The signs began to appear around midnight that day, specifically a few minutes after Gray left.
Ed, who coexists with Little Green, doesn't need much sleep. He's developed a habit of only resting for about two hours late at night, spending the rest of his time perfecting his plans to take over the White Wax Town Parish, promising Duolin future, filling Seraphina with knowledge, and now this matter—
Outwitting and outmaneuvering hackers from another world.
Defining exactly which place qualifies as "another world" is a difficult question, but since Ed is now in another world, then by the standards of this world, the hackers from his hometown would be considered an attack from another world.
He never imagined that the two worlds would break out into "war" in this way, but this cyber war without gunpowder still unfolded.
Fortunately, Ed's soul could penetrate deep into the network, and those backend hacks or data attacks seemed to come to life in his eyes, allowing him to defend calmly.
A massive data breach should theoretically have crippled a typical website, but it posed no problem for the performance-boosting Little Green. As for those attempts to compromise the website's backdoors...
The official website for " World of Disorder " was built entirely by Ed's soul; backdoors are just something that exists only in the fantasies of these people.
If I had to pinpoint it, the backdoor is actually in this world, somewhere that those people's information attacks couldn't reach.
To Ed's relief, the people back home reacted quickly, and after confirming that the website and game were problematic, they all started to investigate.
So far, Ed has discovered seven or eight waves of hackers from different countries. Fortunately, his soul power is strong enough, otherwise, if the Soul Webway were attacked and paralyzed, players wouldn't be able to enjoy this fun game.
However, ultimately, he and the other party are not enemies. The reason he went to great lengths to create a game for everyone to play is, frankly, because it's hard to survive alone in this world, so he needs to bring in some reinforcements from his hometown to help with construction and development.
With this in mind, Ed also devised his so-called "counterattack" plan.
Since we need manpower to attack the White Wax Town Church anyway, and since we've detected a total of thirty attack signals, we might as well draw thirty test qualifications today.
Incidentally, Ed also planned to pull a prank on his fellow villagers to scare them a little.
The real world.
With a series of crisp phone notifications, thirty lucky winners received activation messages for the closed beta test of " World of Disorder " from the official team.
With these thirty players added to the original twenty-two, Ed's player count was now close to Duolin's expectations.
If I were to join the battle myself at that point...
Rather, it's more accurate to say that he will inevitably join the battle, just like with the Rat King and the Wooden House Monster before. He needs the players' help to weaken the enemy, thereby delivering the final blow and gracefully stealing the spoils of victory in a cutscene-like manner...
In a VIP ward of a hospital, a young man in a black uniform is staring at an encrypted online meeting in front of him.
A dozen top-notch technicians are hacking into the " World of Disorder " website using their expertise.
It was already noon. In fact, they had been preparing for the work since early this morning. They spent four hours disassembling a game installation package downloaded from the official website. As a result, all the data inside was meaningless gibberish. There was only an empty shell of a launcher that could run, but that was all it was. It was as fake as a shell company in real life that was ready to run away with the money at any time.
With little progress on the game's development, the technical staff began working on the official website for " World of Disorder ".
As the official website of a game, this place must contain more information than the game's package and launcher. If we can disable it or hack into it through a backdoor...
However, just when many technicians felt victory was in sight, exclamations of surprise reached the young man in black through the internet.
Right before his eyes, the signals from those people disappeared one by one!
The young man in black stared dumbfounded at the computer screen in front of him. The screen, which had been connected to numerous official hackers, had lost its signal. After a few exclamations, the online conference room, which had been filled with more than a dozen people, fell completely silent.
All the screen images or camera content that were originally shared here have disappeared, and a lush giant tree has appeared in every video frame, large or small.
This giant tree seems to be rooted in the virtual world, growing continuously in memory space with the help of computing power, nourished by information. It is presented in the form of pixels and flickers from time to time, looking like the cover of an old game from the NES.
The giant trees on different screens appear to be identical, but upon closer inspection, it can be seen that each tree has text formed by overlapping branches and leaves on its canopy. The tree occupying the center of the screen has "1/30" written on it, while the other shared screens are labeled with similar numbers such as "2/30", "6/30", and so on up to "12/30".
In addition, the exposed, gnarled roots of the giant tree also formed a chilling line of text:
[Tree brother is watching you]
"What... does this mean?"
The middle-aged man in black approached and frowned as he looked at the screen.
The young man quickly explained:
"This is a line from George Orwell's 1984. The original was 'Big Brother is watching you,' used to indicate that everything is under surveillance, but it has clearly been modified and adapted..."
The middle-aged man sighed:
"Of course I've read '1984,' but what I'm trying to say is, why are the people behind this website and this game doing this?"
"Since this is a message deliberately left for us, the right to interpret it lies with us. Considering the visual style, it could be interpreted as the other party implying they have a basic understanding of the world's written and entertainment content, and thus possess a fundamental knowledge of us. But couldn't it also be understood as a pervasive threat?"
The middle-aged man in black was indeed right. In his experienced eyes, the nature of this text was more like a kidnapper cutting words out of a newspaper and pasting them together to form a ransom note than a message in a bottle from an unknown source.
He thought for a moment and then looked to his side:
"You young people are more quick-witted, do you have any ideas?"
The young man in black scratched his head, hesitated for a long time before finally stammering:
"Just like when we were in school, we liked to use our own words to fit the format of famous quotes..."
"I feel like... this is kind of a joke..."