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

The paper still carried the warmth of Han Zhiming's body from the inside pocket of his suit. Chen Ping locked the list in the bottom compartment of his briefcase, tightened the combination lock, and then called Liu Mingyuan back.

The call lasted only forty seconds.

Liu Mingyuan was in the airport VIP lounge. The boarding announcement in the background drowned out most of his sentence, but the key information was not missed: "Benwen is going to the provincial capital tomorrow. You need to keep the hearing under control."

The hearing was scheduled for 9 a.m. the following day.

The multi-functional lecture hall on the fifth floor of the main building of the Chipfire Industrial Park had over 160 seats out of 200. The six-member investigation team from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology sat to the left of the stage, while the High-tech Zone Management Committee and project team sat to the right. A three-meter-wide aisle separated them clearly.

The media section was in the last three rows. Su Qingwan sat in the second row near the aisle, her reporter's badge from the Nanzhou Metropolitan Daily hanging around her neck, a voice recorder resting on her lap, the red light on.

Sitting next to her were reporters from four provincial media outlets, all of whom had registered before 11 p.m. last night. Su Qingwan had registered the earliest—she sent the email at 8:03 p.m. last night on her way home from the Jizhou Laboratory.

He Yuanzheng presided over the opening ceremony, summarizing the process in three sentences: the project team's technical defense, the investigation team's questioning, and the public response.

Gu Weizhen was the first to go on stage.

He didn't use PowerPoint; he simply connected his laptop to the projector, and a code architecture diagram popped up on the screen.

"Regarding the question raised by expert Wang Limin yesterday about the 2014 Lincoln Laboratory algorithm draft, I will respond first."

Gu Weizhen opened the high-resolution scan of the draft; three pages lay side by side on the screen. More than 160 pairs of eyes in the audience simultaneously looked up.

"This draft was indeed written by me. In March 2014, at Lincoln Laboratory Working Group 3."

Wang Limin pushed up his frameless glasses and leaned forward two centimeters.

Gu Weizhen didn't look at him; his fingertip was on the fourteenth line of the second page of the draft.

"But expert Wang overlooked a detail yesterday - this draft was discarded."

The projection switched. The left half of the screen showed the original draft, and the right half showed the internal review records of Working Group 7 of Lincoln Laboratory in 2014. The records were watermarked with the MIT Lincoln Laboratory logo at the top and stamped with the signature of Dr. Harrison, the head of the working group, at the bottom.

"The review conclusion is very clear: the algorithm path has a non-convergent logical flaw in the third level of recursion, and termination is recommended. Reason for termination~"

Gu Weizhen zoomed in on the last paragraph of the review record.

"The core recursive function gets stuck in an infinite loop when dealing with keys longer than 128 bits. This is not just my judgment, but a consensus reached by all five members of the working group."

He turned around and faced Wang Limin directly for the first time.

"Expert Wang said that Chipfire's dynamic authentication module is highly consistent with this draft. Then I would like to ask Expert Wang to take a look at something."

The screen switches to the core code architecture diagram of the Chipfire certification system.

"Corefire's dynamic authentication module uses non-linear elliptic curve cryptography, supporting key lengths up to 4096 bits. Mathematically, it belongs to a completely different species from the linear recursive algorithm that was discarded in that draft."

Gu Weizhen closed his notebook and rested his hands on the edge of the podium.

"To use a somewhat inappropriate analogy, the set of things in the draft is the blueprint for a steam engine, while the core uses a turbine engine. You can't say that the turbine engine was plagiarized from the steam engine just because both blueprints have circles drawn on them."

In the first row of the audience, the deputy director of the High-tech Zone Management Committee coughed lightly, suppressing the upturned corners of his mouth.

He Yuanzheng held his teacup and leaned back in his chair.

Wang Limin's fingers brushed across the edge of the notebook. He turned and exchanged a glance with his assistant, who shook his head slightly.

Chen Pingfang sat in the second row on the side of the project team, with his arms crossed and resting on the table.

It's time to increase the investment.

He stood up and walked to the podium in the middle of the stage.

