You went on a blind date and presented an A-level wanted criminal as a meeting gift?

Two o'clock in the afternoon.

The headquarters of the Yip Group, on the 68th floor.

Ye Qingcheng sat in the main seat of the conference room, with twelve senior executives sitting on either side of the mahogany table in front of her.

This is a weekly core operations meeting, but the atmosphere today is completely different from usual.

On the twelve faces, some were ashen, some were pale, and some tried to feign composure, but the creases between their brows betrayed their true emotions.

On the projection screen in the center of the conference table, the search page of the international patent database is displayed.

A line of glaring red markings.

The core separator technology for fourth-generation solid-state batteries, which Yip's Group invested two years and 300 million yuan in research and development, was preemptively registered by a company called "Tianhua Bio" at the European Patent Office at 3:00 AM yesterday, exactly 24 hours before Yip's formal application.

24 hours.

One more day and the Ye family will be able to get ahead.

"This is no coincidence."

Ye Qingcheng's voice was so cold it could freeze the water in a cup.

"Our technical roadmap, core parameters, and even drafts of our patent applications were completely leaked to Tianhua Bio."

No one spoke in the meeting room.

Ye Qingcheng continued.

"In addition to the patents being preemptively registered, our internal OA system and core R&D database were simultaneously subjected to a high-intensity hacker attack at 7:00 AM this morning."

She looked at the information security director sitting in the third seat on the left.

"Old Chen, how's the situation?"

The chief information security officer looked like he'd just been dug out of the ground.

"The attack intensity far exceeds the level of conventional industrial espionage. The attacker used at least three layers of jump servers, and the IPs were scattered across seven countries, making tracking extremely difficult. The main entry points have been blocked, but some customer data and contract information from upstream and downstream suppliers have already been downloaded."

Ye Qingcheng's fingernails scraped across the table, making a soft, grating sound.

If this data is made public or given to competitors, the entire supply chain of the Yip Group will be impacted.

Partners may terminate contracts due to a crisis of trust, and customers may file lawsuits due to privacy breaches.

After Zhao Deming of Tianhua Capital fell last time, she thought the business war was over.

No.

This offensive is ten times more intense and ten times more sophisticated than the last. This is no ordinary business competition.

A commotion arose at the entrance.

Ye Qingcheng's private secretary, Xiao Zhou, pushed open the door.

"Mr. Ye, the police have arrived. They say they've been sent by the Criminal Investigation Division to investigate a case of commercial espionage."

Ye Qingcheng frowned slightly.

"Let them in."

Li Mingyu entered, followed by two criminal police officers.

Li Mingyu changed into a barely-fitting suit, and styled his hair with hair gel, trying to make himself look like a capable investigator.

But his gait gave it all away—his left leg was slightly limping, a lingering effect of being kicked into a telephone pole by Lin Chen yesterday.

"Mr. Ye, I am Li Mingyu, the captain of the Public Security Brigade of the Criminal Investigation Detachment of Jiangcheng Public Security Bureau. I have been instructed by the bureau to come to Ye's Group to investigate cases of suspected commercial espionage and cyber intrusion."

His gaze lingered on Ye Qingcheng's face for more than half a second.

This is the legendary woman of Lin Chen.

After what happened at the Grand Theater, Li Mingyu's fear of Lin Chen had become ingrained in his very bones, making him unconsciously feel inferior in front of Ye Qingcheng.

What kind of cooperation do you need from us?

Ye Qingcheng asked.

Li Mingyu roused himself and took out a briefcase.

"First, we need your company to provide a list of all employees involved in core technology research and development, access control records for the past three months, and internal network communication logs."

Ye Qingcheng could have these things sorted out in ten minutes.

But over the next two hours, Li Mingyu's investigation findings made Ye Qingcheng's expression grow increasingly grim—not because he had found anything, but because he had found nothing at all.

Access control records show that all personnel with access to classified information entered and exited at normal times.

There were no unusual external communications recorded in the communication logs.

Everyone on the employee list has a clean and honest background.

Li Mingyu was sweating profusely.

To make matters worse, Tianhua Bio's legal team arrived at the front desk of the Ye Group at 3 p.m. sharp.

The leader was a middle-aged man with gold-rimmed glasses and an extremely professional smile, holding a stack of neatly bound legal documents.

"President Ye, on behalf of Tianhua Biotechnology Co., Ltd., we lodge a formal protest regarding your company's recent public claims of 'patent infringement'."

"Please note that Tianhua Bio's patent application was filed earlier than that of the Ye's Group, and all procedures were legal and compliant."

"If your company continues to spread false information in the media, we reserve the right to pursue legal action."

