After breaking up with my boyfriend, I made a fortune and rose rapidly in my career.

Chen Ping quickly went up to the fourth floor.

The door to the governor's office was ajar, the corridor light illuminating the dark wooden door. The secretary stood by the door, gesturing with his chin to indicate that they should come in.

Liu Mingyuan sat behind his desk, holding a fax in his hand. The edges of the paper were curled up, and you could smell the fax paper.

"close the door."

Chen Ping closed the door behind him.

Liu Mingyuan slammed the fax on the table and pushed it over.

See for yourself.

Chen Ping picked it up. It was an official document from the Intellectual Property Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The content was simple: a report filed by a named person claimed that the core algorithm of the Chipfire Project was suspected of plagiarizing seventeen foreign patents, and the Nanzhou Provincial Department of Industry and Information Technology was required to submit a complete self-inspection report within fifteen working days.

The date on the document is today.

The whistleblower is Zhou Zhixing, Deputy Secretary-General of the China Semiconductor Industry Association.

Chen Ping put the fax back on the table.

"Zhou Zhixing is currently in the Nanzhou Detention Center, suspected of leaking trade secrets. The case has entered the investigation stage. This whistleblower letter was not written by him."

Liu Mingyuan propped himself up on the table, walked to the window, and put his hands behind his back.

"Whether he wrote it or not is unimportant. What's important is that the ministry received it. Director Wu of the Intellectual Property Division called me personally this afternoon. His wording was polite, but his meaning was very firm—did your province's 'Core Spark' project use someone else's work?"

Chen Ping didn't respond, but pulled a folder out of his briefcase.

"Governor, this is the underlying code architecture document of the Chipfire dynamic authentication system. It's 3,200 pages long and was entirely developed by Gu Weizhen's team. The version iteration record of every line of code is in a Git repository, with timestamps accurate to the second."

The folder landed on Liu Mingyuan's desk with a dull thud.

"I have checked those seventeen overseas patents, which are concentrated in the field of traditional static authentication. They are completely different from Chipfire's dynamic authentication, with different underlying logic, different implementation methods, and even different programming languages. Of the patent numbers listed in the whistleblower letter, six have expired, three have been voluntarily abandoned by their original holders, and the remaining eight are limited to consumer electronics chips, which have nothing to do with the industrial-grade chip authentication we do."

Liu Mingyuan turned around and stared at the folder.

Chen Ping took out another piece of paper.

"This is a letter of thanks from the Jiangsu Provincial Power Dispatch Center. Last month, the Luzhou power grid experienced an extreme load surge. The Corefire Certification System completed the dynamic recertification of all power grid nodes in the province within 47 seconds, preventing a large-scale cascading trip. The letter was personally signed by the Governor of Jiangsu Province."

The thank-you note is placed on top of the folder.

Liu Mingyuan picked it up, glanced at it, and put it down.

"I've reviewed the materials. Technically, they're sound, and I trust you. But the ministry doesn't need my trust; they need a self-inspection report that can withstand third-party auditing. Fifteen working days, three weeks. Can you produce it?"

"Yes, it's possible. But three weeks is too long."

Chen Ping leaned back in his chair and tapped his knee three times with two fingers.

"Governor, the purpose of this whistleblower letter is not to clarify the ownership of intellectual property rights. It's just to buy time."

Liu Mingyuan did not interrupt.

"The land for the second phase of the Chipfire Industrial Park expansion has just been cleared, and the technical cooperation framework agreement between ASMedia, Broadcom, and Infineon is scheduled to be signed next week. At this critical juncture, a whistleblower letter suddenly appeared, and the ministry issued an official letter to suppress it. All external cooperation is frozen until the self-inspection report is submitted. Three weeks are delayed, then two more review meetings are held, and half a year has passed."

It paused for a moment.

"Six months later, the window of opportunity for Chipfire's technology closed, and the three giants turned to looking for alternatives. By then, even if the project wasn't completely shut down, it was already half dead."

