Chapter 96 Since you're being unreasonable, I'll make sure you can't even access the internet.

"Snap!" Xia Weiliang gritted her teeth and slammed her right index finger down hard.

The blue switch of the mechanical keyboard emitted a crisp, explosive sound, the keycap hitting the bottom plate directly.

The tips of her fingers tingled slightly from the vibration.

The red warning box on the screen flashed twice and instantly vanished.

In its place, dark green code cascaded down like a waterfall.

The data stream was so fast it was dizzying; it was impossible to see the specific letters.

"The command has been sent."

Xia Weiliang pulled back her hand and grabbed a tissue from the side to wipe the cold sweat from her palms.

She stared at the screen full of garbled code, her voice wavering.

"This time, the Americans' network backbone is going to have a real show."

Chu Xuan swallowed dryly, his center-parted hair swaying in the cold wind of the server room.

He leaned in to stare at the screen, but after looking for a long time, he couldn't make heads or tails of it.

"Girl, is this thing really that mysterious? Can it pull the plug on the foreigners' internet across the Pacific Ocean?"

Lu Jingming leaned against the side of the main console.

The plastic lighter in his hand spun twice over his knuckles.

He scoffed, a lazy curve pulling at the corner of his mouth.

"It's not pulling the plug."

Lu Jingming had one hand in his pocket, his eyes gleaming with the cold light of someone watching a show.

"It's about stuffing their servers with garbage they can't digest."

Shen Qingqiu stood behind, wearing high heels, her white shirt clinging to her warm back.

She felt her throat go dry.

"With millions of devices sending packets simultaneously, this traffic could crush North America's backbone network directly."

She pushed up her gold-rimmed glasses, her tone filled with apprehension.

"Lu Jingming, the American officials will definitely be furious."

Lu Jingming didn't pick up the conversation.

He picked up the unfinished bottle of ice water on the table and pressed it against the side of his neck.

The chill made him squint slightly.

"They were unreasonable first. I'm just helping them run a stress test."

California, Los Angeles.

The sun had just set, and the streetlights had turned on, casting mottled shadows on the ground.

Jack was shirtless, curled up on the sofa, holding a greasy pizza crust in his hand.

In front of him was a high-end desktop computer, with an intense shooting game playing on the screen.

A dark blue xinghai pad lay on the corner of the computer desk, its screen black.

"Damn it, flank him on the left! Provide cover fire!"

Jack yelled into his headset, his mouse clicking loudly.

Pizza sauce smeared onto his chin, but he didn't bother to wipe it off.

The character in the game had just raised their gun when their movements suddenly froze.

Then, it performed a comical moonwalk in place.

The entire screen froze into a static image covered in pixels.

A glaring prompt box popped up on the game interface: Network connection interrupted.

A red X appeared directly over the small computer icon in the bottom right corner.

Jack slammed the pizza crust onto the keyboard and ripped off his headset.

"Fuck! What the hell is AT&T broadband doing again!"

He irritably slapped the metal casing of his computer tower twice and bent down to unplug and replug the router cable.

After struggling for a long time, the indicator light was still stubbornly red, with no response at all.

The room fell silent.

Jack sat back down on the sofa, a fire burning in his chest.

He glanced at the xinghai pad on the table, remembering the news today saying that the Department of Commerce had banned the IPs of Chinese devices.

"This piece of junk tablet is probably a brick now too."

He muttered, his finger stubbornly poking the glass screen.

The screen lit up, cutting directly to the main interface.

The Wi-Fi signal in the top right corner was full.

Jack froze for a moment.

He tapped the blue xinghai video icon with his finger.

The video opened instantly.

A local talk show began playing smoothly, without even a buffering animation.

He opened his mouth, looking at the black screen of his computer, then back at the smooth-running tablet in his hand.

His brain couldn't process it.

The top-tier local broadband was paralyzed, yet the Chinese tablet banned by the government could instantly play high-definition videos?

