One Yard Higher

"Begin!"

BugKiller's green progress bar advanced at a steady pace, no different from the first two rounds. Ten percent, twenty percent, thirty percent—the speed was almost identical.

CodeSafe's blue progress bar had been off from the start.

It was normal at ten percent, noticeably slower at twenty percent, and by thirty percent it was practically inching forward one block at a time. The number of issues marked on the live panel to the right kept jumping—

Marked issues: 14... 21... 35...

The viewers noticed the speed before they noticed the numbers.

"Is CodeSafe stuck?"

"It's not stuck. It's running, just insanely slow."

"BugKiller is scanning 350,000 lines at the same speed as the first two rounds. What's wrong with CodeSafe?"

At forty percent, the marked count jumped to fifty-eight.

The viewers started doing the math.

"BugKiller doesn't lag at all on the same project, but CodeSafe took almost three minutes just to reach forty percent?"

"It was two minutes slower on 120,000 lines in round two. At 350,000 lines, isn't this going to be ten minutes slower?"

"This isn't linear growth. It's exponential, isn't it...?"

At fifty percent, the marked count was seventy-nine. The progress bar took seven or eight seconds to move a single block.

"My mood right now is like watching a thermometer rise."

"Dr. Zhao doesn't look too good."

Han Luyi sat five meters away. BugKiller's scan had long since finished on the screen in front of him. He said nothing.

CodeSafe's progress bar kept crawling. Sixty percent, seventy percent—the marked count passed one hundred.

The viewers had gone from discussing it to simply watching the spectacle.

"This isn't even a competition anymore."

Eighty percent.

The entire room waited.

One hundred percent. Total marked issues: 123.

The expert panel spent nearly forty minutes verifying them.

While they waited, the host walked between the two men with a microphone. "Verification will take a while longer, so let's talk with our two guests first. Dr. Zhao, how did the third round feel?"

Zhao Wenyuan remained seated. "Let's wait for the results."

Just four words. The host froze for half a second before turning to Han Luyi.

"And what about NullPointer? After three rounds, how do you feel?"

Leaning back in his chair, Han Luyi looked relaxed. "Feelings aside, let's talk about BugKiller's impact assessment. The expert panel mentioned it earlier. Every issue we detect comes with an estimated repair cost. The underlying logic of this feature links bugs to business scenarios. It doesn't just tell you where the problem is—it tells you how much money that problem will cost once it goes live."

The comments read: "NullPointer is starting to sell his product." "This guy's mentality is seriously strong." "The atmosphere around Dr. Zhao feels off."

The host pressed on. "What gave you the idea for this feature?"

"Freelance jobs. Clients don't care which bugs you fixed. They care how much less they'll lose after the fix. After seeing enough of that, you realize bugs themselves aren't worth much. The losses they cause are what matter."

A wave of comments flooded in: "That insight is worth a hundred million." "Product managers are speechless."

The host turned to Zhao Wenyuan again. "Dr. Zhao, what do you think of this direction—impact assessment?"

Zhao Wenyuan glanced at the experts still conducting verification. "It's a good direction."

That was it. The comments began filling with ellipses.

In the verification area, one expert took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, reading the same section of code twice before writing down his conclusion.

The verification results appeared onscreen.

CodeSafe: Total marked issues: 123. Confirmed bugs: 76. False positives: 47. False-positive rate: 38.2%.

BugKiller: Total marked issues: 132. Confirmed bugs: 127. False positives: 5. False-positive rate: 3.8%.

The head of the expert panel picked up the microphone and paused.

"At the 350,000-line scale, CodeSafe's false-positive rate is 38%. The false positives are concentrated in deep call chains and cross-module dependencies. Its detection engine has developed systemic errors when handling large-scale codebases. These are not isolated misjudgments."

He paused. "BugKiller's false-positive rate is 3.8%, consistent with the first two rounds. Among its 127 detected issues, several repair-cost estimates were accurate down to the person-day level. We have never seen this capability in comparable tools."

There were 53,000 people watching online.

The comments completely lost control.

"38%????"

"Systemic errors. The expert's exact words."

"This isn't code review. This is fortune-telling."

"Dr. Zhao's three thousand words were written for nothing."

"Let the product speak. The product spoke: I'm fake."

That last comment was copied dozens of times within a second. The entire screen filled with: "Let the product speak. The product spoke: I'm fake."

Zhao Wenyuan had not said a single word since the third round began.

The screen in front of him glowed. Eighty-nine detections, thirty-four false positives. He understood better than any viewer what those numbers meant. There had been no problem at 30,000 lines. Cracks had begun to show at 120,000. At 350,000 lines, everything had collapsed. This was not a matter of whether the parameters could be tuned properly. The core architecture of the detection engine simply could not handle large codebases.

