The Opponent Isn't Human

It's Monday of a new week, and the working stiffs are back at their grind.

In an old neighborhood of Baisha City, a young man hunched over as he went downstairs to buy breakfast.

"Hey handsome, the usual?"

"Yeah, and add a serving of stir-fried noodles. Thanks." The young man looked pale, as if he hadn't seen the light of day in years. After paying, he found a spot nearby and started fiddling with his phone.

Why isn't anyone talking?

He expertly opened the Flying Pigeon Chat Group. The last message was from yesterday.

--ice1/2: Bring me a coffee.

They usually just picked one person to go out and buy food around meal times. The rest of the time, they were holed up in their rented room working.

When he left the house today, everyone was still discussing that they should officially start working.

Why is it so quiet now?

ice1/2: ? Did you guys solve it?

One minute passed... five minutes passed...

The message sank like a stone.

"Something's not right." ice1/2 frowned slightly, vaguely sensing that something was off.

"Could it be on fire? Should we call the police?"

"Go check it out! Go check it out!"

Suddenly, shouts came from outside the store. ice1/2 glanced in the direction of the sound.

Could that be~ their rented room?

Black smoke billowed from the window. Combined with the lack of response to his messages, he started to panic.

"Boss! I'll come back for it later!"

ice1/2 hurried back to the rented room, but in just that short amount of time, the fire inside the room seemed to have been extinguished.

In any case, the black smoke slowly dissipated. The onlookers waited for a while and didn't see any movement, so they slowly dispersed as well.

ice1/2 hurriedly took out his key, opened the door, and saw his companions staring in horror at the wrecked computer.

"What happened?"

The fire was obviously caused by a computer malfunction. They handled it skillfully and didn't cause any major damage.

What's there to be afraid of?

"Damn! It's haunted!"

There were a total of 4 people in the room at this time - including ice1/2. This small team had only had three people before yesterday.

A Japanese Contact came yesterday, and today all the computers malfunctioned.

"You son of a bitch, you're screwing with me!" Another Chinese man in the room grabbed the Japanese Contact by the collar and pinned him against the wall, cursing.

The one who spoke earlier was Li Ming, who was also the one in charge of getting jobs for this small team.

The one who made the move was Li Man, Li Ming's cousin. Aside from being a bit hot-tempered, he was extremely loyal to his friends!

ice1/2 was also Li Ming's cousin. His real name was Li Yuan, and he was considered the brains of the small team, but he was a little confused about what was going on.

"Manzi, tell me! What's the situation with your computer?"

"This son of a bitch scared us!"

Li Man had always considered himself brave, but this time he was so frightened that he broke his computer. He was so embarrassed and angry that he couldn't help but want to give him a couple of hard punches.

The Japanese Contact, pinned against the wall by Li Man, tried to explain, but he couldn't understand what had just happened.

Could modern computer viruses cause computer malfunctions and even start fires?

He stammered and opened his mouth, trying to change the subject: "Virus! It must be the other side's retaliation! Aren't you guys professionals? I'm just here to get the data!"

The Japanese Contact spoke fluent Chinese, which was obviously specially selected by the other party.

But he arrived one moment, and the small team almost got wiped out the next. You could only say that his luck was really bad.

"Don't beat him to death!"

Li Ming calmed down and first gave a warning, then described the situation to Li Yuan.

Li Yuan had been smart since he was a child, otherwise Li Ming wouldn't have tried so hard to pull him into this industry.

But frankly speaking, Li Ming was still a little scared by what had just happened.

In fact, the collapse of the Liang Xing Toys Factory official website during this period was the work of the three of them.

Yesterday, the Japanese Contact came to convey the latest instructions. They wanted the Liang Xing Toys Factory's official website to be completely paralyzed!

If there was an opportunity to steal core information, they could also increase the reward.

Although they were limited by patent rights and couldn't directly take it for themselves, slightly repackaging it and promoting their own chips shouldn't be a problem.

Copying in a parallel world is a technical skill!

After all, the platform was a huge mountain blocking their path. Without some skill in packaging, they'd just be throwing away whatever they earned!

Therefore, they saved on any recorded methods wherever possible.

The Japanese Contact's mission was also simple: to bring the results of Li Ming and his team back to Japan.

—If that could be achieved.

After this period of testing, the small team had actually grasped the defensive capabilities of Liang Xing Toys Factory.

The tests also preliminarily showed that someone would only fix the official website after it genuinely crashed for a while.

This time was definitely enough for them to completely paralyze Liang Xing Toys Factory's official website!

Li Ming could easily handle it himself, without even needing the other two to lift a finger.

At first, Li Ming's actions went very smoothly, even giving him a feeling of being unimpeded.

But as the plan progressed, Li Ming felt that something was not quite right.

Too smooth!

And from the start of the attack, the tools he wrote himself could always detect several inexplicable data streams hovering nearby.

When he tried to track them down, these data streams would run away particularly fast.

But if he ignored them, he couldn't shake the feeling of unease.

For the sake of safety, Li Ming decided to have Li Man help out.

A quick battle and quick resolution!

Perhaps he shouldn't have let Li Man help.

It was because of Li Man's intervention that these data streams rapidly grew stronger.

Then, the three of them saw an unbelievable scene.

There were a total of three computers in the rented apartment, all with high-end configurations, of course.

Leaving aside Li Yuan's computer, which was idle, a green monster appeared on both Li Ming and Li Man's computers at the same time.

It was entirely green, with sharp claws and fangs, a tuft of red hair on its head, and a large wooden club in its hand, with traces of screws on the mallet.

"Rua!"

The waving wooden club seemed to want to break through the screen. Li Ming, who was wearing headphones, was startled by the sudden sound and threw off his headphones immediately.

Equally frightened, Li Man punched and shattered his screen. When he came back to his senses, Li Ming's computer was also whirring, and even with the cooling system running at full blast, it couldn't stop the computer from bursting into flames.

"Hehehe!"

The Green Monster Virus grinned even more wildly, until the computer was completely destroyed and the screen went black. It then completely disappeared amidst the laughter that echoed in their ears.

Then a fire started, but it didn't ignite the rented apartment on a large scale. The three of them worked together to put out the fire, and Li Yuan came back before they could clean up.

Ding-dong—

[Hope you like this gift]

In the quiet room, the sound of the email was particularly jarring.

A line of text popped up without permission, full of mockery in its words.

"We're not taking this job. Ming-ge, refund the money!"

Li Yuan stared intently at the line of text. He seemed to see a small, spherical thing behind the text, but it disappeared in a flash.

He couldn't be sure if he was seeing things.

But in their three-man team, Li Ming's practical skills were the strongest, and even he had been inexplicably exposed. Li Yuan knew without thinking that if he forcibly took over, the only result would be humiliating himself.

And that Green Monster Virus... was it a new type of network virus?

He didn't seem to have heard of it.

The sound of fire trucks rang out outside the window. They didn't dare to deal with the authorities!

Would this be considered arson?