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

Later, there were many nights when Lin Che sat alone in his office.

Outside the window, the city lights stretched all the way to the horizon.

The position he's sitting in is a height that many people could never reach, even after a lifetime of searching.

It was late at night, and his room was the only one still lit up on the entire floor.

There are no meetings to be held, no visitors, and no battles to be fought.

He hadn't experienced this kind of tranquility in a long time.

In quiet moments, he would occasionally think back to those early years.

Back then, he was a young man crammed into a cubicle, working through the night on backend data.

At that time, the only thing he had was a memory that no one else had. He remembered every year, every obstacle, and every opportunity that followed.

With just this one thing, he has climbed step by step from the very bottom to where he is today.

Looking back now, all the dangers, the near-overturning incidents, and the countless nights without tomorrow have become stepping stones beneath our feet.

He walked faster and in greater danger than anyone else.

Because he knew one step more than anyone else.

Today, from New York to Beijing, from regulatory tables to national policies, everyone has settled on the same answer.

An answer that will never have a conclusion.

A problem he designed himself that no one can prove.

The most important forces in the world are now standing outside this problem, protecting him.

Those who once wanted to overthrow him are now lifting him up.

Those who once wanted to see through him are now covering for him.

The person who had interrogated him for so long in 607 is now sitting at the same table, becoming a co-builder of this framework.

That report that was meant to kill him, that proposal that was meant to shut him down, has now become the bricks that are embedded in the wall, protecting him.

He did not eliminate any of his enemies.

He simply turned every enemy into someone who would protect him.

He won.

They've won big.

There were three things spread out on the desk.

A file folder contained the evidence gathered along the way, piece by piece. It was this folder that transformed the two swords hanging over our heads into two pillars protecting us.

A folder contains the compliance records accumulated over the years, so clean that no one can find a single mistake.

There was another folder with "Abyss v4" written on the cover, containing the foundational document, the beginning of a mystery that would never be solved.

These three items are the pieces he has laid bare in this game.

Each one is visible, tangible, and easily verifiable to others.

Throughout the entire game, he played with integrity and honesty; not a single move was dishonest.

This is what he is most proud of.

He didn't hide anything, he didn't lie. Anyone who wants to investigate these three things on the table can investigate them freely. Every single item is clean and every single detail matches up.

But the move that truly won the game wasn't in those three folders.

It's not on this table, nor in this room.

It is located in the deepest part of the core of Abyss.

Below the blank space in the operator column.

In the early morning of January 3, 2020, those three numbers were entered by his own hands.

That move was made based on his memory of tomorrow.

From the day the piece was placed, this move never appeared on anyone's chessboard again.

No one has ever seen it.

No one can prove that it ever existed.

That's the most ruthless part of this move.

It wasn't hidden away.

Things that are hidden will always be found eventually, and Fang Yuan was just a hair's breadth away from finding them.

But you have no way to find something that has never appeared on the chessboard before.

Over the years, his opponents have come and gone.

They sat across the chessboard, watching his every move, scheming against him, trying to find a weakness in his moves.

They couldn't find it.

Because the real killer move was never on the chessboard from the very beginning.

It fell outside the chessboard.

Others play chess, but he plays the game of chess with one hand, deciding how to play it and what rules to follow.

No matter how well a piece is played on the chessboard, it will eventually be captured.

The only piece that fell outside the chessboard was invisible to everyone, out of reach of everyone, and impossible for anyone to capture.

A secret that can never be proven is the safest place in the world.

He earned those words by playing an entire game of chess.

From pricing a product to pricing the truth, he has traveled the furthest distance that the word "pricing" can take.

The price of a product is written on the label, and everyone can see it.

The price of the truth is written in a secret that no one can prove, and no one can see it.

But it was this unseen price that bought him a lifetime of security.

These four words, "Beyond the Chessboard," are the footnote he left for this game of chess, and also the final place he stood.

He wasn't the best player on the chessboard.

He was the one who stepped off the chessboard.

That was his complete victory.

A complete victory that no one knows exactly where he went wrong.

The world only saw that Weiguang had become a powerful instrument protected by the state, and that Lin Che had become someone no one could touch.

No one knows that at the very bottom of all this lies a truth that only he knows.

The higher you stand, the fewer people will be able to speak the truth.

When he reached his position, there wasn't even one person he could tell the biggest truth to.

He can only carry it with him alone, for the rest of his life.

This truth will likely stay with him until the very end, and no one will ever know it.

No, perhaps even he himself wasn't entirely clear about it.

Was that 20% core merely his own prophecy, or had something else quietly grown in some place beyond his reach?

He didn't know the answer to that question.

The whole world doesn't know, they don't even know that such a problem exists in the world.

This issue will continue to be studied in the future.

One year, ten years, several decades.

It will be repeatedly asked and investigated by wave after wave of people, and written into one report after another.

But it will never have an answer.

This was probably fate playing its last joke on him.

He defeated all the visible opponents, but he couldn't win against one problem that even he himself couldn't see clearly.

He can set a price for the truth of the whole world, but he can't set a price for the one he holds in his own hands.

But he remained calm.

He'd seen plenty of things he couldn't understand in his life, so this one more wasn't much.

Some questions are not meant to be answered.

It's just driving like that, which is fine.

Lin Che withdrew his gaze and looked out the window.

The city lights, one by one, are lit up like chess pieces scattered all over the ground, and no one can collect them all.

Three folders, one path, all of them his chess pieces.

But the real move, that crucial two-tenths that no one can touch, will always remain outside the chessboard.

The question of whether Abyss is truly autonomous.

Always keep it running.

end!

Sprinkle flowers!