The execution of Xu Yao, the former CEO of Three-Body Universe, marks the final chapter in a corporate tragedy that reads like a thriller. Xu was put to death following his conviction for the poisoning of Lin Qi, the visionary founder of Yoozoo Games, a case that has captivated the international business and entertainment worlds since 2020. This was not a crime of passion, but a calculated, systemic assassination carried out by a legal expert who turned his analytical mind toward chemical warfare.
Lin Qi had harbored an ambitious dream: to transform Liu Cixin's Hugo Award-winning sci-fi masterpiece, 'The Three-Body Problem,' into a global franchise comparable to Star Wars. To secure the elusive rights, Lin hired Xu Yao, a former lawyer at Fosun Group, paying him a staggering 20 million RMB annual salary. Xu succeeded in the acquisition, leading to the creation of the Three-Body Universe subsidiary, but his success became the catalyst for his professional undoing.
As the project progressed toward a landmark deal with Netflix, Lin began to marginalize Xu, excluding his name from public announcements and drastically reducing his compensation to roughly 4 million RMB. Faced with a looming dismissal and the loss of his prestige, Xu transformed into a real-life 'Breaking Bad' figure. He established a clandestine laboratory in suburban Shanghai and set up a shell company in Japan to procure lethal substances, testing them on domestic animals to ensure their efficacy.
In late 2020, Xu systematically poisoned Lin and several colleagues by lacing probiotics, coffee, and whiskey with a lethal cocktail of at least five toxins, including mercury and tetrodotoxin. When Lin was hospitalized, Xu reportedly refused to disclose the nature of the toxins, depriving doctors of the critical window needed for effective treatment. Lin died on Christmas Day 2020, leaving the future of China's most celebrated sci-fi IP in a state of sudden, violent flux.
Throughout the trial, Xu leveraged his legal background in an attempt to evade the death penalty, refusing to confess and reportedly studying psychiatric literature to mount an insanity defense. However, the sheer volume of digital evidence, including his use of 160 different phone numbers to coordinate his laboratory, proved insurmountable. His execution serves as a grim conclusion to a saga that exposed the lethal undercurrents of ego and betrayal within the highest echelons of China’s tech and media elite.