Chapter 83: The Sword Demon Returns

While Tian Jia was absorbed in his work, Zhou Dongyun took Little Ma by the hand and walked to the side, watching the members of the workstation operate their systems.

After a quick look, Zhou Dongyun frowned slightly. This kind of attack could not be called stupid, but it could not be called especially clever either; it was professional-grade work, above average. Under Tian Jia’s rules, and based on the other side’s algorithm, there was danger, but for the moment it was not too severe. After all, this was not some shut-in’s laptop. In military terms, there was plenty of depth and room for error here.

Given the other side’s algorithm, even if it was technically sophisticated, it was not miraculous. In that situation, they would need enough computing power and bandwidth to brute-force the lock. Otherwise, as Tian Jia had said, all they would obtain would be fragments of useless, incomplete memory data.

“Idiot!”

Little Ma seemed to become a different person, staring coldly at the screen as he muttered those words.

That made Zhou Dongyun freeze. That was just how Brother Ma was. The problem was whether he was insulting Tian Jia, or the intruder.

A moment later, greed showed on Tian Jia’s face. “Idiot... I’m about to catch you. You’re just a bunch of punks with sticks attacking a military camp. I don’t know where you learned that pathetic bit of technique, but with this method and not enough computing power or bandwidth, let’s see how you play it.”

As he spoke, Tian Jia kept typing from the stance of a spectator, even lifting his head to shoot Little Ma and Zhou Dongyun a look filled with inexplicable mockery. Then he lowered his gaze to the screen again and said, “The janitor in the bathroom, I’m not going to say you’re peeking at my trade secrets, since Zhou Dongyun brought you here to look. I’ll just ask you this: can you even understand it? Do you know what skill and ability are?”

“President Tian is omnipotent... amazing...” The people around him grew excited in response, because they also felt that they were about to catch the intruder.

“Idiot!”

Ma Weimin had no intention of watching any longer. He sat down beside them, indifferent, and said nothing.

Zhou Dongyun felt that something was wrong. Technically, what Tian Jia was saying was more or less correct. Yet in the old Huaihai Campaign, military theory had also said victory was impossible, and in the end it had become a crushing triumph. In this world, anything was possible. Above all, Zhou Dongyun had some mysterious admiration for Little Ma, and when he entered that aloof master mode and called someone an idiot twice in that strange tone, she felt deeply uneasy.

Just like last time, after he had said “idiot” twice, she herself had been beaten into a state of total incomprehension.

War is deceptive. Not seeing a problem does not mean there is no problem. Failing to find the problem while the problem is already happening. In truth, that was the biggest problem.

So Zhou Dongyun nearly shouted, “Tian Jia, are you still messing around? And you still haven’t cut the power and shut the system down!”

“Stop babbling and interfering with my work. Showing off clumsy tricks before a master only makes a fool of yourself!” Tian Jia said.

There was nothing she could do about him. But this man had really been like this since school days.

So Zhou Dongyun walked up to Little Ma and said, “Is it Masked Sheep?”

Fine. When in his Demon King state, he did not care for anyone, but thanks to her almost primordial, little-girl-like affinity, Little Ma thought for a moment and said, “I won’t go into details. I’m only eighty percent sure it’s him. If it is him, then the entire approach here is wrong. There’s a high chance this place is already doomed. If Masked Sheep is acting alone, his computing power is limited, but he will definitely have a follow-up deployment. If he isn’t acting alone, for example if he’s working for the CIA, then the defensive rules and computing power here are nowhere near enough.”

Zhou Dongyun changed color. “You mean...”

Ma Weimin said flatly, “Yes, it’s obvious. If he isn’t acting alone, then what he wants is everything, not just memory data. He is merely pretending to be greedily accessing memory. Doesn’t this scene feel familiar?”

Zhou Dongyun’s face went green. More than familiar. It was almost an upgraded version of the old offensive and defensive battle in Yangcheng. The opening tactic by which Sword Demon had crushed Masked Sheep was now exactly the tactic the other side was using against Tian Jia. That made the possibility of it being Masked Sheep even greater.

But Tian Jia had already gone mad and could no longer be reasoned with. Zhou Dongyun stamped her foot. “Little Ma, do this as a favor for me. We’re at this point already, and I’m not confident myself. My mind is getting muddled. Take action now, break the permissions, and seize control of the system.”

Zhou Dongyun was both desperate and tense. She truly wanted to see Sword Demon return at this moment.

