On Saturday, colleagues working overtime in the Cloud Business Unit reported that they hadn't seen Vice President Liu Bo.
That was perfectly normal. Employees worked overtime because they hadn't finished their tasks; there was no reason to make senior executives come in too.
But when Monday came, Liu Bo still didn't show up, and his subordinates hadn't received any updates to his schedule.
By eleven that morning, he had missed the first alignment meeting that required his presence.
Someone sent him a message through the internal IM system, but it never showed as read.
The directors attending the meeting started chatting.
After waiting five minutes with no sign of Liu Bo, Wang Hao, the product director in charge of the Ling Tai project, spoke up. "Why don't we call it here? I'll go ask at Mr. Liu's office."
The directors discussed it briefly. They couldn't just sit around chatting for half an hour. Without the vice president, this alignment meeting was pointless.
So they adjourned.
Wang Hao went to Liu Bo's office. The assistant sitting outside greeted him as he approached. "Mr. Wang."
"Is Mr. Liu in?" Wang Hao asked.
"No, he hasn't arrived yet." "Is he out at a meeting?" Wang Hao asked.
The assistant looked down to check the schedule. "I don't have any outside appointments listed here. I don't know where he is either."
At the vice-presidential level, an occasional absence might mean urgent business had come up elsewhere. It wasn't a subordinate's place to ask.
But even his assistant not knowing was a little strange.
Wang Hao had heard that Ling Tai's next step would be to integrate with the Tangyuan Protocol, but he was still waiting for Liu Bo's instructions on the exact timeline and procedures. With Liu Bo absent, his own progress was being