37: Chapter 37: A Prankster Meets a True God
Chairman Qian Boan's movements were frighteningly fast.
Within three days of the order being issued, Chief Engineer Wang Heshan and Chief Engineer Wang Jianguo felt the pressure.
"Chief Engineer Wang, something's wrong!" An engineer in charge of procurement ran into the command center, nearly in tears. "The supplier for that batch of special fiber optic cables we ordered suddenly pulled out. They'd rather pay triple the penalty than supply the goods!"
Chief Engineer Wang Heshan flared up upon hearing this, but before he could speak...
...another person in charge of logistics rushed in, looking even worse. "Elder Wang, our material transport convoy was impounded by the Transport Management Bureau halfway! They said we were overloaded and had incomplete paperwork. They're impounding the vehicles for a month!"
"Bullshit! Our paperwork was specially approved by the military. Who dares to impound them!" Chief Engineer Wang Heshan slammed the table.
"It was reported by a logistics company under the Huanyu Group. They spent money to grease the palms of local authorities; they're looking for trouble on purpose!"
"Dammit!" Chief Engineer Wang Heshan punched the table again in anger.
Over the next few days, the bad news didn't stop.
It was either equipment breaking down, workers causing trouble, or materials being unable to be transported in. Behind every mess, there was the shadow of the Huanyu Group.
The net Chairman Qian Boan cast was both vast and swift, ensnaring all the peripheral supply channels of the Kuafu Project. Although he couldn't touch the core, the nuisance and the delay to the project's progress were immediately effective.
In the command center, the atmosphere was so oppressive it felt like it could be wrung out like water.
"That old bastard is a real piece of work!" Chief Engineer Wang Jianguo paced around the room in a rage. "He's trying to trap us to death in this sand!"
Chief Engineer Wang Heshan snatched up the phone and called Director Zhao Lixin. "I don't believe the state can't handle a single capitalist!"
But Director Zhao Lixin didn't have any good solutions either.
Over the phone, Director Zhao Lixin was also having a headache. "Elder Wang, Chairman Qian Boan's move is an open scheme. Everything he's doing is within the legal framework. We can't use forceful means to intervene in the market, or the trouble will be even greater."
"Then what? We just let him keep us in a chokehold like this?"
"I've already reported to the higher-ups. The state is urgently mobilizing materials from other channels, but it takes time. For now, we can only rely on ourselves." Director Zhao Lixin asked, "How is the Chief Consultant doing? Has she come out of seclusion yet?"
"No." Chief Engineer Wang Jianguo took the phone, looking extremely worried. "Before the Chief Consultant went into seclusion, she instructed that we shouldn't disturb her even if the sky falls. But now, the project is about to grind to a halt, this..."
"Hold on!" Director Zhao Lixin's tone left no room for doubt. "No matter what, trust the Chief Consultant. Since she dared to go into seclusion, it means these things are nothing in her eyes. What we need to do now is hold the fort and wait for her to come out."
After hanging up, Chief Engineer Wang Jianguo and Chief Engineer Wang Heshan looked at each other, both deeply worried. However, Director Zhao Lixin's words had at least given them a bit of a boost.
True, they were following an immortal now.
Immortals have their own way of doing things; why should mortals like them worry so much?
Chief Engineer Wang Heshan flopped back into his command seat, steadied himself, and roared, "Pass down my orders! No unit that has stopped work is allowed to idle! I want all existing equipment and materials maintained! Go over all the construction blueprints again until you know them inside out! Once the materials arrive, I want you to start work immediately and make up for the lost time!"
"Yes, sir!"
Powerful responses rang out once more in the command center.
...
While Chief Engineer Wang Heshan and the others were at their wits' end, a real attack had already reached the core of the Kuafu base.
Hundreds of kilometers away from the base, inside a command vehicle disguised as a weather monitoring truck.
Several blond-haired, blue-eyed foreigners were staring at the computers in front of them. They were the top hacker team codenamed "Ghost," hired by Chairman Qian Boan at a high price.
"Boss, I've found their main server," a young man wearing headphones shouted. "The firewall is military-grade, but give me ten minutes, and I guarantee I can hack in!"
The one called "Boss" was a middle-aged man codenamed Snake Eye. He looked completely confident at the moment.
"Very good." Snake Eye nodded. "Follow the plan. Our goal isn't to steal data; it's to destroy it."
"I want you to destroy all their engineering data and format their servers. Let that Oasis turn into a pile of scrap metal."
"Understood!"
The hackers tapped away at their keyboards, code scrolling rapidly across the screens.
"First layer of the firewall, breached!"
"Second layer, breached!"
"Infiltrating the core database... Found it! All the design blueprints and monitoring data are here!"
"Preparing to plant the virus... 3, 2, 1... Implantation successful!"
Snake Eye let out a cold laugh.
Too easy.
The so-called top national secrets were nothing more than this in the face of Ghost.
"Activate the virus, format!" he gave the final order.
The young man smugly hit the Enter key.
But in the next second, everyone's smiles froze.
On the screen, the progress bar representing the virus jumped once and then stopped.
Then, the entire screen went black.
A line of crooked Chinese characters appeared in the center of the screen, looking as if they had been written with a brush.
"Want to come in? Have you asked me first?"
"What the hell is this?!" The young man was startled and frantically pounded the keyboard, trying to regain control.
But the computer was now like a brick, completely unresponsive.
"Boss! Something's wrong! We're being counter-hacked!"
"Impossible!" Snake Eye's expression changed drastically. "Our system is physically isolated! How could we be counter-hacked!"
No sooner had he spoken.
All the screens in the command vehicle lit up simultaneously.
What appeared on them was no longer code, but rotating golden symbols that no one could understand.
Those symbols swam across the screens as if they were alive.
A strange sense of oppression instantly enveloped the entire command vehicle.
Suddenly, the screens of all the electronic devices in the vehicle flashed, then black smoke billowed out; they were all fried.
"My computer!"
"The server's burned out!"
"Retreat! It's not safe here!"
The Ghost team was in chaos, scrambling to escape the command vehicle that had already turned into scrap metal.
Snake Eye stood in the desert, looking back at the smoking vehicle, his face pale.
Those golden symbols just now... what on earth were they?
That wasn't a program at all, nor was it code.
That feeling... was more like... a curse.
Inside the machine room of the core Array Base at The Oasis base.
A young engineer under Chief Engineer Wang Jianguo was yawning while looking at data.
Suddenly, a notification box popped up in a corner of the screen in front of him.
[Low-level divine sense attack detected, automatically cleared.]
['Heart-Clearing Incantation' Array Pattern activated, counter-tracking and destroying the source of the attack.]
[Event Level: Harmless. No reporting required.]
The notification box flashed and disappeared.
"Huh? What was that just now?" The young engineer rubbed his eyes.
He shook his head, let out another yawn, and continued to stare at the dull curves on the screen. How could he have known that just now, a top-tier hacker attack—one that would have caused the National Network Security Center to sound its highest alarm—had been casually cleaned up like spam by an obscure corner formation in this "machine room" in front of him.