pertwk Chapter 450 False Information
Chapter 450 False Information
On Thursday afternoon, Zhao Hu "invited" Liu Jun to Ling Yun's office.
When Zhao Hu arrived, Liu Jun was cooking instant noodles. A small aluminum pot was placed on the induction cooker, bubbling away, and the room smelled of seasoning packets.
Hearing the knock, Liu Jun assumed it was his neighbor who always borrowed soy sauce. He slipped on his slippers and went to open the door. When he opened it, he saw Zhao Hu standing in the doorway, with two people in black coats behind him. The chopsticks in Zhao Hu's hand fell to the ground with a clatter.
Zhao Hu didn't go inside, but stood at the door and said, "President Ling wants to talk to you."
Liu Jun paused for a few seconds, then looked back at the room—the instant noodles were still cooking, several worn-out shirts were hanging by the window, and a brown paper envelope was on the bedside table. The envelope was not sealed, and half of a hundred-yuan bill was sticking out.
He slowly turned around and reached out to turn off the induction cooker. The bubbling of the instant noodles stopped, and the room suddenly became quiet. "Can I change my clothes?" he said. Zhao Hu glanced at the gray thermal underwear he was wearing and nodded. Liu Jun grabbed a jacket from the bed, put it on without buttoning it up, and followed Zhao Hu out the door.
The drive from the development zone to the R&D center takes less than half an hour. Liu Jun sat in the middle of the back seat, with people on either side of him; he fastened his seatbelt himself. No one spoke the entire way; the car radio was on, broadcasting traffic updates. Liu Jun kept his head down, legs together, hands clenched into fists resting on his knees.
Ling Yun was waiting for him in the office. The tea on the table had been replaced; the new tea was steaming hot. Next to it were two items: one was a printout of the download records from the stolen files, and the other was several photos. The photos showed Liu Jun and Yang Peng sitting face-to-face in a booth at the Longteng Teahouse, with an envelope on the table almost bursting open. Between the printout and the photos was the list Li Mo had written that night. Next to Liu Jun's name was a thin but complete red circle, without any gaps.
When the door opened, Ling Yun was looking at a report. He glanced up at Liu Jun, but didn't slam his hand on the table or raise his voice; he simply pointed to the chair in front of the desk.
"sit."
Liu Jun sat down. His hands were trembling violently; he first placed them on his knees, then moved them to the armrests of the chair, and finally gripped the edge of the armrests, his knuckles turning white from gripping them so tightly.
"Of the things you sent to Yang Peng last Thursday—how many sets of test data for the StarCore chip—were there in total?"
Liu Jun opened his mouth, then closed it again, and uttered a broken sentence: "President Ling, I...they..." He couldn't finish his sentence because Ling Yun pushed the photos of the teahouse half an inch closer to him. In the photos, he was pushing a brown paper envelope from the table to Yang Peng across from him; the action was frozen in the frame, like the two of them passing a baton.
Liu Jun pushed the photo aside, leaning heavily back in his chair, which slid across the floor with a sharp scraping sound. "I owed gambling debts. Yang Peng came to me. After he fired me at the end of last year, I went back to my hometown. At a shady gambling den in the county, I lost all the money I'd saved for over three years in one night, owing 120,000 yuan. The loan sharks started blocking the door, so I ran back to Jinan. Yang Peng found me through someone at a bathhouse. He said—'No need to steal anything, just send a few messages, and the money will be enough to pay it off—so I…'"
"You've been sending these things since last year. Chip design diagrams, test data, internal meeting minutes—I've recorded every single document you've sent, the time, the IP address, the content you dragged away. It would take three days and three nights to recount it all. Do you remember that old server room downstairs? You swiped your card every Thursday night, stayed for about ten minutes, and then came out empty-handed. The time you went in doesn't match the timeline of your so-called network cable cabling business."
Liu Jun lowered his head and covered his face with both hands. His shoulders trembled, but he couldn't cry out.
Ling Yun made him cry for about five seconds.
"I could have called the police. You could have gone to jail, for three to seven years depending on the amount involved. You've only been working for three years, and you've only been married for two years. Your wife is still working as a cashier at a small company in Jinan. What would happen to the mortgage after you went in? How could she support herself? You know that yourself."
