Steal the enemy's base at the start and build a technological empire.

Chapter 447 Li Mo's Frankness

Around 10 p.m., the corridor on the third floor of the R&D center was empty. The automatic sensor light at the end of the corridor had been broken for three days and the property management had not yet come to fix it. When you walked in, the first half was lit, but the second half was dark.

Li Mo had walked this corridor for four years, and he knew with his eyes closed which paving stone would make a sound when stepped on—the third one, counting from the left, would give a thud when stepped on, as if the cement underneath hadn't been properly compacted. Today, he deliberately avoided that paving stone, but he still stopped when he reached the door of Ling Yun's office.

A thin ray of light shone through the crack in the door; Ling Yun was still inside.

He knocked twice and pushed the door open before anyone answered. Ling Yun was sitting at the table, with a list of documents that the Security Department had sent that afternoon spread out in front of him. To his left was a cup of untouched tea, with a layer of fine tea leaves floating on the surface; it had gone cold.

"That account," Li Mo said, standing at the door with his hand still on the doorknob, "belongs to my department."

Ling Yun looked up at him.

"Zhang Wei's account was linked to a temporary project team in the systems department. That team was created last year when we were migrating the database, and I was the project leader. It was supposed to be disbanded after the project ended, but I didn't oversee it, and HR didn't follow up, so the permissions just remained. When Zhang Wei left, I had his main account deactivated, but the temporary team's permissions—I can't remember." He closed the door behind him, standing between the door and the desk, his hands hanging at his sides, his fingers slightly curled. "This is what I was supposed to do; I didn't do it well."

Ling Yun didn't reply. He flipped the documents on the table face down, then leaned back in his chair and looked at Li Mo.

"If you want to hold me accountable, I'll resign."

His voice didn't tremble when he said that, nor did his eyes redden, but his Adam's apple bobbed once, as if he were swallowing something he couldn't swallow. Ling Yun stood up, walked around the table, and stood in front of him. The two were about the same height, and when they stood face to face, their eyes were level.

"You are my brother, not my shield."

Li Mo's chin twitched, as if he wanted to speak, but he didn't.

"Find out the person who should really be held responsible," Ling Yun said. "That's what you should be doing." His tone was exactly the same as when he was assigning tasks to the production line, as if he were talking about something that had already been decided long ago.

Li Mo stood there, biting his lower lip until it turned white. After a while, he raised his right hand from his side, pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, and when he lowered his fingers, there was a small wet spot on his fingertip, which he casually wiped on his pants.

"This is the fourth year," he said.

"What?"

"It's been four years since that run-down internet cafe in Jinan," he said, lowering his hand and finally raising his eyes. "Back then, you said you wanted to compete with Cherry for the keyboard market, and I thought you were crazy. Then you said you wanted to make an operating system, and I thought you were crazy again. Then you said you wanted to make mobile phone chips, and I didn't think you were crazy anymore—because I was used to it. But now someone is stealing what we've worked on for four years, stealing it from the department I manage. Brother Ling, what should I do?"

"Find that person," Ling Yun said, "and make him vomit up what he's eaten."

"Aren't you afraid that person is me?"

Ling Yun didn't answer the question. He walked back to the table, opened a drawer, took out a black notebook, flipped to the middle page, and placed it on the table. The notebook was densely covered with writing, some parts were tables, and some parts were circled in red pen. This was the notebook he carried with him during his time in the United States, and the cover was already worn and frayed.

"Do you remember that meal we had at that Vietnamese pho restaurant in Silicon Valley two years ago? That day you said that if you ever did anything to betray me, you would—"

"I shaved my head to see you," Li Mo's lips twitched slightly, "I remember."

"You still have hair."

Li Mo reached up and touched his hair, then lowered his hand and wiped it on his pants. "Are there scissors in the office?"

"No," Ling Yun sat back in his chair, closed the notebook, and gently pushed it back into the drawer. "So I'll owe you for now."

After he finished speaking, he picked up a document from the table, opened it, signed a few words on it, and closed it again. The actions were very ordinary, so ordinary that it was as if he were handling a regular procurement request rather than the issue of whether a core partner who had just submitted his resignation would stay or leave.

Li Mo stood in the middle of the room, watching Ling Yun finish signing his name, and watching him put the pen back on the table. The pen rolled half a circle on the table before being blocked by a teacup. The whole process took about ten seconds, and neither of them spoke.

Then Li Mo made a very subtle movement—he took off the access card for the R&D center that was hanging around his neck and placed it on Ling Yun's desk. A one-inch photo was pasted on the card; it was taken four years ago, and the person in the photo had shorter hair and a thinner face than they do now. He laid the card flat and pushed it two inches towards Ling Yun.

"I'll leave it with you for now. I'll take it back once I find that person."

Ling Yun looked at the access card but didn't reach for it. "You can leave it with me, but you won't be able to enter the R&D center tomorrow morning."

"I'm going to the development zone tomorrow morning," Li Mo said. "Wang Degui introduced me to someone who worked at the telecom base station there for a few years. He can find out the signal coverage area of ​​this base station—from the base station, the signal coverage radius is one kilometer. Within a one-kilometer radius, there are only three places where you can use WiFi—that teahouse, the budget hotel next door, and the 24-hour convenience store on the corner. Have Zhao Hu check it out too."

After saying that, his tone suddenly changed. Just moments ago, his voice was calm when he was talking about resigning, but now, when he mentioned signal coverage radius and WiFi hotspots, his speech suddenly quickened, as if he were reciting a formula he had memorized countless times.

"And that temporary project team," he continued, "I pulled up all the members' login logs this afternoon. For the past two weeks, someone has been repeatedly logging into the same file directory, only looking at the subdirectories related to the StarCore chip each time. This person has browsing history, but no download history—the downloads were done using Zhang Wei's account. He browsed the files on his own computer, then logged into another machine using Zhang Wei's account and dragged all the viewed files away."

"Who is this person?"

Li Mo said a name. After he finished speaking, the room remained quiet for a long time.

Ling Yun sat there, going over every word Li Mo had just said in his mind. Then he picked up the landline on the table and dialed an internal number.

"Zhao Hu, come to my office."

He hung up the phone and looked up at Li Mo.

"You'll have to open the door yourself tomorrow."

Li Mo was stunned for a moment.

"Here's the access card," Ling Yun said, picking up the access card and handing it back to him. "I've said it before, I don't accept resignation letters. What you need to do now isn't apologize, but dig out that person. Once you've dug him out, we'll talk about shaving your head—until you've dug him out, you don't even have the right to shave your head."

Li Mo reached out and took the card, his fingertips touching the edge of the plastic casing, which was a little cool. He hung the card back around his neck, the photo facing inward against his chest, then turned around and opened the door. In the dark section of the hallway outside, the motion-sensor lights were turned on by the footsteps; Zhao Hu was striding down the stairs.