Tower of Overturn

Russell's glance at the camera instantly traversed countless rivers of data and appeared before Cui Que's eyes.

Many translucent windows popped up in front of her, and she was operating on them swiftly.

Her expression was calm as she swiped her hand to maximize a window and dragged many smaller ones around it, starting to monitor and operate them in sync.

The location of Cui Que's prosthetic interfaces was similar to those of the Inferiors, situated between the wrists and the forearms of both hands.

At the moment, a data cable extended from the interface on each of her wrists, connecting to her heavy-duty tactical gloves.

Each glove had a rectangular block at the palm, emitting heat that was impossible to ignore. If Cui Que pressed her gloves onto someone else at the moment, she could even cause burns directly.

This was known as the "Disc Plate System," an ultra-portable computation device.

In this era, the chips implanted at the back of everyone's head could already satisfy most of life's daily needs.

Things like checking time, positioning, making payments, watching live streams, flipping through videos, and playing games... one could almost say that there was no longer a place for "personal computers."

Naturally, such a small chip couldn't possibly possess high computing power. Otherwise, if it began to operate, it might just burn the brain, let alone gaming.

These data were, in fact, downloaded directly from the cloud at near-perfect synchrony after being processed, whether it was for watching live streams or videos, browsing forums, catching up on news, or gaming. This meant the final visuals were downloaded after computation, not processed locally.

In other words, the chip's role in everyday life was akin to a data cable connecting a graphics card to a monitor.

Even for data that were inconvenient for public computation, the chip wasn't necessary—for example, the data platform used by the bartender in front of Russell, which was the computer shared by the venue. Companies and businesses used such large, integrated computing systems... this was also to ensure no one took the computers or used the company's computing resources for personal calculations.

Thus, this world had no such thing as "personal laptops." Of course, this was also because the corporations did not permit their production.

So, how did the spiritual hackers and network detectives manage to navigate the web?

Did they each carry around a massive desktop computer?

—Obviously, that was impossible.

Spiritual hackers and network detectives could even freely traverse the "Matrix" world.

That virtual world was filled with the illusion of sympathies, appearing real but actually not the same... It was the shared world of the "Spiritual Energy Network" built from the Seven Sky Islands, whose principle was said to relate to the Sea of Collective Unconscious. The download speed was so fast, nearly achieving "simultaneous synchrony," precisely because the nature of this network was not solely electronic signals, but also involved spiritual energy.

It was more of a "sympathy" than a download.

In reverse, skilled spiritual hackers could dive into this Matrix world. By attacking "ICE"—the cybersecurity systems—with spiritual energy, they could even paralyze the enemy's firewall at the data level.

The biggest difference between spiritual hackers and network detectives was "understanding." If they interpreted the Matrix world as the "Sea of Collective Unconscious," they could use spiritual energy within; however, it also meant that data-level entities like firewalls and antivirus software would manifest physically in the Matrix. Getting killed by those entities or even just abruptly disconnecting could turn the person's real-life self into a vegetative state.

Industry professionals, on the other hand, merely regarded the Matrix world as a data world, positioning themselves on a higher data layer. Thus, they could enter or leave the Matrix world at any time.

Their common weapon was the "Disc Plate," a highly integrated computational aid—also thought of as a "prosthesis for prostheses."

Because the Disc Plate was undoubtedly a prohibited object on the same level as firearms and could not pass through most security systems, it was impossible to be directly installed as a prosthetic on the body.

As a "gear," however, that could be linked to a prosthetic interface at any time... it became much more portable.

Only three types of people used Disc Plates—spiritual hackers, network detectives, and information security engineers. Their relationships were somewhat like bandits, knights-errant, and bodyguards.

With a Disc Plate, one could infiltrate surrounding networks at any time. They could swiftly take control of nearby cameras, display screens... and even directly manipulate the chips at the back of someone's head, thereby controlling the prosthetics on the person's body.

Of course, users of different levels had firewalls of varying strength.

On the airship earlier, there must have been a spiritual hacker among the gang of thieves.

That was why he was able to release the virus in first class so accurately—in the same network environment, the virus developed by Babel could even breach Elf's highest privilege firewall.

Different models of Disc Plates integrated different types of functions.

To ensure portability, its feature was specialization rather than omnipotence... by swapping Disc Plates, one could execute various kinds of information infiltration.

The Disc Plate that Cui Que was using was known as the "Eye of God." It contained built-in "keys" capable of quickly cracking the security protocols of most cameras.

Normally, hacking a camera would take someone with Cui Que's skills several seconds, and there was even a chance of being discovered by information security engineers.

But with the help of the "Eye of God," she could manipulate all the cameras in a street within two to three seconds and could even precisely cripple a specific camera.

As for displays like menus, billboards, and signboards, they were basically unprotected by security protocols. She could easily control them without the aid of a Disc Plate.

