Chapter Five: Applause, Calculated

The right preserved every gap and signed every intervention. Viewers climbed from three hundred to twenty thousand. During questions, a reporter stood. “Mr. Zhou, did Bright Mirror obtain Gu interface credentials in advance? Otherwise, how did you complete compatibility in seven days?” The room quieted. The system's credentials had expired and never touched production data, but Jiming could not explain their source. Denial meant lying. Admission invited charges of unauthorized access. Xu Zhi watched from below the stage, waiting to see what he chose to become. “We used nonpublic test credentials,” he said. “They connected only to a sandbox and accessed no customer data.