As he stared at the hacked website on his screen,
Chen Fan was so angry that, for a moment, he laughed.
To be honest, he had anticipated all sorts of moves from his rival.
But he had never expected his rival, once pushed to desperation, to choose the most despicable option.
Hiring someone to hack his website.
Chen Fan had seen far too much of this kind of dirty business in his previous life.
He had long since grown used to it.
He was not particularly furious, just a little rueful.
Sure enough, business competition in 2000 was no different from what it would be ten or twenty years later.
It was always a fight to the death, with nothing off-limits.
In a fit of rage, his rival had gone straight for a hacker.
Instead, Chen Fan felt relieved.
Since you were the first to play dirty, you can't blame me for what comes next.
After all, Chen Fan could not compete with his rival when it came to pouring money into promotion.
But when it came to computer skills, Chen Fan believed he was not much worse than the hackers of this era.
He first got up and discussed it with Zhou Honghai.
When Zhou Honghai heard that Chen Fan needed somewhere quiet and a computer to himself,
he promptly offered him the office next door.
Chen Fan had no time for polite formalities. He hurried into the office alone and opened a web page.
Zhou Honghai glanced in from the doorway. Seeing Chen Fan hammering away at the keyboard, he was curious, but did not approach to watch.
Since Chen Fan had specifically asked for an office, whatever he was doing had to involve some degree of privacy. He did not want anyone watching.
Zhou Honghai had at least that much social awareness.
Zhou Honghai closed the door and left, while Chen Fan quickly went online and opened several forums.
There was no time to make his own specialized tools now, so Chen Fan simply logged into several hacker forums and downloaded a few small utilities.
Then he began tracing his way across the network to his rival's Easy Domain Network.
A little over ten minutes later, the Easy Domain Network's official website had been hacked and would no longer open.
Chen Fan had also taken the opportunity to access the administrator backend and view some of its data.
It turned out that, after days of interference from paid trolls, the Easy Domain Network's traffic had plummeted. Rather than rising, its daily online user count kept dropping.
Even some longtime users had been driven away by the forum's toxic atmosphere, abandoning the site for the Domain Name Network.
Seeing those figures, Chen Fan could not help laughing to himself.
No wonder his rival was panicking.
Apparently, he was close to buckling.
Just then, the warning system on his computer sounded an alarm.
The hacker hired by his rival had come knocking.
The corner of Chen Fan's mouth lifted.
"Perfect timing. Let's see how good you are."
The two sides traded blows. At first, the other side attacked while Chen Fan defended. Yet even after ten minutes, the attacker still could not breach the Domain Name Network's firewall.
Then it was Chen Fan's turn to attack and the other side's turn to defend.
In just three minutes, Chen Fan easily broke through the defenses and gained administrator privileges on the forum.
He even came close to tracing the connection back to the hacker's identity.
At the last moment, however, Chen Fan stopped and voluntarily withdrew.
The hacker on the other end had probably already broken out in a cold sweat.
Chen Fan had originally intended to give his opponent a small lesson and leave it at that.
Unexpectedly, the hacker approached him again and left him a special, encrypted QQ number.
Chen Fan hesitated, then decided to use a new QQ account he had registered earlier to add the hacker as a friend.
The hacker's QQ nickname was Desert North Swordsman, and the account also had a five-digit QQ number.
Chen Fan's account was named "Drunk on a Pillow, Bathed in a Breeze," and still used QQ's original default avatar.
As soon as the friend request went through, a message arrived.
"Master?"
Chen Fan frowned and sent a question mark straight back.
Drunk on a Pillow, Bathed in a Breeze: "?"
Desert North Swordsman: "Thank you for sparing me, Master."
Chen Fan realized the hacker was referring to how he had just had the chance to uncover the hacker's identity, but had pulled back in time.
The hacker had also mistaken him for a true master hacker hiding somewhere on the internet.
After thinking it over, Chen Fan decided this might be an opportunity.
He could coax some information out of the hacker.
Drunk on a Pillow, Bathed in a Breeze: "Are you the founder of the Easy Domain Network?"
Desert North Swordsman: "No, no. The Easy Domain Network's owner paid me to do a job."
"He gave me ten thousand yuan to hack the Domain Name Network."
Chen Fan was speechless.
That's everything spilled already? I barely even asked anything.
Their brief clash had clearly left quite an impression on the hacker.
Desert North Swordsman: "Master, may I ask if you're the founder of the Domain Name Network?"
Drunk on a Pillow, Bathed in a Breeze: "No comment!"
Desert North Swordsman: "Understood, understood. I shouldn't have asked."
Suddenly curious, Chen Fan asked, "You didn't finish the job. How are you going to explain that to your client?"
Desert North Swordsman responded with a chuckle.
"I made it clear before I started. My job was to hack the Domain Name Network, not help him protect the Easy Domain Network..."
Chen Fan did not know whether to laugh or cry.
Desert North Swordsman: "Master, I really admire your skills. Could you take me on as your apprentice?"
Chen Fan answered without hesitation, "Sorry, not interested."
Desert North Swordsman: "Then... if there's a chance in the future, could we keep exchanging ideas?"
This time, Chen Fan did not reply immediately. Instead, he stared at the hacker's avatar for a few seconds and thought it over.
Only then did he type his answer.
"Sure. But I can't promise I'll reply every time."
Desert North Swordsman: "Understood, understood. Masters are always mysterious."
Well, Chen Fan did not have to say a word. The hacker had already built a persona for him.
Just as Chen Fan was about to close the chat window, Desert North Swordsman suddenly sent another message.
"Master, do you know the founder of the Domain Name Network?"
Chen Fan sent another "?".
Desert North Swordsman: "Here's the thing. The Easy Domain Network's founder just contacted me and said he wants to make peace."
"He's admitting defeat and wants a truce. He's asking the hacker to let him off."
Chen Fan laughed.
"He was the one who attacked first, and now he's the one asking for peace. Does he really think it's that simple?"
Desert North Swordsman: "Personally, I think he was driven to desperation."
"Master, if you can contact the Domain Name Network's founder, please pass along that he's willing to make peace."
"And as long as there's a promise not to use hacker attacks again, he's willing to offer some compensation for this incident."
That immediately caught Chen Fan's interest.
"What compensation?"
Desert North Swordsman: "A transfer of ten thousand yuan."
"As long as everyone promises not to use hacker attacks anymore and to compete fairly instead, he's willing to transfer the money immediately."
Ten thousand yuan.
For Chen Fan at that moment, it was indeed a huge sum.
But Chen Fan still was not quite satisfied.
To avoid exposing his identity,
Chen Fan typed back, "I'm only passing messages along. Whether this works out isn't up to me."
"Wait."
With that, his avatar went dark.
Chen Fan deliberately waited a little over ten minutes before sending Desert North Swordsman another message.
"They've agreed. But the compensation isn't enough."
"At least fifty thousand, to cover restoring the website this time."
"And both sides must promise to compete fairly in the future and stop using hackers to attack each other."
Desert North Swordsman: "..."
"I'll go ask."
Before you continue