Liu Mingyuan walked back to the table, opened the drawer, and took out a pack of cigarettes. He opened it, took out one, but didn't light it.

"You mean, someone is using administrative means to forcibly halt research and development?"

"It's not a person. It's a net."

Chen Ping didn't reveal all the details of the Shadow Project. Some things weren't ready to be said yet.

"Zhou Zhixing was merely a pawn pushed to the forefront. While he was in detention, the whistleblower letter was sent from Beijing. This indicates that the instructions originated from a higher level, and the entire process was very well-organized, with dedicated personnel handling everything from drafting and submitting the letter to ensuring its acceptance by the ministry. This is not something one person could accomplish."

Liu Mingyuan tapped the cigarette on the edge of the table, and tobacco fell down.

"What do you want me to do?"

Two things.

Chen Ping raised two fingers.

"First, the provincial governor personally went to Beijing to communicate face-to-face with the executive vice minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Chipfire's technical documents and Su Jiang's practical data are sufficient to explain the issue. Face-to-face talks are more effective than submitting materials, and can at least reduce the fifteen-day deadline to one week."

"And the second one?"

"During the week I'm preparing my self-inspection report, the signings with AMS, Broadcom, and Infineon cannot stop. Not only can they not stop, they must be accelerated."

Liu Mingyuan pinched the cigarette between his fingers, his thumb and forefinger slightly clenched.

"The official letter from the ministry hasn't even been closed yet, and you've already signed a contract with a foreign company? What kind of talk is that?"

"That's a fait accompli."

Chen Ping leaned forward two inches.

"Governor, the fact that these three giants are willing to cooperate with us is the best proof of our technology. Amaz's legal team conducted a four-month background check. If our algorithm really had a problem, they would have run away long ago. Once the contract is signed, the so-called intellectual property rights dispute will be untenable. The buyer has accepted it, so that whistleblower letter will naturally be useless."

The clock in the office skipped past eleven.

Liu Mingyuan stared at the fax on the table and stuffed the unlit cigarette back into the cigarette case.

"One week."

Chen Ping waited for the next part.

"I'm flying to Beijing the day after tomorrow to meet with people from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. But you must sign all three contracts before I return. They must be in writing, stamped, and binding."

"no problem."

"And one more thing." Liu Mingyuan walked around from behind the table and stood two steps away from Chen Pingfang. "The self-inspection report cannot be taken lightly. We need to get an independent report from a reputable domestic intellectual property rights assessment agency, with the funding coming from the provincial finance department. This report isn't just for the ministry; it will be submitted to the State Council in the future."

Chen Ping stood up.

"I will contact the Intellectual Property Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences tonight."

As he reached the door, Liu Mingyuan called out to him.

"Chen Pingfang."

Look back.

Liu Mingyuan placed his right hand on the edge of the table, tapping the surface with his knuckles.

"I won't ask about the details of the net you mentioned. But you must remember one thing—every move you make in Nanzhou has me behind you. Don't let someone stab me in the back."

Chen Ping nodded, opened the door, and went out.

The corridor was deserted. The electronic display screen on the wall scrolled through tomorrow's meeting schedule, the white text flashing twice as if the signal was unstable.

My phone vibrated.

Lin Shaofeng's encrypted text message.

"Gu Weizhen is calling. Ten minutes ago, the Jizhou Laboratory experienced an unexplained power surge, triggering the main transformer overload protection and causing the core server cluster temperature to spike to 82 degrees Celsius. The UPS backup power has been switched on, but it can only last for forty minutes."

Chen Ping's footsteps were rooted to the spot in the middle of the corridor.

The core server contains all the source code, test data, and technical documents used by the three giants to sign contracts for the Corefire certification system.

If the server crashes, the entire contract will be ruined.

The second message popped up immediately afterward, and the sender was still Lin Shaofeng.

"The source of the power surge has been preliminarily identified. The Jizhou Power Supply Bureau's dispatch system received an unauthorized instruction 9 minutes ago, with the source IP pointing to the provincial government's intranet."