Virus Release

Holy shit, seriously?!

Yin Qi, sitting not far behind Tang Shizhe, stared in shock at his departing back. A thousand alpacas stampeded through her mind. What happened to that perfect comeback? How had Tang Shizhe overtaken me instead?

Quiet! Quiet! Maintain order in the examination room!

No whispering! At the proctor's reprimand, the somewhat chaotic examination room finally quieted down.

Tang Shizhe paid no attention to the commotion he had caused. He leisurely rode his little donkey home.

Exam week passed in the blink of an eye, and all the students breathed a sigh of relief. No matter how they had done, the semester was over.

"According to observations by our country's largest orbital astronomical satellite, an unusual astronomical phenomenon has appeared in Pluto's orbit within the Solar System."

"However, due to the extreme distance, we currently have no way of determining the specifics of this astronomical phenomenon."

"Experts say it may merely be an ordinary cosmic ray burst, so the public need not worry." Tang Shizhe lay on his beanbag chair, boredly watching the news on television.

News like this was made purely to boost ratings, just like the countless comets that had supposedly brushed past Earth.

"Boss! Our virus is finished!" Tang Yi's delighted voice suddenly came from the communicator beside Tang Shizhe.

Tang Shizhe had specially installed this communicator because of his persecution complex. He now doubted the security of the internet and telephones, so an offline video phone had become his best option for the time being.

"Got it. I'm coming over now!" Tang Shizhe grew excited as well. What did this mean? It meant his wallet was about to get fatter!

Tang Shizhe sprang up from the sofa and hurried toward the factory building.

A few minutes later, in a private room partitioned off on the second floor of the factory, Tang Shizhe and ten Splitters stood around a computer monitor assembled from ten screens.

"Boss, this virus of ours is actually not complicated. It can infect images of every format and hide within them. The moment a computer decodes and reads an image, it will be quietly breached. There's no way to prevent it!"

"Furthermore, before it receives the activation signal we send out, this virus won't display any aggressiveness at all!" Tang Yi explained, pointing to a picture of a beautiful woman on the screen.

"This virus spreads through images? What exactly does it do?" Tang Shizhe nodded and asked.

"Any computer infected with this virus will be unable to open images of any format, as well as documents of any format, such as RD documents."

"All we need to do next is make some sticker packs and pornographic images. Once the virus is embedded in them, we can start spreading them across the internet!" Tang Yi continued.

"Very good!" Tang Shizhe patted Tang Yi on the shoulder, then turned and left in satisfaction. From here on, money would keep flying into his wallet.

In Tang Shizhe's plan, solving the problem after getting infected was very simple: pay 0.01 Leiden Coin.

This virtual currency did not yet see much circulation, and not much had been mined. At present, each coin was worth roughly five hundred RMB, meaning that in the beginning, infected users would only need to pay five RMB to recover their files.

Five RMB was merely the cost of breakfast. The effort or money needed to reinstall a computer or use other methods far exceeded that amount, so the overwhelming majority of infected people would choose to pay the ransom.

Moreover, this virus did not just target computers; it also targeted the Android system! However, because of its closed nature, the Splitters' current technology could not infect the iOS system.

But the combined number of Android phones and internet-connected computers worldwide definitely exceeded two billion. How much money was that?

Even if only ten percent chose to pay the ransom, that would still be one billion RMB!

Tang Shizhe quickly assigned the tasks, then took out his remaining five hundred thousand and began sweeping up all kinds of virtual currencies online.

He bought tens of thousands to over a hundred thousand worth of Dogecoin, Catcoin, and the like. In the end, only two hundred thousand remained for Leiden Coin.

This would greatly reduce the chance of him being exposed.

Two days later, a huge number of brand-new sticker packs flooded the internet. These funny, adorable stickers instantly became wildly popular, naturally with no small amount of help from the Splitters' paid commenters.

Next, a large number of pornographic images began spreading through various chat groups. They also kept appearing on websites and forums, and those quick on the draw saved them onto their phones and computers before the images could be deleted.

Thus, the virus Tang Shizhe had named Lucky Cat entered the computers and phones of a large number of people first.

Because the infected phones and computers had not yet received the signal sent by Tang Shizhe, they showed no abnormalities whatsoever.

Whenever they sent new images to other devices, the virus continued spreading to new computers and phones through the images they transmitted.

Its spread rose geometrically. In just one afternoon, over a hundred million devices had already fallen!

In this modern era, where people loved using stickers to communicate, this virus's ability to spread was simply off the charts!

"Not enough! Still not enough!" Tang Shizhe stared with bloodshot eyes at the numbers constantly changing on the computer screen before him.

By this point, the virus had spread throughout the world. Countries in the Americas, where image-based socializing was popular, had become particularly hard-hit areas.

Especially when it was nighttime in the Xia Kingdom, the Americas had just welcomed daylight!

One hundred and ten million!

One hundred and twenty million!

The numbers on the screen jumped frantically.

However, just as the number reached two hundred million, a post on the World Hacker Forum caught Tang Yi's attention.

<I found some suspicious code in the latest sticker packs. Is there any expert willing to analyze it with me?> The instant this post appeared, Tang Yi realized that things were going badly.

Someone might discover the existence of this virus!

"Boss, we have to activate these viruses now. If we wait any longer, we'll alert these people!" Tang Yi turned around and urged Tang Shizhe, who was standing behind him.

"What a shame. We've only infected two hundred million devices. Activate it." Tang Shizhe sighed regretfully.

After all, two hundred million devices could only bring him a limited amount of money.