Chapter 81: The Sword Demon's Past and Present Lives

“How was I supposed to know? Being handsome doesn’t mean I deserve to be mobbed like this.” Little Ma shrugged awkwardly.

Zhen Yuqi lowered her voice. “You just seemed completely off. You were ranting about losers, and a lot of top doctoral labs took the hit. Also... it seems Colgate and Crest got hit too?”

On the other side, Tian Jia’s face was no longer contemptuous; it was angry now. He had just remotely activated the recording function on the equipment here, only to hear that vixen Zhen Yuqi tearing apart his reputation with a frenzy. Tian Jia was almost ready to kill.

Little Ma’s embarrassment also made Zhou Dongyun feel a little hot-faced. After all, he was the person she had invited. She could only smooth things over awkwardly. “All right, there’s still no result yet. Everyone, stop crowding around.”

Tian Jia clapped and laughed. “Well said, Teacher Zhou. So this is the expert you brought? I told you, he’s only fit to work bathroom shifts. Fine, you insisted on dragging him here, but why don’t you ask him for his brilliant opinion on this incident?”

Zhou Dongyun said, “You’ve blocked my access entirely. Without complete firsthand data, how is he supposed to analyze anything?”

Tian Jia gave her a look that clearly said, “I’m just laughing,” but he still refused to open access or answer her. He simply pretended Zhou Dongyun and Little Ma didn’t exist and kept his head down, busy with his own work.

Zhou Dongyun could only sigh helplessly. In a low voice, she asked Little Ma, “Do you still remember what you were looking at in the car just now? If not, try analyzing it from that. I wanted you to see the full file too, but Tian Jia refuses to cooperate.”

Little Ma had absolutely no recollection of it. But he did know what the Demon King had been thinking at the time.

So Little Ma only said three words:

“Mask Sheep...”

“Mask Sheep...?”

“Mask Sheep...?”

People nearby all stopped working and stared at one another in shock.

Even Tian Jia, who had been listening through the workstation equipment, changed color dramatically and looked this way in hesitation.

“Mask Sheep... are you sure it’s him?” Zhou Dongyun drew in a deep breath, her face full of visible concern.

“Don’t listen to his nonsense.” Tian Jia suddenly stood up. “I don’t know where he heard that legend, but Mask Sheep was already locked up by the American government and sentenced to a lifetime ban on touching electronic devices. Is this story something you, Zhou Dongyun, deliberately planted in him to muddy the waters beforehand?”

“Are you actually eavesdropping on our analysis?” Zhou Dongyun turned and glared at Tian Jia.

“Eavesdropping? This is a public place. It’s my place, my equipment. If you don’t like it, leave. If you stay, then what’s wrong with my procedures and equipment monitoring you? There are cameras all over the streets. If you’re so capable, why don’t you go tear them all down?” Tian Jia said with a mocking, insinuating smile.

Zhou Dongyun looked at Zhen Yuqi. Zhen Yuqi could only nod helplessly, indicating that Tian Jia wasn’t breaking any law.

“Teacher Zhou, are you not going to answer my question? Where did your assistant hear about Mask Sheep?” Tian Jia pressed on.

After Zhen Yuqi had exposed him, Zhou Dongyun had become thoroughly disgusted with him and simply ignored him. At the same time, however, she felt something deeply strange in her heart and began thinking over certain things.

Mask Sheep.

The most legendary hacker ever exposed on Earth.

He was also the first known case in which an electromagnetic pulse was used to violate integrated circuits and turn that into an assassination.

Later, just as Tian Jia said, Mask Sheep was locked away: life imprisonment, and a lifetime prohibition on contact with electronic devices.

He was an assassin, and for a very long time he was also number one in the field.

The most famous hacker platform of its time, Sheep City, was created by Mask Sheep.

Sheep City was not a physical location. It was a dead corner in a virtual world on the internet. In Sheep City, there were world-class ideas, as well as some high-end specialized tools for making and trading electronics.

For a time, just as wealthy men had all wanted to board the Sea God and swagger around, every tech geek in the digital world wanted the qualifications to enter Sheep City.

At the same time, Sheep City would open different hidden entrances every year. Finding an entrance and successfully getting in was a kind of proof in itself—a feat only top hackers could accomplish after endless effort. The process alone was an achievement and a challenge, let alone the fact that Sheep City truly contained the most cutting-edge ideas and algorithms in the world.

Like the supreme holy land in a xianxia novel, Sheep City occupied that place in the internet world. Zhou Dongyun had been paying attention to Sheep City since she was still a young woman.