Unfortunately, even though it was the real Sword Demon state, Little Ma was not willing. He slightly shook his head, indicating that he only wanted to watch coldly with no concern for anything.

In order to smooth things over for him, Zhen Yuqi was very quick-witted and helped Little Ma out, saying with an air of absolute uprightness and principle, “We cannot follow Dean Zhou’s suggestion. Tian Jia has to authorize us before we can operate the computers here. Otherwise we would be breaking the law. Especially now that he has already ordered a strict prohibition, if we hack in and seize control of the system, we would violate even more statutes, and serious ones at that. If we can’t control it and something really happens here, then the three of us, you and I and him, will all be taking the blame.”

That left Zhou Dongyun helpless as well. It was a bit bureaucratic, but it was the truth, flawless and beyond reproach. To a certain extent, this was precisely her “job duty” here. The authorities had not asked her to come just for show. If something like this happened under her watch and she neither reported it nor stopped it, her responsibility would be even greater.

And so they fell into a deadlock. Zhou Dongyun gave up, sat down with a dark face, and no longer even looked at the screen.

It had not been easy to get a close look at Masked Sheep, and now Tian Jia had ruined it. Missing the chance itself was one thing, but if it really was Masked Sheep, then the matter would be much bigger. Tian Jia would lose without question, and it might even lead to more serious consequences.

The one who truly understood nothing about power was Tian Jia. Did he think that because he had grown up in a greenhouse, he could act as willfully as he had at Xiamen University? Government agencies had rules; yes, no matter how foul his mouth was, they would not make things difficult for him. But the true client behind this incident was not only the government, but also the Poseidon. The composition and background of those people were far more complex. If Tian Jia botched their business, then heaven help him if his so-called foreign daddies really were as righteous, principled, kind, democratic, free, and tolerant as he thought they were.

“Idiot! You’re already dead!”

When Ma Weimin said that for the third time, the entire hall erupted into chaos. Excited shouts and even curses rang out everywhere, mixed with the blare of electronic alarms.

Zhou Dongyun could only shake her head inwardly. It felt like reliving history. Sometimes losing a war really was not difficult. Opportunity and danger always coexisted. Perhaps it was only a single thought from the commander that ultimately gave rise to those epic rivers of blood.

“Damn it! It really is Masked Sheep! Your grandma’s Masked Sheep! What he wants is not memory data, but everything!”

At some point Tian Jia’s expression had become extremely ugly. He had stopped operating the keyboard and was now pounding it, because his own permissions had been locked out in return.

The beautiful woman, her face almost black with rage, stood up and said, “President Tian is finished. We’ve been locked out. We were fooled by his shell. When he was accessing the memory data, he implanted specially encrypted deceptive data. This is electronic warfare’s open attack hiding a covert advance. We kept thinking our bandwidth and system resources looked normal and unoccupied, because our monitoring program was being deceived by the memory data he had implanted. The truth is at the lowest layer. Our data has been continuously accessed and transmitted from the very beginning. The bandwidth has already been heavily occupied, and it is nearly over!”

That was a bit of hindsight, but at least this woman had been the first to raise the issue.

While smashing the table, Tian Jia roared, “I don’t need you to tell me that, I can see it too. Cut the power, shut it down, cut the power, shut it down! What are you all standing there for? Are you dead or what?”

Zhou Dongyun felt her vision darken at the sight of this, but there was simply no solution. Including Tian Jia, many of the staff tried to start the power-cut procedure, but to no avail, because basically everything had been locked down and no one could access it.

Some people tried forcibly yanking out the workstation power cables, but it was useless. It was still that beautiful woman who first grabbed the phone and planned to call the machine room on the third basement level to forcibly cut the power physically. But the call could not connect, the line could not be reached, and even the phones had been locked.

If, when Little Ma said “idiot” for the third time, Tian Jia had not been pounding the keyboard but had instead decisively used the intercom to contact the distribution room, there might still have been a sliver of hope.

Unfortunately, by the time things had gone this far, even that sliver of hope had officially been declared dead. Tian Jia did finally pick up the intercom, but with Masked Sheep now effectively controlling the entire scene, and with a new change in the memory data he had implanted, commands sent through the system emitted a powerful electromagnetic pulse that interfered with Tian Jia’s intercom call. The machine room and the distribution room had no idea what was happening and could not make out a word Tian Jia was saying.