Encirclement

August. Bug Café. Three in the afternoon.

Su Niannian's laptop sat on the table, six browser tabs lined up side by side: Lark documents, backend data, media screenshots. She had started talking at one thirty and was still going now. She had downed two iced lattes, and her voice was a little hoarse.

Han Luyi propped himself against the table with one hand, chin resting on the other, listening the whole time.

He had read the data. Su Niannian had sent him the July monthly report at four in the morning: eleven pages. 18,400 registered users, 12,300 monthly active users, 142 paying teams, and monthly revenue of 426,000. It looked like they were still growing.

But the turning point had already appeared.

"In the first week of July, daily new registrations were 390. In the fourth week, they were 402. The blue line barely moved. Individual developers are still increasing." Su Niannian pointed at the two trend lines on the screen. "But the orange line—new paying teams—went from twelve in the first week to three in the fourth. It's a cliff."

"The paid conversion rate dropped from 3.1% to 1.4%." She switched to another page and pointed at the number in the upper-right corner. "Inference costs for July were 83,000."

Han Luyi looked at the report without speaking.

"Every scan runs the model once, and large repositories go through several rounds. With twelve thousand monthly active users, that's nearly a hundred thousand inference requests a month," Su Niannian said. "When monthly active users were three thousand in May, inference costs were 21,000."

Users had quadrupled. Costs had quadrupled too. Revenue, meanwhile, had only doubled.

"Free users account for 88% of monthly active users. They consume three-quarters of our computing power and generate zero revenue." She closed her laptop. "Companies don't dare pay, and individuals don't need to. At this rate, by the end of the year, inference costs could eat up a third of monthly revenue."

Everything Su Niannian mentioned was inference cost. But if they wanted to retain customers, the model had to keep evolving. Training costs were the real heavyweight.

Han Luyi knew all of that. On the night CodeSafe officially connected to Dingsheng Cloud in mid-July, Su Niannian had sent him a screenshot, and he had known things would not be simple from then on. But after a month, the situation was even uglier than they had expected.

Within two weeks, six industry analysis articles had appeared across four platforms. Their arguments were so neatly aligned they looked like they had been carved out of the same outline: "Independent developer products are flexible but lack enterprise-grade guarantees," "The entry of major corporations marks the maturity of the sector," "The real moat isn't detection rate, but ecosystem integration and compliance capabilities." BugKiller was never mentioned by name, yet every paragraph was about BugKiller.

The customers were beginning to waver too. Five paying users had asked about refund policies. They were waiting to see how BugKiller would respond to Dingsheng.

"Nian Nian," Han Luyi said. "What are you thinking?"

"First, we need to figure out what cards they're playing."

She flipped the Lark document to a relationship map. Five boxes surrounded a circle in the middle, arrows shooting toward it from every direction. Each box was covered in screenshots and links.

"Channels, media, customers, capital, pricing. Five fronts at once," Su Niannian said, tapping the boxes in turn. "You've seen the channels and media. Those six articles were one step away from naming us outright. But the customer line is dirtier."

She enlarged a WeChat screenshot. "CodeSafe's salespeople are directly inviting the technical leads of our paying customers out for coffee and pulling them into some 'Enterprise Advisory Committee.' At least three companies have been contacted."

Her finger moved to the last two boxes. "Someone in the VC circle is saying the market structure is settled and advising against investing in startups. And the community is spreading word that CodeSafe will launch a free trial. Nothing has been announced, but the rumors are already out."

She drew her hand back from the screen.

"Five lines. The same time window. The same rhythm. Someone is coordinating it all."

Han Luyi looked at her.

"You put all this together?"

"It's not like I only found out today." Su Niannian's tone was calm. "It's been a month. I've been tracking it."

Han Luyi said nothing. He stared at the diagram for several seconds, then closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, Sight activated.

A panel surfaced. The five lines Su Niannian had summarized were marked by Sight as well. Their level of coordination was extremely high, with every vector pointing toward the same strategic center. It matched her assessment.

He did not linger on it. He followed the connection lines deeper, searching for what she could not see.

A few seconds later—

[CodeSafe core detection engine reconstruction progress ≈35%; architectural flaws not fully resolved]

[After connecting to Dingsheng Cloud, API adaptation and deployment overhaul were prioritized; improvements to core capabilities delayed]

[False-positive rate for major projects still >25%]

[BugKiller technical advantage: leads in detection rate/false-positive rate/impact assessment across all three metrics; cannot be caught up with in the short term]

Every item was marked with perfect clarity.

Han Luyi looked further down.

