10:01 a.m.
Qingning Technology Building, 42nd floor.
Monday mornings were supposed to be the most chaotic time for Internet Plus companies.
Weekly meetings, weekly reports, KPI reviews—
The air was always filled with an invisible sense of anxiety.
But today, the atmosphere in Qingmi AI's office area was subtly different.
Not just because Christmas decorations could be seen everywhere.
But because—
Liu Qingning, the General Manager who was always punctual, always arrived an hour early, and should have been sitting in the conference room listening to a technical briefing right now, was late.
"Good morning, President Liu."
"Morning. Merry Christmas."
"Merry Christmas, President Liu."
Dressed in a creamy white casual outfit and soft-soled sneakers, her long hair draped over her shoulders, Liu Qingning walked into her office with nearly imperceptible light makeup and a relaxed smile on her face.
There was no emergency meeting.
No string of @ mentions in the group chat.
Even the usual unwavering morning technical sync meeting had yet to be announced.
Just last weekend, server fluctuations had caused Qingmi AI to suffer nearly half an hour of response delays.
For a product benchmarked against consumer-side user experience, that counted as no minor incident.
By President Liu's usual standards, even a 0.1% error rate would be investigated to the very end. She would never let it go until she found the root cause.
Her face might have been soft and adorable, but when it came to technical issues, she had always been stern.
Yet today—
When she passed the technical team, she even smiled at them and said, "Merry Christmas."
For a moment, hushed whispers rose among the workstations.
"President Liu is in a really good mood today?"
"More than good. It's like she's become a different person. She's so cute."
"Has she seen the incident