Chapter 14: Game Theory_1

[I stumbled upon something interesting, so decided to get in touch a bit early.]

[In a newly released virtual reality game, I found its system to be sturdy and impregnable, and even managed to burn out some interesting components in battling with it.]

[So, I thought to invite you for a face-to-face. Of course, this is a risky move for me, if you manage to successfully hack into the central server...]

[Then, I guess the game might most likely end in your victory.]

[However, this probability is low, after all, if your skills were way above mine, you would have already managed to find me out, right?]

[You have half a day to prepare, at seven thirty tonight, in a certain public space's zone thirteen, I will hang around for an hour, the code phrase is our joint operation from three months ago.]

[Don't disappoint me, SUN.]

[——Your 'loyal' partner in crime.]

…

Mu You looked at the message that she had managed to decrypt in front of her. She was beyond stupefied, she felt like she was losing her mind!

In order for the duo known as 'Black Sun' to avoid having their only means of communication being high-conflict confrontations, they picked a low-end phishing site as a message board. The agreement was to update each other periodically there, and all their discussions besides their direct attacks were conducted there.

Of course, if there wasn't much to talk about, casual 'Nice weather today' type of messages were also okay.

Up till now, countless large-scale hacking operations by Black Sun have been negotiated here, at this place that is as low-level as low-level can get.

While leaving messages for each other, they'd also try to stump each other. The messages were written in code. The cipher keys were usually recent articles, magazines, gossip, but sometimes there'd also be the Bible, New Hanyu Dictionary, or famous novels, to increase the difficulty. However, this time, what Black left for Mu You to decrypt was simple: it was just a column from the evening paper two days ago. Apparently, he didn't want her to waste time on that.

Because what the content itself gave her was already an extremely tight deadline...

"Tonight at half-past seven... some public space's thirteenth zone... the newly released virtual reality game..." Mu You stared at the computer screen, pursed her lips gently, and muttered: "What on earth are you up to this time! Are you trying to mess with my head or..."

She glanced over at the tracker program that was half-completed, and murmured to herself: "Or did I get it wrong from the start? Or maybe it's a trap or something, you bastard!"

Mu You scrambled onto the floor, rolling around on the plush carpet, vigorously massaging her cute baby face. After messing around for a while, she got up with her hair all disheveled, hacked straight into the backend of the phishing site, used the pager to input her message.

[It's a date, also, kindly avoid such lame hints like 'newly released game', it's too crude!!!]

"Phew~" After inputting the message, Mu You squatted back into her chair, immediately stopped the tracking program, and simultaneously played a few of her favorite animations on the surrounding screens while... err, this is not needed.

While watching the animations, she was also rapidly analyzing the entire situation in her mind. Her covert battle with Black had been ongoing for several years. Even though she wasn't sure if the other party had made progress, she had indeed made a lot of gains on her front, and had even identified some major suspects.

Among them was Motan...

Despite how little information she had, she added him to her list of suspects. The reason being that she spotted some discrepancies in his information, his address, and other details weren't even logged on the net.

Although these were just suspicions, Mu You memorized his face. Even if he wasn't Black, at least he was some kind of hacker and prying into the lives of fellow hackers was a hobby of hers...

Despite suspecting him, she did not dig deeper as her list of suspects was filled with thousands of names from all around the world, of different genders and races, hence she did not give it too much thought.

Until...

She encountered Motan in the [Realm of Innocence]. Seeing the priest who appeared to not have altered his appearance in any way, Double Leaf decided to make a move at first sight.

First, she logged out immediately and set up numerous 'bait', then during their second meeting, she subtly hinted that she was Black Sun, and commanded the AI to keep tabs on the web situation continually.

The result delighted her. The false information created by the temporary sixth module was visited over three million times within a day. Overjoyed, she had just planned to carry out further verification when...

Black's message abruptly showed up.

Plus, he also invited her to meet him in a public space in the [Realm of Innocence]. He seemed completely unaware that she had been playing this game for a while now, acting as though he was the only one trying to break Innocence Corp's firewall.

What the hell is going on?!?!

Even though her reply indicated the scarcity of technical content in his hint, Mu You was painfully aware that finding this game was an easy task. The real challenge lied in procuring a set of equipment within an afternoon in time for her to log in to the [Realm of Innocence] at seven-thirty. She definitely wouldn't be able to make the gear herself in such a short period of time.