128: Chapter 128 System Countermeasures: Information Fog
"They're here."
Just as Lin Mo's low whisper fell, deep within his mind, the civilization leap system interface, which had been silent for a moment, suddenly blazed with light. A cold, emotionless notification sounded:
[Detected high-threat level entity tracking behavior.]
[Detected host exposure risk index continues to climb.]
[Emergency countermeasure mission triggered!]
[Mission Name: information fog]
[Mission Requirements: Within 72 hours, with the assistance of the "Fuxi" and Weaving Net systems, create a large-scale, high-credibility stream of false information and physical activity traces. Successfully mislead at least 80% of trackers, and force them to expose key nodes or consume at least 70% of their operational resources.]
[Mission Rewards: 3,000 Points, unlock the 'Advanced Digital Camouflage and Deception Protocols' knowledge pack, and significantly increase experience in the 'Stealth and Counter-Reconnaissance' skill.]
[Failure Penalty: High-risk exposure of the host's location, the probability of the mobile fortress encountering a direct attack increases to 65%, and the difficulty of subsequent missions will surge.]
[Time Limit Countdown: 71:59:59...]
72 hours! It overlapped perfectly with the opponent's operational window!
Lin Mo's pupils constricted slightly, but his heart actually settled. The system had provided clear counterattack objectives and a timeline, which was much better than passive guessing. He immediately cast aside all distracting thoughts, his consciousness operating at high speed. Combining the faint abnormal signal he had just observed with the real-time data stream from "fuxi," a clear, bold, and highly aggressive countermeasure plan instantly took shape.
"Shanxiao," Lin Mo's voice was steady, carrying an unquestionable decisiveness, "notify Director Long and Engineer Su that the countermeasure plan 'Mirage' is initiated. I need 30% real-time computing power priority from 'fuxi,' as well as deep data weaving permissions from 'Weaving Net' for the target city and the surrounding three provinces."
"Understood!" Shanxiao did not hesitate for a second, immediately sending the command through a top-secret channel.
Almost instantly, Long Zhantian's reply came: "Permissions granted. Do you need ground coordination?"
"Not for now. Keep silent to avoid alerting the enemy," Lin Mo's fingers flew across the virtual keyboard. "First, let's muddy the waters."
As soon as he finished speaking, the images on several screens in front of him changed abruptly. On the left screen, in the graph representing "Fuxi" computing power allocation, a thick blue light pillar surged up, occupying nearly one-third of the area. The right screen was like an erupting volcano, with countless lines of light representing data generation and flow beginning to radiate and interweave frantically in all directions from that small Jiangnan city.
What Lin Mo wanted to do was not simple hiding, but actively creating a superstorm in the digital world—a "information fog" where truth and falsehood were indistinguishable!
Step One: Myriad Phantoms.
He first invoked "fuxi's" massive database and generative models. Combining them with Lin Mo's early real activity data (the original data of which had been strictly protected), he instantly generated over a hundred highly realistic "Lin Mo Digital Avatars." These avatars possessed different behavioral patterns: some simulated an unemployed youth continuing to look for work, leaving carefully designed browsing and application records on major recruitment websites; some simulated a tech enthusiast, posting encrypted posts on specific forums that seemed to discuss cutting-edge technology but actually contained misleading information; some even simulated a trajectory of a short trip to relax due to "pressure," leaving faint traces in the transportation and accommodation systems (all virtual or defunct accounts) of surrounding cities.
The data streams generated by these digital avatars were "naturally" embedded into the massive background noise of the internet by the Weaving Net system in a clever way. Their frequency of appearance, logical chains, and even accidental "mistakes" (such as tiny flaws in IP jumps) were all carefully calculated. They were enough to attract the attention of highly professional trackers without appearing too deliberate.
Step Two: Feint to the East, Attack in the West.
Almost simultaneously with the phantom actions, Lin Mo initiated a more provocative phase. Through several previously reserved encryption protocol seeds—similar to those used when Patriot X sent anonymous emails in the early days but now defunct—he sent several fragments of information to overseas monitoring nodes suspected to be related to Craig's forces. These fragments were multi-layered with disguises and contained contradictory content. One hinted that the "target might be hiding in a northwestern industrial stronghold," another pointed to a "scientific research institute on the southeast coast," and another was even more obscure, seemingly related to "northern border trade."
