Code

"Beep--"

The busy tone rang in his ear, and K decisively pressed the hang-up button, casually tossing the well-encrypted satellite phone onto the coffee table piled with snack wrappers and empty cola cans. The metal casing struck the glass surface with a crisp sound.

He shrank further into his gaming chair, grabbed his still-warm soda, and took a big gulp. The cool, sweet liquid slid down his throat, taking away some of the heat from staring at the screen for so long. His gaze returned to the three monitors side by side in front of him. Code scrolled like a waterfall, the network topology diagram flickered, and several monitoring windows displayed real-time footage from different corners of the park—everything seemed normal.

Xie Yunchuan's chilling anger, palpable even through the airwaves, and his declaration, "I will definitely catch you," swirled in K's mind, then, like a bag of forgotten trash in the corner, were swiftly swept away.

Idiot.

K mentally labeled the other person with this simple and direct tag again. A scalpel wielder, no matter how skilled, is just a high-level craftsman. Trying to play technical tracking with someone like him, who swims in the labyrinth of bits and protocols? And he's so confident about catching him? Isn't that just plain stupid? The jump server he used to answer the phone is probably already flooded with new traffic in the logs of some data center somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, leaving not even a ripple.

Threat? That only counts if you can actually reach it.

He shook his head, as if trying to shake off something boring, and his fingers returned to the keyboard, the clatter of keys filling the small but well-equipped "staff dormitory" once again. The air was filled with the smells of instant noodles, the heat from electronic components, and a faint trace of smoke—a familiar and comfortable "battle environment" for him.

His main task right now isn't battling Madman artists from afar, but rather being a good "tough guy K" in the tech department. The park is gradually opening up the authority he's getting, especially the maintenance task for that critical line involving cash flow—it's like a godsend.

However, doing too well isn't good either. K's fingers flew across the keyboard as he skillfully buried several "little gifts" in the code patching an outdated liquidation interface—redundant judgments that would logically require three turns to trigger, subtle pointer errors that would only be exposed by using specific variable names, and a "performance optimization" section with comments longer than the code itself. He appeared to be diligently fixing bugs and improving efficiency, but in reality, he was cleverly adding a few uniquely shaped bricks to an already crumbling mountain of code.

The key to sustainability is ensuring the system runs smoothly without major problems, while also guaranteeing that if a problem does occur, only the person in charge can quickly pinpoint the critical, vulnerable "support pillar." Perfect employees are expendable everywhere, but valuable yet somewhat troublesome technical creditors are the ones who survive longer and see more.

His gaze fell on one of the screens, where a complex diagram of fund flows was laid out. Several dim lines extended from the nodes representing the park, passing through layers of disguise and shell companies, and finally disappearing into the fog of several overseas bank accounts. This was part of the "line" that the behind-the-scenes boss had given him, and so far he had only touched a few inconspicuous turnover nodes in the middle.

"Almost there..." K muttered to himself, then reached for his cigarette case, shook out a cigarette, and lit it. The smoke curled up, blurring his gaze as he stared at the screen. As long as this money laundering channel wasn't physically disconnected at every stage, and information wasn't transmitted via human USB drives (that would be too costly and inefficient, not meeting the needs of such large-scale telecom fraud), then it was like an underground river, with a clear path to follow.

What he needs to do now is to patiently and gradually penetrate upstream and downstream along the few "sources" he has already found. He needs to track IPs, analyze transaction patterns, crack possible encrypted communications, and capture those regular anomalies in the vast sea of data packets.

Unless the other party is so ruthless as to use completely isolated parallel lines, given enough time, it's only a matter of time before they catch the big fish by following the network cables... no, by following the data traces of fund flows.

He exhaled a smoke ring, watching it slowly distort and dissipate in the blue light of the screen. Outside the window, the loudspeakers in the park began another round of "motivational" announcements, mixed with faint reprimands. This hellhole continued to operate efficiently and cruelly.

K stubbed out his cigarette, flicked it into the already full ashtray, and stretched his stiff neck.

There's still a lot of work to do; the "mountain of excrement" needs to be built, and the lines need to be dug. As for Xie Yunchuan?

He glanced at the satellite phone lying among the pile of snacks.

Go ahead and scratch it if you want.