Chapter Twenty-Four: The Data Thief
When the name "Li Jianguo" exploded like thunder in Xiao Ran’s earpiece, she felt her heart skip a beat.
Sky Dome Network.
The very company that had caused Old Lu’s death!
And now—it was connected to Anderson—
Countless clues that had once made no sense suddenly converged, drawn together like iron filings to a magnet, forming a terrifying and lucid picture!
But there was no time for shock.
For a top agent, shock was an emotion reserved for the dead.
Within a tenth of a second, her mind suppressed every tumultuous wave and regained absolute calm.
“Lin Feng!” Her voice came through the communicator, steady and decisive, brooking no doubt: “There’s no time to run. Anderson has already cast an inescapable net. If we withdraw now, we’ll walk right into it.”
“Our only way out is to get what we came for before he closes the trap!”
“Get ready to work!”
With that, she spared no further glance at the corner, but picked up a glass of wine and strode in the opposite direction. Like a graceful pantheress, she moved silently, using the crowd, the lights, and the shadows of the architecture to weave a dangerous reverse encirclement toward the corner where Anderson and Li Jianguo sat.
…
Backstage, in the electrical control room.
Lin Feng watched the screen, his gaze grave as he observed the two figures conversing softly—demons in human guise.
He knew Xiao Ran’s judgment was correct.
Now, it was his turn.
“‘Mouse’,” his voice was cold and focused, “initiate the ‘Hive’ surveillance protocol.”
“Received, boss!”
First attempt: [Laser Eavesdropping]
Lin Feng maneuvered a camera disguised as a service robot, inching it closer to the corner. He tried to use an invisible laser from the robot’s eye to read tiny vibrations in the nearby floor-to-ceiling window caused by sound.
But the screen returned only erratic, unintelligible static.
“Boss! The glass is custom-made ‘acoustic metamaterial’ anti-surveillance glass! Laser eavesdropping failed!”
Second attempt: [Near-field Penetration]
“Switch to Plan B.” Lin Feng’s fingers never paused.
He directed the robot to get closer, attempting to use a directional, high-sensitivity parabolic microphone to pick up the conversation.
But when the robot was five meters from the corner, every electronic component on it emitted a faint hiss and instantly went dead!
“Boss! They’re carrying military-grade, high-powered portable signal jammers! Near-field penetration failed!”
Anderson—watertight!
He was like a knight clad in the finest armor, leaving not even a crack to attack.
Lin Feng’s forehead broke out in a fine sheen of sweat as time ticked inexorably away.
He knew that if he couldn’t find a breakthrough, both he and Xiao Ran would die here tonight.
What to do?
He stared at Li Jianguo’s bloated, repulsive face on the screen, then at the man’s wrist, where a gleaming, expensive Patek Philippe smartwatch caught the light.
Wait…
A smartwatch?
A wild, near-mad idea—something only a lunatic like him could conceive—flashed through his mind like lightning, dispelling the fog.
Every conventional route was blocked.
Then he would take a path they would never dream of—a “heavenly road”!
—
“‘Mouse’!” His voice trembled slightly with excitement. “Patch me into the satellite link! Target: Zurich, Switzerland, Patek Philippe Group, user data center!”
“Wha—?!” The girlish voice of ‘Mouse’ was full of shock. “Boss! That’s… that’s Swiss bank-level security!”
“Then punch through it!”
…
Third attempt: [Crushing from Above]
If his previous attacks were like prying at a locked door, now Lin Feng was dropping a meteor on the whole house.
He no longer tried to eavesdrop on “sound.”
He changed tack.
What he wanted was… ultimate control over that smartwatch.
By brute-forcing the Patek Philippe user data center, he managed to exploit a backend vulnerability in Li Jianguo’s watch.
Then, like a phantom, he slipped silently into the tiny device.
He activated a maintenance-diagnostic microphone inside—one that Li Jianguo didn’t even know existed.
…
At last, sound came through the earpiece.
It was broken and laced with static, but it was enough.
It was Anderson’s voice, elegant and icy.
