Reborn: The Return of the Villainous Mr. Liu

Jia Lin arrived at her cabin the next day with vigor and enthusiasm. She sat back on her chair and lazily stretched her arms. She checked her mobile and seeing the continuous onslaught of messages, her brow twitched in annoyance.

People just don't have patience. It will be any day now.

Her assistant stepped in and said, "Mam, Sir Zixin has asked for you."

"Oh. Okay. I will be heading there in a second."

The door closed behind her, and she smiled.

It seems the day is today. Quite fast.

Jia Lin entered the CEO's office and bowed. "Good morning, Sir. You called for me?"

"Yes."

Zixin's voice hinted at iciness and gaze unfriendliness.

"Is this about the Luster project's assigned resources? I am almost done with it. I will be ready with the presentation tomorrow."

"I wonder if there is a tomorrow for you."

"Sorry?" She blinked.

Assistant Ling arrived by then along with Guiying, who stood at a distance from Zixin's table.

"Good morning, Cai Guiying," Jia Lin merrily chirped.

Guiying said nothing.

Assistant Ling said, "Sir has something to show you."

She curiously craned her neck slightly to see him starting a video recording. Her gaze stiffened at what was being shown to her.

"Doesn't this…seem to be CCTV footage of last week?"

Zixin said, "Keep watching."

The point in time came in the clip where it dawned upon her why she was called in the office. The clip ended and Assistant Ling closed his laptop.

"Do you have anything to say?"

Jia Lin calmly but immediately responded. "Somebody has framed me. I never sneaked into your office and accessed Cai Guiying's laptop. Is this about the wrong email being sent?"

"You would know it better than anybody."

"With due respect, Sir, I don't."

"This clip was deleted. Somebody did. Guiying had to restore it to reach the truth."

She looked at Cai Guiying with poise and confidence. "I am innocent. I don't know who put me in there, but I have nothing to do with your predicament. I didn't do anything to your laptop. Didn't the IT guy himself say that your system was clean? Which means nobody accessed it right?"

"No. It means that they didn't need to put any remote bug in my system. I thought about it. How did you just sneak in and logged into my laptop? I didn't see you inserting anything in the USB drive or anything to break my password."

"Exactly."

"But then it occurred to me that you approached to talk to me. You were standing behind me as we laughed. My laptop was locked at that time. Then you asked me if I could show you a sneak peek of my story draft. Just because you were curious."

"Yes? What was wrong with that?"

"Naturally, I had to login back into my system. My work is stored in my cloud account. So you saw me inputting my system password. You stood right behind me. You read my fingertips pressing the keyboard buttons and you remembered it."

"That's absolutely ridiculous."

"It isn't," Guiying shot back. "If we rewind the clip again, we can zoom in to check that you were keenly looking at me typing. You stored my system password in your brain so that you wouldn't need to maliciously access my laptop and pose the risk of getting caught."

Jia Lin showed a hurt expression. "How could you believe all this? I welcomed you with open arms. We joked and laughed. Why will I make this ploy? I don't have anything against you."

Zixin intervened at that point. "Not personally. Professionally, yes. Just yesterday, I received a job application. The position was cited as my assistant. This application came from none other than your nephew. It's strange. The applications for my assistant position don't just pop up whenever. This came at the time when it was possible that an action might be taken against Cai Guiying, especially since the board was involved."

She stiffened.

Guiying said, "I remember. You said once that your cousin's son was looking for a job but he always failed. I believe if I would be kicked out of the company because of my error, then you could get your nephew in for the job. You are the HR head. You would have easily made arrangements for the opening and convinced Assistant Ling."

"That's horrible!" She trembled. "I am being accused left and right. Sir this is all false. Let's say for argument sake that I remembered your password, but how would I alter the CCTV video clip? I am not an IT person to hack. If anyone then blame Zheng Jiao. She must have some secret agenda against me."

Zixin stared at her. "You forget, Mrs. Jin. You are not an IT person now. But you were before. Your work experience entails working in the IT industry for ten years before you switched to the HR side in Chen Corps."

"...That was a long time ago, Sir. I hardly remember anything about that world now. I have lost my touch. Certainly, I am not capable of hacking into systems. And why isn't Zheng Jiao being questioned? She is the most suspicious person of all. Guiying's laptop was in her department for two whole days. Isn't it so easy for her to just walk in and do anything she wants?"

"She can but she hasn't. The video clips of the IT department are clean. No alteration. I cross checked it with my own hacker I know. She is the best. She is the one who found the altered clip that we just showed you. And not only that."

He slid a file towards her.

"You were smart to try to hide your presence behind fake IP addresses and countries and what not but not before the Queen. She combed through and dug out your identity. You altered the footage."

Jia Lin read trace log output files of Chyou's software that had neatly unmasked Jia Lin's real home IP address from where she had deleted the video part of her sneaking into Zixin's office.

One look through all those parameters was enough to tell her that the hacker wasn't any bogus. In fact far from that. Just from the trace file alone, she could sense how complicated but ingenious Chyou's software might be to catch her identity despite all the top protections she had used.

Zixin narrowed his eyes. "Confess now?"