4: Chapter 4 Anonymous Emails Shock the Highest Levels of the Dragon Kingdom

Lin Shen's body was steadily recovering, but his inner anxiety grew day by day.

The deduction progress of the technology tree was slow, and the pressures of the outside world—through the news, his parents' occasional worried conversations, and the snippets he saw while secretly browsing restricted networks on that old laptop—reminded him of the severity of the situation at every moment.

The "satisfaction level" of the first prerequisite for the Photonic Chip Basic Architecture had finally reached 100%.

The gray phantom of the "lock" had faded significantly, appearing almost translucent, as if it would shatter at the slightest touch.

However, the progress of the second prerequisite, "Material Synthesis Path," fell into a terrifying stagnation after reaching 5%.

He needed more, more specific, and more cutting-edge information.

Not just publicly published papers, but also unpublished data from laboratories, failed attempts, and the details of technical route debates.

And these could only be accessed through that internal account of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

How to use this account became the most urgent problem before him.

Using it directly in the hospital ward was foolish.

He needed an environment that was secure, anonymous, and capable of relatively stable access to high-speed internet.

The opportunity appeared three days before his discharge.

After a comprehensive evaluation, Dr. Chen announced that Lin Shen could go home for follow-up rehabilitation, only needing to return to the hospital for regular check-ups.

This news made his parents overjoyed, and they immediately began to make arrangements.

"Going home is good, it's good!" Wang Huilan wiped away tears, "Everything is ready at home, and the air is better than in the hospital. Mom will make sure you get properly nourished!"

Lin Jianguo also rarely showed a relaxed smile: "Yes, home. Your room, your mom cleans it every day; it's exactly the same as when you left."

Lin Shen felt warm inside, but a plan was also quietly taking shape.

Going home meant more freedom and privacy, and it also meant... having the opportunity to access the old equipment at home.

His family lived in an old-fashioned work unit residential compound; the house was quite old, but it had the advantage of being quiet.

Most importantly, his father, Lin Jianguo, was a retired signal soldier. Although he had been retired for many years, he still had an interest in various electronic devices. There was a small "work corner" at home, featuring an old but well-maintained desktop computer, as well as some tools like old routers and network cable testers.

Lin Shen remembered that his father had once fiddled with the home network for a while in order to study stocks (although he hadn't made any money).

On the first day home, after getting settled under his parents' careful care, Lin Shen "casually" brought up the computer.

"Dad, that old laptop of mine feels like it's on its last legs at the hospital; it's slow and laggy. I haven't been online in a long time. I want to check the news, look up rehabilitation materials, and so on... Can that desktop at home still be used?"

Lin Jianguo was watering the flowers on the balcony and turned his head upon hearing this: "It sure can! I turn it on and wipe off the dust every once in a while, and I've reinstalled the system, so it's clean. The configuration is a bit old, but it's definitely fine for checking news and looking up information. Do you want to use it? I'll move it to your room right away and run a network cable for you."

"No need to move it, I'll just use it occasionally. It's fine right there in your work corner, no need to go through the trouble," Lin Shen said hurriedly. "You don't need to specifically run a network cable either; I'll just use wireless internet."

"How can wireless be as stable as wired!" Lin Jianguo put down the watering can, perking up. "Your health is what's important right now, and you shouldn't strain your eyes while online. I'll adjust the height of the desk and chair for you, and run a better network cable. I guarantee it'll be fast and stable! I'm familiar with the wiring in this building; I was even involved in laying it back in the day." The veteran's enthusiasm was ignited, and he had quite the air of returning to his old profession.

This was exactly what Lin Shen had hoped to see. The network environment set up by his father personally at least ruled out the possibility of having specific surveillance devices implanted (given his family's level, they weren't worth targeting).

The old desktop's system was clean, and his father reinstalled it regularly, which also reduced the risk of getting a Trojan horse.

Although the equipment was outdated, it should be barely sufficient for logging into the internal account to consult literature.

Over the next two days, Lin Jianguo indeed began to optimize the home network with great enthusiasm.

He even dug out some old network equipment, set up a simple wired access point, and connected it directly to his work corner, calling it "creating a green and healthy internet space for my son."

Although Wang Huilan nagged him not to mess around, she let them be when she saw that both her husband and son had things to do and were in good spirits.

Lin Shen, meanwhile, while cooperating with his father to "verify" the network performance (speed tests, ping values, etc.), was carrying out a more precise plan.

He couldn't log into the Academy of Sciences internal account directly on that computer; even if the network was relatively secure, the computer itself could leave traces that couldn't be completely erased.

What he needed was a "stepping stone"—a one-time, anonymous access.

He remembered an extremely old, forgotten "tool" stored on his USB drive—it was from his university days, when, out of curiosity and for learning purposes, he had exchanged ideas with a fellow hacking enthusiast classmate.

The other person had given him a miniature Linux Live system image, along with a very primitive offline proxy configuration script based on a dynamic IP pool and protocol obfuscation.

