Chapter One: One Million Words

When it rained in Linlan, the neon looked like broken code. Lu Chenzhou stood beneath an overpass, staring at the same sterile message he had received twenty-six times that month: Thank you for applying. After careful consideration, we have chosen a candidate whose qualifications more closely match our needs. Three months ago, he had been a senior engineer at ClearSea Intelligence. Then he pointed out that its Civic Sentiment Forecast secretly relied on fabricated data. ClearSea fired him for disclosure violations and marked his profile in the industry credit network. Even outsourcing shops stopped returning his calls. He owed 4,200 yuan in rent. His mother's rehabilitation bill was due tomorrow.