177: Chapter 177 Your Trump Card, My Property

Wu Dong slammed his hands down hard on the mechanical keyboard. His knuckles cracked loudly. The red countdown on the large screen was blinding.

One minute and fifty-eight seconds.

"Bang."

The iron door of the control room was kicked open from the outside. The heavy door slammed violently against the white plastered wall.

Da Biao rushed into the room, reeking of machine oil. The hydraulic tubes on his two thick mechanical arms were still steaming.

"Boss. The factory has sounded the highest level air defense alarm." Da Biao strode over, reaching out with his metal palm to grab Lu Chen's arm. "I heard Colonel Lone Wolf shouting outside with a megaphone that an unidentified missile has locked onto the factory area. Let's go. We need to get to the underground air raid shelter immediately."

Lu Chen raised his hand casually and swatted away Da Biao's outstretched mechanical hand.

"Stand still. What are you panicking about?" Lu Chen's tone was calm.

"That's a missile." Da Biao was so anxious he paced in circles, his booming voice making the window glass hum. "Wu Dong, stop typing too, let's go!"

Wu Dong stared intently at the code on the screen, ignoring Da Biao completely.

Lu Chen took out his plastic lighter from his pocket again and lit the cigarette of double happiness he had only taken two puffs of.

"Stay right here. We aren't going anywhere." Lu Chen exhaled a ring of smoke.

"Boss. Are you crazy? Are we staying here to wait for death?" Da Biao's eyes widened.

"The missile is now our company's property." Lu Chen flicked the ash into the glass ashtray, his voice devoid of emotion. "An object bought with our own money has to listen to its owner."

Da Biao was completely stunned. He rubbed his bald head, completely unable to understand what this meant.

"Wu Dong. Progress?" Lu Chen turned his head.

"Boss. The underlying firewall on the other side is extremely thick. They used a military-grade physical isolation network." Wu Dong's forehead was covered in bead-sized sweat. "I can't break in through the standard data security port at all."

"If you can't get in through the standard port, use the financial settlement port." Lu Chen looked at the jumping red characters on the large screen. "This submarine was built with the parent company's money. Every screw on it is recorded in the financial ledger. You are the only chief financial auditor. Check its ledger. Insert directly into its motherboard from the accounting port."

"Understood." A fanatical light shone in Wu Dong's eyes. "As long as this piece of scrap metal is still on the company's books, it has to accept the boss's financial audit."

Wu Dong's ten fingers turned into a blur again. The sound of keyboard tapping became a dense, continuous stream.

...

Pacific Ocean. Waters on the edge of the Mariana Trench.

Beneath the cold seawater. The main control room of the viper one strategic nuclear submarine.

The red combat readiness lights bathed the entire cabin in blood red.

The white captain stood in front of the metal console, his hands clasped tightly behind his back.

"Sir. Launch silos one through six have finished flooding." The adjutant looked at the console and reported loudly. "Target coordinate system verified. Locked onto the Jiangcheng region of China."

"Initiate the preheating sequence." The captain issued the final order. "Confirm the real-time status of the missiles."

"Status is normal. Launch authorization countdown. One minute and thirty seconds." The adjutant's finger hovered next to the red confirmation button.

The captain watched the green light spot on the radar screen.

"This is our last mission for Freemasons." The captain spoke to the dozens of operators in the main control room. "The highest settlement fee promised by the organization has already reached your families' accounts. After completing this strike, the entire ship will immediately dive and enter a period of absolute silence. Do you understand?"

"Understood." The operators roared in unison.

...

New York. Manhattan intensive care unit.

Anderson leaned against the corner of the wall, covered in blood. His two hands were clutching that heavy black briefcase tightly.

On the miniature screen of the briefcase, red numbers were ticking away mercilessly. One minute and ten seconds.

Anderson pulled up the corners of his mouth, revealing teeth stained red with blood.

"Let's die together." He cursed gleefully in his heart.

The hard work I've meticulously planned for decades—why should it become a wedding dress for you bunch of Chinese rubes?

Do you really think you can swallow the entire foundation of Freemasons just by getting some dirty money and sweeping up some stock in the financial market? Dream on.

"Today, I'll teach you what it means to flip the table." Anderson took a deep breath. An agonizing, tearing pain immediately shot through his lungs. He didn't care at all.

"Faster. Faster." A harsh gurgling sound came from Anderson's mouth. "Blow it all flat... burn it to ash..."

Five hospital security guards blocked the door of the ward. None of them dared to take even half a step forward. They looked at the pistol Anderson had thrown on the floor and only dared to lean against the corridor wall with their hands raised.

...

Jiangcheng. Data control room.

Forty-five seconds.

Large blocks of green audit code were scrolling wildly down the main screen, directly covering up the blinding nuclear radiation symbol.

"I've cut in." Wu Dong roared with a hoarse voice. "Boss. I've obtained the underlying protocol library."

"Change it completely." Lu Chen stood up.

Wu Dong slammed his hands on the keyboard: "I'm forcibly overwriting their highest-level launch instruction set. The resistance is huge; the physical system on the other side is frantically rejecting the new data."

"Cut off their power system authorization." Lu Chen walked to the front of the screen, his hands in the pockets of his black jacket. "A piece of scrap metal bought with my money. If I don't provide fuel, let's see what it uses to fire."

Twenty seconds.

