22: Chapter 22 The World's Number One Hacker: Too Clean

Jingzhou, West City.

A dilapidated residential building from the 1990s. The tiles on the outer wall had fallen off in chunks, and the outdoor air conditioning units were rusted with brownish-red water stains.

On the third floor, the door number was half-covered by a courier slip.

The curtains were drawn tight.

The room was less than ten square meters.

Courier boxes, potato chip bags, and empty cola cans were scattered on the floor. In the corner, the quilt on the single bed was balled up.

Beside the pillow lay a copy of "Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach" face down.

The spine was broken, indicating it had been flipped through many times, though no one had touched it recently.

Three monitors supported a wall of cold blue light, reflecting onto the white wall opposite, cutting the room in half.

On this side of the light, there was a dense stream of scrolling data.

On the other side of the light, there was a chaotic ruin of daily life.

A girl sat cross-legged, huddled in a gaming chair.

The gray hoodie was two sizes too big, the hood pulled up, the cuffs drooping past her fingertips, with only ten fingers flying across the keyboard.

Twin tails hung down from the sides of the hood, the ends curled, brushing against the back of the chair.

She had a baby face, fair skin, and was chewing on a strawberry-flavored lollipop, the plastic stick swaying to the rhythm of her chewing.

She looked like a high school student skipping class to surf the web.

The content on the three screens proved otherwise.

Left screen—a complete mirror of the Xinghai Hospital internal database.

Liu Hongde's full medical records from three days ago, CT scans, and blood biochemistry reports, arranged chronologically.

The data changes within those three days were marked in red by her.

Cancer metastasis sites—completely disappeared.

Middle screen—transaction flows of the Liu Group financial system.

The capital link flowing back through three overseas shell companies within ten days amounted to five billion.

The terminal destination of the transferred accounts was masked by seven layers of proxies.

She had already stripped away six layers.

The seventh layer was stuck.

The encryption logic didn't resemble any known financial protocol.

It looked more like an independently handwritten key.

She stared at that layer of encryption for four seconds, moving the lollipop from the left corner of her mouth to the right.

Right screen—a map.

The Yongchang Steel Structure Factory in the Chengdong Industrial Zone was marked with a red circle.

Beside it were fragments of encrypted communications she had snatched from the public security internal network.

The other party's information security level was extremely high, but the fragments were enough for her to piece together a few keywords.

"Supernatural Individual."

"Unknown Organism."

"Top Secret."

Lin Xiaoman's gaze scanned back and forth between the three screens.

Supernatural Individual—a secret military enhancement project?

Unknown Organism—a leak from a biochemical weapon experiment?

Top Secret—that could explain the scale of mobilization.

She didn't believe in the supernatural.

For someone who started writing code at six, her worldview was built on binary; there was no room for ghosts or gods between zero and one.

But the shape these pieces formed when put together was something she had never seen before.

Interesting.

Then there was Wang Hao.

A ride-hailing driver living in the East City.

On the night of the incident, he had accepted an order starting from the western suburbs.

Passenger's mobile number—a virtual number, already canceled.

Western suburbs.

The girl's fingers paused for a beat.

Liu Yuyan.

She had been to the western suburbs at least twice in the last ten days.

Navigation records showed the destination was the same village road both times.

After returning, her travel patterns changed completely—originally it was company, board meetings, banquets; now there were fixed "blank periods," all heading towards the west.

The timing of the chemical plant incident.

The time Wang Hao's house was sealed off by the military.

The time of the Liu Group's capital movements.

All three lines overlapped in the same week.

The girl pulled the lollipop out of her mouth, the sweet strawberry taste lingering on the tip of her tongue.

"Found you."

The voice was very light, soft, and nasal.

The blue light of the screen reflected at the bottom of her pupils, and whatever was swirling inside them was not of the same species as the voice.

The phone rang.

The screen displayed "Old Man Sun the Grudge."

She stared at the caller ID for two seconds, the corners of her mouth turning down.

She answered without using speakerphone, clamping the phone between her ear and shoulder, her hands never leaving the keyboard.

"Hello, Mr. Sun, the matter you entrusted to me—"

"Have you found it yet?"

The voice on the other end of the line was urgent, sharp, suppressing anxiety.

"It will take a few more days. The clues are quite scattered."

"Aren't you supposed to be—"

"Mr. Sun."

The voice hadn't changed, but the tone had.

"I said a few days, that means a few days. If you rush me, the price will go up."

There was a two-second pause on the other end, then it hung up.

The girl pushed the phone away with her shoulder, and it clattered onto the armrest of the chair.

She glanced at the darkened screen and rolled her eyes.

She put the lollipop back into her mouth.

She had never intended to hand anything over to Sun Bonian.

The reason she sat in the chair working continuously wasn't money.

It was that feeling.

Writing her first line of code at six, hacking her first government database at twelve, becoming "Zero" at seventeen.

Before the age of twenty, all the digital secrets in this world were like Lego blocks to her.

Boring.

Bored for two years.

Until these things appeared on the screen.

Cancer disappearing out of thin air, top-level military response, a billionaire CEO running to the wilderness, a ride-hailing driver's home blocked by military vehicles.

All clues pointed in the same direction—that village road in the western suburbs that didn't even have a base station.

She checked the satellite imagery.

Wasteland, abandoned farmhouses, an old courtyard house.

She checked the property rights—under the Liu Group's name, registered over forty years ago, with zero transactions since.

Checked the electricity—zero usage.

Checked the network—zero access.

Checked the surveillance within a five-kilometer radius—a total of three cameras, all traffic monitors at intersections, and the facial captures were blurry mosaics.

The courtyard house was right there on the satellite map.

