Chapter 57: I Know You're Anxious, But Don't Be Anxious Just Yet

Nangong Zhiwen immediately nodded and said, "Alright then! I won't bother you any longer! I apologize once again for the inconvenience caused!"

Ji Tianxing enthusiastically had the butler escort Nangong Zhiwen out.

As soon as Nangong Zhiwen left, Ji Yun strode out immediately, walked straight up to the "network early-warning monitor" that Nangong Zhiwen had mentioned, and picked it up to examine it closely.

Ji Tianxing walked over, looked at his son's vigilant expression, frowned slightly, glanced towards the doorway where Nangong Zhiwen had disappeared, and then asked, "What is it, is there something wrong with this thing?"

Ji Yun shook his head and replied, "I don't know. It looks fine for now, but a state security agent acting like a door-to-door salesman—I always feel like something isn't right."

"Indeed." Ji Tianxing clicked his tongue slightly, nodded, and said, "I felt the same way just now. If you really feel uneasy, just unplug it."

"No matter what overseas hacker organizations there are, our home computers don't store anything confidential."

Ji Yun nodded and immediately said, "Then I'm unplugging it!"

With that, Ji Yun instantly unplugged the so-called "network early-warning monitor," handed it casually to the butler, and instructed, "Find a place to put it. They might come back to check on it later."

More than an hour later.

Upon returning to the abandoned villa in the suburbs, Nangong Zhiwen asked Xie Baorong the moment he stepped through the door.

"I've already connected that device to the Ji family's network. Well, did you get things sorted out on your end?"

Xie Baorong smiled faintly, stroked the pitifully few hairs on top of his head, and said, "Of course! Seven seconds after connecting to the network, the Trojan horse program entered the Ji family's network and went into silent mode."

"I added a layer of special camouflage to this Trojan horse program. Unless someone exceptionally professional conducts a targeted search, they will never discover the issue."

"However, the excuse you came up with probably still left the Ji family in doubt. Just a few minutes after you left, that thing was unplugged."

Nangong Zhiwen sneered and said, "It doesn't matter. Unplugged is unplugged. Since it's already connected to the network, its mission has been accomplished."

"That's right." Xie Baorong nodded immediately and said, "Thank goodness I welded that box together securely and added special rivets. Without a specialized screwdriver, it can't be easily taken apart. Otherwise, if they had been even slightly more suspicious and opened the box, they would have found out that the inside is actually just a small circuit board, which definitely would have raised more alarms."

"If they had discovered that, with the Ji family's influence, both of us would probably be locked up."

"Forget it." Nangong Zhiwen took a deep breath and said, "Illegally intruding into a general's home network and wiretapping a general—this is already a grave crime. Now, stretching out my neck is a slash, and pulling it back is still a slash. Let's do it!"

"Can we see the footage of the Ji family now?"

"Yes, we can!" Xie Baorong nodded instantly, his plump fingers dancing across the keyboard with surprising agility. As his hands flew up and down, the large screen above their heads split into more than twenty different sections, displaying every single corner of the Ji family estate.

"There are twenty-four network cameras in total at the Ji family, and all of them have been intercepted by the Trojan program. We can monitor them at any time. However, my backend display shows that the Ji family also has three physical cameras that are not connected to the network. Since my Trojan program has to invade via the public network, there's nothing I can do about those three disconnected cameras." Xie Baorong explained.

Nangong Zhiwen clicked his tongue slightly and said, "It doesn't matter. Twenty-odd cameras should be enough. What about the audio?"

Xie Baorong immediately clicked on one of the feeds, enlarging that window to the center of the main screen while the other twenty-something feeds surrounded it like stars orbiting the moon.

Along with the enlargement of this feed, the audio within it was also amplified.

The feed showed the Ji family's backyard, where several servants were chatting casually.

The conversation was crystal clear; they could even hear the chirping of crickets in the garden.

"Not bad at all!" Nangong Zhiwen grinned, looking at Xie Baorong. "You really know your stuff, the picture is so clear, and the sound is so distinct."

Xie Baorong smiled faintly and said, "This isn't my credit. All I did was split a stream of the Ji family's own surveillance and wiretapping feed and transmit it to our server."

"The clear picture and distinct sound are thanks to the fact that the network cameras the Ji family bought are definitely not ordinary cheap knockoffs."

Nangong Zhiwen nodded slightly, then suddenly frowned and asked, "Since you can use the network to intercept the Ji family's surveillance and wiretapping equipment, can you also control them?"

"Control? Do you mean rotating the shooting angles of the cameras, things like that?" Xie Baorong asked immediately.

"Pretty much. Can you do that?" Nangong Zhiwen nodded eagerly.

"Remote control commands are written into the Trojan program, so yes, that is indeed possible." Xie Baorong nodded right away and said, "Wait a moment, let me pick an empty feed."

Soon, Xie Baorong found the camera for a storage room. This warehouse was used to store boxes of red wine and famous paintings collected by the Ji family; usually, nobody ever went there, and at the moment, it was completely empty.

Xie Baorong enlarged this feed, pressed the command key immediately, and rotated the camera, capturing every corner of the warehouse clearly.

Nangong Zhiwen immediately asked, "Since you can do this, can you also remotely control that Executioner drone you embedded the Trojan program into?"

Xie Baorong let out a light sigh, looked at Nangong Zhiwen, and said, "I know you're in a rush, but the nature of these two things is different. Our surveillance of the Ji family is an intrusion via network takeover; as long as the equipment requires network support, it can be intercepted."

"However, the Executioner drone itself is not connected to the network; it is an independent, autonomous control terminal."

"Just like those three physically connected cameras at the Ji family—the reason I can't hack them is precisely because those three cameras are not connected to the network at all."

Nangong Zhiwen listened in utter confusion, obviously knowing very little about these cyber-related matters. "I really don't understand these things. I spent days memorizing everything I said at the Ji family earlier. Is there a simpler, more layman's explanation?"

Xie Baorong sighed helplessly, looked at Nangong Zhiwen, and asked, "Have you ever played computer games?"

Nangong Zhiwen nodded and said, "I played Westward Journey when I was young, along with CS, Red Alert, and things like that. Does that count?"