25: Chapter 25 God on the Keyboard

Returning to his apartment in Queens, Chen Mo locked all three deadbolts.

He tossed the key card into the system space, stripped off his soaked trench coat, and went to the bathroom for a cold shower.

The icy water poured over his head, allowing his slightly overheated brain to cool down rapidly.

Tonight's performance was merely an entry ticket.

He walked out, drying his hair, sat down at the second-hand desk, and awakened the system interface.

[Host: Chen Mo]

[Level: Lv3]

[Current EXP: 1250 / 2000]

[Available Functions: Trait Extraction, Trait Equipment, Trait Enhancement]

His gaze landed on [Basic Firearms Mastery (White)].

In this country where guns are rampant, being 0.1 seconds slower on the draw meant the end result would be lying on George's autopsy table.

"Enhance."

[Consuming 1000 EXP, enhancing "Basic Firearms Mastery"...]

A warm current was instantly pumped from his heart, surging through his blood vessels to his limbs and bones.

Chen Mo's arm muscles twitched uncontrollably, and his finger bones made a crisp cracking sound.

This sensation lasted for half a minute.

When he clenched his fist again, the world had changed.

No, it was his hand that had changed.

He casually grabbed the glock on the desk; this piece of iron that usually felt heavy now felt like an extension of his fingers.

There was no need to aim at all.

He raised his hand, pointing the muzzle at a moth outside the window.

Even separated by two layers of glass and the pitch-black night, he had an absolute intuition—as long as he pulled the trigger, that moth would be reduced to dust.

[Enhancement Successful!]

[Acquired Skill: Sharpshooter (Green)]

[Attribute Bonus: Shooting accuracy increased by 50%, draw speed increased by 50%, acquired passive trait Dynamic Vision Lv1]

Chen Mo tucked the gun back into his waistband, and that sense of crisis—of "whose target am I"—finally dissipated a little.

"Bzz—bzz—"

The old Nokia on the desk suddenly began to vibrate.

That was George's private line.

"Hello."

"You're not asleep, are you?" George's voice sounded even hoarser than usual, with the roaring sound of an exhaust fan in the background.

"Got a job. A charred corpse was just delivered, said to have died in a server room explosion, but I smell C4."

Chen Mo's eyes narrowed: "I'll be there immediately."

Twenty minutes later.

The morgue's lights were glaringly pale.

Wearing a mask, Chen Mo stood before the autopsy table.

The corpse on the table was unrecognizable, its skin carbonized, curled up into a ball.

"Has the identity been confirmed?" Chen Mo asked.

"No fingerprints, and the teeth were blown away too." George was using tweezers to extract something from the corpse's throat, "But I found this in his stomach."

It was an SD card half-corroded by stomach acid.

"This guy swallowed it before he died; probably thought his stomach was safer than a safe."

George dropped the SD card into an evidence bag, "These IT folks, their thought processes are just different from normal people."

IT?

Chen Mo looked at the faint, eerie blue light cluster hovering above the corpse.

That was the color of data.

He reached out and pressed his hand onto the only relatively intact part of the corpse's skull.

"Extract."

[Extraction Successful!]

[Acquired Skill: Hacking Mastery (Blue)]

[Acquired Memory Fragment: Incomplete Backdoor Program Code]

Boom!

A massive stream of information crashed through Chen Mo's neural defenses like a flood.

A green waterfall composed of 0s and 1s scrolled frantically across his retinas.

C++, Python, Assembly language... those codes that were originally obscure and difficult to understand now became as familiar as his mother tongue in his eyes.

He saw the cracks in the firewalls, the trajectories of data transmission, and even the digital skeleton hidden beneath the surface of this world.

Is this the power of blue?

Chen Mo braced himself against the autopsy table, panting heavily, sweat instantly soaking his back.

"What? Is this corpse too smelly?" George gave him a strange look.

"No... just a bit of hypoglycemia." Chen Mo waved his hand, turned, and walked out, "George, don't turn this SD card in yet, give me ten minutes."

He rushed into the forensic office, locked the door, and threw himself in front of that old, outdated computer that was usually only used for playing Minesweeper.

The moment his fingers touched the keyboard, a feeling of absolute control, like a monarch reigning over the world, welled up.

This broken computer, which only had intranet access, turned into a sharp scalpel in his hands.

The clattering of keystrokes merged into a continuous sound.

He bypassed the police department's firewall, which was effectively useless, and dove deep into the server along the network cables.

First, he scrubbed the traces of those five million.

Utilizing [Hacking Mastery] and the memories of Jonathan Rockefeller, he constructed eighteen layers of jump servers between the Cayman Islands and Zurich, split the money into thousands of small trade transactions, and finally funneled it into a seemingly legitimate offshore fund.

But this wasn't enough.

Chen Mo's fingers didn't stop; he took the opportunity to cut into the NYPD's personnel database.

Since he was playing, he might as well patch the loopholes more perfectly.

He modified several of his grades from his police academy days, changing his shooting score from excellent to passing, and changed his psychological assessment from "extremely calm" to "somewhat impulsive."

People who are too perfect are monsters.

People with flaws are the ones who are policemen.

Just as he was preparing to log out of the system, a deeply hidden folder suddenly jumped into his field of vision.

It was an independent encrypted partition hanging in the backend of the Internal Affairs server.

If it were before, Chen Mo would never have discovered it.

But now, the encryption algorithm flashing on that folder looked like a child's doodle in his eyes.

The backdoor program he extracted from the corpse's memory was exactly the key to this lock.

Chen Mo took a deep breath and pressed Enter.

The folder opened.

Inside, there was only one document, titled—[Deep Diver Observation List].

He opened the document and scrolled down with the mouse wheel.

On the first page, there were several names he didn't recognize.

The second page...

A familiar ID photo appeared abruptly on the screen.

It was his face.

Next to the photo was a bright red question mark, and below it was only a single, short note:

[Target: Robert Chen]

[Status: Under Observation]

[Risk Level: B-]

[Note: Recent behavior abnormally efficient, suspected of possessing an unknown intelligence source. Recommendation: Continue monitoring, evaluate whether there is value in recruitment or elimination.]

The signature was a badge watermark that only people in this line of work could understand—CIA Domestic Operations Division.

Chen Mo's fingers froze on the keyboard.

Cold sweat instantly broke out.