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

"Xiao Chen, sit down and let's talk."

Six characters, no signature, no name.

Chen Ping stared at the screen for three seconds, then put his phone back in his pocket. The text message was sent four minutes earlier than Sun Peide's call.

In other words, before the Bureau of Veteran Cadres even had a chance to exert pressure, the person who sent the text message had already predicted the course of the whole affair.

This is not an ordinary retired cadre.

Han Zhiming pushed the door open and came in, holding a note in his hand.

"Director, we've received word from the retired cadres' activity center that there's a tea gathering tomorrow morning, and they'd like you to come and have a chat."

"Who made the invitation?"

"They didn't name you specifically, just said it was a few senior comrades who wanted to chat with you. The meeting place is the Pine and Crane Hall in the activity center."

Songhe Hall. That's the largest reception room in the Provincial Party Committee's Retired Cadres Activity Center, capable of seating twenty people at once.

Chen Ping tapped his fingers twice on the table.

"go."

Han Zhiming opened his mouth.

"No need for you to come with me, I'll go alone."

The next morning at 9:30, Chen Ping's car was parked at the entrance of the veterans' activity center.

Several ginkgo trees stood in the courtyard, their leaves carpeting the ground, rustling underfoot. The old man at the gatehouse peeked out, glanced at him, and then withdrew.

The door to Songhe Hall was half-open, and the aroma of Longjing tea wafted out.

Chen Ping pushed open the door and went in.

Seven people.

Three people sat on each side of the long tea table. At the head of the table sat a thin, elderly man with completely white hair, wearing a dark blue Zhongshan suit with the collar neatly buttoned. The first seat on the left was occupied by Sun Peide, who had made the phone call yesterday.

Chen Ping recognized the old man in the main seat.

Zhao Deyu. Former Governor of Jiangsu Province, retired eight years ago.

"Xiao Chen is here." Zhao Deyu pointed to the empty chair opposite him. "Sit down."

His voice wasn't loud, but every word carried a heavy weight. No one else in the room spoke first.

Chen Ping walked over but didn't sit down immediately. He first gave a slight bow to everyone present before pulling out a chair.

"Governor Zhao, esteemed seniors."

Zhao Deyu picked up his teacup and took a sip.

"I've been retired for eight years and haven't been involved in politics. But recently, the province has been making too much noise, and the veteran comrades are getting restless."

He put down the cup and twisted the knob on the lid with two fingers.

"I've heard about that core-fire standard you're working on. I don't understand the technical details, but I understand the principle. Reform always involves affecting people's interests. The problem is, when you make a cut, you're not just cutting away the cake, but also the people who are serving it."

The second person from the left, a chubby old man wearing gold-rimmed glasses, chimed in.

"That's exactly what I mean. Hengyuan, SMIC, and Dingxin—these three companies together support over two thousand people. You cut off their livelihood with just a single document; how are they supposed to survive?"

Sun Peide nodded in agreement.

"Xiao Chen, you're young and capable, everyone sees that. But when doing things, you can't just look at efficiency; you also have to consider relationships. We invited you here today to hear your thoughts."

The script was exactly the same as yesterday's phone call, only in a more respectable setting.

Chen Ping didn't respond to their conversation.

"Governor Zhao, esteemed seniors, I had some materials prepared before I came here today."

He took a stack of A4 papers out of his briefcase and placed one in front of each person.

"This is the operation and maintenance data of the Jiangsu power grid over the past eighteen months."

Zhao Deyu glanced down at it but didn't look at it.

The others, however, did open and read it.

Chen Ping stood up and walked to the white wall above the tea table.

"After introducing domestically produced chips certified by the ChipFire standard, the failure rate of smart terminals in the Jiangsu-Jiangxi power grid decreased by 41%. This alone saves more than 30 million yuan in maintenance costs annually."

He stretched out a finger and drew a line in the air.

"Thirty million, esteemed seniors. Where did this money go in the past? It was spent on after-sales maintenance of M-Tek licensed chips. Thirty million every year flowed into overseas accounts; not a single penny remained in Suzhou."

The fat old man flipped to the data page, his finger pausing on the numbers.

Chen Ping continued pushing downwards.

"Hengyuan, SMIC, and Dingxin all use licensed M-Tek IP cores at their underlying layers. These IP cores contain remote auditing interfaces; in short, it's a door, and the key is in someone else's hands."

He paused for a moment.

