Chapter Six: Digital Archaeology
Inside the Special Investigation Group's office, the atmosphere had undergone a complete reversal from the previous day's absurdity, turning as silent and oppressive as the sea before a storm.
In Lin Feng’s “cyberpunk doghouse,” he projected the high-security “dark compartment” he’d extracted from the Data Core SD card onto his largest 4K curved screen.
It was a strange and beautiful sight.
A matrix of countless translucent, neon blue hexagons pulsed and transformed in rhythm, like a living creature. It looked both like a sophisticated beehive and the digital DNA spiral of some alien species.
This was, in Lin Feng’s career, the most elegant and also most malicious encryption algorithm he had ever seen.
Xiao Ran stood behind the white “demarcation line,” arms crossed, brow furrowed as she watched the screen. She couldn’t decipher the complex code, but she could feel the chilling danger radiating from that ghostly blue glow.
“What is this?” she asked grimly.
Lin Feng didn’t turn around. He put on a pair of special blue-light-blocking glasses, his usual irreverence replaced by a pure, razor-sharp focus. A lollipop dangled from his lips, the stick trembling ever so slightly as he spoke.
“A ghost,” his voice was low and hoarse.
“A ghost that killed my mentor five years ago.”
“And now, it’s come back.”
The words crashed into Xiao Ran like a boulder dropped into a placid lake, stirring up stormy waves in her heart. At last, she understood Lin Feng’s fury at the cemetery had not been aimless.
He was fighting his own fate.
“Can you do it?” Xiao Ran asked.
“No,” Lin Feng’s reply was so blunt it made her heart sink.
“But,” he paused, a manic grin curving his lips, “I like it.”
With that, he donned a pair of custom noise-cancelling headphones.
In that instant, he shut out the world.
The Lin Feng who could barely find his way in the real world vanished, replaced by the omnipotent demon of the digital realm—“Zhurong.”
Thus began a “digital archaeology” worthy of miracles.
He did not, like other hackers, start with brute-force attacks. In his eyes, that would insult both a worthy opponent and himself.
Stage One—Surgical Dissection
He moved like a top-tier neurosurgeon wielding a scalpel. His fingers danced elegantly over the keyboard; each line of code became an invisible, razor-sharp blade. Rather than attacking the “beehive’s” hard shell, he searched the sea of data structures for its most delicate, vulnerable “neural nodes.”
Layer by layer, he carefully peeled back the seemingly seamless encryption matrix. Each layer housed a wholly distinct encryption logic, interlocked and symbiotic.
Xiao Ran and the other tech agents drawn by the commotion held their breath, unable to comprehend Lin Feng’s actions. All they saw was the impregnable “beehive” on screen being deconstructed in an almost artistic fashion.
Stage Two—Reconstructing the Labyrinth
Time ticked by, second by second.
Ten hours later, Lin Feng emerged from his “doghouse.” Without rest, he rushed to the command center’s massive whiteboard, grabbed a marker, and began a feverish scrawl.
Complex formulas, cryptic logic diagrams, and symbols only he understood soon covered the board.
He resembled a mad scientist, forgoing sleep and food as he modeled the universe.
Xiao Ran watched silently. At last, she understood what Lin Feng was doing.
He wasn't cracking a password.
He was using his mind to reverse engineer and fully reconstruct the opponent’s vast and intricate “labyrinth of thought”! He didn’t want merely to find the exit; he wanted to map the entire maze!
Such terrifying confidence, such monstrous talent!
Stage Three—A Resonance Across Time and Space
Twenty-four hours passed.
Lin Feng’s eyes were bloodshot, empty energy drink cans piled into a small mountain at his feet.
Still, he found no breakthrough. The opponent’s thinking was too meticulous, too imaginative, almost without logical flaw.
Just as despair began to set in for all, Lin Feng suddenly stopped writing.
He stared at the “maze map” on the whiteboard, falling into deep contemplation.
Something was off...
There was a strange “rhythm” to the encryption logic. It wasn’t just cold mathematics—it felt more like... like an ancient song, one he knew well.
What was it?
He closed his eyes, letting his thoughts drift back five years to that stifling, humid underground server room.
