Ma Xiaofei replied within three seconds: "??? Old Han, you're treating us voluntarily? Tell me, who do you want me to take out? I'd take a knife to the ribs for you!"
Zhang Haoran was two minutes slower: "After work works. Same old place?"
"Same old place."
The old place was a barbecue stall near the university district called One More Skewer.
The owner had changed three times, and the flavor of the skewers had gone through three different styles, but whenever the three guys from Dorm 404 got together, they always came here.
At seven-thirty that evening, the three of them sat on plastic stools outdoors, with sixty meat skewers, a bowl of crayfish, and three beers spread out before them.
"Business first." Ma Xiaofei raised his beer bottle and pointed it at Han Luyi. "Old Han, Dingsheng optimized you out?"
"Yeah. Happened yesterday."
"Fuck!" Ma Xiaofei's expression was so exaggerated he looked like he was performing in a comedy sketch. "You're P7! A P7 algorithm engineer got optimized out? Is Dingsheng insane?"
"Chen Bowen took my project."
"Fuck him..." Ma Xiaofei slapped the table, splashing two drops of crayfish broth. "A guy like that, you're not suing him?"
Zhang Haoran quietly peeled a crayfish beside them, his voice low. "You can't sue. The project belongs to the company, and attribution rights are basically a gray area at big tech firms."
"That's way too fucking unfair!"
Han Luyi smiled, took a sip of beer, and opened Sight, curious about what his two brothers' panels looked like.
Ma Xiaofei's panel popped up.
[Emotion: Righteous indignation] [Hidden emotion: Jealousy (Han Luyi somehow still isn't bald)] [Core anxiety: Follower growth bottleneck]
Han Luyi nearly lost it. Jealous that he wasn't bald?
Then he looked at Zhang Haoran.
[Emotion: Worry (for Han Luyi)] [Hidden emotion: None] [Core anxiety: Month-end mortgage payment ¥11,400]
Han Luyi closed Sight and smiled as he took another drink.
"Enough about me." He changed the subject. "Xiao Fei, what story are you chasing lately?"
Ma Xiaofei perked up, with the kind of energy that came from gritting his teeth.
"Funny you should mention it. You know Flash, right? That short-video app."
"What about Flash?"
"Those sons of bitches screwed me over." Ma Xiaofei slammed his beer bottle onto the table. "Screwed me bad."
Han Luyi paused with a crayfish in his chopsticks. "What happened?"
"Last month, I took a promotion job. A skincare brand hired me to run feed ads on Flash. The brand supplied the budget, and I handled the content and placement." The more Ma Xiaofei spoke, the darker his face became. "I'm telling you, I treated this job like my comeback battle. I put in twelve grand of my own money for production, shot three videos, and worked my ass off for half a month."
"And then?"
"Then we ran the ads, and the results were total garbage. Flash officially claimed eighty million monthly active users. Based on the traffic model they published, my ad should've gotten at least five hundred thousand impressions. It got eighty thousand. Eighty thousand! The conversion rate was even more ridiculous. It didn't come close to the ROI the brand expected."
Ma Xiaofei gulped down his beer. "The brand decided my content sucked and flat-out refused to pay the remaining twenty grand. I complained to Flash customer service that their data was wrong. Guess what they said? 'Ad performance is influenced by many factors. We recommend optimizing your content quality.'"
"You couldn't get the final payment back?" Zhang Haoran asked.
"Get it back, my ass. The brand said missing the KPI meant missing the KPI. It was written in black and white in the contract. What was I supposed to tell them, that Flash watered down its data and that's why the results sucked? What proof did I have?" Ma Xiaofei rubbed his face. "Twelve grand in production costs down the drain, twenty grand in final payment gone. Thirty-two grand! I only make a little over eight grand a month!"
Watching his expression, Han Luyi felt like he was about to cough up blood.
"I still wasn't willing to let it go, so I spent another week digging through their public data. CPM, user activity curves, ad fill rates—none of it lined up." Ma Xiaofei lowered his voice. "Old Han, I'm telling you, their numbers are inflated by at least three times. But I don't have the technical ability to prove it. I can only reverse-engineer it from ad performance data, and that isn't solid enough. If I publish it, Flash's legal team will sue me for defamation in minutes."
In reality, it was more than four times.
Zhang Haoran spoke up from beside him. "Flash's Series B lead investors are Starlight Capital and Cloud Sail Ventures. Neither is some minor outfit. They should've done due diligence. If the data was really inflated this badly, there's no way the investors wouldn't have noticed."
