Rumors

Chapter 13: Rumors

Huang Ji first replied to him on Baidu Tieba, asking several questions about aliens.

Yet after waiting for quite a while, the other person never replied.

He scratched his head and continued sensing the other person's online information.

"A Penguin account? Nickname: 'Tonight Beat Tiger'? What's that supposed to be?"

By probing deeper into the information tied to the man's Baidu Tieba account, Huang Ji learned that he had once sent his Penguin account number to a fellow forum user through a private message.

Although that private message had already been deleted, Huang Ji could still find it.

Since this was information rather than a physical object for him to observe, Huang Ji had no way of learning the information associated with that Penguin account.

But it did not matter. Huang Ji searched Baidu and soon learned what a Penguin account was.

"Oh, so it's this software!"

Huang Ji immediately opened the little penguin program that came with the computer and casually registered an account according to the tutorial he had found.

Then, using the search function, he found the other person's Penguin account. Now he had something tangible to observe!

As he stared at the Penguin account named "Tonight Beat Tiger" and its profile picture, Huang Ji continuously acquired information about it!

He even learned the other person's password, along with every conversation they had had with all their friends using that account...

Of course, Huang Ji could not process it all in such a short time. Faced with a huge pile of useless information spreading out before him, he filtered out most of it. Then he chose to add the person as a friend, hoping to speak with him directly.

"Hmm, a verification question? What's my favorite game?"

Huang Ji blinked and slowly typed three letters with two fingers: "WOW."

Done. That was the answer.

"Hmm..." Huang Ji took a sip of water and went to the bathroom.

After waiting for quite a while, the other party still had not accepted his friend request. Seeing that it was getting late and that he still needed to return to the bookstore, Huang Ji logged directly into the other person's Penguin account!

After manually adding himself, he waited for the other person to log back in...

"Hello. I'm very interested in aliens, but I have a few doubts about what you said," Huang Ji slowly typed.

The moment he sent that message, a barrage of text came crackling in from the other side.

"Die, you account-stealing mutt!"

"What's this? Dogs can use the internet these days? Look at your pathetic face, and you still dare add me as a friend? Calling you a piece of shit would be giving you too much credit!"

"Look at that ugly mug! What did aliens ever do to you? Why aren't you interested in Great Strength Bubble Roll instead?"

"I'm seriously impressed! I've lived this long and never seen such a stupid dog! You stole an account and still have the nerve to actively ask questions? Give you a broom and you think you can fly to heaven?"

"What, can't type? Why aren't you saying anything? Which family member of yours has gone to Western Paradise?"

Such a huge flood of text came firing over like a machine gun.

Huang Ji was completely stunned!

"???" His mind was full of question marks after being cursed at like that. Yet this was his first time using a keyboard, and he was unfamiliar with typing, so he could not even manage a single retort...

So this was the internet...

Huang Ji stared at the screen. The other person launched wave after wave of attacks, becoming more energized the more he cursed. As the messages crazily flooded the screen, not a single sentence was repeated!

He repeatedly tried to formulate a response, but before he could type even two characters, the other side had already sent another two or three sentences. He could only delete what he had written.

Huang Ji watched the other person ramble on endlessly, feeling rather speechless. After some thought, he calmly typed a line.

"Dong An, can you shut up?"

"..."

The other side truly fell silent for quite some time.

Then another string of messages arrived, repeatedly demanding to know how Huang Ji knew his name.

He also kept guessing whether Huang Ji was one of his childhood friends or perhaps an internet café manager.

No matter what the other person said, Huang Ji simply kept typing his own words with two fingers.

"I ask, you answer. Can you stop doing a solo comedy routine?"

Dong An was deeply unwilling to accept that. He crackled out another torrent of insults. To be fair, he did not use a single swear word.

Huang Ji's head was aching. Silently, he sent two strings of letters and numbers: Dong An's World of Warcraft account and password...

The other side fell silent again. Huang Ji smiled and continued sending messages, listing all of Dong An's main accounts, alternate accounts, and storage accounts.

"Sir, I'm young and ignorant. Please don't hold it against me!"

When Dong An saw that every game account and password he had painstakingly maintained had been sent out by Huang Ji, he immediately caved!

