"Yes."
Su Wei nodded.
She pointed to the stack of English research reports on the desk.
"You have me organizing these just to satisfy the business school’s faculty reviews and publication requirements. While the data is tedious, it’s all public information that the market has already digested. No matter how quickly or cleanly I process it, it won’t generate a single cent of profit for you in tomorrow’s trading session."
Su Wei’s gaze shifted slightly, landing on the third monitor to Shen Lan’s left.
On it was a window that wasn’t maximized. Against a black background, green text scrolled by—a stream of rapidly changing high-frequency backtesting data.
Su Wei looked away from the screen and back at Shen Lan.
"The Markov chain model you use for the business school always has parameters that are six months out of date. The algorithm you actually use to profit from spreads and run high-frequency arbitrage runs on your offshore account. You’re using the business school as a front for your own private quantitative fund."
As her words fell, a brief, dead silence descended upon the office.
From the corner, the formerly dense and frantic sound of keyboard clatter came to an abrupt halt.
Xu Qian sat frozen at her workstation, her hands hovering over the keyboard. A red error message blinked on her screen, but her eyes weren’t focused on a single character.
She didn’t dare turn her head, even consciously softening her breathing.
Her throat bobbed as she swallowed dryly. She forced her hovering fingers back down to the keyboard and aimlessly tapped a meaningless spacebar, trying to disguise herself as a pocket of air in the office.
Behind the desk, Shen Lan didn’t fly into a rage at having her cards laid bare.
She had seen plenty of dog-eat-dog drama on Wall Street for the sake of profit.
In fact, she preferred this type of person to the meek students who didn’t even dare to voice their own ambitions.
"And?"
Shen Lan picked up the bone china cup on her desk and took a sip of water.
"Are you trying to blackmail me for a guaranteed spot in the graduate program, or are you looking to be listed as the second author on my paper?"
"I have no interest in academia."
Su Wei’s reply was curt.
She just quietly looked into Shen Lan’s eyes.
"I need to make more money. A fixed hourly wage has a ceiling, and I don’t want a ceiling."
"I want access to your core live trading database."
Su Wei laid her demands frankly on the table.
"I know your live models run very fast, but conventional data cleaning can’t keep up with the frequency at which you open positions."
Su Wei didn’t look at Xu Qian, but the implication of her words was clear.
"If I can get direct access to your underlying database to handle the pre-processing and outlier filtering for your live data, I can save you a tremendous amount of time on trial and error. In exchange, I want a percentage-based commission on the live backtesting projects."
Shen Lan set down her cup.
The bottom of the cup met the desk with a crisp CLINK.
"Su Wei, you’re very smart."
Shen Lan’s voice grew cold, taking on a genuinely scrutinizing tone.
"But live data is where real money is on the line. One misplaced decimal point can mean the difference of tens or hundreds of thousands in profit or loss. What makes you think you’re qualified to touch any of it?"
Su Wei didn’t answer immediately.
She turned and walked toward Xu Qian, who was still frozen in the corner.
On Xu Qian’s workstation, two monitors were on. The one on the right displayed a backtested equity curve that was a sea of red.
For the first nine months, the curve had climbed steadily upward, forming a beautiful forty-five-degree angle.
But at a certain point in October, the previously perfect curve suddenly plummeted like a kite with its string cut, crashing straight to the horizontal axis. The account’s net value was instantly wiped out.
This was the reason Xu Qian had been on the verge of a breakdown for the past few days.
Su Wei stood behind Xu Qian, glanced at the chart, and then spoke to Shen Lan.
"Senior Sister Xu’s volatility strategy for soybean futures... the data source has no gaps, and your mathematical model has no logical errors. But when it ran into October, the account blew up and was completely liquidated."
Su Wei turned her head to look at Shen Lan.
"If you’ll allow me, I can find the ’poison’ that caused the account to blow up in under ten minutes. Once you see the result, you can decide whether to give me access to the live data."
Shen Lan looked at Su Wei’s calm face.
In this girl of fourteen or fifteen, Shen Lan saw a certainty that was utterly inconsistent with her age.
It wasn’t blind confidence, but a composure built on reason and calculation.
Shen Lan lifted her chin slightly.
"Xu Qian, move. Let her take a look."
As if granted amnesty, Xu Qian scrambled up from her chair. She moved so hastily that she banged her thigh on the corner of the desk, making her hiss in a sharp breath of pain, but she still quickly moved out of the way.
Su Wei pulled the chair over and sat down.
She didn’t look at the complex strategy code Xu Qian had written, nor did she check the system’s operating environment.
Her right hand took the mouse, and her left rested on the keyboard.
"Where’s the detailed table of base prices?" Su Wei asked.
Xu Qian quickly pointed to an Excel file on the desktop named "October Main Contract Tick."
"Th-this... this file has every minute of trading data for October. Open, close, high, low, volume, open interest... there are over a hundred thousand rows."
Xu Qian’s voice was still a bit shaky.
To find the problem, she had already spent days poring over those hundred-thousand-plus rows of data. Her eyes felt like they were about to go blind, but she hadn’t found a single data gap or any garbled code.

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