radicalducati Chapter 42 Loyalty!
Chapter 42 Loyalty!
Li, the head of the technology research and development department, a middle-aged man with thinning hair and a receding hairline, was sweating profusely as he stared at the code stream on the projection screen.
"Mr. Ma, no... absolutely not."
Li's voice was hoarse, "We used three top-of-the-line servers, running for seven days and seven nights, trying to reverse engineer the interface Lin Yu provided. In the end, all three servers burned out!"
"His code contains an extremely bizarre logical structure. It doesn't participate in any calculations normally, but as soon as our decompiler touches the core function, it acts like a black hole, instantly draining all computing resources!"
At the head of the meeting room, Ma Huayun's face was ashen.
"So, we haven't even touched an edge of his algorithm?"
"Yes."
Engineer Li nodded with difficulty, "Moreover, we discovered that the black hole structure had actually been registered as an international patent a month ago. The patent holder is named Xia Zijin."
Ma Huayun slammed his hand on the table.
"Excellent! Lin Yu, what a brilliant scheme! A series of interconnected plans!"
He finally understood.
From the very beginning, Lin Yu had no intention of cooperating properly. Threats, extortion, technical traps, and patent barriers were used step by step, each link connected, to manipulate him and the entire Tencent technology department.
"Mr. Ma, what do we do now?"
Engineer Li asked, "Should we continue cracking it?"
"Crack my ass!"
Ma Huayun roared, "Pass the word: the task force is disbanded! Let's change our approach!"
He stood up and paced back and forth in the conference room, his eyes filled with malice.
"If we can't use the hard approach, let's try the soft approach."
Ma Huayun stopped and said coldly, "We can't technically harm him, so let's target his people!"
He looked at the director of human resources.
"Go check, besides Lin Yu and Xia Zijing, who else is on the Singularity Algorithm team? That fat guy named Wang Lei, get me all his information!"
"Offer him three times, no, five times, ten times his salary! Plus the stock option pool from Tencent headquarters! I want you to poach him from here at all costs!"
A cruel smile appeared on Ma Huayun's lips.
"A genius, with two students. I want to see how long their laughable team trust can last in the face of tests of money and humanity."
"Lin Yu, don't you like playing games?"
"Then let's play an even bigger game."
"The game is called 'Draw the Firewood from Under the Cauldron'."
A high-end coffee shop in Beijing's CBD.
Wang Lei sat on the leather sofa, his hands gripping the fabric of his pants tightly, his palms sweaty.
Sitting opposite him was the senior director of Tencent's human resources department, a woman dressed in an elegant business suit with a professional smile.
A contract was placed on the table.
"Wang Lei, Mr. Ma has a very high opinion of your engineering packaging capabilities."
The HR director pushed the contract forward a bit. "This is an offer letter for a senior engineer at Tencent headquarters, at the P8 level. The annual salary is three million, plus stock option pool dividends from the Tencent Video product line. Based on the current market value, the stock options are worth around ten million."
Wang Lei swallowed hard.
Three million annual salary. Ten million stock options.
For a student from an ordinary family who is still a freshman in college, this amount of money is enough for him to immediately buy a luxury house in Beijing outright and change the social class of his entire family.
"Singularity Algorithm is currently just a shell company; you don't even have a proper office space."
The HR director continued, his voice full of persuasion, "Following Lin Yu, you'll at most be a student doing odd jobs. Join Tencent, and you'll have access to top-tier hardware resources and lead a team of two hundred. This is the ultimate dream for any programmer."
Wang Lei stared at the contract.
The sound of his heartbeat was deafening.
Many images flashed through his mind: the leaky roof of his old home, his parents' calloused hands, and the envious looks from his roommates.
All of this can be achieved immediately once you sign your name.
"Is it that Tencent can't crack Lin Shen's algorithm?"
Wang Lei suddenly raised his head and asked.
The HR director's smile faltered slightly, but he quickly masked it: "Tencent has 20,000 top engineers. There's no technical problem we can't overcome. We just value your talent and want to save some time."
Wang Lei observed the other person's micro-expressions and adjusted his thick-rimmed glasses.
He took a deep breath and pushed the contract back onto the table.
"Feel sorry."
Wang Lei stood up. "I refuse."
The HR director's smile vanished completely: "Wang Lei, think this through. This isn't the time for you to act impulsively. What Mr. Ma wants, and what Tencent wants in terms of technology, we've never failed to get. If you refuse now, you might find it incredibly difficult to get anywhere in the internet industry."
"I don't understand what circles are."
Wang Lei grabbed his backpack, his voice trembling slightly, but his eyes were firm. "All I know is that the core logic of that algorithm was written by Lin Shen. I'm just a construction worker. You're offering me such a high price not because I'm worth that much money, but because you want to bring down Lin Shen."
Wang Lei turned and walked towards the coffee shop door.
"As Lin Shen once said, the essence of business is who can hold whom by the throat."
Wang Lei stopped and turned around, saying, "You couldn't get him by the neck, so you came to me. Penguins are nothing special."
One hour later.
An abandoned warehouse on the west side of Jinghua University.
Lin Yu was lying on several desks pushed together, covered with his school uniform, and sleeping.
Xia Zijing sat on a folding chair to the side, with a laptop on her lap, the screen filled with complex matrix calculations.
The warehouse door was pushed open.
Wang Lei walked in, covered in sweat, threw his backpack on the ground, and slumped into a chair.
"Someone from Penguin contacted me."
Wang Lei gasped for breath and took a swig of cold water from the table.
Lin Yu didn't even open his eyes, just rolled over and asked, "How much did you get?"
"Annual salary of three million. Stock options of ten million. P8 level."
Wang Lei's heart was still bleeding when he said those numbers.
"You didn't give me enough."
Lin Yu said calmly.
Xia Zijing's fingers stopped on the keyboard, and she turned to look at Wang Lei: "You didn't sign it?"
"nonsense!"
Wang Lei rolled his eyes in annoyance. "If I had signed, I'd be celebrating with champagne in a five-star hotel in Shenzhen right now. Why would I come back to this run-down warehouse to breathe in formaldehyde?"
Lin Yu sat up, unzipped his school uniform, and rubbed his hair a couple of times.
He pulled a USB drive out of his pocket and threw it onto Wang Lei's keyboard.
"What is this?"
Wang Lei asked.
"The complete core layer of Algorithm 2.0".
Lin Yu walked to the water dispenser to get some water. "The fact that Tencent poached you means their tech department is at its wits' end. Next, Ma Huayun will definitely unilaterally break the cooperation agreement and force the launch of their crudely modified version."
Wang Lei's eyes widened: "A knock-off? Didn't you plant a Trojan horse in the code?"