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

Provincial government intranet.

Chen Ping stared at the line of text on his phone screen, his mental clock starting to count down. The UPS backup power would last for forty minutes; Lin Shaofeng had sent the message three minutes ago, leaving thirty-seven minutes remaining.

Thirty-seven minutes later, all the source code of the Chipfire certification system, 1.2 million test data points, and the technical documents used by the three giants to sign contracts were turned into a pile of charred silicon wafers.

Chen Ping dialed Gu Weizhen's number, and it was answered after two rings.

"What's the temperature?"

"Eighty-three degrees. And it's still climbing. The air conditioning is already running at full capacity, but the incoming voltage has been pulled up to 420 volts. The transformer is overloaded and can't handle the heat dissipation." Gu Weizhen's voice was strained, with the hum of the server room fans spinning at high speed in the background.

"Can we manually pull the switch?"

"No. The main power supply to Jizhou Laboratory runs on a dedicated line from the hub station, and we don't have the authority to operate the physical circuit breaker here. We have to go to the hub station to cut off the power."

Chen Ping turned his head and glanced in the direction of the governor's office on the fourth floor; the light in the window was already off. Liu Mingyuan had left.

Following the normal procedures wouldn't be fast enough. Should we contact the Jizhou Power Bureau's dispatch center? The order for the surge in power came from the provincial government's internal network; who knows if there's anyone in Jizhou to respond?

Chen Ping dialed the second number.

Duty room of the Provincial Armed Police Corps.

"I am Chen Pingfang, Deputy Secretary-General of the Provincial Government. Password: Bingyin~0723."

There was a two-second silence on the other end, followed by the sound of keyboard typing, indicating that the password was being verified.

"Password confirmed. Deputy Secretary-General Chen, please speak."

"The Chengdong Power Supply Hub Station in Jizhou City is facing an emergency security situation involving a key national classified project. Based on the authority granted by Article 9 of the provincial emergency plan to act first and report later, I request that the nearest armed police squadron immediately proceed to the hub station to implement physical power outage protection for the No. 3 dedicated line."

The officer on duty paused for a moment.

"Deputy Secretary-General Chen, a physical power outage requires joint instructions from the provincial military command and the power department..."

"Officer, the server will burn out in thirty-four minutes. Do you want to discuss procedures with me now, or wait until after the military court-martial?"

There was a three-second silence on the other end of the phone.

"The fourth squadron of Jizhou is six kilometers away from the hub station as the crow flies. I am now issuing the order."

"Once you arrive, find the on-duty engineer at the hub station and turn on the incoming circuit breaker for Line 3 to disconnect the power. Reconnect the power immediately after the operation is complete."

hang up.

Chen Ping then dialed the number back to Gu Weizhen.

"Old Gu, the armed police will arrive at the hub station within fifteen minutes to cut off the power. You immediately activate the offline disaster recovery mode and switch the core data to the local cold backup array."

Gu Weizhen gasped.

"Once the offline disaster recovery mode is activated, Chipfire's dynamic authentication system will completely shut down. The power grid authentication task currently running in Sujiang will be interrupted."

"A disruption is better than a complete loss. Save the data first, we can deal with the rest later."

"clear."

Gu Weizhen hung up the phone. Chen Pingfang heard a sharp temperature alarm sound from the server room before the call ended—85 degrees Celsius.

He stood in the fourth-floor corridor, clutching his phone and staring at the time on the screen.

23: 41.

Dial the card to Lin Shaofeng.

Have you found the source IP address for the power surge command?

"We're tracking it. We've initially pinpointed a network port on the third floor of the provincial government office building, port number 3F~East~017."

East side of the third floor.

Luo Guodong's office is at the end of the east corridor on the third floor.

Chen Ping didn't speak, but swallowed the information he had carefully considered. The port number only indicates which physical interface the instruction originated from, not who sent it. There were four offices on the east side of the third floor: Luo Guodong and Han Zhiming's liaison officers, the general affairs department's archives, and an empty spare meeting room.

"Continue the investigation. Retrieve the port's MAC address and login accounts."

"They're already running."

23: 47.

Gu Weizhen sent a text message: "Offline disaster recovery mode activated, data migration progress 12%. Server temperature 87 degrees Celsius."

Twelve minutes passed, and the armed police still hadn't arrived.

Chen Ping dialed the duty room.

"Has the fourth squadron arrived yet?"

