, the skin is thinnest.

He didn't come back to hide; he came back to stand where the knife could reach him.

And far away on the other side, there is a third thing turning.

That wasn't a person, it was a machine.

A well-written proposal, following the usual rhetoric of "national security" and "critical minerals," is being passed up the chain of command.

This procedure doesn't recognize right or wrong, but rather the process itself; every necessary step is taken and every required stamp is applied without fail.

Once this proposal goes through all the necessary procedures, it will be difficult for Weiguang to be removed from that list.

The person who submitted the proposal, Lin Che, sat across from him at the negotiating table in Africa for several days, and before leaving, he said, "Until we meet again."

He wasn't after Lin Che as a person; he was after the company, Weiguang.

The massive program moved slowly, frame by frame, but it never stopped. The direction it turned was towards the faint light.

The lights were drawn in from three directions, from the west and east, into the room where the lights were on.

Lin Che put the glass of water back in its place; the surface swayed, then calmed down.

Footsteps sounded outside the door, and Chen Wei returned, carrying a note in his hand.

"Fang Yuan just sent me a message."

Chen Wei paused for a moment and then read the words on the note to him.

"He said he's made some discoveries lately and wants to see the structure in person."

Lin Che's fingertips paused on the edge of the table for a moment.

No one made a sound from inside the room.

"Then let's meet."