Chapter 133 The Ghost Appears
Southeast Asia, a certain coastal city.
Eleven at night, in an unremarkable villa by the sea, George stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling window, looking out at the pitch-black sea in the distance. Waves crashed against the reefs, letting out a dull roar, like some ominous omen.
He had been hiding here for three months.
Ever since the failure to subvert Zhang Jianguo, he had been forced to evacuate the mainland and travel through various places to reach this tropical country. His superiors didn't blame him, but they didn't give him any new missions either—they just told him to "stand by," like a dagger temporarily tucked into its sheath.
George didn't like waiting.
He turned around and looked at the person sitting on the sofa.
That was his superior, codenamed "Principal." In his sixties, with graying hair and gold-rimmed glasses, he looked like a respectable university professor. No one would have thought that this amiable-looking old man controlled the entire intelligence network of East Asia.
"George, sorry to keep you waiting," the Principal spoke, his voice gentle as if chatting about family matters. "But some things cannot be rushed."
George walked over and sat opposite him. "Principal, I want to know, when can I go back?"
"Go back?" The Principal smiled. "What would you do if you went back now? They've already noticed you. That female bureau chief, Fang Lin, is just waiting for you to walk into her trap."
George fell silent.
The Principal picked up a tablet from the coffee table, tapped it a few times, and handed it to him. "Take a look at this first."
George took it. On the screen was a photo—a massive construction site in the Gobi Desert. Tower cranes, trucks, dense crowds of workers, and the laboratory Prefabricated Buildings faintly visible in the distance.
"tokamak-3," the Principal said. "The Chinese Nuclear Fusion device. Construction officially began three months ago. Lin Mo's team is turning it into a reality."
George stared at the screen, his eyes dark and sinister.
"Do you know what this means?" the Principal continued. "If they succeed, the global energy landscape will be completely transformed. Oil, natural gas, coal—all will become history. At that time, what cards will we have left to play?"
George looked up. "So, our mission is..."
"Sabotage," the Principal said succinctly. "But not by blowing it up. Blowing it up is too conspicuous and would trigger a full-scale counter-response. What we need to do is slow them down, the slower the better. Ideally, slow enough for the project to be aborted."
George frowned. "How do we slow it down?"
The Principal tapped the tablet a few more times, and a photo of another person appeared on the screen.
It was a young man in his early thirties, wearing glasses, with an ordinary face that would definitely not stand out in a crowd. The only thing special was those eyes—staring at the camera with no expression, like two cold glass beads.
"This person's codename is 'Ghost'," the Principal said. "An MIT PhD specializing in network information security. Recruited by us five years ago, he's been undercover at a cybersecurity firm in Silicon Valley. His specialty—"
The Principal paused and emphasized his tone, "Remote infiltration. No need to enter the target area, no need to contact anyone. With just a network cable, he can infiltrate the most secure network systems in the world."
George looked at the photo, a strange feeling rising in his heart.
This "Ghost" was completely different from him. George specialized in face-to-face contact—subversion, bribery, and developing assets. But this person only needed to hide thousands of miles away and complete everything with a keyboard and code.
"What is his mission?" George asked.
"Infiltrate the base network and steal core Nuclear Fusion data," the Principal said. "Not everything, but the key parts—the First Wall Material formula, the Magnet System design parameters, and the Plasma Control Algorithm. Once we have these, we can sell them to anyone who wants them, or keep them for ourselves. When the Chinese are close to succeeding, we'll create some 'accidents' for them."
George understood.
This wasn't just theft; it was planting a mine.
Planting a mine in their system and detonating it at the most critical moment—a single data error, a parameter shift, or a control failure would be enough to ruin the entire project.
"And my mission?" George asked.
"You?" The Principal smiled. "You're responsible for coordinating with him. Whatever he needs, you provide. He's in the shadows, you're in the open. The two of you, one attacking the network, the other attacking people—a two-pronged approach."
George was silent for a few seconds, then nodded. "Understood."