"Director He, we are requesting to conduct an on-site technical verification."

He Yuanzheng put down his teacup.

"What verification?"

"Expert Wang Limin believes that Chipfire's dynamic authentication module originated from the draft prototype he referred to. If it is indeed the same source code, then an expert who understands the prototype's logic should be able to find the module's encryption vulnerability within a reasonable time."

Chen Ping took a USB drive out of his briefcase and held it up.

"This is a sandbox testing environment for the Chipfire dynamic authentication module. The encryption level is set to standard commercial level, which is two levels lower than the actual deployed version. I asked the technician designated by Expert Wang to try to crack it on-site for thirty minutes."

It paused for a moment.

"If it can be cracked, it means that Corefire and that draft do indeed have a technical lineage, and we will accept all investigations."

Let's pause for another beat.

"If we can't break this connection, then the link between this draft and Corefire is a false proposition. Continuing to pursue it would be a false accusation."

A murmur arose in the lecture hall.

Wang Limin pulled his left hand back from the notebook and placed it on his thigh.

He Yuanzheng glanced at Wang Limin.

"Expert Wang, what's your opinion?"

Wang Limin remained silent for four seconds. Those four seconds seemed to stretch out in the quiet lecture hall, long enough for reporters in the back rows to start flipping through their notebooks.

"Can."

He reached out to his assistant. The assistant took a laptop from his briefcase, opened it, and pushed it in front of Wang Limin.

Chen Ping handed the USB drive to Gu Weizhen. Gu Weizhen walked to Wang Limin's position, inserted the USB drive into his computer, and deployed the sandbox environment. The entire process was projected synchronously, and everyone in the audience could see the operation steps on the screen.

The sandbox has been loaded.

A command-line interface pops up, and the cursor blinks.

Wang Limin stared at the screen, his fingers resting on the keyboard.

In the first minute, he entered a series of probe commands. The encrypted structure tree returned by the sandbox filled the screen—each branch nested with a dynamic key rotation mechanism, with a rotation frequency measured in milliseconds.

In the fifth minute, Wang Limin's typing speed slowed down. His fingertips hovered above the keyboard for two seconds before falling.

In the twelfth minute, he took off his frameless glasses and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.

In the nineteenth minute, the assistant leaned over and whispered something, but Wang Limin waved his hand to block him.

In the last three rows, Su Qingwan's voice recorder's red light was flashing steadily. She wasn't taking notes; her hands were clasped on her knees, and she was staring at the back of Wang Limin's head in front of her.

Twenty-sixth minute.

Wang Limin lifted his hands from the keyboard, spreading his ten fingers and placing them on either side of the desktop.

The command line on the screen stopped at the last returned message: "ACCESS DENIED. Encryption layer 7/12. Time remaining: 04:11."

It has twelve layers of encryption, and he's stuck on the seventh layer.

Four minutes remaining.

No one spoke in the entire lecture hall. The only sound was the hum of the air conditioning vents.

The thirtieth minute.

He Yuanzheng glanced at the clock on the wall.

"Time's up. Dr. Wang, what's the result?"

Wang Limin put his glasses back on, his eyes fixed on the screen behind the lenses. A streak of sweat ran from his temple to his ear.

"Failed to complete the crack."

The four words were squeezed out from between his teeth, each one carrying a hint of bitterness.

Chen Ping did not pursue. He turned to He Yuanzheng.

"Director He, the technical independence of the Chipfire dynamic authentication module has been clearly demonstrated through on-site verification. We request the investigation team to provide a preliminary conclusion on the intellectual property plagiarism charge."

He Yuanzheng placed the teacup on the table, making a crisp sound as it tapped.

Just as he was about to speak, Chen Ping's phone vibrated three times on the table.

Encrypted call. Lin Shaofeng.

Chen Ping answered the call, and Lin Shaofeng only said one sentence.

"Zhou Zhixing cut his wrists in the detention center."

Chen Ping turned off the screen and placed the phone face down on the table. His knuckles pressed against the edge of the table, the force traveling from his fingertips to his wrist.

In the auditorium with more than 160 people, no one else heard that sentence.