With a casual toss, the disc was thrown to Lin Feng. The little girl, personified vividly, stretched lazily and said coquettishly, “The program module is in there. Your permission level isn’t high enough, and your karma points are still negative. Nuonuo has tried her best, but this is all I can do for you! Alright, master, you need to compile this program quickly and then try to transplant it into the game terminal. The rest is up to you!” Compile a program? Transplant it into the terminal? That’s doomed; I don’t understand any of it! Hey, good Nuonuo, sweet Nuonuo, you’ve got to see things through to the end, don’t leave me hanging halfway! You know very well that I’m a total noob when it comes to computers, you can’t be so heartless! Hehe, don’t be discouraged, master, Nuonuo believes in you!
“Wait, wait a minute, don’t go, I still have questions to ask you, hey!” Lin Feng, who was lying in bed sleeping, suddenly opened his eyes, got up with a sense of helplessness, and instinctively touched his left palm, but there was no sign of the small disc. He shook his head with a bitter smile, walked back to his computer desk, sat down, took a deep breath, and then opened a document. His fingers started flying over the keyboard.
The document began to fill with lines of strange code, unlike any existing computer programming language. The strings he typed out were obscure and didn’t resemble any narrative style from the real world. Yet, Lin Feng was typing with such fervor, his eyes slightly squinted, hardly looking at the screen, his fingers moving at high speed. This state continued throughout the night.
Only when the sun rose did this arduous task come to an end. “Phew~~” After typing the last character that popped into his mind, Lin Feng straightened up, letting out a long sigh. “By the gods, finally finished. This is a variant of the Thousand Illusions Ancient Coke Code? Nuonuo, you better not be playing me! Can such a simple file really match the effects of the Thousand Illusions Ancient Coke Code? Who would’ve thought that a total computer noob like me would one day personally write a powerful virus with a keyboard!”
“Now, how do I go about the final compilation? I heard programmers need a compiler after writing the source code. What compiler do I use to generate the final application? Damn Nuonuo, always using system permissions and karma points to block me, I don’t believe every time I need help, there are so many rules.”
Chapter 230: Storm on the Horizon (1)
After coding the variant of the Thousand Illusions Ancient Coke Code, Lin Feng was clueless about what compiler to use to generate the executable software. After some thought, he decided to package it and send an email to the experts at the Wanmei R&D base. He figured that skilled programmers could crack any software just by looking at the source code. He sent the code directly to them, leaving the final step to them. He simply wrote two sentences explaining his intentions, titled the email “Source Code for Virtual Terminal Login Program” without any encryption on the attachment, and sent it off.
After doing all this, the sky outside was already bright. He wasn’t sleepy anymore. After freshening up and eating the breakfast sent by the hotel, he went downstairs.
Lin Feng had been in this unfamiliar city for some time. During this period, he was swamped with miscellaneous tasks, constantly entangled in various cocktail parties, meetings, board meetings, and press conferences, leaving him frazzled. Yesterday’s disturbance by those counterfeiters had further dampened his spirits. He had only been CEO for half a month and was already tired of it. However, he also knew that even if he stepped down, his influence on the company’s affairs would be minimal.
He realized that his busyness over those days was partly self-inflicted, partly due to his employees deliberately creating tasks for him, and partly just bad luck, all because he was young and had taken the top position in the industry, which naturally attracted all sorts of baseless gossip. For instance, the day after he took over Wanmei’s headquarters, a girl went online to claim she was his childhood sweetheart and first love, even releasing intimate photos (with faces blurred). Within a day, her true identity was exposed – she was from a place far from Lin Feng’s hometown, and her real photos could serve as a talisman for night travel.
His arrival not only caused a massive upheaval at Wanmei’s headquarters but also sparked unprecedented hype and speculation in the entire gaming industry, with all sorts of tactics, both open and covert. A topic that particularly fascinated gossip enthusiasts was his public appearances, where he was always pestered with questions about his online ID “Merciless Ghost Hand” and whether he was the same person as the lone hacker involved in recent cyber attacks. Another topic of discussion was naturally his rapid rise to Wanmei’s top management, with some speculating maliciously that he might have used hacking techniques to coerce Wanmei, forcing its founder Qin Jian to leave.
Rumors and whispers were flying everywhere, painting Lin Feng as an omnipotent figure in the online world, while the most gossiped-about events from his time in Yushan City were barely mentioned. The news from Yushan was limited to his past encounters with school bullies Cao Nan, the Thirteen Eagles of Beiguan, former criminal police captain Cao Lei, and the notorious Yushan Bandit Case. With these cases known, people suddenly realized that this new young CEO of Wanmei was also somewhat of a martial artist, making Lin Feng’s reputation even more prominent. The aura surrounding him, apart from the title of a young CEO who fell from the sky, also earned him the nickname of a reclusive lone ranger, full of the flavor of the martial world. Those young hackers who are eager to prove themselves in the online world even regard Lin Feng as their idol, calling him the “Hidden Hero.” Little does Lin Feng know, while unintentionally collecting these dazzling halos, his every move, especially in the online world, has already been watched by countless greedy eyes lurking in that virtual realm. Particularly, his recent high-profile announcement that Wanmei would soon launch the first mass-market universal virtual gaming terminal has attracted much attention. Due to the successful hype of Wanmei with the old game “Fantasy World,” it has successfully caught the eyes of many enthusiastic players. Especially, some players publicly shared their experiences with the virtual terminal online, and the trial notes from the highly popular leader of the top guild further fueled the frenzy, pushing the heat of the virtual terminal to its peak. It is precisely because of this massive promotional campaign that Wanmei’s upcoming new game “Net Spirit” is poised to become the undisputed ruler of the virtual world.
Lin Feng now seems like an exhibit caged up; he has no clear understanding of these matters. When he typed the last character on his laptop and clicked to send the email, countless tentacles from the virtual world stretched out with various intentions. Among them, there were those secretly protecting him, those coveting his research results, and many who, driven by new or old grudges, recklessly joined in to get a piece of the action. Unbeknownst to Lin Feng, that plaintext email he sent out triggered a massive hacker battle in the virtual network world, escalating into a fierce conflict without smoke. Initially, several hacker groups were probing to see if it was a trap, but they were stirred into action by a hacker team claiming to fight for industry fairness.