Li Mingyu tried to adopt the demeanor of a police officer to deal with these well-trained lawyers, but he was rendered speechless after they cited three legal provisions and couldn't even get a word in edgewise.

The legal team left the documents and departed calmly.

Li Mingyu stood in the conference room, his face flushing red and then turning pale.

Ye Qingcheng closed her eyes and rubbed her temples with her fingers.

At this moment, she didn't seem like the aloof female CEO who dominated the business world; she seemed more like someone trapped in the eye of a storm, unable to find a way out.

4:12.

The door to the CEO's office was pushed open.

No one knocked on the door.

Ye Qingcheng raised her head.

Lin Chen stood at the door.

A thin black suit jacket over a dark gray turtleneck, the cuffs slightly rolled up to reveal a black watch without any markings on the wrist.

He looked clean and neat, with almost no superfluous lines visible in the afternoon backlight.

He stepped in, and as he passed by Li Mingyu, it was as if Li Mingyu was just a pillar that didn't get in his way.

The moment Ye Qingcheng saw him, her phoenix eyes, which had been tense, finally relaxed slightly.

Her lips opened and closed, but in the end she said nothing, just stared straight at him as he walked up to her.

Lin Chen reached out and pressed her shoulder, gently pushing her back into the boss's chair.

"Don't be afraid, I'm here."

The three words followed "Don't be afraid" were spoken softly, but everyone in the office heard them.

Ye Qingcheng's eyelashes trembled slightly.

She reached out and placed her hand on the back of his hand, which was resting on her shoulder, her fingertips tightening and clenching it.

It loosened up again very quickly.

It's not that I don't want to hold on.

There were more than a dozen pairs of eyes watching from the side.

Lin Chen stopped next to her boss's chair and turned to face the conference table.

The eyes of all twelve executives turned to them.

Everyone in the company knew that Ye Qingcheng and this man had an unusual relationship, especially after the collapse of Tianhua Capital. There were rumors that Lin Chen was the "mastermind" behind the Ye Group.

Lin Chen's gaze swept across each face from left to right.

The speed is not fast; each face is paused for about two to three seconds.

But in those two to three seconds, the [Master-level Micro-expression Analysis] and [God-level Insight] have already completed a comprehensive scan of the movement status of each person's twenty-six facial muscle groups.

The frequency of pupil contraction.

The amplitude of the micro-tremor of the orbicularis oculi muscle.

The depth of the nasolabial folds.

Asymmetrical contraction of the frontalis muscle. Tension of the platysma muscle.

Of the twelve people, eleven had facial expressions that reflected the expected tension of being scrutinized by a superior.

Some people straightened their backs, some put down their pens, and some cleared their throats.

The twelfth person.

I sat in the second-to-last seat on the right side of the conference table.

Zhou Zheng, Deputy Director of the R&D Department.

At the age of 41, he joined the Yip Group seven years ago and participated in the entire process of developing and finalizing the fourth-generation solid-state battery separator technology.

His expression appeared flawless on the surface.

With his back straight, his hands naturally folded on the table, and even a hint of concern on his lips, he displayed the composure expected of a senior executive facing a crisis.

But Lin Chen saw two things.

First, Zhou Zheng's right index finger and thumb formed a subtle rubbing motion when they overlapped, with a frequency of about 2.3 times per second.

This is a typical self-soothing behavior, known in psychology as a "stress adapter".

This indicates that Zhou Zheng's internal anxiety level is far higher than what his outward behavior suggests.

Secondly, and more importantly.

For the two to three seconds that Lin Chen's gaze swept over Zhou Zheng, Zhou Zheng's pupils contracted for an extremely brief moment, less than 0.1 seconds, before immediately returning to their normal size.

This reaction is called "threat recognition pupillary constriction".

Ordinary tension will not trigger this reaction.

The pupil will only automatically complete this action before conscious intervention when the amygdala in the brain receives a threatening signal that "this person may know my secret".

Lin Chen's lips twitched slightly.

He didn't rush to speak.

First, turn your head to look at the computer on Ye Qingcheng's desk.

"Can I borrow your computer?"

Ye Qingcheng moved aside.

Lin Chen bent down next to her chair, his ten fingers landing on the keyboard.

He had previously helped Ye Qingcheng upgrade the internal network architecture of the Ye Group, and he could draw the entire system topology with his eyes closed.

What he needs to do at this moment is not defense, but to trace the source.

[God-level hacking skills] Full power enabled.

The data stream on the screen began to accelerate.

Lin Chen's fingers danced across the keyboard at a speed that went from fast to extremely fast, until they were just a blur to the naked eye.

