Who would still start a business seriously after being reborn?

Chapter 582 The Peak Battle
David's orders were carried out swiftly.

Microsoft's formidable engineering capabilities are on full display at this moment.

A massive cluster of DPI devices was deployed in the Azure data center, new filtering rules were compiled, loaded, and activated, and the highest-level filtering gateway was quietly established at the network's underlying layer.

The effect is almost immediate.

A few minutes later, the purple pulse on the monitor screen began to become chaotic and distorted, losing its previous regularity.

According to the game data monitored by the backend, the error rate of the so-called top players in these servers began to rise strangely.

A soft, suppressed cheer rose from the operations room. They seemed to have finally found a way to counter their opponent.

"We did it! David, it looks like we did it!" Emily shouted excitedly.

David didn't laugh. He frowned and stared at the real-time traffic graph: "Don't get too excited. The opponent isn't that simple. Notify T3 and KFC to be prepared. Player complaints might be coming."

Audition Online, East China Region 1, Free Practice Channel, Room Name: 【East China Peak Battle, Noobs Get Out of Here!】

The atmosphere in the room was so tense it almost seemed to overflow the screen.

Two groups of people stood clearly separated in the room. On the left was the Royal Dynasty family, led by Royal Dynasty, Mad Young Master and Royal Dynasty, Baby. On the right was the Shining Star family, led by Star, War God and his wife Star, Little Cat.

Both were dressed in the most dazzling paid clothing, and their words revealed a disdain and arrogance unique to non-mainstream aristocrats.

Most of the onlookers were known as dance gods, and the room was packed with them. The chat screen was flooded with messages at a dizzying speed.

[Royal Dynasty_Little Brother: Young Master, crush them! Let them know who the true king of East China Region is!]

[Starry Night Follower: War God Bro is invincible, Cat Sister is mighty, the scum of the Dynasty, get out of East China No.1!]

[Netizen 1: I've placed my bet! I'm betting on a bowl of spicy hot pot from the Starry Sky constellation!]

[Netizen 2: I bet a bag of spicy strips from the Dynasty restaurant chain! Young Master Kuang has been incredibly aggressive lately!]

The two masters stood arrogantly in their respective spots in the room, each striking an exaggerated pose, so aloof that they didn't even bother to utter a single word.

They are the strongest God Fingers in the family.

Even if they use cheats, their hand speed is still the fastest.

Especially Huangchao Kuangshao, as the golden finger of the Huangchao family, he set a record of breaking nine keyboards in one month.

Known as a nightmare for internet cafe owners, and a user on KFC's blacklist.

The homeowner quickly selected the classic 188 song "Likable" as the background music.

As soon as the game started, upbeat music immediately filled the air.

Both sides displayed skills far exceeding those of ordinary people.

The characters on the screen seemed to be possessed by dance gods, hitting every note precisely on the perfect note, with the number of Ps jumping wildly, the scores chasing each other, the two rising one after the other, leaving the audience dumbfounded.

[Public Chat]

Holy crap! Is that hand speed even human?!

This synchronization rate... it's terrifying!

[A battle of gods! A battle of gods! This is true mastery!]

Crazy Young Master and God of War even had time to exchange friendly greetings during breaks in the music.

[Starry Sky War God: Hehe, Young Master, you're in good shape today? Your finger doesn't hurt anymore?]

[Royal Dynasty, Mad Young Master: Your wife cured me yesterday.]

Huangchao Kuangshao's words immediately drew angry curses from many members of the Xingchen family.

But he doesn't care.

Even the best have to endure gossip and rumors.

He thoroughly enjoyed the thrill of this epic showdown and the admiration of the onlookers.

However, just as the song reached its most complex and intense bridge section, a bizarre event occurred.

Almost at the same millisecond.

The character of Huangchao and Kuangshao suddenly stumbled, and a huge, blinding MISS exploded above his head.

Immediately afterwards, the character Star God of War seemed to be infected as well, and with a strange twitch, a MISS also popped out.