Half the roof had collapsed, the walls were covered in vines, and it was no different from the surrounding abandoned farmhouses.

Property registration, cadastral surveying, historical imagery—everything was there, everything was normal.

So normal it was boring.

A dilapidated courtyard worth less than two million, with not a single signal tower within a two-kilometer radius.

Just a place like this.

The head of a hundred-billion-dollar group had visited twice in ten days.

Lin Xiaoman's fingers hovered over the keyboard for three seconds.

She had been coding for eight years.

She had seen firewalls, she had seen encryption, she had seen top-level military information isolation, and nothing had ever blocked her for more than twenty minutes.

But this time was different.

It wasn't that it blocked her. It was that there was nothing to block.

On a data level, this courtyard was squeaky clean. No encryption, no shielding, no target worth hacking.

It was just a dilapidated courtyard.

But it was too clean.

Cancer disappearing out of thin air, top-level military response, abnormal movements of a billionaire CEO—all abnormal clues pointed to this place, yet the place itself was outrageously normal.

When everything was screaming "there's a problem," only the answer was saying "no problem."

Lin Xiaoman didn't believe that.

The first thing eight years of coding taught her was—the cleaner the place, the deeper things are buried.

She crunched the lollipop.

The strawberry-flavored sugar shards crunched between her teeth.

She pulled a new lollipop from the bag on the table, tore off the plastic wrapper, and popped it into her mouth. Blueberry flavor.

Her fingers returned to the keyboard.

The data stream accelerated.

Not enough.

She had swept across the keyboard for eight years, and this was the first time she had encountered something her keyboard couldn't reach.

The answer was not on the screen.

Lin Xiaoman stared at the outline of the dusty courtyard on the satellite map, the corner of her mouth twitching.

"Interesting."

She pulled her hood down.

"I'll have to go see for myself."

—

At the same time.

Torch Base.

Su Chen sat on the stone steps under the ancient tree, a notebook spread across his knees.

The system panel hung quietly in the corner of his vision.

"Current Points: 1250"

"Current Reality: 210"

It looked much better than a week ago.

The point rewards for killing exotic beasts, the influx of reality from Wang Hao's awakening event, plus the faith bonus brought by Liu Yuyan's continuous layouts on the secular level—the numbers were climbing steadily.

Of course, he hadn't been idle either.

He had spent quite a bit on odds and ends this week,

Color corrections for the details of two murals in the base's stone corridor,

Maintenance for the "age erosion" effect added to Wang Hao's set of bronze piece scrolls,

And three small pieces of evidence props prepared for subsequent burying.

Over two hundred and sixty points scattered, all small, inconspicuous jobs, but each one was a screw in the chain of evidence.

Su Chen was calculating the next relic fabrication plan.

An electronic sound exploded in his brain.

"—Warning—"

"Spatial fluctuation detected. Coordinates: East China Sea, 29.7° North Latitude, 124.3° East Longitude."

"Fluctuation Level: E-Rank."

"Estimated arrival time of Exotic Beast: 24 hours."

Su Chen's pen stopped.

He flipped to the front of his notebook.

The last exotic beast—Chengdong Industrial Zone, one week ago.

A seven-day interval.

"System, what is the frequency pattern of the precursor leaks?"

"Insufficient data samples. Based on the two known occurrences, the leakage interval will gradually shorten. Within twelve to eighteen months, it is possible for a D-Rank or even C-Rank Exotic Beast to descend."

Su Chen poked the tip of his pen onto the words "East China Sea."

At sea.

Last time in Jingzhou's East City, he could at least catch a ride-hailing car to get there; this time it threw him straight onto the ocean.

Even if his teleportation range was boosted to one thousand meters, one thousand meters per jump, jumping from Jingzhou to the East China Sea—he wasn't an amphibian.

"System, will this one come ashore after it arrives?"

"Current data cannot determine this. The behavioral patterns of E-Rank Exotic Beasts vary greatly; both activity within the sea area and landing on the coast are possible."

Two possibilities.

Either it wreaks havoc on fishing boats in the sea, or it crawls ashore to wreak havoc on coastal cities.

Either way, he couldn't reach it alone.

Su Chen's fingers tapped twice on the paper.

The frequency was accelerating, the locations were spreading.

He couldn't run to all of them by himself.

This issue had already been exposed by the last Shadow Erosion Beast.

It was just that he got lucky that time; the beast landed within Jingzhou city, and a forty-kilometer taxi ride was enough to get there.

What about next time? And the time after?

What if two appeared at the same time, one in Jingzhou and one in Guangnan?

He had to have someone to hold the battlefield for him.

Su Chen looked down at the eight characters on the cover of his notebook.

Kindling.

He pulled up the system panel and flipped to the Super Sequence creation interface.

"E-Rank Kindling Creation: 1000 Points + E-Rank Exotic Beast Crystal x 1"

He had enough points.

The crystal—

Su Chen's fingers paused.

He had used last week's E-Rank Exotic Beast crystal to break through to Tier 2 himself.

He didn't have a second one.

To make Kindling, he had to kill an exotic beast first and take its crystal.

The next exotic beast was in the East China Sea.

He couldn't get there.

Su Chen leaned back against the stone steps, covering his face with his notebook.

He needed combat power to kill exotic beasts. But he needed the exotic beast's crystal to manufacture combat power.

Unless—that thing crawled ashore on its own.

Su Chen took the notebook off his face and stared at the pale golden firmament.

Twenty-four hours.

He opened the notebook and wrote a line of text in the blank space.

"Bet on it coming ashore."

He added another line below, in smaller print.

"If it doesn't come ashore—"

The pen tip hovered over the paper, stopping for two seconds.

He didn't finish writing.

He closed the notebook and stood up.