“It’s nice to meet you two. I’m Liao Ming, the manager of the marketing department.”
Five minutes later, a tall man in a suit and a pair of leather shoes walked in from the door and shook hands with Zhang Heng and E-Goat.
E-Goat looked a little nervous. Since he held the microcomputer with one hand under the table, he could only sit on the chair and give Liao Ming a handshake with his other. Unfortunately, he did not look like someone who came here to discuss business with the overly serious expression on his face. Instead, he looked like he was here to find fault.
As the marketing manager, Liao Ming had read through countless people and dealt with all kinds of monsters. Hence, not about to be bothered by E-Goat’s expressions, he still enthusiastically exchanged electronic business cards with the two.
“You two are from…Qitong Technology Group?”
“Yes. To be precise, we are just a subsidiary of the main company. We were only established recently,” Zhang Heng said.
The two electronic business cards forged by E-Goat were very detailed. Taking into account the possibility that the other party might do a background check on them, E-Goat decided to use the information of a real company. The main company was about the same size as Shengtang Morgan, where it had thousands of subsidiaries under it. E-Goat had selected a newly established subsidiary to increase the authenticity of its business card. It also allowed them to whip up something on the spot.
Liao Ming nodded, “As far as I know, Qitong Technology Group also has a company in the sensor business. No. I should say that Qitong Technology Group’s sensors are very popular in the industry. So why not just order the sensors from that company?”
Of course, Zhang Heng had already prepared the answer to this question.
“Oh, their sensors are indeed very popular. That’s why they need to deal with a lot of orders. And we need those sensors urgently and we have very little time left. Besides, we don’t have high requirements for the sensors… We actually hope to lower costs…”
“Understood. Let me introduce our product lineup to both of you,” Liao Ming said while connecting his bracelet to the projection in the living room.
E-Goat’s breathing only got faster than before.
Zhang Heng discussed the possibility of hacking the bracelet when he met E-Goat for the first time. According to E-Goat, the bracelet was a must-have personal device for everyone in this era. It had multiple functions and was also used to store personal information. In other words, the security that was used to protect the bracelet had to be top-notch. It also meant that it was almost impossible to hack the bracelet through the internet. Even the top-tier hackers would take considerable time to hack into the bracelets of other citizens.
No matter how secure the system was, however, there would always be loopholes. So, E-Goat came up with an idea. He would use the short-distance communication method to complete the hacking. Before Liao Ming’s bracelet was connected to the projector in the meeting room, E-Goat would first shield the projection signal and disguise his microcomputer as the projection device. Then, when Liao Ming connected his bracelet to the projector, he would not realize that he was actually connected to E-Goat’s microcomputer. Without using any brute-force attack, E-Goat would be able to access Liao Ming’s bracelet easily.
Of course, this simple and crude method wasn’t without its shortcomings.
First of all, when Liao Ming connected his bracelet to E-Goat’s microcomputer, the real projector would not receive any signal. If Liao Ming weren’t a fool, he would very quickly realize something amiss. Fortunately, this was an easily solvable problem. As long as E-goat connected his microcomputer to the projector, he would be able to project whatever Liao Ming wanted to show them. The biggest problem was that Liao Ming’s bracelet would display a safety reminder when it was connected to a new device.
This was not a serious matter because they did encounter this message from time to time. Most people do not care too much about this security reminder. However, they could not rule out some cautious people who would notice the subtle difference.
Liao Ming, for instance, now had a look of surprise on his face when he received the security reminder. As the marketing department manager, Liao Ming had to take care of his customers all the time. This was not the first time he used the second meeting room, nor was it his first time connecting his bracelet to the projector. Hence, he was surprised to receive the security reminder.
On the other side, E-Goat’s heart had almost jumped out of his throat. He was worried that that Liao Ming would find out about it. But, on the contrary, Zhang Heng remained calm and asked, “Why? What’s the matter?”
“Oh. It’s nothing. It’s probably because I just upgraded the system two days ago.” After seeing Heng seemed to be in a rush, Liao Ming didn’t want to overthink things. He simply clicked OK, and his bracelet was connected to E-Goat’s microcomputer. About two seconds later, the projector started working and projected the company information Liao Ming had stored in his bracelet.
At this point, Liao Ming was relieved, and he began to introduce their lineup to the two. He talked for about a quarter of an hour, during which he would pay attention to Zhang Heng’s and E-Goat’s expressions from time to time. He seemed to be studying their behavior. However, to his disappointment, Zhang Heng almost had no expression on his face. E-Goat, on the other hand, seemed to be more relaxed than before. In the end, Liao Ming could not read anything from them.
After Liao Ming finished his presentation, Zhang Heng asked a few more frequently asked questions by the buyers before asking, “Can we visit the production workshop?”
“Of course. Wait a minute. Let me contact them first.”
Liao Ming made a phone call. After that, he brought Zhang Heng and E-Goat downstairs. Then, they walked to the workshop behind the office building and visited the assembly line.
Zhuorui’s production workshop was similar to the other companies on the fourth level, where no workers were on the assembly line. Liao Ming had said that the entire Zhuorui Sensor Co. Ltd. had less than forty people. The R&D and marketing departments were where most of the workers worked. As for other departments, there were only two to three employees in each.
After turning around, Zhang Heng and E-Goat found nothing anything suspicious. At least on the bright side, Zhuorui was a small technology company that operated like any other technology company. As for the dark secrets they might be harboring, Zhang Heng and E-Goat had to check out the information they copied from Liao Ming’s bracelet.
When it was all over, Zhang Heng shook hands with Liao Ming.
“We have a better understanding of the whole thing now, but we still need some time to study and compare the quotations. I will contact you as soon as possible once we make the decision.”
“Thanks for your hard work. You can call or email me if you have any questions later!”
Liao Ming sounded as enthusiastic as ever.
After leaving Zhuorui, Zhang Heng and E-Goat went into a cafe and asked for a corner seat. After that, E-Goat compiled the data that he copied and sent to Zhang Heng, including Liao Ming’s communications records, emails, photos, two months’ worth of location information, and consumption records.
It took an hour for E-Goat to sift through all those information. As he read further into it, he became more and more disappointed. That was because the data stored in Liao Ming’s bracelet was nothing out of the ordinary, just like the workshop the two visited earlier. Other than the inappropriate relationship with a female employee, he did not seem to be hiding any secrets.