The technology at that time seemed long outdated now, and any firewall with moderate defense could identify and block it. However, it had one characteristic: it was extremely compact, left almost no logs, and its connection method, from the perspective of today's mainstream surveillance, might be ignored or classified as low-priority noise precisely because it was too old and "non-standard."

Most importantly, it was completely offline and didn't require registering any accounts. It only needed an initial starting point that could access the internet to try to connect, following a pre-set, extremely complex path, to an anonymous gateway that had long ceased to exist but whose protocol was still supported by some edge nodes of academic networks.

The success rate might be less than one percent, but once successful, its traffic would be mixed in with a large amount of obsolete academic exchange data streams, making it very difficult to trace the specific source.

This was a gamble. The gamble was that the Academy of Sciences' internal literature database still retained a very low-privilege read-only channel for access from certain historical cooperative academic nodes (the anonymous gateway simulated exactly such an abandoned node); the gamble was that current network monitoring systems didn't pay enough attention to this kind of "antique" level, extremely small data volume, seemingly randomly failing connection attempts.

He carefully copied the tiny image file and a modified script (replacing the target with the Academy of Sciences literature database basic search interface) from the depths of his USB drive, packed them using a simple self-written encryption tool, and hid them within a few unrelated family photo archives.

On the evening of the fourth day at home, his parents finished watching TV and went to rest early. Lin Shen confirmed that the lights in their room were out before quietly walking into his father's work corner.

The old CRT monitor (his father insisted that this thing was good for the eyes) lit up, emitting a faint hum. The system booted up very slowly.

Lin Shen inserted the ordinary USB drive containing the disguised files, took a deep breath, and began to operate.

He first used the computer to visit a few ordinary news websites and medical forums, leaving behind normal browsing history. Then, he ran a real system cleaning tool he found on one of his father's old software CDs (which was, of course, useless) to create some irrelevant operational traces.

Next, he decompressed the photo archive, released the miniature Linux image and script into the RAM disk, and used a vulnerability to directly load the image into virtual memory to run under the Windows system—this technique was also demonstrated by that classmate when he was showing off back then.

The screen went black for a moment, and a few lines of extremely fast white command-line code flashed by.

His heart hammered like a drum. Lin Shen stared intently at the screen.

The script began to run, attempting to connect. First time, failed. Second time, timed out. Third time... The network connection icon in the bottom right corner of the screen flashed frantically, and the script showed it was trying the 17th preset protocol and port combination...

Time ticked by, and sweat seeped from Lin Shen's palms. Just as he was about to give up and force a shutdown, a tiny line of green text finally popped up on the screen:

[Connection established. Channel unstable, limited to 180 seconds.]

Success!

He quickly pulled up the prepared internal login page for the Academy of Sciences (the address was obtained from that email) and entered the temporary link and verification code.

The page loaded slowly, redirected... and he was in!

It was that familiar, simple internal literature retrieval system interface, with permissions displayed as "Basic Guest."

There was no time to cheer; every second was precious.

Lin Shen had already prepared a list of keywords: Photonic Crystal, ultra-low loss, silicon-based integration, sub-nanometer processing, ion beam etching, molecular beam epitaxy, topological insulator photonics, rare-earth doping...

His fingers flew as he typed into the search box, filtered the time range (the last five years), and began frantically downloading abstracts and full-text PDFs that were available for download.

The system was slow, the connection was unstable, and the downloads were intermittent.

He had to prioritize grabbing the documents with the most promising titles and abstracts.

For some papers that required higher permissions, he could only note down their numbers and titles.

180 seconds passed in the blink of an eye.

Just as he finished downloading the abstract of the seventeenth document, the screen went black, and the connection was severed.

The micro-system automatically uninstalled itself, leaving almost no trace behind.

Only on his USB drive was there an additional encrypted data file that appeared to be corrupted, which stored all the information he had just grabbed.

Lin Shen quickly closed all windows, ran that useless cleaning tool again, and then shut down normally.

He leaned back in his chair, gasping for air as if he had just run a marathon, his heart still pounding violently.

The risk was immense, but the harvest... might also be immense.

Over the next two days, he stayed in his room most of the time, using the excuse that he needed to rest and engage in "cognitive training" (reading literature).

In reality, he was using that old laptop (in an offline state) to decrypt and carefully study the materials he had risked so much to obtain.

The internal, not-fully-disclosed research materials were indeed extraordinary.

He saw the specific progress, real bottlenecks encountered, and even detailed reports on failed experiments from multiple top-tier laboratories regarding Photonic Crystal materials.

This information, like key pieces of a puzzle, quickly combined with his previous deductions.

Many gray areas became clear, some erroneous assumptions were eliminated, and several previously unpromising technical paths regained vitality due to certain marginal positive data found in the internal materials.

His "mental deduction" efficiency increased abruptly!

[Prerequisite 2: Need to obtain or deduce the synthesis path for the key material "Ultra-low loss Photonic Crystal". (Status: Deducing (5% → 21%))]

The progress had jumped significantly!