This information was like bloody scraps of meat thrown into a wolf pack, immediately triggering violent fluctuations in the opponent's monitoring network. Lin Mo could even reverse-monitor through "Fuxi" that shortly after receiving the information, the data interaction volume of those nodes surged several-fold. Clearly, internal emergency evaluations and resource reallocations were underway.
Step Three: Deeply Hidden Bait.
This wasn't enough. Lin Mo knew well that the most formidable hunters often only believed the truths they "unearthed" themselves. He utilized the deeper capabilities of Weaving Net to start manipulating the physical surveillance level of the small city and its surrounding areas. It wasn't about deleting or blocking, but "adding" and "modifying."
In the archived footage of the city security system under "fuxi's" control (parts of which had been covertly covered by Weaving Net via backdoors) around transportation hubs and old rental houses that "Ghost" might focus on, rendered blurry figures were quietly planted. These figures resembled Lin Mo's physical characteristics but differed in details. They appeared at different points in time, acting either hurriedly or cautiously, faintly echoing the online traces created by the digital avatars earlier.
Even more brilliantly, Lin Mo used a special algorithm to simulate extremely faint residual signal characteristics—similar to what his personal quantum terminal (already upgraded with encryption) might produce on specific frequency bands—that could be captured by ultra-high-sensitivity equipment. These signal characteristics were like ghosts, intermittently "flickering" between several unrelated areas with high population flow in the small city (such as large shopping mall parking lots and library Wi-Fi hotspots). They appeared for very short durations and with extremely weak intensity, as if the target were conducting brief and cautious communications or data transmissions in these places.
These three moves were launched synchronously within almost ten minutes. The false information, both online and offline, proliferated like a rolling snowball, interacting and spawning even more "clues." The entire small city and its surroundings, on a data level, instantly became a giant maze filled with echoes and mirror images.
The effect was instantaneous.
In an ordinary business hotel less than fifty kilometers from the small city, "Ghost," who had just checked in and was opening his laptop, furrowed his brows tightly.
On the screen before him, the automatic pushes from the Prometheus system suddenly grew exponentially. Hundreds of new clues regarding "Lin Mo" or his associated signals emerged almost simultaneously, with red dots densely packed.
Northwest? Southeast? Northern border? "Ghost" browsed quickly, his professional instinct immediately telling him this was highly likely to be interference. But interference had levels; such large-scale, high-fidelity interference itself indicated that the opponent's resources and reaction speed were terrifying.
What alarmed him even more was that the several passive sniffing nodes he had set up after connecting to the local network actually fed back several extremely tempting yet contradictory physical signals—those residual characteristics suspected of being quantum communication were actually appearing in several far-apart locations simultaneously?
"Viper should have received them too..." "Ghost's" eyes were cold as his fingers slid quickly across the touchpad, trying to find even a single thread of truth from this massive amount of junk information. He believed in his own judgment and Prometheus's deep analysis capabilities, but faced with this unreasonable tactic of saturation coverage using massive false information, he also had to slow down his pace to perform more time-consuming cross-verification and logical cleaning.
He knew that his and "Viper's" precious 72-hour window had been silently eroded from this moment on. And they hadn't even been able to confirm whether that young man named Lin Mo was truly still in this city or had long since made a clean getaway.
Inside the mobile fortress, on the screen in front of Lin Mo, the progress bar representing the mission completion rate was rising from 1% at a slow but steady pace. Simultaneously, a dynamic map generated in real-time by "Fuxi" showed that with the small city as the center, the data streams representing the enemy's reconnaissance forces had already begun to show obvious signs of confusion, dispersion, and resource internal friction.
"The fog has risen," Lin Mo leaned back in his chair and let out a soft breath, his eyes growing sharper. "Let's see how long it takes you to walk out, or... if you'll start fighting among yourselves in the fog first."
Shanxiao glanced at Lin Mo's calm profile from the rearview mirror, feeling a secret chill in his heart. This young national scholar didn't act often, but when he did, he stirred the winds and clouds, turning the digital space of the entire region into his home field and trap. This method of hearing thunder in silence and using the enemy's own strength against them was more profound and unfathomable than a direct fire confrontation.
The fortress vehicle continued to glide silently along the new route planned by "fuxi," driving into the deeper night.