"The dispatching data, load distribution, and peak-valley nodes of the Jiangsu power grid are all exposed behind this door. Whoever holds the key can see the lifeline of our entire province's power supply."

Quiet fell over the tea table. The fat old man slowed his movements as he flipped through the documents, his brow furrowed.

Zhao Deyu never looked at the document, but his thumb circled the knob on the cup lid and then returned to its original position.

Chen Ping didn't give them time to process it.

"I'm not here today to challenge you all. The three companies have been ordered to withdraw their technical expertise, with a 90-day rectification period—not a day less. But I've also prepared a solution."

He pulled out a second document from the bottom of the briefcase.

"The Chip Spark Incubation Program. If these three companies are willing to complete the domestic replacement of their underlying architecture within ninety days, the Chip Spark Project Office will provide full technical support and give them priority in being recommended for inclusion in the five-province alliance's supplier whitelist."

He placed the documents in front of Zhao Deyu.

"In other words, the old road is blocked, but the new road has been paved. As long as businesses are willing to use it, the new road will be even wider than the old one."

Zhao Deyu finally opened the document.

He read very slowly, turning one page, pausing for a few seconds, and then turning the next page.

The retired cadres on either side of the tea table exchanged glances. The fat old man's attitude had clearly softened; he pushed the materials forward and leaned closer to look at them.

Sun Peide was humiliated. He had thought today would be a slow and insidious confrontation, but Chen Pingfang had directly overturned the table, and his overturning was justified.

Zhao Deyu closed the document and put it back on the table.

"Xiao Chen, where will the funding for your incubation plan come from?"

"A portion will be allocated from the provincial special fund, and another portion will be covered by the joint construction fund of the five-province alliance. For the portion raised by the enterprises themselves, we can coordinate low-interest loans with the provincial development bank."

Zhao Deyu remained silent for more than ten seconds.

"You've already planned out the whole path."

"The path was conceived by the Chipfire team; I was just the errand runner."

Zhao Deyu glanced at him but didn't ask any more technical questions.

"Okay, I'll show this incubation plan to Mingli when I get back."

This is a loosening of restrictions.

Chen Ping nodded without saying anything more. He had done enough; pushing too hard would only lead to disaster.

As he bent down to pack his briefcase, he casually mentioned it.

"Governor Zhao, you've served in the province for so many years, you're a veteran. I've recently been organizing some old archives of the provincial government and came across some documents from around the year 1900 (the Year of the Metal Dragon), many of which are missing batch numbers. Do you remember what the provincial document filing system was like back then?"

The year of Gengchen.

The third person on the left of the tea table, a tall, thin old man who hadn't spoken until now, suddenly paused in his tea-serving hand. Tea spilled onto the rim of the cup, and he hurriedly tried to wipe it up with a tissue, crumpling it into a ball and stuffing it into his pocket.

Chen Ping took all of this in the corner of his eye.

He'd noticed this man the moment he entered. He remained silent, sitting in a corner, head down, sipping tea, his presence barely noticeable. But his attire was impeccable; the watch on his wrist was an old Swiss model, worth at least 400,000 yuan. For a retired senior official to wear such an expensive watch was intriguing in itself.

Zhao Deyu's answer was rather bland and steady.

"It's been too long, I can't remember. Go check the archives."

Chen Ping didn't ask any further questions and got up to take his leave.

He walked out of the Songhe Hall and across the stone path under the ginkgo trees, then took out his phone.

Three unread messages.

The first two were work reports sent by Han Zhiming. He quickly glanced at them and crossed them out.

The third one comes from Su Qingwan.

"Senior, I found the gray building in that old photo you asked me to look up."

Chen Ping stopped in his tracks under the ginkgo tree.

The message was followed by a comparison image. On the left was a magnified view of the background from an old photograph, and on the right was an archival photograph of the building. The outlines, window arrangements, and porch curvatures of the two buildings matched perfectly.

Su Qingwan's last message consisted of only one line.

"That building isn't part of the university. It used to be the Second Guesthouse of the Provincial Party Committee."

Chen Ping held his phone tightly, his thumb pressed against the edge of the screen, remaining motionless.

The back of the photo read "Three people traveling together," and he always thought the stone tablet in the background was the name of a university.

But if that gray building is the Second Guesthouse of the Provincial Party Committee, then the words engraved on that stone tablet are not the school's name.

It's something else.

He glanced back at the tightly closed doors of the Pine and Crane Hall.

The tall, thin old man who had just spilled the tea was now standing behind the second-floor window, looking down at him through the gauze curtain.