Currently, dozens of densely packed windows were before Cui Que's eyes.

These windows arced around her, enveloping her from within like a Light Shield displayed in front of her.

In order to use the "Disc Plate" with utmost focus, spread the windows, and analyze data, she found her work efficiency in the office to be much higher than when she was out and about.

Although Cui Que was not a spiritual energy hacker, if she were subjected to too much external interference, it was still possible for her to be distracted and leave some traces behind.

To prevent an overload of information from causing fatigue and to avoid directly attacking the Hive Nightclub's firewall, she used Russell as her invasion springboard—when the Inferior reported that Russell had entered the Hive Nightclub, she immediately unfolded her Disc Plate, indiscriminately plundering the surveillance data from all nearby probes.

Because the moment Russell's chip entered the "Hive Nightclub," he had already connected to the nightclub's local area network.

Cui Que first took control of the sixteen cameras in the Hive Nightclub's main hall and turned off the seven windows that couldn't track Russell's location.

As Russell approached the front desk, Cui Que, through the listening devices there, eavesdropped on the conversation between Russell and the bartender.

Then, she ran her Disc Plate system at full capacity, rapidly collecting camera feeds from all rooms in the nightclub and managed to locate Glass's room in just five or six seconds, through rapid switching on and off of the cameras.

The Hive Nightclub was backed by a Director of the Tianen Group. Intruding into its personal user information database would be very troublesome.

But searching for today's room bookings was much simpler.

Based on the room number she had obtained, Cui Que looked up today's consumption records and quickly identified the customer's information.

It was only then that she learned of the pseudonym Glass was using—this was to be expected.

If everyone was wearing a mask upon entry, then they certainly wouldn't give their real names. Otherwise, wouldn't wearing a mask be as good as not wearing one?

Before Russell's conversation with the bartender ended, Cui Que swiftly displayed the information on the nearest screen that Russell could see.

Watching through the monitor, she saw Russell take a wristband from the bartender and register his alias.

Cui Que finally breathed a sigh of relief.

"So this is what it's like inside..."

She murmured softly to herself, obviously curious about the inside of the "Hive Nightclub."

Although Cui Que was somewhat worried when Russell was hit on by that high school girl, she chose to prioritize hijacking the cameras in order to take control of the situation as soon as possible.

Luckily, Russell managed to shake them off and wasn't dragged away; otherwise, Cui Que would have had to urgently call the Inferior to save the day.

After that, she didn't idle either.

She just took a drink of water, took off her gloves, changed to another set of Disc Plates, and began to hack into all the prosthetic bodies in the room, using Glass's room as the reference point.

Cui Que had already looked with the "Eye of God," and there were no listening devices in Glass's room.

But someone might be using a prosthetic body with enhanced hearing—after all, information can't be extracted directly from the brain and the chips won't record what is heard or seen. Even screenshots and video recordings are not stored locally but on the servers of the Cyber Sect.

Her judgment was evidently correct.

The camera showed that, apart from Glass, there were only two girls wearing smiley face masks in the room.

However, the "tail spike C type" Disc Plate told her that, hidden silently in the corner of the room, were four cyborgs.

"... What's going on? The degree of their modification has exceeded half."

Cui Que's swiftly dancing fingers paused, and she frowned slightly in confusion, murmuring softly, "The bodyguards hired by Tianen Daily are a bit too... professional, right?

"They even have personal firewalls for every single one of them, so rich!

"But why... is it the 'Deep Sea' type?"

The "Deep Sea" is a typical passive firewall, a custom firewall variant, with an annual fee for a personal licensed system costing seven to eight thousand.

It's not like the "Honey Pot" which is aggressive and can trace back the intruder, nor like "Black Ice" which uses inert data to make it indestructible. The main feature of the Deep Sea firewall is to significantly prolong the intrusion time of an enemy, typically used for corporate information libraries in conjunction with alarm systems as inner wall protection.

Others might fail, but in terms of "stalling," it is second to none. It's like a stone wall without towers.

For personal protection, however, it doesn't really serve much purpose.

If someone truly wanted to infiltrate, Cui Que would still be able to break in within about twenty minutes.

In personal protection, it's far less secure than the "Honey Pot" and "Black Ice."

The former makes spiritual energy hackers wary, afraid to enter and worried they won't be able to get out; the latter is just purely high in security level, which if not opened with social engineering from the inside, cannot be breached at all.

Something felt off, but even after careful consideration, Cui Que didn't receive any spiritual perception.

So she continued with the intrusion.

Because of the firewall, she couldn't directly take over the prosthetic body's permissions, but she could create a crawler to find a way around the information protection and steal intelligence.

After about half a minute of work, right up until Russell swiped the card to enter the room, Cui Que managed to crawl into the listening data of one of the bodyguards' hearing aids.