In the core server room of the North American broadband operator, it had turned into a battlefield.

Sirens pierced the ceiling.

Red emergency lights spun frantically, illuminating the white walls as if they were bleeding.

Several engineers in work clothes were sweating profusely, their fingers slamming against the keyboards in front of the main console.

On the massive monitoring screen.

The traffic curve, which had been as calm as rippling water, had, in that very second,

shot up like a rocket, creating a terrifying vertical red line.

"Find the source! Where is this DDoS attack coming from!"

The supervisor screamed at the top of his lungs, knocking his coffee cup to the floor.

Brown stains soaked through the carpet, making it sticky underfoot.

"We can't track it! There are too many IPs!"

A chubby programmer looked terrified, his hands shaking so much he could barely hold the mouse.

"They are all local residential broadband addresses! Millions of independent nodes are sending invalid handshake requests simultaneously!"

Data garbage poured into the server room like a mudslide.

The servers, usually used to process normal web traffic, were instantly clogged with massive amounts of junk data packets in every channel.

"CPU load is at maximum capacity! Memory overflow!"

The chubby man shouted, pounding the table in despair.

A dull "pop" sound came from the direction of the server racks.

A pungent smell of burning plastic wafted out.

The first server hosting the gateway had its motherboard burnt through, going black and crashing.

A chain reaction followed immediately.

The second one.

The third one.

The backbone network nodes fell one after another like dominoes.

Most of the North American civilian broadband network fell into complete paralysis within those few short minutes.

Foreigners on Twitter using mobile data were all posting complaints, and everything was in chaos.

Washington, the top-floor office of the Department of Commerce.

The blinds were drawn tightly, blocking out the glaring streetlights outside.

John Smith leaned back in a large leather chair, holding half a glass of red wine.

The wine swirled in the glass, reflecting his white face with an arrogant smile.

The computer screen on the desk was on.

He was preparing to refresh the Sina webpage to see the miserable sight of Chinese netizens crying in despair.

"Lu Jingming, you're still too green to play games with me."

John sipped his red wine and lightly clicked the mouse with his finger.

The browser page froze.

The little circle in the middle spun twice.

In a flash, the entire screen turned gray and white.

A glaring prompt appeared in the center: Unable to connect to the internet.

John frowned and set down his wine glass.

He leaned forward and tapped the monitor frame with the back of his hand.

He bent down to pull at the blue network cable plugged into the wall.

"What are those idiots in the logistics department doing? They couldn't pick a better time for maintenance."

He irritably loosened his tie.

He had just straightened up, preparing to press the intercom phone on the desk.

A chaotic sound of footsteps came from outside the solid wood door.

It sounded like someone was scrambling over here, their shoe soles clicking loudly against the floor tiles.

"Bang!"

The door was shoved open by someone's shoulder.

The doorknob slammed into the wainscoting, scraping off a chunk of paint.

The balding expert from the Cybersecurity Bureau burst in.

He was running too fast and tripped over the edge of the thick carpet with his left foot.

He completely lost his balance and lunged forward.

With a dull "thud."

The expert fell heavily in front of John's mahogany desk.

His chin hit the corner of the desk, scraping off a patch of skin and oozing a few drops of blood.

He didn't care about the pain at all, scrambling up by grabbing the edge of the table with his hands and feet.

His face was as pale as if it had been coated in flour.

His eyes were bloodshot, filled with a ghostly terror, and his lips were trembling.

John's expression darkened as he stood up to stare at him.

"What are you panicking about! Have the Xinghai IPs been completely locked down?"

The expert swallowed dryly.

A hissing sound like a broken bellows came from his throat.

He raised his trembling hand, pointing at the computer that had lost its connection.

"Sir! It's not us cutting off their network..."

The expert gasped for air, his voice filled with a despair that was on the verge of tears.

His eyes were full of broken despair.

"It's Xinghai Technology, they have paralyzed most of the civilian network backbone in North America!"