[Fix path: --]

Empty.

He stared at that field for three seconds. Sight flickered there, as if trying to generate something, then went dark again.

Level 2 Sight could provide fix paths for code bugs—what file to change, what line to change, and how to change it. But when faced with a systemic competitive disadvantage like "weaker brand, weaker channels, weaker capital," it could not provide an answer.

This was not a bug. This was a problem he could not patch.

Han Luyi shut off Sight.

Su Niannian was still waiting for him to speak.

"We're still ahead technically," Han Luyi said. "After CodeSafe connected to Dingsheng Cloud, they've been busy with API adaptation. Their false-positive rate on major projects is still their old problem."

Su Niannian did not ask how he knew. She was already used to Han Luyi's occasional bursts of "technical intuition."

"So?"

"But it doesn't matter." Han Luyi stood and walked to the window. "When enterprise customers make purchasing decisions, detection rate sits in the fourth column of the evaluation sheet. The first three are: 'Have we heard of this brand?' 'Will this company go under tomorrow?' and 'Who takes responsibility if something goes wrong?' The name Dingsheng is a perfect answer to all three."

Su Niannian leaned back in her chair and stared at the ceiling.

"Then we don't fight on the first three columns."

Han Luyi turned around.

"Dingsheng Cloud's ecosystem is closed. They can't build a community." Su Niannian sat upright and reopened her laptop. "Open-source all the SDKs. Let the community build its own plugins: VS Code, JetBrains, GitHub Action, GitLab CI. Leave the core engine untouched, but open every interface."

"Not the model."

"Of course not. We open-source the scaffolding, not the brain," Su Niannian said. "Dingsheng can crush us through channels, but it can't build a community ecosystem. Their 150,000 enterprise developers belong to Dingsheng, but the plugin ecosystem can belong to us."

Han Luyi thought for a moment, then said, "We need to solve the cost problem at the same time. Add a personal Pro plan, ninety-nine a month. Unlimited private repositories, full impact assessment reports, priority queue. Reduce the free plan's scan limit from sixty a month to twenty. How many heavy users do we have now?"

"Eight hundred to a thousand scan more than forty times a month. At a 15% conversion rate, that adds twelve to fifteen thousand in monthly revenue," Su Niannian said. "It won't cover inference costs, but at least it stops the bleeding. And once this group gets used to it, they're also likely to push for team plans at their companies."

"Too bad this isn't a breakthrough," Su Niannian said.

Han Luyi looked at her. "First, we survive. We'll find an opportunity."

The two fell silent for a while.

Su Niannian stood and packed up her laptop. "We'll put out the plan tomorrow. Open-source the SDKs, price the personal Pro plan, limit the free plan. The three-piece set."

She stuffed the laptop into a backpack nearly as big as she was.

"Luyi, you're becoming more and more like a qualified CEO."

With that, she headed for the door.

Nine at night. Room 502. Desk lamp.

There were two unread messages on his phone.

Ma Xiaofei: "Old Han, I saw a bunch of paid hit pieces against BugKiller today. Want me to make a video and fire back? I've already saved all the material."

President Li of Cross-Border Reach: "Mr. Han, some headhunters recently contacted our technical lead and said CodeSafe is forming an Enterprise Customer Advisory Committee. Things on your end... okay?"

He replied to Ma Xiaofei: "Not yet. Let me think about it some more."

After a pause, he added, "Thanks."

He replied to President Li: "Everything is normal. Thank you for your trust."

He opened the code editor. He was restructuring the impact assessment module for v1.3, a requirement Su Niannian had brought up last week. Enterprise customers thought scans for large projects were too slow.

He typed several lines of code. Deleted them. Then typed two more.

The BugKiller backend dashboard hung in the lower-right corner. New registrations today: 341. About the same as last month. New paying teams: 0.

Registrations were still rising, but no one was paying.

He closed his eyes. The afterimage of that afternoon's diagnostic report still lingered at the edge of his mind, five attack vectors marked with perfect clarity, and beneath them, that field for the fix path, empty.

Like a CT scan that showed the lesion in plain sight but could not prescribe medicine.

Beside the monitor were Duoduo's crayon drawing of a big ladybug and Lin Wanqing's cloth ladybug picture. One large, one small.

His phone rang. It was Gu Siyue.

"Are you free at nine tomorrow morning? I've drafted a framework for compliance—data security, privacy clauses, liability waivers. I want to go over the broad direction with you first. If there are no issues, I'll move forward directly."

Han Luyi paused. "Is it urgent?"

"Given your current situation, very urgent."