127: Chapter 127 Mysterious Hacker Attack? The Red Queen Teaches Them a Lesson
The top-floor server room of Titan Center was currently experiencing a silent war.
The air was permeated with the burnt smell of overloaded electronic components, and the cooling system had been turned to maximum power, emitting a low hum that sounded like a swarm of enraged wild bees.
The holographic red alert was still flashing frantically, and that eerie black chrysanthemum icon was spreading and splitting across the screen like a virus, attempting to devour every green dot representing a defense node.
Victor stood before the main console, the tablet in his hands already soaked with cold sweat.
"Boss, these guys are crazy."
Victor watched the data streams jumping wildly on the screen, his voice trembling.
"The opponent has deployed a botnet, and these aren't ordinary 'zombies.' These IP addresses come from military servers and top financial institutions all over the world... They are burning money! The cost of this attack is at least one hundred thousand dollars per second!"
"One hundred thousand dollars?"
Chen Yuan sat on the leather sofa, his posture lazy to the extreme.
He held the unfinished glass of red wine, gently swirling it, watching the scarlet vortex inside the glass with eyes as calm as if he were watching a boring silent film.
"Burning money is the one thing I don't fear."
He chuckled, his tone filled with the disdain of someone standing at the pinnacle of the pyramid looking down at all living beings.
"Then let them burn. In this world, no one is richer than me."
Chen Yuan raised his head and looked at Alice, who stood quietly beside the server with blue data streams flashing in her eyes.
"Red Queen, don't just defend."
He took a sip of wine, his voice low:
"Play with them. Don't rush to win; give them a little hope, make them think that if they just try a little harder, they can break through our firewall."
Chen Yuan extended his right hand and made a fierce fist-clenching gesture in the void.
"And then... chop their hands off."
"Understood, boss."
Red Queen's voice still had no fluctuation, but in that cold mechanical tone, there seemed to be a hint of arrogance belonging to a top predator.
The green code on the screen began to change.
They were no longer passively patching vulnerabilities but, like a conscious pack of wolves, began to organize, induce, and divide, leading that black torrent of data into carefully designed traps.
Meanwhile.
Ten thousand miles away in Tokyo, Chiyoda Ward.
Beneath an unassuming office building hid the top cyber defense center in all of Japan.
Hundreds of supercomputers were running at full power, and on the giant display screens, countless data streams converged into that black chrysanthemum.
Dozens of top hackers sat in front of computers, their fingers tapping out afterimages on the keyboards.
"Baka! How is this possible?"
A young man with a samurai haircut wearing a hacker hoodie smashed his keyboard, his pale face filled with disbelief.
He was the Chief Technology Officer of the "Dark Division," codenamed "Onikiri."
"Our attack clearly broke through their outer defenses! Why can't we enter the core database?"
Onikiri stared fixedly at the screen, veins bulging on his forehead. "It's like... like there's an invisible black hole swallowing all of our data!"
"Increase the intensity!"
The middle-aged man standing behind him ordered with a gloomy face.
He was wearing a traditional kimono, and his eyes were as sinister as a venomous snake. He was the butler of the Fujiwara Family and also the monitor for this operation.
"The family head said, at all costs, those materials must be destroyed! That is a secret concerning the survival of the family!"
"Mobilize all the 'zombies'! Even if it means burning out a few servers, it doesn't matter!"
"Yes!"
Onikiri gritted his teeth, his ten fingers flying as he entered a string of red commands.
"Launch the 'Amaterasu' protocol! All-out attack!"
Following his command, an even more violent torrent of data crossed the Pacific Ocean via submarine fiber optic cables and slammed fiercely into Titan Center's firewall.
That was an all-out strike gathering the power of Japan's top hackers.
It was enough to paralyze the defense system of The Pentagon.
However.
Just at the moment that torrent was about to touch the core database.
A sudden change occurred.
On the screen at Titan Center, the green defense line that had been in jeopardy suddenly split open from the middle as if it had a life of its own.
It was like a mocking mouth.
"Hmm?"
Onikiri froze, his fingers hovering over the Enter key.
Before he could react, an even larger, more terrifying data stream, carrying a sense of dimensionality reduction strike from the future, erupted back out from that gap!
"Boom!"
That was a tsunami on the data level.
Red Queen had struck.
She was no longer just a shield that only knew how to defend, but had turned into an unbreakable spear. She used the opponent's attack channel to instantly complete a series of operations: reverse tracking, locking, invading, and controlling.
The speed was so fast that it even exceeded the limits of human neural reaction.
In the underground server room in Tokyo, alarms blared instantly.
"Warning! Warning! Unknown data intrusion detected!"
"Firewall failed! Core access seized!"
"System overload! Thermal control system failed!"
Red warning lights flashed frantically, illuminating the entire server room like hell.
Those supercomputers running at full speed suddenly emitted ear-piercing shrieks, and the speed of the cooling fans soared to the limit, emitting a death rattle.
"Quick! Cut the physical connection!"
Onikiri roared in terror, reaching out to pull the network cable.
But it was too late.
"Bang!"
The server closest to him emitted black smoke.
Immediately followed by the second, the third...
Sparks flew, and the smell of burning filled the air. The entire server room instantly turned into a giant oven.
"What's going on?! Quickly cut the power!"
The middle-aged butler was knocked to the ground by the blast wave, roaring in a panic.
"It can't be cut! Control has been locked!"
Onikiri's face was deathly pale as he looked at the giant red-and-white umbrella icon that had suddenly appeared on the main screen.
That umbrella was slowly rotating, as if mocking their incompetence.
In the center of the screen, a line of red Chinese characters popped up, written in a wild, cursive script, carrying a chilling killing intent:
【It is impolite not to reciprocate.】
New York, Titan Center.
Chen Yuan looked at the red coordinate point that had finally been successfully located on the screen, the smile at the corner of his mouth growing colder, yet also increasingly excited.
"Japan, Tokyo, Chiyoda Ward."
"Mitsubishi Zaibatsu building, third basement level."
Red Queen's voice echoed in the office, as precise as the guidance signal of a cruise missile.
"Boss, the opponent's identity has been confirmed."
"It is the 'Dark Division' hacker organization raised by the Fujiwara Family. It is also the lair of that so-called 'Shadow'."
Chen Yuan put down his wine glass, the bottom of the glass colliding with the table with a crisp sound.
He stood up, walked to the floor-to-ceiling window, and looked at the sky in the east that had just begun to turn white.
"Fujiwara Family?"
He softly murmured this name, a flash of bloodthirsty light in his eyes.
"The debt from back then hasn't been settled, and now you've come to die."
Chen Yuan turned around, straightened his suit which hadn't been messy at all, and revealed an extremely brilliant smile at Victor and Alice:
"Since they like playing with fire so much..."
"Then I will go to Tokyo myself."
"And teach them what it means to..."
"Play with fire and get burned."