Inside the submarine on the seabed.

"Sir. The system is showing serious abnormal fluctuations." The operator suddenly looked up, his face full of panic. "An unknown instruction stream has entered our launch motherboard."

The captain frowned and strode over: "Activate physical isolation immediately. Cut off all external signal receivers at once."

"I can't cut it." The operator was frantically tapping the panel, his voice completely changed. "This isn't an external signal access. This is a native instruction crawling out from our own underlying financial logs. It carries higher control authority than yours."

"Nonsense. I am the supreme captain." The captain pushed the operator away. "Move aside. Let me do it."

Ten seconds.

Anderson laughed like a madman in the ward. He laughed until tears mixed with blood streamed down his face.

His two hands stroked the screen of the briefcase tightly, as if stroking the most precious treasure.

"Ten seconds. It's all over." Anderson gasped for air.

Three seconds.

In the control room, Wu Dong's face turned red from holding his breath. He slammed both hands down on the Enter key.

The keyboard made a dull, crisp sound.

"Privilege revocation completely finished." Wu Dong roared.

One second.

Submarine weapon cabin. The captain's hand was raised high, not yet touching the launch confirmation button.

"Click." A crisp sound of a metal circuit breaking rang out.

All the red combat readiness lights in the main control room extinguished instantly. Only the green emergency lighting glowed weakly in the corner.

All the large screens on the console went black. The red launch countdown that had been flashing continuously was stuck completely at the last second.

"Entire ship power system offline."

"Weapon cabin forced physical lockdown."

"Reactor entering forced sleep mode."

Several continuous, cold electronic mechanical voices echoed in the dark submarine control room.

The captain was stunned on the spot. He desperately pulled the backup mechanical starter switch next to him. Even though he pulled the switch until it cracked loudly, there was no system feedback.

"Where is the backup power? Connect the backup power!" The captain turned and roared at the adjutant.

"Sir. I can't connect it. The control lock for the backup power has also been seized." The adjutant collapsed on the floor, his voice trembling violently. "We... we have been seized by the system."

...

In the intensive care unit.

Anderson stared fixedly at the briefcase screen. His eyeballs were about to pop out.

The countdown on it actually didn't reach zero. It stopped forever at one second.

Immediately after, the miniature screen flickered twice. A line of bold, blocky Chinese characters appeared in the very center of the screen without warning.

"Control ownership change: China Chenguang Factory."

Anderson opened his mouth wide. A non-human scream came from deep in his throat. A mouthful of viscous black blood sprayed directly onto the screen glass, covering the glaring Chinese characters.

He rolled his eyes back and collapsed completely onto the cold tiles. His body went into a series of unconscious spasms and twitches. He fell into a complete coma.

Chenguang Factory data control room.

The air defense alarm that had been ringing across the sky outside stopped abruptly.

The wall of monitors shed their blood-red warnings and returned to their normal blue operating background.

Da Biao wiped the cold sweat from his forehead vigorously: "Wu Dong. Done."

"Completely done." Wu Dong collapsed into his office chair as if his bones had been removed, panting heavily. "Three submarines. They've all become dead iron. I've wiped their underlying passwords completely."

Lu Chen finished the last puff of his double happiness. He threw it on the ground and extinguished it with the sole of his old leather shoe.

He walked slowly to Wu Dong's desk. He reached out and pulled over the computer microphone equipped with high-fidelity amplification.

"Connect the audio from the main control rooms of those three iron lumps on the seabed." Lu Chen ordered, looking at Wu Dong.

Wu Dong immediately sat up straight and tapped the keyboard: "Connected. You can speak, Boss."

Deep on the seabed.

In the deathly silent submarine control room, no one dared to breathe.

The public loudspeaker on the console suddenly emitted two harsh bursts of static. Everyone was so scared they took a step back.

Immediately after, a man's voice exploded in the ears of the dozens of white crew members. The tone was calm, carrying absolute coldness.

"I heard you want to bomb my factory area."

The white captain shuddered violently and scrambled to the public microphone.

"Who are you? What on earth did you do to the warship system?" The captain roared frantically into the microphone.

"I am your new boss." Lu Chen's voice traveled directly down three thousand meters to the seabed via fiber optic cable. "I just checked the ledger. You eat from my company and live in my company. You take the money I pay you. And you still want to bomb my territory."

"You're talking nonsense. This is the absolute private property of Freemasons." The captain retorted, gritting his teeth.

"Go look at the bottom of the employment contract in your underlying system. The absolute controlling shareholder has changed its name." Lu Chen raised his hand and tapped the black edge of the microphone casually.

"Tap. Tap." The tapping sound echoed deep on the seabed, making all the crew members' hair stand on end.

"Since everyone signed the contract in black and white, you must follow the rules of Chenguang Factory." Lu Chen's tone dropped to freezing point.

"What do you want? We are regular soldiers subject to military regulations." Veins bulged on the captain's forehead as he threatened viciously. "At worst, we'll manually open the external exhaust valves. We'll force our way to the surface. You can't trap us."

"You can't go to the surface." Lu Chen said calmly.

Lu Chen glanced at the deep-sea seabed coordinate map on the large screen. His index finger slowly pressed down on the main control Enter key of the workstation.

"Since you want to play in the water so much." Lu Chen's mouth curled into a cruel arc. "Go down and play well with the mud in the trench."