"You were right, Tiger. I found some unusual traces."
In a large room packed with electronics, dense wiring, heat sinks, monitors, and KFC family-bucket wrappers, a slovenly middle-aged man in an oversized Pikachu T-shirt yawned as he spoke. His hair looked like a tangled bird's nest.
"I can't reach the deeper information, and this equipment can't handle it either. But over the past few hours, I definitely picked up some unusual, highly targeted web-crawler activity."
"Those things have been hounding a few ancient fiction and document forums, plus some personal backup sites, like rabid dogs."
"At this rate of repeated access, those sites will probably get overwhelmed."
"The signatures are complicated, too. They don't match any public search engine I've got on record."
"Of course, that's not the main issue. The main issue is... I checked the keywords they were searching for, and sure enough, several of them were the ones you mentioned."
The voice coming through his headset was accompanied by a hum of wind. Whoever was on the other end seemed to be standing near some kind of vent.
"Fatty, can you trace them to anything specific?"
At that, Fatty tapped a few keys and brought up another set of complex charts on the largest central monitor.
Countless dotted lines in different colors, each representing a data stream from a different source on the deep web, wove together across the charts.
They crisscrossed and tangled, then abruptly branched, broke, and converged at different nodes, forming a vast, almost chaotic spiderweb that seemed to tremble like something alive.
"Probably not..." The man at the computer pondered for a moment, uncertainty in his voice. "The IP pool's too messy, and the proxies and relay points are scattered all over the world. There's no untangling it."
He paused, his eyes flicking to the analysis progress bar in one corner of the screen. "The final source analysis did turn up a few core nodes pointing to... Hmm, forget it."
He changed course mid-sentence, apparently deciding that explaining it aloud would be too much trouble. "Same old email address. I'll send you the charts and data in a bit."
He switched to the data-analysis process. On a simplified network topology map now displayed across his screens, much of the detail had been blurred out, but several dark red dots had been clearly circled.
Judging by their IP addresses, most corresponded to locations overseas.
"Though I have to say, these really aren't places that would normally take an interest in things like 'online fiction' or 'mythology.'"
Having noticed a few details, the portly middle-aged man called Fatty gave a chuckle.
"...But I can't trace them any further."
"Also, I scraped a few job postings from data-recovery sites and freelance platforms like Upwork."
As he spoke, he deftly opened several windows.
"They're high-paying commissions posted in just the last couple of days. Looks like they're all connected to that book you mentioned, and to research into related history and legends."
"Some people are even offering big money to hire experts in mythology or folklore as 'private consultants.' Heh..."
He pressed Enter, and several commission summaries appeared on the screen. Their titles and payment amounts stood out.
"Going by the requirements here..." He rubbed his chin and studied them carefully for a while. "They mostly want someone to recover cached pages or snapshots from sites that reposted or saved the book's contents early on..."
"Oh, and files on personal computers, folklore research by independent scholars, and historical artifact archives."
"Let's see. Eight Million Gods: Takamagahara Series... On the Origins of Ancient Athens and the Worship of Jupiter... An Analysis of the Bible and a Comprehensive Comparison of the Old and New Testaments... Lovecraft's Original Manuscripts... A Detailed Account of Voodoo Doctrine, with an Appendix of Voodoo Specimens... Biographical Research on the Founding Masters of Jainism..."
"Wow. That's impressive. They've dug up even buried texts and private collections..."
Narrowing his eyes, Fatty looked at another screen still showing a dark interface and asked in puzzlement, "But I've got a question, Tiger. Are there a lot of versions of this web novel?"
"Why are these public commissions so straightforward, while everyone on the deep web is asking for different versions, supplemental lore, even rare annotated editions?"
"And what's this about a huge reward for a complete collection of offhand lore the author came up with?"
From his expression, the man at the computer was genuinely baffled.
"Hey, enough with 'the book' this and 'the book' that, Fatty! Can't you just say its title?"
"Haha, I'm not stupid. Going by your reaction, those words are probably on public internet-monitoring and data-harvesting lists. Why would I say them for no reason? What, trying to use your buddy to pad your stats?"
The voice on the call paused, as though its owner had stifled a cough, then resumed. "Fatty, why don't you come give me a hand? There aren't many people in our bureau who know their way around networks. We could really use someone like you."
"Haha, forget it. Maybe ten-odd years ago, but my skills are outdated now. I wouldn't be much help."
Fatty made no attempt to put on a brave face. His refusal was plain.
"...All right, I can't talk you into it. That's it, then. I'll come have a drink with you on my next leave. Don't you dare run off!"
"Obviously. Bring the hard stuff and I'll be there!"
After a few more words, the signal on the other end cut out, and the smile on Fatty's face quickly fell away.
He sighed, his spirits visibly sinking.
Whether people wanted to face it or not, time had changed too much.
Sunk into an ergonomic chair polished smooth by years of use, the man, who clearly paid his figure no mind, reached into a takeout box and stuffed a large boneless chicken strip into his mouth. Its crust was fried golden, but it had long since gone cold.
He chewed a few times, then grabbed a bottle and gulped down some cola.
Before long, perhaps thanks to a little kick from the Aspartame in the soda, a smile returned to his oily face. He rubbed his hands together. "Heh. All right, let's see what's going on here..."
The overly sensitive nodes were best left alone, but not every node had security protocols at that level.
He eagerly fired up a backup server and set to work analyzing the portions of the recorded traffic that had passed through data-center nodes in neutral countries overseas—traffic clearly encrypted with a new obfuscation protocol.
His plump fingers moved back and forth, still reasonably nimble.
Amid the crisp, rapid clatter of keys, Fatty failed to notice something on a few of the smaller screens in a split-screen display to his side.
Their interfaces had been silently cycling through network traffic monitors, deep-web node statuses, and encrypted communication channels.
For a fleeting instant, too brief for human eyes or even data-detection systems to truly catch, a faint silver streak flashed across them—
As though some invisible "gaze" had wandered out of the depths of the data ocean...
It passed through the thin LCD barrier and quietly glanced at the portly middle-aged man, who was so absorbed in his own world that he noticed nothing amiss.
These days, the ability to capture keywords and related information across vast networks was hardly limited to just a handful of organizations.