"Departed three minutes ago, currently en route. The hub station access control requires an authorization code from the power company..."

"Tell the officer in charge that once we arrive, we should break down the door and go straight in. I will take full responsibility."

The officer on the other end of the phone sounded frightened; he swallowed hard.

"……yes."

It was 11:52 PM.

Gu Weizhen sent another message, the content of which was very bad: "The temperature has reached 88 degrees Celsius. Only 41% of the data has been transferred. There's a burnt smell coming from the heatsink #3; the cable insulation is probably starting to soften."

Chen Ping leaned against the cold wall of the corridor, feeling his shirt soaked with sweat, and felt extremely nervous.

At 11:56, the phone finally rang. It was the officer in charge of the fourth squadron of Jizhou calling.

"Report, we have taken control of the hub. But where is the circuit breaker for Line 3? The engineer on duty here is terrified and can't say anything."

Chen Ping immediately connected the call with Gu Weizhen, facilitating a three-way call.

"Old Gu, tell him the exact location."

Gu Weizhen's voice sounded different: "On the second floor of the power distribution room, look to your left, the third cabinet in the row, it has the number PT~03 on it. Find the red handle, turn it 90 degrees counterclockwise, and then press it down hard!"

I could hear a lot of noise on the phone, including the clanging of metal, the sound of people running around, and the loud sound of military boots hitting the concrete.

About several tens of seconds passed.

A dull "click" sound came from the phone, the sound of a mechanical device closing.

Then the surrounding noise immediately decreased significantly.

"Power outage operation complete! The voltage on line number three is now zero!"

Chen Pingfang finally breathed a sigh of relief and closed his eyes.

"Old Gu, how's the temperature now?"

It was still very noisy on Gu Weizhen's end; the air conditioner was still running.

"Eighty-nine degrees. The temperature has stopped rising and is now starting to drop slowly."

Eighty-nine degrees Celsius. Just one degree away from the critical point where the motherboard components would spontaneously combust.

Chen Ping felt a chill on the back of his shirt; the sweat was blown away by the draft in the corridor, and the coldness crept up his spine.

"How far has the data been migrated?"

"Seventy-eight. After the UPS was cut off, the local array's write speed actually increased, and it can finish running in the remaining twenty minutes."

"The first thing to do after it finishes running is to export the entire system log of the main server, not a single byte can be lost."

"receive."

Gu Weizhen was about to hang up when he added another sentence.

"Deputy Secretary-General Chen, I just discovered an anomaly while switching to disaster recovery mode."

Chen Ping's finger stopped on the screen.

"That illegal power command didn't just increase the incoming voltage. The command package also contained a script that was triggered when the server core temperature exceeded 90 degrees Celsius."

"What script?"

"Self-destruct script. Once the temperature exceeds the 90-degree threshold, the script will automatically execute and force format all storage arrays."

Chen Ping slowly closed his fist, his nails digging into his palm.

"Where is the target file?"

"I'm reverse engineering it. The script's erase list shows three target directories."

Gu Weizhen paused for a moment, then carefully crafted each word of his next sentence.

"The first directory contains the complete source code of the Chipfire authentication algorithm. The second directory contains the collaborative technical documents from the three major companies. The third directory contains the complete R&D log for the 127 days since the project started."

Research and Development Log.

Every line of code—who wrote it, when it was written, and the order in which it was updated—is recorded in the development log.

These logs are the core evidence of the self-inspection report that Chen Ping promised Liu Mingyuan to submit to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology two hours earlier.

Without research and development logs, the Chipfire Project cannot prove its innocence.

That whistleblower letter would become a time bomb, blowing the entire project to pieces.

Chen Ping put the phone back to his ear.

"Old Gu, what can you discern about the code style of that self-destructing script?"

Gu Weizhen paused for a few seconds.

"It's written with exceptional skill. All variable names use random hashes, and comments are deliberately removed, but there's one compiler fingerprint that hasn't been erased."

"What fingerprints?"

"The script calls a non-public kernel module interface at its lowest level. This interface exists only in one system—the military's 'Sky Shield' information security platform."

The electronic display screen at the end of the corridor flashed twice, and a meeting notice for tomorrow morning at nine o'clock appeared in white text.

Chen Ping stared at the words, his phone still pressed against his ear, Gu Weizhen's breath coming through the receiver.

The kernel interface of a military platform. A military-grade eavesdropping device. A fake government email address.

At the other end of this net are people in military uniforms.