"Leave it to me, boss. Though... he probably won't dare come back for a second run."
In the library, Chen Xiao closed and reopened the laptop with interest.
He had only made a tentative attempt to enter the White House's internal network, only to be stopped cleanly and decisively. His opponent's seasoned technique had instead piqued his interest.
Dozens of seconds later, the computer finished restarting. His hands blurred once more, streams of data cascading across the screen so fast that even the cooling fan gave off a high-pitched hum.
Inside the cybersecurity agency, Corrod had just risen to leave when that glaring exclamation mark appeared again in the lower-left corner of his screen. His eyebrows rose.
"Back again?"
He sat back down and tapped a few keys. His gaze swept over the tracing route, and the corners of his mouth slowly lifted. "Heh, a familiar face."
"You won't slip away so easily this time."
He looked relaxed. After all, the intruder hadn't even lasted sixty seconds last time.
By industry standards, anyone who could penetrate multiple layers of perimeter defenses and reach the edge of the White House's internal network already qualified as a first-rate hacker.
But to Corrod, he was still a kid who had only just left the newbie village.
Sure enough, dozens of seconds later, he tore through the novice's last layer of disguise and was about to lock onto his real IP address.
But...
"Huh? Interesting."
Corrod abruptly straightened, his expression turning grave. All ten fingers flew across the keyboard like rain, the clatter of keystrokes growing ever more urgent.
Ten minutes later, he let out a long breath and raised a hand to wipe the fine sweat from his forehead.
At that moment, Tart, a middle-aged white man who had quietly appeared behind him at some point, spoke in a low voice. "Corrod, who exactly is it this time? How could they keep you occupied for so long?"
Not a trace of ease remained on Corrod's face. He shook his head slightly. "The same person as before, using the same intrusion route."
Tart froze, looking puzzled. "Then why did you..."
"But this time, he's switching IPs too quickly. So quickly that he's completely outstripping my counter-tracing program's response limit."
Before he finished speaking, his jaw began to tighten.
He had never expected anyone to be capable of cracking devices across different countries in batches and spoofing local IP addresses at a pace far beyond the limits of human operation-faster even than the defensive algorithms he had written himself.
Or, more precisely, that "person" wasn't flesh and blood at all, but a highly optimized, fully automated penetration engine.
Otherwise, how could he compromise hundreds of terminals scattered across the globe within a single second?
This was clearly a top expert, someone who had pushed the most primitive penetration methods to their limits. On the surface, they were old tricks, but underneath lay low-level code precise to the millisecond.
He could jump between tens of thousands of IP nodes in a minute, dispersing traffic around the world and flooding the firewall with vast numbers of fake requests before silently slipping into the core system.
During the morning's probing attack, he had deliberately posed as an inexperienced novice to lull Corrod's judgment. The real killing move had been hidden in the second assault.
But no one had expected him to suddenly disconnect after holding on for a full ten minutes. Otherwise, Corrod would have called for backup.
Even so, he had thoroughly lost face here.
The National Security Agency's top technical expert had actually needed to bring in colleagues to defend against a single intrusion.
They waited another ten minutes or so. Only after confirming that the intruder had vanished completely did the two slowly breathe easier.
Tart clapped his hands and turned toward the tense subordinates in the office. "All right, go get something to eat. Corrod successfully neutralized that attack."
"Vitas, the computer's broken."
In the library, Clarice frowned at Chen Xiao. Black smoke was rising from the laptop on his knees.
An almost imperceptible transparent glow appeared in Chen Xiao's eyes. His gaze penetrated the casing and swept across the motherboard as he nodded. "The motherboard overheated. The cooling couldn't keep up, and the CPU circuitry suffered a breakdown and burned out."
"Oh." Clarice blinked.
"If it's broken, it's broken. Clarice, let's get lunch first."
"I'll head to the underground base this afternoon and ask Teacher Ororo to lend me the main computer."
After lunch, Chen Xiao found Ororo and, using research as an excuse, successfully borrowed the base's main computer.
Storm now trusted him immensely and agreed almost without hesitation.
At two that afternoon, in the monitoring room of America's cybersecurity department,
Corrod's expression changed abruptly, and he shot upright. "Boss, he's back!"
"He's back?"
Tart's gaze sharpened. "This time, everyone works together. We must uncover his real identity!"
As the department head, he had already sensed that the morning's two assaults were no coincidence, and had put the entire staff on alert for the afternoon.
He had also invoked national security to persuade Corrod to accept a coordinated defense.
"Don't worry, boss."
"Leave it to us."
The young technicians around them responded one after another, their tones relaxed.
Although they lacked Corrod's extraordinary talent, everyone who could enter this department was a hardcore expert in software.
Several had even been internationally renowned hackers before the Americans recruited them with generous salaries.
Now, everyone sat upright at their workstations, the huge screens before them connected to the department's supercomputer.
