287: The good news is there, but the bad news is too good to be true.

Once this matter concludes, he can participate in the College Entrance Examination with peace of mind.

However, the moment the College Entrance Examination was mentioned, Lin Yu's mind was flooded with a pile of questions once again.

That day at the industrial park, that Commander-in-Chief named Qin Zhan, along with his boisterous subordinate Zhong Huai, claimed to be his dedicated College Entrance Examination examiner.

He didn't know if this was true or false.

If it were true, why would they tell him in advance?

What he couldn't figure out even more was where their attitude of respect, bordering on fear, toward him came from.

One mystery after another occupied his mind, and he couldn't find the answers.

Forget it.

Lin Yu shook his head, casting these distracting thoughts aside.

He would deal with whatever came his way.

If he couldn't figure it out, he wouldn't think about it.

With his current strength and trump cards, no matter what scheme the other side was plotting, he was confident he could handle it all.

He opened the door and walked out.

The sunlight, unseen for two days, spilled onto him, bringing a hint of warmth.

And just as Lin Yu stepped out of the residence he hadn't left for two days, another researcher who hadn't left his room for several days was already being driven insane by himself.

...

Inside the exclusive laboratory of the Fangs at the military district.

Zhong Huai's hair was as messy as a bird's nest, his eyes bloodshot and filled with red veins.

On the table in front of him, there was a pile of toppled empty energy drink bottles.

It had been three full days.

He had been investigating Lin Yu for three days!

He was going crazy.

It wasn't because he hadn't found anything.

Nor was it because he had discovered some earth-shattering secret.

It was just that...

It was just that Lin Yu's background investigation report was too damn clean!

"Impossible... This is absolutely impossible!"

Zhong Huai grabbed his hair, letting out a low, beast-like roar.

He had mobilized all the permissions the Zhong Family could use within the intelligence system.

He had used the highest-level query port of the Fangs within the military.

He even risked disciplinary action, or even execution, to hack into several peripheral servers of the highest archive of Blue Star and the Abyss Domain.

He turned the name "Lin Yu" into a top-priority search command, stirring up an invisible storm throughout the entire Blue Star database.

Then, he received a report.

A... perfectly flawless report.

Lin Yu, eighteen years old, originally a top student at Linzhou City No. 1 Middle School.

Five years ago, on the eve of the College Entrance Examination, for unknown reasons, his grades plummeted, and he applied for a suspension of studies and delayed the exam.

His family background was simple; his parents were middle-class and originally ran a small business. Later, after Lin Yu suspended his studies, they focused entirely on accompanying Lin Yu and Lin Yao. His younger sister, Lin Yao, had outstanding talent and had just awakened a Mythical-grade profession.

This file was impossibly clean.

Zhong Huai stared fixedly at every word on the light screen, his teeth grinding with a clatter.

Every detail exuded a sense of being "perfectly reasonable."

Especially those five lost years.

The report stated that after suspending his studies, he left home and rented a small factory building in the industrial area alone to focus on studying his profession's characteristics.

In the end, he gained nothing.

In five years, he exhausted all his savings and even owed a mountain of debt.

In the end, he was found by his younger sister, Lin Yao, who persisted, persuading him time and again, and finally earnestly convinced him to return home.

And that debt was paid off by his family.

What a standard script of "a prodigal son returning is worth more than gold."

What an inspiring image of a brother who "finds his way back after going astray."

What kind of interstellar joke is this!

This file is absolutely fake!

Zhong Huai's fingers tapped frantically on the console, calling up deeper data.

He had to find a loophole.

There must be a loophole!

However, the more he investigated, the colder he felt in his heart.

Those five years were not completely blank.

There were clear consumption records.

Lin Yu often went to the black market to purchase a potion called a "mental stabilizer" from a middleman named "Old Ghost."

The purchase frequency was almost once a week.

It lasted for five whole years.

This detail was like a perfect patch, fixing the most illogical link in the entire story.

For an ordinary person to conduct boring research day after day for five years and fail repeatedly, it would be strange if they didn't have a mental breakdown.

And the existence of these mental stabilizers made everything become logical.

It perfectly explained why Lin Yu didn't go crazy.

It even indirectly confirmed how destitute and desperate his five years had been.

This is... too real!

It was so real that it made Zhong Huai feel waves of nausea.

He could even, through these records, visualize a down-and-out youth in a dark factory, enduring the pain of failure while relying on inferior potions to maintain his sanity.

"Fake... it's all fake!"

Zhong Huai roared lowly, switching his verification channel.

Old Ghost's transaction records, which he had verified through special means, were real.

The bank statements, which he had hacked into to see, were real.

The school's suspension certificate and the electronic archives in the Linzhou municipal database—he had analyzed every single pixel, and they were also real!

He even found Lin Yu's birth records.

Accurate to the second.

The hospital of birth, the attending nurse, his weight that day, every vaccine he had received.

The record of him being made to stand in the corner by his teacher in kindergarten for fighting with other children.

A scanned copy of his second-place award certificate from a fifth-grade essay competition in elementary school.

His scores from every mock exam during middle school.

Everything constituted an inescapable net.

A net that was airtight and completely flawless.

Not just Lin Yu.

Zhong Huai also investigated his parents' information.

Counting back three generations, they were all native Blue Star people, with a background cleaner than purified water.

Lin Yu's father and Wang Qingxuan's father, Wang Han, were childhood best friends; this also perfectly explained why Lin Yu and that proud daughter of heaven were so close.

No flaws.

Not even the slightest flaw.

Zhong Huai collapsed into his chair, feeling like his brain was about to burn out.

He couldn't figure it out.

In this information age, a person's past is like an open book, with no secrets to speak of.

The methods various forces use to steal privacy are bizarre, with data entangled and verifying each other.

Wanting to forge a seamless file is no less difficult than creating a planet out of thin air.

You have to modify the hospital's birth database.

You have to modify the education system's student status database.

You have to modify the financial system's transaction database.

You also have to modify the telecommunications company's call records.

You also have to modify eighteen years worth of video footage from countless public and private surveillance cameras!

This is simply not a great undertaking that human power can accomplish!

Unless this file was real from the very beginning.

From the moment Lin Yu was born, someone had laid all this out for him.

This is not "forgery."

This is "creation."

Creating an "ordinary person" identity that is absolutely real, absolutely clean, and absolutely capable of withstanding any form of investigation.