Guo Wenlin did not ask Yanchuan whether he thought the missing report had been falsified.
He asked how much cooling capacity a battery installation needed to keep its promised output available on an unusually hot afternoon.
They met in a small conference room Chen had booked after a professional introduction. Guo represented a firm exploring investments in industrial flexibility projects. He had read one of Yanchuan’s publicly circulated technical notes about testing conditions. He said he wanted a preliminary discussion, not a signed opinion.
Yanchuan had told Chen about the family case before accepting the meeting. Chen had asked him to make the conflict clear at the beginning.
“I have a personal connection to an unresolved acceptance dispute at one installation in Kenya,” Yanchuan said. “I cannot advise on that project for you.”
Guo nodded without surprise.
“I know. That’s partly why I asked to meet you. But I don’t need your brother’s documents.”
He placed a commercial brochure on the table. Its photographs showed batteries inside clean enclosures, rows of chillers, and a control screen filled with green indicators. The installations belonged to several companies. The brochure promised that demand could be moved between hours and that reserve power would be ready when contracted.
“What is your firm purchasing?” Yanchuan asked.
“A position in future projects. Capacity arrangements, some service rights, potentially an interest in the operating contracts.”
“Hardware?”
“Sometimes. The valuable part isn’t always the hardware.”
Guo was in his forties, with an untidy cuff he kept folding back as he spoke. He did not make the performance claims himself. He pointed to the conditions beneath them and asked Yanchuan how he would price the uncertainty.
The brochure gave an example: a customer paid for equipment to deliver a specified electrical service when needed. If the service was unavailable during a call, the provider could face a penalty. The investor’s expected income depended on the difference between what the system cost to maintain and what the contract required it to deliver.
“What if the reported acceptance condition ignores some cooling load?” Yanchuan asked.
“The income forecast would be too generous.”
“What if the excluded period was a genuine fault?”
“Then the risk could be larger.”
“And if the period was excluded under an agreed test procedure?”
“Then you need to decide whether that procedure represents the service you’re buying.”
Yanchuan waited for the familiar move: the promise that a clever model could resolve the uncertainty. Guo did not offer one. He spread a term sheet on the table with the numbers removed.
“We can buy an option,” he said. “Pay something now for the right, but not the obligation, to finance a project after it meets certain conditions. That reduces the cost of waiting. It doesn’t remove the question of what the conditions mean.”
Yanchuan looked at a clause describing available capacity. The definition permitted a reduction for scheduled auxiliary consumption but said nothing about temporary load transfers during testing. He imagined the clean October chart set beside that sentence.
“Would the seller price it differently if the missing interval were shown?”
“Possibly. I don’t know the missing interval you’re thinking of.”
Guo said the words with a restraint that made Yanchuan look up. The man was not asking him to disclose confidential material. He was asking for the shape of a risk that could exist at many sites.
Yanchuan wrote three headings on Chen’s notepad: measured output, total site demand, promised availability. He explained how a result could be valid under one heading and insufficient under another.
Guo listened, then asked who normally bore the cost of a failed performance guarantee.
“That depends on the contract.”
“Exactly. So a clean report is useful to someone even if it doesn’t make the equipment better. It can change who carries the uncertainty.”
For a moment Yanchuan heard Luo offering the family a support payment tied to an acknowledgment that the employer had completed its assistance. The two arrangements were not the same. One concerned an individual family; the other concerned commercial risk. But the shape of the bargain was familiar: money in exchange for treating an unresolved obligation as settled.
“Do you know Luo?” Yanchuan asked.
Guo said he had met the management of several consultancies while examining possible projects. He would not discuss any specific relationship without permission, and he did not claim to represent Yansheng’s employer.
“Then why bring me here?”
“Because you understand why a smooth chart makes people comfortable. I want an adviser who can tell me when that comfort costs more than it saves.”
Yanchuan looked at Chen. His supervisor had remained quiet, making notes about the boundaries of any future work.
“My firm’s clients pay us to calculate things,” Chen said. “We don’t promise that calculation makes an approval legitimate. If you want an independent assessment, the scope and conflicts come first.”
Guo agreed. He proposed an ordinary paid feasibility study for a different, unnamed project once the parties could document that it had no connection to the missing-person investigation. The assignment would examine demand profiles, auxiliary load, and the cost of reserve capacity. Yanchuan would not be named as the sole independent reviewer.
Guo was not buying his silence. The invitation was still complicated.
On the train home, Yanchuan told Mei about the meeting.
“He wants your judgment,” she said.
“He wants to know what a claim is worth.”
“Those can be the same thing.”
“He knows about my brother.”
“Then he knows you have a conflict. Don’t let him call it an advantage.”
She asked whether he had given Guo the event extract. He had not. Had he described Amina’s work? Only in general terms, without identifying the site or the authorized materials. Had he agreed to be paid? No.
“That’s a start,” she said. “Now ask who your answer would belong to.”
At home Yanchuan called An and explained the offer. She was sorting receipts for the month’s supplier invoices. Every time he mentioned an option, a guarantee, or a limitation, she interrupted to ask who could enforce it.
“That depends on the contract,” he kept saying.
“Then the contract is the story, not the brochure.”
He smiled despite himself.
“Do you think I should refuse?”
“I think you should find out whether the work is separate. We need your salary. We also need you not to become useful to someone because they know how worried you are.”
“Would you rather I stayed away from it?”
“I would rather I didn’t have to decide for you,” she said. “Every month I look at the costs of searching for him. I don’t want that number to become the reason you sign something you can’t take back.”
He waited for reassurance. She returned to her receipts.
After the call, he opened the family’s expense sheet. The line for a possible second journey to Kenya was still empty. He could not fill it with a business opportunity whose terms did not exist.
Guo’s assistant sent a proposed scope the next morning. It excluded the disputed site and any records obtained through the family inquiry. The payment was for time spent on a generic feasibility model. It also contained a clause allowing the client to circulate selected findings without the underlying assumptions.
Yanchuan circled it.
He asked Chen whether they could insist that any released result include its stated operating conditions and exclusions. Chen answered with an email he had already begun drafting.
We will not deliver a figure that may be quoted independently of the range in which it is valid.
The terms remained unsigned. Yanchuan closed the draft.
By evening Amina had forwarded the latest authorized response about the October maintenance ticket. The contractor could identify which document office received it. The parent ticket had been marked administratively complete, but the restoration acknowledgment required by the service schedule had still not been located.
Guo was pricing an industrial promise while the contractor still could not produce the restoration acknowledgment Yansheng had sought.
Yanchuan put the two questions in separate folders.
Guo’s unsigned scope remained on his desk when he went to bed. He left Chen’s question about the conflict of interest unanswered until they could discuss it at work.