Liu Jun removed his hand from his face, tears still wet on his face, snot dripping down his lips. He looked at Ling Yun, his eyes filled with an expression of having given up all resistance.
"I'm not calling the police because I'm soft-hearted. It's because going to jail is too lenient for you—for someone like you, jail is just another place to stay. From today onwards, you will continue to provide intelligence to Yang Peng. But the content of the intelligence will be determined by me."
Liu Jun seemed not to understand, his mouth agape and his eyebrows furrowed.
"This method is called 'playing along.' I've kept all the records of what you've done; I haven't thrown any away. If you do well, these will be my files; if you try anything funny, these will be your criminal record."
When Liu Jun knelt down, his knees hit the floor with a dull thud. Zhao Hu moved slightly behind him, but Ling Yun stopped him with a look.
"Don't kneel before me. I don't need you to kneel. I just want you to do one thing—keep the intelligence you've already sent out and the intelligence you're going to send out in the future as consistent as possible. What will you do if they find out you've betrayed them?"
Liu Jun thought for a moment. "They will—" He didn't finish his sentence.
"So you had no choice. And I didn't give you a choice either."
Ling Yun opened the drawer, pulled out a brown paper envelope, which was sealed with a red stamp. He pushed the envelope to the opposite side of his desk.
"Here's the latest test data from StarCore. Take it to Yang Peng now. The data looks real—power consumption is still too high, the GPU issue isn't fully resolved, and the yield rate is still dropping. But look closely, the yield data is from the old batch of defective samples, and I've inflated the GPU frequency by a few percentage points. Many real problems have been amplified. When they take it back and analyze it, they'll conclude that the chip is usable, but the cost is too high, and it might not be stable until the end of next year."
Liu Jun took the envelope with trembling hands, looked down at it for a long time, and then stuffed it into the inside pocket of his coat. The envelope was stuck hard against his chest and under his armpit.
When will they contact you?
"Tomorrow night. Dragon Soaring Teahouse."
"Very good. Now go back and finish that pot of instant noodles. Don't let Yang Peng notice anything amiss. If he calls, act as if nothing is wrong."
Liu Jun stood up, his legs still trembling. He took a few steps towards the door, then stopped. Without turning around, he simply turned his head to the side and said in a very soft voice, "President Ling... my wife—"
"Your wife won't know about this. On the condition that, from now on, you don't lie to me a single word."
Liu Jun lowered his head, opened the door, and left. His footsteps echoed down the corridor towards the stairwell, turning into a stumbling jog halfway down, then suddenly stopping as if tripped over something, before continuing. Zhao Hu reached the door, closed it, and turned to look at Ling Yun. "You believe him?" Ling Yun moved the now-cold teacup on the table aside, picked up the empty cup, and poured half a cup of fresh hot water. "I believe he's afraid. Fear is enough. A person who fears death is much easier to control than someone who isn't—fear is the only honest emotion he has right now."
"He will give Yang Peng that envelope tomorrow."
"Yes. The data in that envelope will tell Liu Chuanzhi a few things. First, the chip problem is more serious than we've publicly stated, but less severe than he himself anticipates. Second, this data independently cross-validates other information within his intelligence network. Third, based on the trend of this data, he estimates mass production will likely occur in the second half of next year—so he will most likely decide to continue stockpiling. Because he feels he has won the last card."
Zhao Hu gathered the stack of teahouse photos on the table and put them into his briefcase. "What about Yang Peng?"
"Don't touch Yang Peng. Yang Peng is a thread. Behind the thread is Wu Jianguo, Wu Jianguo is connected to Hualian Technology in Taiwan, Hualian Technology is backed by Gu Gorden, and above Gu Gorden is Goldman Sachs—each of them has a part of the picture. What we need now is not to tear the net apart, but to make every thread in the net think that it is still weaving something in the same place, but in reality, it has already begun to entangle its own legs."
The phone rang. Ling Yun glanced at the caller ID, pressed the speakerphone button, and heard Ma Baoguo's voice on the other end.
"President Ling, I've been staking out Hongguang Optoelectronics for two days and found the problem with that hidden line. The first batch of trial production screens will be off the production line next week."
What is the estimated yield rate?
"Most of them are usable. After the first batch, things will gradually stabilize."
"Keep an eye on it. I'll go check on it next week." Ling Yun hung up the phone.