He had never tested a 350,000-line project during the public beta.

The host waited three seconds.

"Dr. Zhao, any final remarks?"

Zhao Wenyuan looked up at the camera.

"Thank you to the community for its oversight. We will conduct a serious review."

Then he stood, removed his lapel mic, placed it on the table, and left.

The camera followed him for two seconds. The live viewer count rose by another three thousand the instant he pushed open the door.

The comments surged one last time—

"It's over. Completely over."

"Dr. Zhao was certainly graceful. But what good is grace? Thirty-eight percent is still thirty-eight percent."

"Let the product speak. The product says: I'm dead."

When Su Niannian saw the third-round results from her bed, she kicked off her blanket and nearly sent her laptop flying off the bed.

She entered the data from all three rounds into a spreadsheet and saved six screenshots of the best comments. Before the livestream had even ended, BugKiller's backend showed registrations starting to rise.

New registrations surpassed two thousand that day.

Two days later, the livestream recording passed one million views, and "38% false-positive rate" became a meme in tech circles.

The title of Ma Xiaofei's highlight video was: <CodeSafe Founder Says "Let the Product Speak," and the Product Says, "I'm Fake">. It reached 300,000 views.

Within a week, BugKiller's registered users soared from a little over three thousand to more than eight thousand.

Zhao Wenyuan did not post anything on social media for three days.

CodeSafe sent an all-staff email: all marketing campaigns were suspended, and every effort would be focused on repairing the core engine.

Han Luyi drank coffee at a window seat in Bug Café. Su Niannian sat opposite him with her laptop open, her fingers never stopping as she organized post-livestream user data and registration trends.

Halfway through, without even looking up, she said one thing.

"He shouldn't have come."

Han Luyi held his cup and said nothing.

"His product is genuinely good on small projects. Without this livestream, he would at least have had time to fix it slowly. Now the whole world knows."

Han Luyi took a sip of coffee.

"He won't give up."

Su Niannian looked up at him.

"What do you mean by that?"

Han Luyi did not explain.

May 17, three days after the livestream.

Zhao Wenyuan sat in his office in Jingan District. Both monitors were on, but he stared only at the one on the left.

On CodeSafe's data dashboard, new registrations had been negative for three straight days. More people were uninstalling than registering.

He had not replied to his investor's WeChat messages. The first had still been polite. The second was blunt: "I need an explanation at next week's board meeting." He had not read the third.

He had not replied to media interview requests either.

He opened a page he had never carefully examined before: the large-project test logs.

Since the public beta began, they had only run projects with fewer than 50,000 lines. No one had tested it on large codebases.

Now he looked. Full traversal grew exponentially beyond 200,000 lines. Context-window overflow. Model hallucinations—fundamental mistakes in the architectural design.

He knew how to fix it. It would take six to twelve months, but the money on the books would not last that long.

The community had already pronounced CodeSafe dead. Those three characters—"38%"—were more devastating than any analytical article.

Zhao Wenyuan leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes for a while.

Then he picked up his phone.

He scrolled to the bottom of his contacts, to the number he had not called all these days—Wang Zhiyuan.

He pressed the call button.

It rang twice.

"President Wang, regarding Dingsheng Cloud... you must have seen the livestream results. I wanted to ask whether your interest still stands."

There was a second of silence on the other end, and then Wang Zhiyuan laughed.

"Dr. Zhao, why do you think I approached you?"

Zhao Wenyuan said nothing.

"What does it have to do with me whether your product is good?" Wang Zhiyuan's tone was as relaxed as if they were discussing the weather. "Dingsheng Cloud's procurement of a code-review tool comes out of the group's IT budget. The budget has been approved, so the money has to be spent. Who it gets spent on—that's for me to decide."

He paused.

"You need a major contract to survive. I need a supplier who's pleasant to work with. That's all there has ever been to this."

Zhao Wenyuan held the phone, his back pressed against the chair.

"...I understand."

"Tomorrow afternoon, I'll have someone send you the proposal. We can discuss the details in person."

Zhao Wenyuan hung up.

He placed the phone on the desk. The screen went dark, reflecting his own face.

He closed his eyes. Wang Zhiyuan had made it very clear. It did not matter whether the product was good. It did not matter whether the false-positive rate was 38% or 3%. The money came from a budget. Whether it was spent, and who it was spent on, followed another set of rules.

Last time, he had still been able to negotiate terms. Now, he could only accept them.

The stakes had changed.

Han Luyi knew nothing about that call. He was in 502 writing new features for v1.2.

Outside the window, lights came on one by one in the old residential complex.