The perfect streak of consecutive Ps was as if it had been cut short by an invisible hand.

[Public Chat]

[Netizen 3: "??????"]

[Netizen 4: "It's lagging?? Everyone's lagging??"]

[Netizen 5: "Wait a minute, why isn't my connection lagging?"]

The two skilled workers at the various KFC service centers panicked. They instinctively increased the pressure of their presses on the spacebar, but the situation only worsened.

At first, the character could still get Cool, Good, and even Bad, but after he increased his typing speed, he got four consecutive MISSes in the game.

What was just a top-tier match between gods has instantly turned into a comical scene of noobs pecking at each other.

The score stagnated, and the situation became awkward.

The public chat was initially deathly silent, then erupted into a huge wave of questions.

【what's the situation? 】

[A collective mistake by top players?]

What kind of show is this?

Madman and God of War are seasoned veterans with skin thicker than most.

After a brief moment of panic, the two almost simultaneously came up with a solution.

Suddenly, the character "Dynasty_CrazyYoungMaster" stopped dancing and typed in the public chat, his voice urgent: "[Damn it, my stomach suddenly hurts so much! I can't take it anymore, I think it's from the spicy hot pot I ate for lunch! I need to go to the toilet, baby, can you help me?]"

Star God of War glanced at it and cursed it inwardly for being cunning, but reacted quickly and typed: [Hiss... coincidence, I think I ate something bad too. Ugh, this is so painful! Little Cat, this round is yours, brother of the Dynasty. Sorry, I had to use the restroom. How about we call this a draw? We'll play again next time!]

[On the public chat]

"Huangchao_Baby," she said somewhat flusteredly, "Ah? I...I...I can't do it."

Starry Night and Little Cat were very concerned about Starry Night and God of War, and asked anxiously, "Honey, don't scare me! What did you eat?"

Some onlookers who didn't belong to either family were stunned for a few seconds, then burst into laughter.

[Hahahaha! Holy crap! Mass food poisoning?!]

Did Huangchao and Xingchen eat at the same street stall selling mala tang (spicy hot pot)?

Is this the telepathic connection between masters? Even their stomach aches are synchronized?

[This is hilarious! Stepping on someone caused gastroenteritis, is that even acceptable?]

Crazy Young Master and War God, seeing the mockery on the public chat, turned pale and then flushed, but they could only grit their teeth and continue acting. Crazy Young Master of the Dynasty: [I can't hold it in anymore, brothers, I'm leaving first.]

After saying that, Huangchao Kuangshao left the room at lightning speed.

Starry Sky and War God followed closely behind and also made a hasty escape.

All that was left were their bewildered wives, a group of onlookers laughing uproariously, and a half-hearted battle for the title of strongest player in East China Region 1.

The farce quickly spread throughout the entire region.

While people were laughing at the two masters from the same family for having diarrhea at the same time, they also discovered that the cheat software had malfunctioned.

In an instant, the top players in the three regions that had their servers hosted on Microsoft servers collectively went into hiding.

Almost at the same time.

In Jingzhou City, at the Operating System Research and Development Center of Handong University, a red alarm box also popped up on the screen in front of Lin Qingyin.

[WARNING: Abnormal latency fluctuations detected at the network layer. Target region: Asian Audition Online server cluster. Latency pattern: Non-random, suspected to be deliberate latency injection targeting a specific operation command stream.]

"They've realized what's happening," Lin Qingyin murmured to herself.

She immediately issued an alert through the encrypted chat tool built within the Gods Network Research Institute.

As soon as she sent out the message, more than a dozen sub-accounts logged into the Audition Elf server backend.

Not long after, the channel became instantly active.

[Hey, so those guys at Microsoft are finally fighting back? Starting to play around with the network layer?]

[Delayed injection? That's an interesting tactic.]

"Leave it to me!" a research fellow with the ID "Time Sequence Magician" chimed in. "Playing with the network layer? I'm their granddaddy!"

[Time Magician] quickly retrieved the raw network data sent back by the Audition client.

