For the first time in weeks, the Chenghua headquarters was silent—unnaturally so.
Lin Nian'an stood alone on the rooftop, wind slicing past her like the whisper of unfinished threats. From this height, the city looked like a circuit board: blinking, humming, alive. But she knew the truth. Beneath the glass towers and mirrored façades, war had already begun.
Gu Chenyan stepped beside her, coat billowing. "They moved earlier than expected. Two shareholders sold off overnight. Ruixian's gaining traction."
"I figured they would." She didn't flinch. "They're just pawns."
"Pawns can still tip the board."
Lin Nian'an turned to him. "Then let's remove the board."
She descended into the chaos with renewed purpose.
In the lower levels of the company's data center, Lin Nian'an met with an engineer team she trusted more than the board: her original development unit from three years ago, coders and architects who'd helped build the first iteration of Chenghua's predictive algorithm.
Zhao Min, head of cybernetics, looked up from a console. "We just intercepted a data siphon routed through an encrypted mirror node."
"Whose signature?"
He paused. "It bounced through a Korean server, but the code origin is… internal."
Nian'an's mouth tightened. "Someone on the inside is feeding data to Ruixian."
"She's targeting our AI ethics model," Zhao said. "If that gets compromised—"
"We lose government trust, investor confidence, and maybe the entire project," she finished. "Isolate the node. Rewrite the security protocol using a non-deterministic key shift."
Zhao hesitated. "That'll take 72 hours. During that time—"
"Do it," she said. "I'll buy you the time."
That night, Lin Nian'an hosted a high-level stakeholders' cocktail event.
It was bait.
Ruixian arrived in silver heels and an ice-blue dress, radiating smug confidence. She greeted Nian'an with a glassy smile.
"You're throwing parties now? I thought the empire was crumbling."
"Only the parts I didn't need," Lin Nian'an replied, sipping wine.
Throughout the night, Nian'an watched the room. She knew which allies had grown silent, which whispers were spreading, which smiles meant knives. But she also knew who still followed her—young tech entrepreneurs, silent investors who'd doubled profits under her leadership, old colleagues who remembered what she built.
She just needed to remind them.
When she took the stage, the room fell silent.
"I've heard the rumors," she said calmly. "They say Chenghua is bleeding. That we're fractured, leaderless, fading. Let me be clear—Chenghua has never been stronger. Our new platform enters beta testing next quarter. Our AI division has outpaced projections by 37%. And our strategic partnerships…" her gaze flicked to Gu Chenyan at the back of the room, "…are expanding."
A polite ripple of applause.
Then, quietly: "And to those who think a hostile takeover can be disguised with silk gloves, I say this—come at me openly. Or don't come at all."
Now there was real applause.
Ruixian's smile faltered.
The next morning, Lin Nian'an received a private message from Wei Jia. It was brief.
"You have two days. I can only stall the ethics committee that long. Choose your battlefield wisely."
Two days.
Lin Nian'an threw herself into action. She called silent partners, restructured a dormant fund, arranged for emergency stock repurchase. Gu Chenyan used his offshore contacts to purchase an additional 3% stake in Chenghua under a shell company. Together, they were building a wall before Ruixian even realized a siege had begun.
But time was slipping fast.
Day two.
Zhao Min burst into her office, breathless. "We completed the encryption sweep. The node is secured. But there's more."
"What?"
He placed a data chip on her desk.
"It wasn't just siphoning data. It was inserting predictive bias. Someone was teaching the AI to skew results in favor of specific political candidates."
Her blood went cold.
"That's federal crime."
"Yes."
She leaned back. "We just caught them committing treason."
"And if we go public," Zhao said, "it'll cause a national scandal."
Lin Nian'an stared at the chip. It was more than leverage—it was a nuclear weapon.
She met Ruixian that night at a private skybar.
The city glowed beneath them, golden and unbothered.
"I'm going to give you one chance," Nian'an said, sliding the chip across the table.
Ruixian frowned, picked it up, and began skimming the contents.
Her face drained of color.
"You wouldn't…"
"I could walk into a federal office tomorrow," Lin Nian'an said. "You'd be arrested before lunch."
"This would take me down too."
"Maybe. But I'm not the one who built the backdoor."
Ruixian gritted her teeth. "What do you want?"
Lin Nian'an leaned in. "You announce your withdrawal from the board race. You publicly support my strategic direction. And you burn every tie you've built with Jiawei."
Ruixian looked like she wanted to spit glass. "You think I'll just roll over?"
"I think you're smart enough to know when the war is already lost."
Silence.
Then, Ruixian stood. "You'll regret this."
"No," Nian'an said. "You will."
The fallout was immediate.
Ruixian released a statement citing "strategic redirection" and "personal ethics considerations." Jiawei went radio silent. The board reconvened a day later and voted overwhelmingly to reaffirm Lin Nian'an as CEO with expanded executive rights.
She had won.
But the war wasn't over.
Late that night, in Gu Chenyan's apartment, she stood at the window again.
"You used that data bomb like a scalpel," he said, handing her tea.
"It's not over," she murmured. "Jiawei's too quiet. That silence feels like planning."
"She won't risk exposure now."
"Then she'll find another weapon."
Gu Chenyan placed a hand on her shoulder. "Then we sharpen ours first."
She looked at him.
"You once asked where my line was drawn," she said. "Now I realize I have to redraw it—wider. Stronger."
He didn't smile, but his eyes softened.
"You're not alone anymore, Nian'an."
She nodded, voice quiet but firm. "Good. Because next time, I won't just survive. I'll dominate."