Settling In

If these VR glasses were merely one of the hardware devices used to connect to the OASIS servers, they should not have contained the OASIS client code.

But Chen Chen remembered that in the film, the protagonist had used voice commands to make the VR glasses reconnect to the server after the connection was interrupted. In other words, these glasses were more than just hardware for a game—they were a fully functional smart device.

Just like a modern person's phone.

A phone could be used to play games, but playing games was far from its only function.

At that moment, Chen Chen connected the VR glasses to his laptop through the USB interface.

Perhaps because the real world had been mired in war for years and technological development had stagnated, the USB protocol specifications of the VR glasses had not changed, allowing the two devices to communicate with each other.

After connecting them, Chen Chen immediately opened the program, only to discover that aside from the client for OASIS, the VR glasses contained no other software.

Chen Chen frowned, but he was not discouraged. Instead, he used Show in Finder to display the client file's contents.

After opening the client folder, Chen Chen found a huge number of resource files and startup icons, along with several files whose extensions could not be identified.

Those should have been the Mach-O files generated after the code was compiled.

Together, those files took up several hundred gigabytes.

Of course, considering the complexity of OASIS in the film, that size did not surprise Chen Chen. If anything, it was remarkably streamlined.

Over the past three months, Chen Chen had learned a great deal about computer technology, and it finally came in handy.

Chen Chen first found several of the most powerful unpacking programs currently available and tried to unpack the files, but evidently, none of them succeeded.

OASIS's encryption technology was still extremely formidable.

Eventually, the sheer size of the files severely slowed down his laptop and crippled his work efficiency.

By then, only two days remained before the three-month deadline expired.

So Chen Chen simply put away his computer, packed his luggage, contacted the factory director to complete the handover, and moved out of the factory.

After leaving, Chen Chen did not idle around. He spent some time running around before finally finding a secluded warehouse in the coastal outskirts.

"This place was originally built by a small fishing company. Later, the government caught the company fishing too close to shore. After they were fined several million, the company went bankrupt."

At that moment, Chen Chen and the warehouse agent drove up to the site.

After getting out of the car, the agent offered him a cigarette, but Chen Chen waved it away.

Seeing that Chen Chen did not smoke, the agent lit one himself and pointed at the warehouse. "After going bankrupt, that Boss wanted to use this warehouse as collateral, but who'd want this godforsaken place? So it's been abandoned ever since."

Chen Chen walked up to the locked rolling shutter door, crouched down, and touched the ground. The dust was thick, confirming that no one had come here in a long time.

"I'll open it." The agent stepped forward, took out a ring of keys from his bag, and tried them one by one. Finally, he managed to open a gap about half a person's height.

The two bent over and entered the warehouse. It was about two hundred square meters, small for a warehouse, but it had been cleaned very thoroughly. Aside from the dust on the floor and a pile of wooden strips in one corner, there was no clutter at all.

However, because it had been used for years to dry fish, a faint fishy smell still lingered throughout the warehouse.

Chen Chen looked up. The warehouse roof used the most common color-coated steel structure and stood around six or seven meters high. Sunlight streamed through gaps along the sides, scattering bright patches across the dim interior.

"This needs to be repainted."

Chen Chen frowned at the mold stains spread across the walls.

"Repainting is easy. I can hire three or four people, and they'll have it done in two days."

The agent spoke casually. "If you want to rent this place, I'll send people over as soon as I get back."

Chen Chen did not answer. Instead, he took the agent's keys, opened the warehouse's back door, and circled the entire building.

"The location is a little remote, but the price is cheap."

The agent felt somewhat awkward and tried to make conversation. "I heard there was even a murder in those woods behind us. Supposedly, a few years ago, a woman from a nearby village ran out after arguing with her husband. Her family searched all night but couldn't find her."

"Then the next day, after they called the police, the police found her body in those woods. After that, lots of people said the place was haunted. Hahahaha!"

"..."

Chen Chen gave the agent an expressionless look, and the man's smile instantly froze. "Uh, look at this mouth of mine. How about we look at another place? There are several other vacant warehouses available for rent..."

"No. This one will do."

Chen Chen walked up to the slightly rusted rolling shutter door and lightly patted it. "Just hire some people to clean it up. I'll start with a one-year lease."

"Okay, okay!" The agent nodded repeatedly and began making calls to arrange everything.

Chen Chen had chosen this warehouse because it was secluded enough. The nearest village and shops were several kilometers away, while the coast was only four or five kilometers away.

In the film, kidnappers generally chose exactly this kind of godforsaken place when holding hostages.

To ordinary people, this sort of area was a breeding ground for crime, where no one would hear them no matter how loudly they called for help.

But for someone like Chen Chen, it was a prime location with routes in every direction. Once he left the warehouse and slipped into the nearby woods, even several hundred police officers would never catch him.

If things got serious, Chen Chen could even choose to flee by sea.

Of course, this was merely Chen Chen preparing for the worst. If the Federation truly discovered the USB Drive, then even if Chen Chen fled to the ends of the earth, he would still be caught one day.

While the agent had the warehouse repainted, Chen Chen used the computer skills he had learned online to assemble four desktop computers that each cost more than ten thousand.

Once the repainting was complete, Chen Chen moved all his belongings in as well. In just two or three days, Chen Chen's first workplace was officially complete.

In this environment that felt cut off from the rest of the world, Chen Chen officially began the first step of cracking OASIS.

Chen Chen decided to use a dynamic debugging tool to manually unpack it himself.

With the effects of NZT-48, Chen Chen could concentrate his mental focus to an extreme degree. At such high efficiency, he could complete in a single day what would take an ordinary person more than a week.

Relying on that efficiency, Chen Chen spent a full half month before finally locating the true OEP entry point.

Next, Chen Chen once again used decompilation software to gradually display the process by which the program ran in assembly language.

Unfortunately, with the technology available in the Earth Federation where Chen Chen lived, they were still unable to convert OASIS's source code.

But that was enough. What Chen Chen needed was an idea. As long as he could determine the general direction, he was confident he could draw on their approach and create a similar program from scratch.