Chapter One: Rejected by an Entire Industry

At one in the morning, Chen Mo reached the electronics scrapyard on the west side. Every shutter was down except one shop at the end of an alley, glowing blue. Its sign read WILDFIRE HARDWARE RECYCLING. Beneath it, someone had taped a handwritten warning: No refunds for bad computers. Bad people pay extra. Tang Ye emerged from behind a wall of server power supplies. “I didn't think Hanhai's elite visited places like this.” “The entire industry just expelled this particular elite.” Chen Mo passed him a list: eight discontinued graphics cards, two server motherboards, and thirty-two mismatched memory sticks. Tang winced. “Put this together and the noise will make my upstairs neighbor think I'm launching a rocket. Mining crypto?” “Running a model.”