Huang Ji rolled his eyes. He had already given up much hope for this person, feeling that he probably did not know anything useful.

Still, just in case, he decided to ask.

Huang Ji disliked how slowly he typed. After thinking for a moment, he sent a video call request.

Before long, a skinny monkey-like man appeared on camera. Of course, Huang Ji had not installed a webcam, so the other person could only see darkness on Huang Ji's end.

Putting on his headphones, Huang Ji listened to the other person say, "Sir, what is this about? Someone as capable as you wouldn't possibly need to steal my account. Right?"

Huang Ji carefully sensed him and felt somewhat disappointed.

Sure enough, it did not work. Through video and voice, he could not obtain Dong An's human information.

In other words, this did not count as seeing or hearing the other person.

As expected, I still need to look at someone directly with my own eyes. What I'm seeing now is only an image translated from electromagnetic signals onto a computer screen, not Dong An himself.

The same goes for sound. What I obtain is still information from the computer, information about electromagnetic signals, rather than information about the person himself.

It was like looking at a photograph. Huang Ji could only obtain information about the photo itself, not information about the person in it.

To understand a person, he could only see them in person or directly make contact with them.

After confirming this, he asked solemnly, "Where did the evidence for your claims in that alien discussion post come from? How do you know astronauts have seen aliens?"

Dong An said, "It's all foreign conspiracy theories. Some people inferred it from details in interviews with certain astronauts. I heard that foreign hackers even broke into FBI classified files and claimed the government concealed the existence of aliens..."

The skinny monkey on screen talked endlessly. One moment, he said a spacecraft had crashed and alien corpses had been dissected by Americans. The next, he said the aliens were not dead and had reached an agreement with America to help them develop weapons. Then he said Area 51 had flying saucers hidden in an Underground Base.

At first, Huang Ji listened very seriously. But gradually, he realized this person might just be making things up.

Then Dong An added, "Oh, right. I actually suspect America never landed on the moon at all. The live broadcast back then was filmed in advance. People overseas have already exposed it and pointed out all sorts of suspicious details in the moon landing footage."

"America has never landed on the moon. Otherwise, why has technology regressed after all these years?"

"Look, the moon has no moisture, so how could those footprints be so clear? And those shadows weren't cast by a single light source... It was obviously filmed in a studio..."

He babbled on and on, bringing up all kinds of speculation and "evidence."

At last, Huang Ji lost his patience.

The moment he heard the claim that the moon landing was a hoax, Huang Ji immediately realized the other man was purely guessing.

Huang Ji knew perfectly well whether the moon landing was fake.

Whenever he looked up at the stars at night and saw the moon, he could directly see "the number of times the moon had been landed on by humans." The answer was six.

Not only that, there were 24,483 pieces of human trash left there.

Most of the trash consisted of spacecraft fragments and wreckage, followed by American flags, lunar rovers, laser reflectors, and so on.

With those things there, the moon landing could not possibly have been a hoax. Yet the suspicious details Dong An pointed out about the footage sounded so convincing.

Fortunately, my Information Sense can verify the moon landing. What he says sounds very plausible, but it is wrong.

In that case, his earlier claims about aliens, despite the evidence he cited and the logic behind his reasoning seeming so credible, were probably mostly wrong as well. They were nothing but wild guesses...

Huang Ji shook his head, realizing how foolish he had been.

He had seen some random person's remarks online and thought that he might know something about aliens.

Thinking about it now, he had been far too naive.

So this was the internet... What a disappointment. He had never encountered the internet before. With only a half-baked understanding, he had rushed online and placed expectations that were too high on the information it could provide.

Still, the information he mentioned about classified FBI files and the Area 51 Underground Base isn't completely useless.

As long as I go take a look, I'll know everything. And the astronauts—whether they have seen aliens or not—I'll know that too once I meet them.

After pondering for a while, Huang Ji ended the video call with Dong An, shut down the computer, and left.

After this experience, he gave up the wishful notion that he could easily obtain vast amounts of intelligence just by casually searching around.

Any mystery, any truth—I only need to visit the scene and meet the people involved face-to-face, and every secret will become clear.

The matter of aliens isn't urgent. I'll set it aside for now. My priority should still be studying.