In the years that followed, the negative effects brought by Sheep City gradually expanded, and countless ugly incidents on the network could almost all be tied to it. As one of the industry’s geniuses, and as someone who kept tracking Sheep City, Zhou Dongyun had developed an algorithm that was ahead of its time. On one occasion, her algorithm actually predicted in advance the next opening of Sheep City’s entrance.

So Zhou Dongyun organized the world-famous “Forty Thousand Red Hackers Counteroffensive” and launched a full-scale assault on Sheep City. This was known in the trade as the First Geek World War.

Though the momentum was immense, the Red side represented by Zhou Dongyun was unfortunately defeated. Afterward, Sheep City struck back, sowing chaos across countless fields.

Even though Zhou Dongyun’s algorithm had successfully predicted and tracked the entrance to Sheep City, defeat was defeat.

Then, one year before the great blackout in New York, the Second Geek World War erupted without warning. On the opening day, a mysterious figure known as the Sword Demon Challenger attacked Sheep City.

After a brutal tug-of-war involving thousands of top hackers from around the world, Sheep City was finally breached. That was the epic “Battle of the Rail Line for Sheep City” in the history of the internet world.

Afterward, rumors spread that the entire rail-line struggle was only smoke and mirrors, and that the Sword Demon Challenger had merely been acting as if in a desperate fight to draw attention—like a digital version of the art of war—making Sheep City believe Sword Demon was an isolated raider whose strength was already spent.

Sheep City was also eager to capture Sword Demon for a decryption breakthrough. Caught in that strategic trap, it walked straight into the snare, and the whole city was slaughtered.

The Sword Demon Challenger attacked with an algorithm and computing power on the scale of a megaton-class weapon.

At the time, countless hacker elites who had taken part in the Battle of the Rail Line for Sheep City were unable to escape. Every one of them was locked down, and all their dealings and files were decrypted. After that, those geeks scattered across the world were naturally subjected to government raids.

The once-arrogant Mask Sheep fell because of the defeat in the Battle of the Rail Line for Sheep City.

In theory, no one should have been able to obtain evidence against Mask Sheep. But, absurdly and almost unnaturally, that guy codenamed Sword Demon could. The evidence that led to Mask Sheep’s life sentence was anonymously provided by the same Sword Demon who had personally launched the Second Geek World War.

These things were only legends. No one could confirm them, because Zhou Dongyun had not taken part in the Battle of the Rail Line for Sheep City.

After the Second Geek World War, aside from the selectively decrypted evidence released by Sword Demon, every other trace had been erased.

Human beings are curious, and Zhou Dongyun was no exception. Because she did not know the inside story of the second war, not only the authorities, but Zhou Dongyun privately as well, kept tracking the new king of the internet. Theoretically, Sword Demon in the Second Geek World War had broken far more than twenty laws, and no one could tell whether he would become a second Mask Sheep. So during that period, everyone was unanimously tracking Sword Demon.

Later, there were rumors that the Red side’s stronghold in the Battle of the Rail Line for Sheep City was located in New York. Thus, a sweeping investigation was carried out there. Just when it seemed as though some clues had finally emerged and Sword Demon’s identity might be decrypted, the famous New York blackout occurred.

It was almost like the city had been carpet-bombed by an electromagnetic nuclear weapon. Who could do such a thing? Who did it? For what purpose? Opinions varied, but from that point onward all clues and evidence were severed.

Taken together, these were the past and present of the two rulers of the internet world: Mask Sheep and Sword Demon.

The authorities had long since stopped saying anything about it. But as an industry authority who had personally tracked both Geek World Wars, Zhou Dongyun had her own private conclusion: the person who caused the New York blackout was the same Sword Demon who had once slaughtered Sheep City. He was also the miraculous youth who, at the age of ten, had left behind ideas at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that were far ahead of his time.

Thinking this through gave her a complete line of logic. Zhou Dongyun was now looking at Little Ma with a strange expression, because she felt that this man might be that legendary figure—the one who had razed Sheep City to the ground and, through the Second Geek World War, established his crown: the Sword Demon Challenger.

She had no evidence. It was only a private suspicion. She might be partly right, but she could not speak recklessly. Zhou Dongyun had always been easygoing, and she did not want to stir up trouble for anyone by talking nonsense.

And apart from the fact that no one knew the truth behind the New York blackout, Sword Demon, by Zhou Dongyun’s reckoning, did not have many dark stains on his record... well, unless that time he used an electromagnetic pulse to hack her computer counted.

On that basis, the more Zhou Dongyun felt that Ma Weimin might be that solitary master without equal, the more she felt admiration and reverence, and the more cautious she became. If it really was him—the man who had personally defeated Sheep City back then—then his statement that it was Mask Sheep carried absolute authority and had to be treated with the utmost seriousness.