“…Mr. Li, how are the ‘assets’ at Sky Dome Network coming along?”
Li Jianguo’s answer was obsequious: “Rest assured, Mr. Anderson. ‘The item’ has passed its final test. It’s ready for delivery at any time.”
“Excellent.”
“That item… is it really as powerful as you say?”
Anderson chuckled softly, his laughter suffused with a godlike arrogance.
“Mr. Li, do you know what a ‘zero-day exploit’ is?”
“It is ‘zero.’”
“A piece of code that can bypass any firewall, indiscriminately infect and control every brand, every model of phone in the world—the code of the gods.”
In that moment, Lin Feng and Xiao Ran felt their hearts stop.
“Our plan is simple,” Anderson said, his voice a devil’s seductive whisper. “At the very moment of the ‘Dawn One’ product launch, with all eyes watching, we will use ‘the item’ to hijack not just every phone in the country, but all across Asia—hundreds of millions of devices.”
“At ‘zero hour,’ these phones will simultaneously launch a full-scale assault on your nation’s only, fragile financial settlement system.”
“A distributed denial-of-service avalanche—one unprecedented, initiated by your own 1.4 billion ‘people’.”
“I don’t want to bring down Huaxin. I want to cripple your entire country’s financial system.”
“I want your fragile dream of rising to be annihilated in a single instant—reset to zero.”
Horrific.
A vast, despair-inducing conspiracy, one bordering on the inhuman, finally revealed its full, monstrous face.
Suppressing the storm within, Lin Feng encrypted the deadly recording at top speed, packaged it, and began uploading it to the national security cloud server.
But the moment he clicked “send”—
“WOOOO—!! WOOOO—!! WOOOO—!!”
The shrill, highest-level security alarms blared without warning throughout the entire summit venue!
Anderson’s team had detected the “heavenly” intrusion!
They had located Lin Feng’s signal source!
—
“Exposed!”
Boom!
The electrical control room door shuddered violently under a massive blow from outside!
At the main hall, every exit was sealed at once by heavy blast-proof shutters crashing down!
Dozens of security personnel in black suits, like sharks scenting blood, began converging on both the control room and Xiao Ran’s location!
The net had closed in an instant!
“Lin Feng! Go!” Xiao Ran’s voice snapped through the earpiece—urgent but cool.
“Upload needs thirty more seconds!” Lin Feng shouted, watching the agonizingly slow progress bar on the screen.
The control room door was starting to buckle.
Xiao Ran glanced at the ever-nearing pursuers. She hesitated no longer.
She snatched up a heavy silver candlestick from the nearby table and smashed it hard against the floor-to-ceiling window!
Crash!
The massive glass pane shattered on impact!
Wasting not a second, she drew from her seemingly elegant high heels a sliver of steel thinner than a hairpin, glinting coldly.
A wire cutter.
She hooked the wire onto the thick exterior drapery, then vaulted out the window!
Like a heroine of the night, she slid down the drapery from the third floor in a daring descent toward the ground!
Meanwhile—
“Upload complete!”
A split second before the control room door was battered open, Lin Feng yanked out all his equipment, slung his heavy toolkit onto his back.
He didn’t take the door.
He kicked open the ceiling vent and, like a wildcat, disappeared inside, launching into a breathless, parkour-like escape through the labyrinthine ducts backstage!
…
A few minutes later.
In a dark, damp alley outside the club.
Two equally battered figures met at last.
Behind them, sirens blared and searchlights swept in frantic pursuit.
Xiao Ran leaned against the wall, gasping for breath, her elegant evening gown slashed and torn in several places.
Lin Feng was in no better shape; his “Zhang San” work uniform was reduced to rags.
They exchanged glances, each seeing in the other’s eyes the disheveled look of survivors—and an irrepressible thrill.
“Did you get it?” Xiao Ran panted.
“I got it.” Lin Feng, equally breathless, his eyes always ablaze, now shone like stars piercing the night.
He held up his heavily modified, still-warm tablet.
“Pandora’s box.”
“And now…”
“…it’s in our hands.”