The Nerd Who Conquered The World

Chapter 9

The line went dead as Lin Danpeng's face changed, he knew Chairman Wang was already angry.

Wang Jinlong arrived forty minutes later. He was a tall man, with broad shoulders, and gray hair at his temples that he had never bothered to hide because he had never cared what people thought of how he looked. Only what they thought of what he built. He walked with the particular heaviness of someone who carried real weight, not arrogance exactly, but the absolute certainty of a man who had never lost anything he truly decided to keep.

His assistant trailed behind him at a careful distance.

He walked through the floor without speaking, taking in the scene,engineers hunched over screens, three separate external cybersecurity teams already set up with their equipment in different corners of the room, the collective atmosphere of a group of people who were working hard and getting nowhere.

He stopped behind one of the external team leads.

"How long do you need to solve this," he said with a voice that demanded attention.

The consultant turned and stood slightly straighter. "Chairman Wang. We're making progress but this is a complex virus"

"How long." He repeated again his tone changing.

"To fully resolve it? At least a week or more will be needed "

"Too long." Wang Jinlong's voice stayed completely calm. But it felt somehow worse than shouting. "In one day we lose customer trust. In two days we lose the clients who are watching this happen from the outside. We are in the middle of closing a deal that will make this company one of the top e-commerce financial platforms in the country. That deal depends on us demonstrating that our systems are stable and secure." He leaned slightly forward. "So fix it today."

"Sir, I understand the urgency but even with additional resources, there is no way to solve this."

"Then cancel the contract and refund every yuan and you are to pay for the damages caused in the wasted time." Wang Jinlong turned away from him completely as though he had stopped existing.

"Where is Wang Hao?"

His assistant checked his phone. "Sir, he hasn't arrived yet. He was supposed to resume this morning"

Wang Jinlong held out his hand. The assistant placed his phone in it without a word, as he dialed.

Wang Hao's voice came through slowly and thick, the voice of someone just dragged out of sleep.

"Where are you?"

"Old man, why did you wake me up this early?"

"It's 10 am, get here now you bastard" The voice dropped half a register. "Or I cut every card you have today. All of them."

He ended the call and handed the phone back. Then he walked to the window and stood looking out at the city with his hands clasped behind his back.

Nobody spoke as they waited with bated breath.

…

In Wang Hao's apartment the call had just ended and the room snapped into motion.

Wang Hao shoved the duvet back and sat up, already reaching for his shirt on the floor. Su Xiaowan stirred beside him, blinking at him.

"Wang Hao? Where are you going?"

"The old man called." He was already buttoning up, moving fast, taking his jacket off the chair. "Something must have happened. He usually doesn't threaten like that unless it's serious."

"How serious?"

"Very serious." He grabbed his keys as he looked around for his other shoe. "I don't know yet."

Su Xiaowan sat up slowly, pulling the sheet around her, watching him rush. In week of being with Wang Hao she had never seen him move like this the careless ease completely gone, replaced by something that looked almost like fear.

"Will you be back tonight?" she asked.

He didn't answer, rushing out as with the door closed behind him.

She sat in the quiet apartment for a moment. Then she reached for her phone and opened the news, searching for any news but nothing yet about Wang Tech. She put the phone on the nightstand and lay back, staring at the ceiling.

Something was wrong. She could feel it in her heart.

…..

Wang Hao arrived at the office forty minutes later to find his father standing at the window of the IT floor with his back to the room, the three external cybersecurity teams still running scans that were clearly returning nothing useful, and every engineer on the floor trying very hard to look like they were making progress.

Wang Hao took one look at the room and understood immediately that this was beyond anything he knew how to handle.

He found the nearest engineer, Zhao Mingtao, systems analyst, the one who always looked slightly more stressed than everyone else and pulled him aside.

"Old Zhao, How bad is it?"

Zhao Mingtao looked at him with the expression of a man who had not slept and did not expect to sleep anytime soon. "Very bad sir. All operations had been stopped and customers were already complaining and the virus that caused this is at the core. We called three firms and with our combined resources, still nobody has been able to touch it. Whatever this thing is, it was built by someone who knew exactly what they were doing."

Wang Hao looked at the screens. at the numbers scrolling. Although he couldn't uh understand much he still grabbed something after all his major was computer science too. He never knew his father's company was bleeding out in real time through a laptop that some customer service officer had opened without thinking.

He felt something he was not used to feeling, helplessness

……

By the end of that day the first external reports began appearing. A partner logistics company issued a quiet internal notice to their team

Suspend all data integrations with Wang Tech Industries until further notice, nature of their current system issue unclear.

Two smaller clients cancelled scheduled meetings without explanation. A financial news outlet ran a brief item:

Wang Tech Industries reports internal system disruption sources cite operational delays across multiple divisions caused by the dreaded Python Virus.

The news was small but in this industry something like this spread quickly after than anything.

By morning three more partner companies had quietly cut their connections from them. Not publicly, they just sent a polite email for a temporary suspension, a reason that carefully avoided mentioning the words ‘virus’ or ‘security breach.’

Wang Tech Industries was beginning to look like rotten shit that nobody wanted to be standing too close to.

And nobody inside the building could explain why the problem wouldn't stop.