Rejection

B*stard!

Guo Dazhuang clenched his jaw. The charismatic appeal he had spent all these years cultivating for himself had completely vanished into thin air. At this moment, he was like a gambler who had lost everything. All that was left was irrational fear and madness.

D*mn it, how did the opponent do it? There was no opening on his side. What kind of trick did the opponent used to infiltrate without him noticing?

This was an embarrassment!

He was a hacker, an elite hacker to boot. To be completely helpless before another hacker's attack, this was an absolute humiliation!

It had been a very long time since Guo Dazhuang, better yet known as King, had tasted defeat - whether it was in terms of the real world or on the internet.

Just like his online alias, he was destined to be the king of the cyberworld. The wind itself shall heed his call. He should be invincible!

At this point, Guo Dazhuang unplugged the computer directly and headed toward the door.

"Boss, where are you going?"

The secretary by the door quickly got up and asked.

"I have some business to attend to. You don't have to come." Guo Dazhuang pushed the secretary away with a stoic expression. The employees watched as he left the office.

Even though the opponent had discovered his identity in the real world, it did not mean he had lost. As long as the opponent had not exposed his identity, he still had time to find the opponent's identity and even the playing field.

Guo Dazhuang was very confident in his abilities.

He was King, one of the leading members of the largest hacker organization in the Earth Federation, Anonymous!

…

While all of this was underway, the instigator of this event, Chen Chen, was getting up in front of his computer. He got up and stretched a little.

He had to admit, King had remarkable willpower. Unlike the other three who had given up easily, he still refused to surrender even at this stage.

Chen Chen was not worried about his identity being exposed. He knew that to continue expanding, he was going to have his identity exposed to the general public sooner or later anyway. In that case, why bother hiding?

After all, it would appear more natural to step into the upper-class society with a pre-established reputation as a successful entrepreneur.

Besides, his background was as clean as they come, unlike King, who was a hacker. If word about King's identity got out, he might even have to face jail time.

On top of that, would anybody even believe him if he just confronted them directly and said he was X?

It was all smoke and mirrors. It was very difficult to spot someone who knew his craft.

In the end, the four of them agreed to head to the meeting location appointed by Chen Chen. All four of them were Shangdu natives. Three hours would be plenty of time for them to make the meeting in time.

Chen Chen looked at the time. It was about an hour and a half until the meeting. He cleaned up for a bit and also put Little X into standby mode.

After closing the warehouse door, he set up dozens of alarms monitoring the area around the warehouse. Once he had done that, he took his newly bought scooter and headed toward the main junction.

As a globalized metropolis, the suburb was more than an hour's ride away from the inner section of the city. Chen Chen had to depart early to not be late.

It was during the heat of the summer and the sun was like a blinding ball of flame. Chen Chen had to use the shade from the tree for cover to ease his ride.

It seemed like it was time to buy a car.

Chen Chen considered for a moment. The company account still had a little over a hundred thousand so a regular car would suffice.

There was no need to rush anyway. Soon, his checking account would have forty million.

With Chen Chen's current hacking proficiency, he could easily turn to money laundering, gambling, bitcoin transactions or various other methods to gain significant wealth.

It may be a little problematic to use these gained funds in Mainland China. He could remedy it by registering shell companies in other regions. The shell companies could be used as sources to finance Blacklight. This way, he could gain a significant sum.

However, not only was there a risk of being exposed but it would also not address the benefactor problem.

That was right, benefactor.

As described previously, it was very easy to be targeted when establishing a company. Especially when you had a high-tech company possessing a technology with great potential. You might as well be a child in the street with hundreds of dollar bills in your pockets.

The ones who had their eyes on you were none other than the competitors and venture capitalists.

People described the market as a cake. Eating the entire thing alone would never work. The best option was to collaborate with others and make the cake larger and stronger. Even though in the end you would have to split the cake into slices but it would still be a larger slice than the initial cake you had.

However, you should consider this - what if you were capable of enlarging the cake just by relying on your resources?

In practice, this sort of solution would never work. It was a naive view of the capitalism structured industry. The core essence of the industry was still a pack of wolves splitting the game among themselves. It was ridiculous that people just accepted it as part of a natural process.

If you choose to not accept any investments, your opponents would pull out all the stops to obstruct your path. In the end, they would ruin your cake and you would not have anything left on your plate.

It was either that or they would join forces and make the same cake you were making. Then, they would use their superior combined resources to overpower you.

This was a widely known unspoken rule.

To avoid such a scenario, Chen Chen had to accept investment from other parties.

King, SB, CZH, and ZF. The four of these were the candidates Chen Chen had filtered after entering the dark web as Little X.

The four of them were from Shangdu, had no complicated background, and had came to their success by themselves.

Each one of them owned enterprises and their net worth was above billions.

In that case, instead of waiting for a venture capital firm to come to Chen Chen, he would rather take the initiative and choose his own investors.

That was how the current situation came to be.

Naturally, Chen Chen was not going to hog everything for himself. Since he was going to enlist help from others, he was going to split the profits. Two percent equity of Little X Translator would be a substantial amount of compensation.

Chen Chen estimated that this product which was ahead of its time could make twenty to thirty billion at the very least.

Even though this group of people was irritated now, the matter would become entirely different once they had understood the potential of the software.

There was no such thing as enemies so long as there was mutual benefit.

With their help, Chen Chen's company would continue to gain traction.

As Chen Chen was concocting his plans in his mind, his phone suddenly rang.

He stopped his scooter by the side of the road and took out his phone. It was Xia Yin calling.

It had been four months since Chen Chen left the school. In the beginning, Xia Yin would occasionally call Chen Chen. The calls had been getting less frequent recently as Chen Chen was always indifferent toward her. 

"Hey senior, what's going on?" Chen Chen picked up the phone and revved up the scooter again.

"Chen Chen, I have good news for you. Our thesis was just published!" The excitement in Xia Yin's voice could be heard through the phone. "The school just organized a meeting to commemorate me and Wang Wei's efforts."

"Congratulations."

Of course, Chen Chen knew when it was going to be published since he was the corresponding author. However, the only reason he went through all that work was so that it would help him in his process of applying for the university student business loan.

After having accomplished his goals, Chen Chen could not care less about the two articles back then.

"Oh yeah, when will you be free? How about I treat you and Wang Wei to celebrate this victory?"

Xia Yin continued.

"Sure." Chen Chen smiled. "I'll come if I have time."

After several short exchanges, Chen Chen excused himself by saying that he was driving.

Chen Chen was aware of how Xia Yin felt about him.

The only problem was that Chen Chen had the USB drive belonging to a different world. What he was after was not some lovey-dovey stuff. He wanted to attain his heart's desire with the help of the USB drive.

Cutting it off once and for all would always be the most efficient method...