The Principal stood up, walked to the window, and looked out at the dark sea.
"George, do you know why he's called 'Ghost'?"
George shook his head.
"Because he has no past, no future, and no identity," the Principal's voice drifted, as if from far away. "He never leaves a trace anywhere, never uses the same IP address for more than ten minutes, and never says anything online that can be tracked. He's like a ghost, floating in the cyber world, and no one can catch him."
He turned around and looked at George. "So, this time you don't need to care about what he does or know where he is. You just need to do your own job—wait for his instructions, then execute."
George took a deep breath. "Yes, sir."
Two days later, on the other side of the ocean, in an unremarkable apartment.
A young man sat in front of a computer. The lights in the room were off, and only the dim glow of the screen illuminated his face. He was "Ghost."
On the table in front of him were three monitors, a computer tower, and several external hard drives. The walls were covered with various sticky notes, densely packed with codes and symbols that only he understood.
On the screen, lines of code scrolled rapidly.
He was making final preparations before entering the base network.
Target network: tokamak-3 project internal network.
Protection level: National level. There is physical isolation, intrusion detection, and 24-hour manual monitoring. Theoretically, it's impossible to breach from the outside.
But "Ghost" never believed in the "impossible."
He spent three months doing one thing: researching all the equipment suppliers involved in the project. From crane manufacturers to concrete suppliers, from laboratory instrument companies to office equipment agents—he checked every single company that might have business dealings with the base.
Finally, he found a breakthrough.
A company supplying air conditioning equipment to the base had pre-installed a remote diagnostic module in every unit for easier after-sales maintenance. This module could be connected to the internet, allowing engineers to remotely view the equipment's operating status and detect faults early.
Of course, this module had password protection and firewall isolation; theoretically, it was very secure.
But "Ghost" had studied the module's source code—written three years ago, it had a known vulnerability that the manufacturer had never patched.
He only needed to use this vulnerability to enter that air conditioner's control system, and then use it as a springboard to step-by-step infiltrate the base's core network.
It was like crawling into an impregnable fortress through a tiny crack.
The corners of "Ghost's" mouth curled up slightly.
This was his favorite feeling—the whole world thought it was safe, but only he knew that the vulnerability was right there.
He typed the last line of code, and a window popped up on the screen:
"Infiltration tool deployment complete, waiting for target to come online."
He leaned back and closed his eyes.
Next, it was just waiting.
Waiting for that air conditioner to connect to the internet, waiting for that vulnerability to be exposed, and waiting for that door to open on its own.
A week later, at the tokamak-3 base.
Li Xiao stretched and stood up from her computer. She had finished another hundred thousand sets of condition simulations today, and the data for the First Wall Material was looking better and better. She picked up her cold coffee and prepared to go to the pantry for a hot cup.
As she passed the server room door, she suddenly stopped.
The server room door was slightly ajar, and a faint humming sound came from inside. It was the sound of servers running, which was normal. But she always felt something was wrong—she couldn't put her finger on it, it was just an intuition.
She pushed the door open and looked inside.
Everything was normal. The server indicator lights were flashing, the air conditioning vents were blowing cold air, and there were no unusual marks on the floor.
Li Xiao shook her head, thinking she had been too tense lately, and turned to leave.
What she didn't know was that at the very moment she turned around, lines of code were quietly running inside the control module of the air conditioner above her head.
A program that had been hidden for three months was activated.
Like a ghost, it silently passed through the firewall, bypassed the intrusion detection system, copied itself into a common system log, and quietly lurked in the base's internal network.
Waiting for the next instruction.
Meanwhile, in the apartment on the other side of the ocean.
"Ghost" opened his eyes and looked at the green prompt popping up on the screen:
"Entered target network perimeter."
He chuckled softly, picked up the water glass next to him, and took a sip.
Then he typed a new line of code:
"Start scanning core database."
On the screen, countless data poured down like a waterfall.
And he was just a ghost sitting in the shadows, seen by no one.