"Then the investors got fooled too," Ma Xiaofei said.
"Or they knew and pretended not to." Zhang Haoran tapped the tabletop with his chopsticks. "Passing the parcel. As long as they can drive up the valuation before the next round, it only matters that someone else ends up holding the bag."
Han Luyi remembered the face he had seen on Flash's team page that afternoon and asked, "Have you heard of Flash's CTO, Zhou Mingzhe?"
Zhang Haoran stopped peeling his crayfish. "Zhou Mingzhe?" He frowned. "That name... wait, wasn't he at Dingsheng before?"
"Yeah. I saw him at the annual meeting. He was sitting at Wang Zhiyuan's table."
"Right." Zhang Haoran put down his chopsticks. "Wang Zhiyuan brought him up. He left Dingsheng in 2023, after working under Wang Zhiyuan in tech for three years. When he left, people inside Dingsheng were talking about it."
Ma Xiaofei's eyes widened more and more as he listened. "Wait a second. Flash's CTO used to work under a Dingsheng VP?"
"It's common for people from big tech firms to go out and start businesses." Zhang Haoran paused, his tone turning cautious. "But last month, when I was helping the bank with a compliance review, I came across one of Flash's angel-round investments. It went through a shell company. Structurally, it looked like a personal investment channel, not the behavior of a legitimate institution."
He didn't continue.
Han Luyi took a sip of beer. Flash ran deeper than he had thought.
He looked at Zhang Haoran. This guy usually didn't say much, but his angles on things were always sharp.
"Suppose," Han Luyi chose his words carefully, "suppose someone got hard evidence that Flash falsified data or stole private information. Technical evidence, that kind of thing. What's the safest way to handle it?"
Zhang Haoran looked up at him.
"Unless it's one of those major companies competing with them, wouldn't an ordinary person reporting them be like throwing an egg at a rock? Their legal department isn't made up of pushovers either..."
Before he could finish, Ma Xiaofei stopped and looked at Han Luyi too.
"Old Han." Ma Xiaofei put down his beer bottle. "Do you know something?"
"I'm just making a hypothetical."
"That look on your face doesn't seem very hypothetical."
Han Luyi didn't answer. He took another drink.
After thinking for a moment, Zhang Haoran said, "If there really is hard evidence, reporting it directly isn't the best choice. Flash is valued at ten billion. Their legal team must be prepared. The safest approach would be an anonymous channel and professional media, but before that—"
He pulled up an electronic business card on his phone and slid it over to Han Luyi.
"You need to find a reliable lawyer first and figure out the legal risks."
The card read: Gu Siyue, Senior Partner, Haicheng Boheng Law Firm.
"Who's this?" Han Luyi asked.
"One of our bank's outside legal advisers. She handles internet and intellectual property litigation, and she's very good." Zhang Haoran said, "She's a little cold, but her professional ability is beyond question."
Han Luyi saved the business card.
Ma Xiaofei looked from one to the other, feeling like he had become a self-media bloodhound with a keen nose. "What's with those looks? What's going on? Old Han, you've really got something, don't you?"
"I'm really just making a hypothetical."
"I'd believe you were Qin Shi Huang."
"Seriously, Old Han, what are you planning to do next?" Ma Xiaofei asked.
"Pick up some freelance work first," Han Luyi said truthfully. "Then see if there's anything I want to do."
"With your skills, you could start a business in no time."
"Starting a business takes more than technical skills."
"Enough, enough." Ma Xiaofei stood up to pay the bill. "This one's on me. When you get rich someday, remember to bring your brother along."
"Didn't I say I was treating?"
"You just lost your job. What are you treating us for?" Ma Xiaofei pushed him back onto the plastic stool. "You're still fighting me over the bill at a time like this? Give it a rest, Old Han."
Han Luyi smiled and didn't argue anymore.
When he got home, Han Luyi sat down in front of his computer and opened the text file where he had recorded the problems with Flash that afternoon.
Zhang Haoran was right. Find a lawyer first.
Han Luyi picked up his phone and pulled up the electronic business card Zhang Haoran had sent him.
Gu Siyue, Haicheng Boheng Law Firm.
He opened Boheng Law Firm's official website, found the online appointment page, and scheduled a consultation for tomorrow morning.
Name: Han Luyi.
Consultation area: Internet enterprise data compliance.
Notes: Legal assessment needed for a technical report involving user privacy and security.
Sent.
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