Moreover, he had also obtained a lot of valuable information regarding sub-nanometer processing technology (Prerequisite 3); although he hadn't officially started deducing this part yet, the cognitive foundation had been solidified.

What excited him even more was that after integrating this new information, his understanding of the overall architecture of the Photonic Chip improved by leaps and bounds.

On the technology tree, the [Photonic Chip Basic Architecture] node itself, besides the "lock" fading, began to show some extremely fine, glowing vein-like phantoms around it—a sign that the technical blueprint was taking shape!

But problems followed.

The higher the deduction progress and the more details there were, the more he realized that to truly realize it, the interdisciplinary challenges that needed to be solved were growing exponentially.

The involved material synthesis parameters, process precision requirements, and multi-physics simulation models had become so complex that they far exceeded the limits of what a single human brain could handle.

He needed more powerful computing tools to perform simulation verification.

And he had no supercomputer, not even a decent workstation.

Just as he was distressed by this, a news broadcast during dinner stung his nerves once again.

A certain Western giant corporation, in conjunction with the federal government, announced the establishment of a "Photonic Computing Industry Alliance," investing huge sums of money and publicly declaring that they would "set the next-generation computing standards," excluding the Dragon Kingdom from the core system.

His father, Lin Jianguo, was so angry that he threw down his chopsticks: "This is bullying! They are trying to push us into a dead end!"

His mother, Wang Huilan, sighed with worry.

Lin Shen finished his meal in silence, returned to his room, and looked at the heavy night outside the window, his eyes even darker than the night.

He couldn't wait any longer.

Passive deduction was too slow.

He had to do something, even if it was just... throwing a stone to see how big of a ripple it could create.

He sat back down in front of the old laptop and opened a standard text editor.

He didn't need to connect to the internet.

Relying on his increasingly clear understanding of the Photonic Chip architecture in his mind, combined with the details and directions provided by those internal materials, he began to try to draft a... "Technical Outlook and Feasibility Suggestion Summary."

This was not a complete blueprint, but rather a highly condensed "Technical Roadmap" and "Key Breakthrough Point Indicators."

He deliberately blurred the specific parameters and material formulas (because he hadn't fully confirmed them either), but clearly pointed out the possible technical paths, the core difficulties that needed to be tackled, and the expected performance leap.

His wording was extremely rigorous, the logical chain was clear, and he cited a large number of public documents (the information from the internal materials was cleverly transformed into reasonable inferences by him), making it look like a strategic analysis report that had taken a top-tier team a long time to research in depth.

At the end of the document, he did not sign his name, only leaving one line of text:

[To those in the Dragon Kingdom aspiring to break the shackles: Light can travel faster. The key is in this direction, willing to lend a helping hand. — An outsider who does not wish to see their homeland trapped]

By the time he wrote the last word, it was already early morning.

Lin Shen checked it several times to ensure there was no hidden information that could reveal his personal identity; the document itself was just plain text, containing no metadata.

The next step was the most critical one: how to throw this "stone" into the "pond" where it needed to go.

Send it directly to the public email of the Academy of Sciences or relevant ministries?

It would likely be drowned out or processed slowly according to standard procedures.

He needed a more direct delivery channel that couldn't be ignored.

He remembered an extremely secret encrypted email address prefix in the internal literature database system, used for emergency communication in extreme situations.

He had caught a glimpse of this address three years ago during a high-security project coordination, when he was strictly warned not to record or use it.

It connected directly to the highest-level technical early warning system.

Three years had passed; was this address still valid?

He didn't know.

The risk of using it was extremely high; once traced (even though he had taken all the anonymity measures he could), the consequences would be unimaginable.

But... was there any better way?

Lin Shen's gaze fell on the technology tree screen, on the [Photonic Chip Basic Architecture] node where the gray had almost faded away and was shimmering with an alluring faint light.

It then fell outside the window, on the sea of lights representing the struggle and hope of countless people.

He closed his eyes and was silent for a moment.

When he opened them again, his eyes were full of determination.

He launched the micro-Linux image and script for the last time—this time, the goal was to try to send an extremely concise ciphertext, containing only the core summary of the document and instructions to obtain the full document (stored in a one-time, encrypted network storage node that would self-destruct after 24 hours), to that remembered encrypted email prefix via the remaining path of that old anonymous gateway.

The whole process took less than thirty seconds.

After sending was complete, all local traces were cleared again.

After doing all this, Lin Shen turned off the computer and walked to the window.

In the eastern sky, there was already a faint glimmer of dawn.

He didn't know if this email would be seen, if it would be taken seriously, if it would trigger the reaction he hoped for, or if it would sink into the sea without a trace, or even bring unexpected trouble.

He only knew that he had done the maximum he could do at this stage.

The only thing left was to wait.

Meanwhile, in the capital of the Dragon Kingdom, inside a building buried deep underground, in the early hours of the morning, a piercing buzzing sound representing the highest priority technical early warning suddenly rang out in a rarely used monitoring room.

The duty officer looked at the screen with sleepy eyes, then his pupils contracted sharply, and he jumped up...