Scholar's Advanced Technological System

New York.

The window blinds were closed inside an apartment with the air conditioner blasting in the background. The dark and cold room felt like a hospital morgue.

Three large monitors sat on the desk, where empty red bull cans scattered around the room.

A man went into his room with a pizza in his hand. He sat down at his desk and clicked on his mouse.

Three dark-themed code terminals filled his screen.

Most people would be confused by the lines of code on the screen, but not him.

“Finally…

“I got you! Perfect!”

Lone Wolf smacked his lips and smirked. He grabbed a slice of pizza and began biting.

He had completed another server hack.

Even though the Boss didn’t order him to do anything, he believed that it was time to extend the attack to beyond media companies.

After all, it wasn’t like they were an organization that had strict rules. Not to mention almost all of the Chinese media outlets had already been hacked.

He sifted through the lines of code and laughed at the thought of the Chinese administrators sh*tting their pants.

However, his account on a dark web forum received a message.

[Did my “shipment” arrive?]

He wasn’t talking about a real shipment, but rather an attack request, such as a DDOS attack or something of a similar nature.

A DDOS attack was a similar cyber-attack method that could be done by noob hackers. Therefore, it was much more efficient for expert hackers to “order” these attacks instead of carrying out these attacks themselves.

Lone Wolf clicked on the unread message.

However, he suddenly froze.

[Um, Master is letting you a chance to redeem yourself, so you should surrender. ( ́◔‸◔ ‘)]

“Pfft…

“Hahaha!”

Lone Wolf laughed and leaned back on his computer chair. He deleted the message and logged off his sockpuppet account and logged onto a backup account.

“What a joke… You think I’m going to surrender just because you found my account? Go f*ck yourself!”

Finding his sockpuppet account ID wasn’t difficult, the entire hacker circle was paying attention to this event.

Anyone that looked through his account history could tell that he was part of the Eagle Hunter group.

Thus, he wasn’t worried at all. Trying to find his personal information from his sockpuppet account was nearly impossible.

However, on one of the terminals, he suddenly saw the Jin Ling University server light turn green.

This meant that their trojan was removed by the server administrator, and their server was online.

Do these fools want to die?

“Do they know who they are up against?”

Lone Wolf placed his hand on the keyboard. He was about to give them a lesson.

However, after he pressed down the first key, he was shocked.

A dialog box suddenly jumped out on his screen, displaying a string of unknown characters.

[(*・Ω・) ✄╰ひ╯]

Lone Wolf: “???”

…

Cyber Security Bureau.

Inside an office.

Even though it was late into the night, the workers were still here.

A can of Coke was sitting on the computer desk as Director Hong stared meticulously at the computer screen. He suddenly spoke.

“F*ck sake, these rats!”

The enemies were like sneaky rats, biting them left and right.

Director Li from the State Administration for National Defense was also there. He frowned and asked, “Has the safety warning been issued?”

The technician sitting next to them looked at Director Hong and received a nod. He then looked at Director Li and spoke.

“It has been issued, but it won’t do much. Companies like Tencent and Alibaba already have good security. Some medium-sized companies received our notices, but there is nothing they can do… In fact, I think our warning might have increased the panic.”

Director Hong said, “It’s still better to inform them, what else can we do?”

“… There’s nothing else other than to switch the roles and become the attacker ourselves.”

The office suddenly became quiet, only keyboard tapping sounds could be heard.

Director Hong coughed and said, “Okay, forget about it. The higher-ups will never approve for us to attack. Once we become the attackers, that means that China has declared an international cyber warfare. Even though we were the ones that were hit first, we will be blamed… Right now, we need to collect evidence and find where these people are, then ask the local authorities of that country to arrest them.”

Not to mention that they didn’t even know who and where the attackers were. If they were to somehow retaliate, the international political damage would be unthinkable.

Also, the International Lunar Hadron Collider Conference was underway, affecting the international political situation was exactly what the hackers wanted.

Director Hong coughed and said, “How’s the server recovery going?”

The information security engineer sitting in front of the computer spoke in a tired voice.

“Most of the large media domains have been restored… I’ve restored at least a dozen websites now, but we can’t keep doing this forever.”

A technician sitting in front of the computer in military clothes suddenly made an announcement.

“We found a new website with abnormal traffic activities, and it is now confirmed to have been hijacked.”

Before Director Hong could speak, Director Li spoke first, “Who is it this time?”

“The state Trade and Development Council website.”

After Director Hong heard that another website had fallen, he furiously slammed the table.

“Motherf*cker!”

The attack had spread beyond media websites and onto government departments.

Director Hong began to sweat.

Even though the major government department websites had reinforced security, the Chinese government was so large that there were just too many servers and websites. They could only rely on the servers’ built-in firewalls and defenses.

And this wasn’t his biggest worry.

If the attackers expanded their battlefield and attacked the medical, energy, and logistics industries, the damage could be catastrophic…

The losses would be unbearable.

However, the engineer sitting at the computer screen suddenly frowned and looked closer at his screen.

“Wait a second, something is wrong.”

Director Hong immediately said, “What?”

“The attacker’s traffic data we were tracking has disappeared…”

Director Hong suddenly turned blue.

“Did the attackers find us?”

The information security engineer shook his head and said, “I’m certain they haven’t found us… They all just inexplicably disappeared one by one.”

Director Hong wanted to ask what was going on, but a sonorous voice came from the side.

“The Trade and Development Council website is up!” the man in the military uniform said. He stood up excitedly and said, “It seems like they’ve retreated!”

Director Hong frowned and carefully stared at the screen.

“But why did they retreat?”

The engineer shook his head.

“I don’t know…”

He was 100% certain that the attackers didn’t notice them tracking their data traffic.

However, there was no other reason for them to retreat like this.

This was amazing for those servers that were under attack, but the Cyber Security Bureau wasn’t happy about this at all.

Not catching the attackers meant they were open to a second attack at any time.

If they couldn’t find out what the reason behind the retreat was, they wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight.

Director Hong looked around the office and spoke in a firm tone.

“Continue the investigation, it doesn’t matter that the attacks have stopped, we have to find them!”

“Okay!”

Even though they didn’t win the battle, it was still a small victory.

The “soldiers” in the office were still fighting on the front line.

Director Hong nodded and went into his office. He was about to sit down, but he heard a knock at his door.

“Come in.”

The door opened and a skinny employee walked in.

“Director!”

Director Hong: “What?”

“We just received an email… It’s a bit special.”

“What kind of email?”

“There’s some strange code in the email, and also some text saying…” The staff member hesitated for a bit and said, “They found the attacker’s IP address.”

They found the attacker’s IP address?

Director Hong was ecstatic.

He immediately asked, “Who sent the email? Did we have a way to contact them?”

“No…” the staff member shook his head and said, “The email is signed by one person.”

“Who?”

“Dr. Z…”

Director Hong: “…?”

Director Li: “???”