Chapter 4

Chapter 4

At 9:20 PM, I swiped my card and re-entered the company.

The expressions on the faces of the receptionist and the security guards were as priceless as if they had just seen a corpse come back to life.

The colleagues who had watched me leave with my box earlier that day were now sneaking glances at me from their workstations. Group chat notifications were pinging incessantly; it was as if someone had dropped a bomb in the middle of the office.

I ignored them and went straight into the server room.

The system monitoring screens were a sea of red.

The traffic anomaly in Nebula 2.0 was even more severe than I had anticipated. User behavior recognition had been incorrectly categorized, causing the risk control chain to trigger automatically. Four major clients had been locked out in a chain reaction, and work orders were piling up like an avalanche.

Xu Baiyan was standing at the entrance of the server room, his face dark with frustration.

When he saw me, he froze for a second before squeezing out a smile.

“Ruoqi, you’re back? President Qin should have said something sooner. What happened earlier today was just a matter of procedure-”

“Get lost.”

I cut him off, leaving him rooted to the spot.

Xu Baiyan’s smile stiffened on his face.

What I used to hate most about him was this exact act. He was involved in every disgusting thing that happened, yet whenever a problem arose, he could always wash his hands of it and act like a peacemaking ‘nice guy.’

“Give me system permissions.”

“Ruoqi, this isn’t compliant with regulations…”

I turned to look at Qin Yanchuan.

Qin Yanchuan said only two words: “Give them to her.”

Xu Baiyan’s expression shifted slightly, but in the end, he didn’t dare stall any longer.

Once the permissions were granted, I spent twenty minutes reviewing the logs, my heart sinking further with every line.

The problem did indeed lie with the Circuit Breaker Logic, but what had actually triggered the anomaly wasn’t the code itself. Someone had secretly tampered with the parameter tables before the launch, lowering the original safety threshold by a third.

This wasn’t negligence.

This was intentional.

I enlarged the log, pointed at the last change record, and asked Qin Yanchuan, “Whose operator ID is this?”

Xu Baiyan spoke up first. “That’s an automated system archival ID; it might not necessarily-”

“I didn’t ask you.” I looked up at him. “Or are you saying you know better than President Qin?”

Xu Baiyan fell silent.

Qin Yanchuan stared at the string of numbers, his brow furrowing deeper.

“It’s a backend ID from the Secretariat Group.”

I let out a cold laugh. “How interesting. The Secretariat Group even understands risk control parameters now.”

No one on-site dared to respond.

I continued my investigation and soon discovered another issue.

Two new outsourcing interfaces integrated into Nebula 2.0 were not from the suppliers I had approved. The interface documentation was beautifully written, but the underlying structure was full of traps, looking like something cobbled together at the last minute just to fill a quota.

“Who signed off on this outsourcing?”

Xu Baiyan couldn’t dodge it this time. He could only say with a stiff upper lip, “To make the launch deadline, we temporarily brought in an extra resource…”

“Are you out of your mind?” I snapped at him. “You used an outsourced firm to patch the core system’s foundation?”

“Ruoqi, now is not the time to assign blame…” Qin Yanchuan reminded me in a low voice.

“Yes, you’re right. Now isn’t the time.” I took a deep breath, suppressing my anger. “First, we save the system.”

For the next three hours, I barely left the console.

Patching parameters, rolling back interfaces, restarting grayscale deployments, and troubleshooting the locked-down links layer by layer-my fingers moved so fast they were a blur. I downed two cups of coffee in the interim, my voice growing hoarse. When Xu Baiyan tried to lean in to see the screen, I barked at him to “Stay away from my computer,” sending him scurrying back.

At 1:00 AM, the first client was restored.

At 1:40 AM, the second client was back online.

At 2:30 AM, the last error message finally vanished from the large screen.

The entire server room erupted into a cheer that had been suppressed for far too long.

However, I didn’t feel the slightest bit of relief.

Because I knew that while this malfunction was resolved, the real problems were just beginning.

I closed my laptop and said to Qin Yanchuan, “I’ve saved the system. Now it’s your turn to fulfill your end of the deal.”

Qin Yanchuan looked at me, his voice low. “Tomorrow morning at ten o’clock, there will be a special meeting of the Board of Directors.”

“Permissions, audits, people-I’ll give them all to you.”

I stared at him. “Including yourself?”

He paused.

“Including me.”

Because a second later, I found an even earlier record buried deep within the backend logs.

Time of record: Three years ago, the night before the launch of Nebula 1.0.

Operation note: Delete founding version signature information.

Executor account-

Qin Yanchuan.