You Look at Me, I Look at You, Mixue...

"You're right, Tiger. I've found some unusual traces."

In a large room filled with electronic equipment, dense wiring, heat sinks, monitors, and KFC family-bucket packaging, a slovenly middle-aged man in an oversized Pikachu T-shirt, his hair like a tangled bird's nest, spoke as he yawned.

"I can't access any deeper information, and this equipment doesn't support it either. But over the past few hours, I really have detected some unusual web crawler activity with a very clear target."

"These things have been watching several ancient novel and literature forums, as well as some backup sites run by individual webmasters, like rabid dogs."

"With visits this frequent and repetitive, the servers behind those pages will probably get blown out."

"Their signatures are complicated too. Anyway, they don't match any public search engine in my records."

"Of course, that's not the main issue. The main issue is... I looked through the search keywords, and the terms you mentioned really are among them."

The voice coming through his headset was accompanied by a droning wind. It sounded as though the person on the other end was somewhere near an air vent.

"Fatty, can you trace them to anything specific?"

At that, Fatty merely tapped a few keys and brought up another set of complex charts, projecting them onto the largest central display.

On the chart, countless dotted lines in different colors, each representing a different source of data flow within the dark web, intertwined with one another.

They crisscrossed and tangled, suddenly branching, breaking, and converging at different nodes, forming a vast, nearly chaotic web that trembled faintly as if it were alive.

"Probably not..." The man before the computer pondered for a moment, his voice carrying a hesitant note of frustration. "The IP pool is way too mixed up. Proxy relays are scattered all over the world. There's no way to sort it out."

After a pause, his eyes quickly swept over the analysis progress bar in one corner of the screen before he continued, "The final trace analysis did point several core nodes toward... Hmm, forget it."

The words took a turn as they reached his lips. Fatty probably just found a verbal explanation too troublesome. "Same old email. I'll send you the charts and data directly in a bit."

After casually switching the data parsing process, a network-node topology map that had been simplified in real time appeared across his monitors. Though the overall image had become much blurrier, several deep red points had been distinctly circled.

Judging by the corresponding IPs, most of the locations involved were overseas.

"But I have to say, these really are places that normally shouldn't be interested in things like 'web novels' or 'mythological content.'"

Having noticed a few details, the plump middle-aged man known as Fatty merely chuckled.

"...But I can't trace any further."

"Also, I've scraped a few job listings from data recovery service websites, as well as freelance platforms like Upwork."

As he spoke, he deftly pulled up several windows.

"These high-paying commissions only appeared in the past couple of days. They all seem related to the book you mentioned, along with research into related history and legends."

"Some people are even offering high salaries to hire experts specializing in mythology, folklore, and similar cultural fields as 'private consultants,' hehe..."

With a press of Enter, several commission summaries quickly appeared on the screen, their titles and reward amounts glaringly conspicuous.

"Look at the requirements here." He stroked his chin and examined them carefully for quite a while. "They're basically all trying to find people who can recover site caches, webpage snapshots, and the like from websites that reposted or preserved the specific contents of that book early on..."

"Oh, and files from personal computers, folklore research by certain independent scholars, historical artifact archives."

"Let's see... Eight Million Gods: Takamagahara Series... On the Origins of Ancient Athens and Jupiter Worship... Bible Analysis and a Comprehensive Comparison of the Old and New Testaments... Lovecraft's Original Manuscripts... Detailed Voodoo Doctrines and an Appendix of Voodoo Specimens... A Biographical Study of the Patriarchs of Jainism..."

"Good grief, that's pretty impressive. They've even dug up texts buried underground and private collections..."

Narrowing his eyes, Fatty stared at another screen resting on a dark interface and asked in confusion.

"But I've got a question, Tiger. Does that web novel have a lot of versions?"

"Why are the public commissions so straightforward, while the dark web is full of people asking for all kinds of versions, supplementary settings, even rare annotated editions?"

"What does it mean when they say there's a huge reward for a complete collection of the author's offhand worldbuilding for that book?"

Judging from his expression, the fat man working at the computer was genuinely baffled.

"Hey, what do you mean, this book and that book, Fatty? Can't you just say the title directly?"

"Haha, I'm not stupid. From your reaction, those terms are probably already on the public network surveillance and data-scraping lists. Why would I mention them for no reason? What, trying to use your buddy here to boost your performance, kid..."

The voice on the phone paused, as though he couldn't help coughing, before sounding again. "Fatty, how about coming over to give me a hand? We don't have many people in the bureau who really know their way around the internet right now. We urgently need talent like you to join us."

"Haha, forget it, forget it. Maybe ten-odd years ago, but now my skills are already outdated. I wouldn't be much help to you guys."

With no intention of pretending otherwise, Fatty's refusal was unmistakable.

"...Fine, I can't persuade you. Then that's it. Next time I'm on leave, I'll come drink with you, so don't run off!"

"Cut the crap. If you bring baijiu, I won't run!"

After chattering for a few more sentences, Fatty's smile quickly collapsed only once he heard the signal on the other end disconnect.

With a sigh, his mood visibly sank.

Many times, whether people were willing to face it or not, the years had already changed far too much.

Sunk deep into an ergonomic chair polished smooth by age, the man, who showed no concern whatsoever for his figure, casually grabbed a large piece of boneless fried chicken from a takeout box. Its exterior was golden and crisp, but it had clearly gone cold long ago, and he stuffed it into his mouth.

He chewed it a few times, then grabbed a bottle and gulped down two mouthfuls of cola.

Soon enough, perhaps stimulated by the trace of Aspartame in the happiness water, a few traces of a smile suddenly returned to his greasy face. Rubbing his hands together like a fly, he said, "Heh, all right. Let me see what's going on here..."

The overly sensitive nodes really weren't easy to touch casually, but not every node could have protocol configurations of that level.

Just as he impatiently booted up a backup server and busied himself trying to further analyze the related traffic in those records—the portions that had passed through data center nodes in neutral overseas countries and were clearly encrypted using a new obfuscation protocol—

His somewhat pudgy fingers still moved back and forth with a fair amount of agility.

Amid the crisp, rapid clatter of keys, what Fatty failed to notice was that on the screen beside him, among several relatively smaller displays beneath a split projection—

The interfaces that had been silently cycling through network traffic monitoring, dark-web node statuses, and encrypted communication channels—

For an exceedingly brief span of time, so brief that neither human vision nor data detection could truly capture any trace of it, a faint silver glimmer suddenly flashed past—

As if some invisible "gaze" had wandered through the depths of the ocean of data...

Then, through that thin liquid-crystal barrier, it quietly glanced at the plump middle-aged man, already immersed in his own world and completely unaware that anything was amiss.

By now, it wasn't merely a few organizations that possessed broad mechanisms for dispersively capturing keywords and related information.