He wasn't tracking the IPs of external attackers; that path is long and mostly a dead end.

He's investigating internally.

The Yip Group’s core R&D network has a strict data access control system, and every access to classified documents is logged.

But a high-level mole wouldn't be foolish enough to log in directly using their own employee ID to download files.

Lin Chen wanted to investigate something at a deeper level.

MAC address table of a network switch.

Peak traffic records for fiber optic interfaces.

And a detail that most IT personnel overlook: when each terminal connects to the intranet, the operating system automatically sends a request message containing the local hardware characteristics to the DHCP server.

This feature code contains the network card's physical address, the CPU's serial number, and the motherboard's serial number.

Even if you change your IP address, erase your logs, or even reinstall your system, the hardware identifier will not change.

three minutes.

Lin Chen retrieved a record from the massive DHCP logs.

Two weeks ago, at 2:19 a.m., Terminal No. 7 at the Yip Group's R&D center sent an encrypted data packet to the outside world.

The data package is 4.7GB in size, which is exactly the same as the compressed size of the complete technical documentation for the fourth-generation solid-state battery separator technology.

The hardware signature of Terminal 7 corresponds to the user who is—

Zhou Zheng, Deputy Director of the R&D Department.

Lin Chen straightened up.

He walked toward the conference table.

With slow, deliberate steps, the leather shoes made a clear, rhythmic "tap, tap" sound as they trod on the imported marble floor.

The meeting room was extremely quiet.

The twelve executives watched Lin Chen walk over step by step, and for some reason, they all held their breath.

The thing that was wrapped around this man was too heavy.

It wasn't murderous intent, nor was it intimidating.

There is something even more uncomfortable than these—certainty.

When someone who already knows the answer approaches someone who is unaware that they have been exposed, they will naturally exude this quality.

Lin Chen stopped in front of Zhou Zheng.

Zhou Zheng looked up at him. The moment their eyes met, Zhou Zheng's pupils contracted again, this time much more significantly than before.

"Director Zhou."

Lin Chen spoke.

The sound wasn't loud, but everyone in the conference room could hear it clearly.

"How much money did Prajna give you to betray the Ye family?"

As soon as Lin Chen said that, the temperature in the conference room seemed to drop ten degrees in an instant.

Zhou Zheng's face turned white at a speed visible to the naked eye.

It wasn't the angry paleness that comes from being wrongly accused; it was the physiological reaction of all the blood rushing to the face at the same instant when someone pulls you out of the shadows and throws you into the spotlight.

He moved.

His mouth opened, his lips moved twice, but he hadn't managed to utter a single word.

"Snapped!"

A crisp sound.

Lin Chen's right hand struck Zhou Zheng squarely on the left cheek.

The force was precisely controlled, not enough to cause a fracture, but enough to send him flying two meters away, chair and all.

The chair overturned and Zhou Zheng's head hit the leg of the conference table with a dull thud. He fell to the ground, and the left side of his face quickly swelled up, with a clear red five-finger mark embedded on it like a brand.

"Lin Chen, what right do you have to hit me! Do you have any evidence?!"

Zhou Zheng covered his face, his voice sharp and fragmented, like a cat whose tail had been stepped on.

Lin Chen squatted down to be at eye level with him.

There was no anger or contempt in those eyes.

There was only one kind of chilling, indifferent feeling, like looking at an insect.

"Two weeks ago, at 2:19 a.m., Terminal 7 sent a 4.7GB encrypted data packet to an anonymous relay server located in Singapore."

Zhou Zheng's face turned from white to ashen.

"You...how could you..."

"Your hardware characteristics are in the DHCP log."

"You think deleting the operation logs will make things clean? That's something a primary school student would do."

Lin Chen stood up and patted his hands to remove non-existent dust.

He turned to look at Ye Qingcheng.

In Ye Qingcheng's phoenix eyes, coldness and killing intent were intertwined in an extremely restrained manner.

She didn't call security.

She simply picked up the phone from the table and dialed a number.

"The Ministry of Justice?"

"Zhou Zheng is suspected of selling the company's core trade secrets. An internal investigation is to be launched immediately, and the police are to be notified simultaneously."

She hung up the phone and walked up to Zhou Zheng.

The toe of the high heel stopped five centimeters away from Zhou Zheng's nose.

"Zhou Zheng, you've been with Ye's for seven years. I trusted you, promoted you, and gave you stock options and shares."

Her voice was so soft it was almost inaudible.

But that lightness was more oppressive than any roar.

You betrayed me.

"The Ye family won't fall, but you will."

Zhou Zheng collapsed to the ground, unable to utter a single word.