He remembered Old Lu.
He remembered Old Lu humming an odd, tuneless melody while teaching him to code.
Old Lu had said it wasn’t a song—it was a “password chant” adapted from a long-obsolete military encryption algorithm called “Star Matrix,” used for passing information without radio in the old days.
That melody...
Lin Feng’s eyes snapped open!
He rushed back to his computer, fingers flying across the keyboard.
This time, he wasn’t dissecting or deducing. He was... “playing along.”
He answered the password matrix’s “breathing” with his own rhythmically coded lines!
He’d found it!
He’d found the one true “melody” hidden among billions of possibilities!
It was Old Lu’s last, most precious legacy to him.
The adversary, in his battle with Old Lu five years ago, must have stolen and learned the “Star Matrix” algorithm, weaving it into his own encryption both to flaunt his triumph and mock his dead foe.
But he could never have imagined—the one person in the world still able to “hear” this song was still alive!
“Old Lu...” Lin Feng muttered, watching the password matrix begin to falter on the screen. “This time, let me sing a requiem for you.”
...
Forty hours in.
When Lin Feng hit the final, ceremonial Enter key, the ghostly blue “beehive” that had tormented him for two days finally began to melt and dissolve away like ice and snow.
And there, wrapped deep within, was the “truth from hell.”
Everyone in the command center crowded around, hardly daring to breathe.
First Layer of Truth: The Dormant Trojan Horse
The dark compartment contained no transaction records. Instead, it housed a dormant backdoor program with an Ouroboros icon.
“Is this... a virus?” the tech team leader asked, stunned.
“No,” Lin Feng’s face was grave as never before. “It’s a nuclear bomb.”
Second Layer of Truth: The Real Target
Lin Feng activated the program in a virtual machine and traced its attack path.
Minutes later, when the final target appeared on the screen in blazing red letters, every elite in the National Security Bureau drew a sharp breath.
The target wasn’t Huaxin Technologies.
It wasn’t the National Security Bureau.
It was—the National Modern Payment System (CNAPS)—the main server of the National Financial Settlement Center!
Everyone was dumbstruck.
The “Fisherman” was nothing but a thoroughly used, hapless “courier.” His sole task was to unwittingly deliver this Trojan, disguised as a transaction record, to the vicinity of the National Security Bureau, and lure their techs into cracking it on an internal machine!
Once the internal network was infected, the program would use it as a springboard to launch a devastating attack from the very heart of the nation’s financial lifeline!
What a vicious plan! What a Trojan Horse!
Third Layer of Truth: The Mastermind’s Smile
Suppressing his shock, Lin Feng pressed on with the analysis.
He knew that any program of this caliber would carry an unforgeable author’s “signature.”
Diving into the program’s lowest-level code, after several minutes of searching, he finally uncovered a unique, quantum-encrypted digital signature hidden in an inconspicuous segment of redundant code.
He entered the signature into the National Security Bureau’s terminal, connected to global corporate databases.
Seconds later, a company name and a photograph popped onto the screen.
Orion Capital.
In the picture, a blond, blue-eyed man in a bespoke suit raised a glass of champagne to the camera, wearing a poised and impeccable smile.
It was Anderson.
The truth, at last, was laid bare.
Lin Feng slumped against his chair, drenched in cold sweat, as if he’d just been hauled from a river.
At that moment, an ice-cold bottle of mineral water was handed to him.
He looked up and saw Xiao Ran.
Her eyes were filled with shock, reverence, and a hint of something even she hadn’t noticed—concern.
For the first time, she crossed the white “demarcation line” and stepped into Lin Feng’s chaotic “doghouse.”
That small gesture marked the beginning of the collapse of the invisible barrier between them.
Xiao Ran gazed at Anderson’s hypocritical smile on the screen, her eyes turning icy cold. Slowly, she spoke, her words directed at Lin Feng, yet perhaps also at herself:
“Welcome back, old friend.”
Lin Feng paused, detecting an unusual meaning in her words.
He looked at Xiao Ran and asked the crucial question:
“This Anderson...”
“...do you know him?”