An Approaching Storm

You followed the convoy westward, passing through the Great Wilderness and arriving once again at Scrap Mountain. Here, people always worked together; those who went it alone mostly couldn't survive. Fortunately, you found an intermediary, and after paying a hefty fee, you successfully joined the Slag Gang.

Your talent in the hacking domain exploded this year. Initially, you were unknown throughout Punklorde's internet, but after successfully breaching the defenses left by several renowned hackers and leaving behind an electronic graffiti tag of a White Fox, you began to gain fame.

The name White Fox also became a rising star frequently discussed in hacker circles today.

At sixteen, a handy weapon is crucial for survival in Scrap Mountain. Through Aether Editing technology, you crafted a holographic weapon entirely programmed with an Aetherium Chip. Its form could change in various ways, sometimes even disguising itself as an umbrella or a travel bag, which greatly facilitated your movements here.

Your talent in the hacking domain was quickly noticed by the Slag Gang's boss. To test your loyalty, he sent you to participate in several gang wars, intending to use you for internal power struggles.

Over several months, you flawlessly completed the missions he assigned, surviving almost every encounter by the skin of your teeth. This earned his trust, and he began to cultivate you as a confidant.

At seventeen, you gained considerable prestige within the Slag Gang. As your relationship with the underworld boss grew closer, he started exposing you to different levels of things—power.

You traveled with him between the Oasis District and Scrap Mountain. You truly witnessed the so-called upper class, and the Slag Gang, the criminal organization, was indeed just a tool used by high-ranking officials in the Oasis District to handle dirty work, just as you had investigated. You didn't know the specific details of that official or ever met him, only that his codename was "Owl Serpent."

Following local custom, the codename you chose during work exchanges was the one the madam had given you: "White Fox."

After this change in identity, your work also shifted. From previous gang wars and internal power struggles, it transformed into hacking into the networks of "Owl Serpent's" political opponents to obtain their confidential information.

Of course, the nature of this work was entirely different from gang warfare. If you discovered that an opponent of "Owl Serpent" was actually one of the few upright officials, you would deliberately mislead and encrypt the information.

However, there was one rather ironic thing. In the process of completing "Owl Serpent's" missions, you indirectly investigated the information of almost all the officials in Punklorde's Oasis District. While you still couldn't confirm whether "Owl Serpent" or someone else was responsible for your parents' deaths, you found that almost none of the officials from the Aetherium Chip development companies, whether allies or rivals of "Owl Serpent," were clean.

All crows are black under the sky; almost everyone had their stains, which significantly reduced your guilt about participating in these affairs.

Sometimes, when on business trips to the Oasis District, you thought about visiting the fast-food restaurant again, but you ultimately dismissed the idea, hoping that Silver Wolf would live a normal life as you envisioned. However, you occasionally heard news about her, such as the fact that she had dropped out of school two years ago when you left the Oasis District, and was only working at the fast-food restaurant.

At eighteen, after selectively eliminating many of "Owl Serpent's" political rivals, you were also promoted by him, successfully entering the government supported by the "Punklorde Network Corporation."

Due to your youth and striking appearance, you were favored by many noblewomen. You even earned the nickname "Canary" within the entire upper-class social circle, and many government officials were eager to introduce their daughters to you.

[You couldn't find the book title, maybe try searching for the author! They might have just changed the name!]

At nineteen, after entering the Oasis District's government, you gradually saw many things clearly. Cases like your parents' were common throughout Punklorde; the conflict between the Great Wilderness and the Oasis District had existed in Punklorde since ancient times. But this year, something shook all of Punklorde—someone in the Great Wilderness had successfully developed a crude version of the Aetherium Chip, meaning that the Aetherium Chips, originally controlled by the "Punklorde Network Corporation," would now flood into the wilderness area on a large scale.

From a production standpoint alone, if the people of the Great Wilderness possessed and mastered the use of Aetherium Chips, it would rapidly improve their current living conditions.

However, from a macroscopic perspective, you didn't believe this was a good thing. The reason was the extremely sharp conflict between the Oasis District and the Great Wilderness at present.

Hundreds of years ago, when Punklorde's "Sage" first created the Aetherium Chip, many residents of the Oasis District voluntarily went into the Great Wilderness to pioneer new lands. At that time, Aetherium Chips were a shared resource for both the people of the Great Wilderness and the Oasis District.

But as generations passed, the passion of the initial "pioneers" had long since extinguished, and their descendants lived in the harsh environment of the Great Wilderness. After several natural disasters in the Great Wilderness and the Oasis District's refusal to provide aid, the relationship between the two sides continuously deteriorated.

Eventually, it escalated into Punklorde's first global network war. With the reality-editing capabilities of the Aetherium Chip, the destructive power of this war was even more terrifying than direct armed conflict.

The outcome of that war was the tragic defeat of the Great Wilderness and the overall defeat of Punklorde. Cities crumbled, civilization was nearly destroyed, and the terrifying nature of the Aetherium Chip was fully revealed at that time.

The "Punklorde Network Corporation" was established then amidst the ruins of the Oasis District and controlled the distribution of Aetherium Chips throughout Punklorde. From then on, Aetherium Chips rarely flowed into the Great Wilderness.

But now, with the conflict between the Great Wilderness and the Oasis District reaching such a point, and with Aetherium Chips flowing in large quantities into the Great Wilderness, what did this signify?

You dared not think in that direction, but it couldn't change one fact.

The shadow of a second global network war had already cast itself over all of Punklorde.

The storm was brewing.

Today is the first day of Bread's official debut. How far this book can go is directly related to today's performance.

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