But a little over ten minutes later, veins twitched on everyone's foreheads, Corrod included, as they stared in disbelief at the data racing across their screens.
Their firewall had been breached.
The millions of concurrent requests that erupted in that instant had directly overwhelmed the preset interception logic chain.
No one could believe that the White House's internal network, unbreached for six years, had its gates pried open today by an unknown intruder using the most basic methods.
Tart recovered first and barked an order. "Physically disconnect the network immediately!"
But Corrod shook his head dejectedly. "It's too late, boss. He already bypassed us and got inside during the first probing attack."
"Impossible!" one team member blurted out. They hadn't detected even a trace of anything unusual.
Corrod's tone was calm. "Because he used tens of millions of fake connections as a smokescreen, tying up our analytical resources while draining the host computer's processing power."
"He himself used only a piece of code disguised as a legitimate instruction, slipping it into the normal responses we sent out and passing effortlessly through the firewall."
"It's just that once inside, he only browsed ordinary government affairs data. He didn't download any classified military or scientific research files, so the alarm never went off."
"But..." Everyone froze.
What hacker would launch a long-range assault just to read a few relatively accessible administrative briefings?
Although that information also concerned important government affairs, its security classification was far below that of cutting-edge weapons specifications or top-secret experimental records.
At that moment, Corrod sighed softly. "Look, he's leaving."
As soon as he spoke, the torrent of information surging across the large screen abruptly receded, and the display quickly returned to a normal webpage.
No one had time to concern themselves with the chaos in the security department.
Inside the underground base, Chen Xiao sat before the main console, tapping his fingertips lightly against the desk as he silently reviewed what he had just read.
His eyelids lowered slightly, and he spoke slowly in a low voice. "Twelve first-generation Sentinels have completed their final calibration. At six this morning, they departed Trask Industries for Alcatraz."
As soon as he finished speaking, Chen Xiao's fingers flew across the keyboard. A few keystrokes located Trask Industries' registered address.
Next, using his superb penetration skills, he easily bypassed its basic firewall and silently slipped into the internal system, quickly scanning the key data.
"The Sentinel laboratory isn't at Trask Industries headquarters at all. It's hidden inside a major military base in America. Taking it out directly would be extremely difficult."
"Sure enough, America has made the Sentinel Program its highest priority."
He leaned back in the chair and sat quietly for a long time, his gaze calm as thoughts churned through his mind. A moment later, he deftly erased every access record, closed the computer, stood, and left.
He had found out everything he needed to.
Next, he had to work out how to choose the safest, most advantageous path through the coming mutant conflict.
According to the original course of events, Wolverine would find Jean Grey while out investigating and urge her to return to the school, only for Magneto to severely injure him with a casual blow, knocking him unconscious on the spot.
Meanwhile, Magneto would send out several doubles to keep the American authorities' attention firmly fixed elsewhere, while he himself gathered all his forces and headed straight for Alcatraz off the coast of San Francisco, forcibly tearing apart the Golden Gate Bridge and landing with overwhelming force.
Just as he gained the upper hand and was about to breach the laboratory, the awakened Wolverine would lead the X-Men in a rapid reinforcement.
A brutal melee would ultimately erupt. Magneto would be hit by a specially made suppressant bullet and lose all his powers, while Jean, losing control of her emotions, would once again be consumed by the Phoenix Force. She would go on a killing spree, slaughtering large numbers of soldiers and mutants before finally being killed by Wolverine himself.
But for Chen Xiao, a mutant himself, that ending was no blessing.
Once Magneto fell, the "target" standing out in front would be gone. The likelihood of certain people setting their sights on the school, or even on him, would rise sharply.
So this game had to proceed at his pace.
After returning to the surface, Chen Xiao did not go to the classroom. Instead, he found an open stretch of grass and casually sat down in the warm sunlight, stretching his body and quietly basking in the sun.
As sunlight fell upon him, the cells in his body seemed to awaken. His bone density quietly increased, his muscle fibers steadily strengthened, and his power rose in successive waves. That tangible sensation of constantly growing stronger from the inside out was intoxicating.
But while his body rested, his brain worked at high speed, simulating the coming battles over and over.
And the first opponent he would have to face was Jean Grey, who had yet to fully master her own power.
If he wanted to change the course of the future, the out-of-control Jean was an unavoidable hurdle.
But right now, no one among the X-Men could directly contend with the newly awakened Phoenix Force, including him, since he had yet to complete his second awakening.
Even if he forcibly activated his X-Gene and entered the second stage, he would at best barely be able to hold his own.
Unless he threw caution aside entirely and ignited his potential at the cost of his lifespan, making his abilities surge hundreds or even thousands of times over... then perhaps he would have a slim chance in a fight to the death.
Chen Xiao narrowed his eyes and murmured, "A head-on confrontation won't work. I'll have to find another way."
"For example, helping Jean awaken her original consciousness and using her own mental power to suppress the dark personality, allowing her to reclaim control over her body and the Phoenix Force."