He didn't try to fight against the massive Microsoft DPI cluster, because that would be like an ant trying to shake a tree.

He took a more ingenious and fundamental approach.

"Since they're testing the accuracy of the data packet arrival time interval..." The "Timing Magician" explained in the channel while rapidly writing code, "Let's add some spice to it."

On that very day, he designed a lightweight local delay perturbation device.

He implanted the disruptor into the Audition Online server and typed: "Take a look, everyone. See if there's anything that can be improved. Once it's perfected, push this small module out in the next silent update for Audition Online."

After he released the perturbator, someone quickly typed: "[You've added a tiny buffer at the client level, haven't you?]"

[It's not just the buffer; he also seems to have designed a pseudo-random algorithm to add a tiny, random delay value to each data packet.]

I think it's feasible. As long as this value is less than the precision required for the game's controls, it's enough to break that superhuman level of precision in time intervals.

[As long as the content and order of the data packets, as well as the final in-game action timing, remain unaffected, it will work.]

[It will not be affected; only the time interval between data packets transmitted over the network will be affected.]

Everyone chimed in with their opinions, making changes and adjustments, and by the next day, the time-delay perturbation device was complete.

This disruptor is essentially giving the data sent by the cheat a constantly changing, invisibility cloak.

Microsoft's DPI devices can no longer accurately identify which data packets are external from the massive data streams based on the single characteristic of time intervals.

Because now the time intervals between all data packets have become natural.

Once the disruptor was completed, the official website of Audition Online immediately released an announcement stating that the Audition Online game was experiencing latency issues and that the cheat program would undergo a routine update to resolve the latency problem.

Just a few hours later.

Seattle Microsoft War Room

“David, something’s wrong,” Emily exclaimed. “The purple pulses are gone! No, they’re not gone, they’ve become exactly the same as the normal flow. Our DPI rules seem to be malfunctioning.”

On the monitoring screen, the abnormal traffic characteristics that could previously be barely detected by the algorithm have now completely dissipated into the normal background noise.

The filtering rules are no longer able to effectively identify the target.

"How is this possible?" David rushed to the control panel, staring incredulously at the data curves, muttering, "How could they have reacted so quickly? How did they know we used time interval detection? And how did they execute such a precise countermeasure?"

A chill ran down his spine.

This is no longer a contest of technical skills.

It was as if the other party was sitting right there in the room, listening to their decisions, looking at their code, and then casually offering a perfect solution.

The operations room was deathly silent. The joy of victory from a few days ago had been completely crushed, replaced by a deep sense of confusion.

“They…” David murmured to himself, staring at the torrent of data on the screen that had returned to normal, as if asking himself, or perhaps asking an adversary in the shadows: “Who exactly are they?”

David is now seriously questioning the meaning of life.

Although the destroyers have an advantage over the repairers, who are they?
They are Microsoft's top-tier S1 technical team, and they solve the most fundamental logical problems at the highest level of the system.

This is just a cheat.

If those people have that ability, why can't they do something better?
How many coins can a cheat program earn?

The silence in the operations room lasted for a full minute, with only the low hum of the server fans audible.

“How did they do that?” Emily’s voice trembled slightly as she broke the silence. “How long has it been since our rules went live? Was it 24 hours? They not only pinpointed our strategy precisely, but also quickly came up with a countermeasure.”

She pointed to the indistinguishable normal traffic on the screen and said, "This method of adding random delay disturbances to the client is too bizarre. This is not the thinking of a normal cheat maker. It seems to be tailor-made to deal with our detection mechanism."

David slumped back into his chair, rubbing his face vigorously with both hands, trying to shake off the exhaustion from a sleepless night.

He covered his face with his hands, forcing himself to calm down, and recalled the entire exchange.

In the first round, they increased their detection sensitivity, and the opponent immediately introduced a human-like jitter algorithm to reduce this feature.

In the second round, they used DPI equipment to detect time intervals, but their opponents countered with a time delay disruptor that perfectly neutralized their attack.

Every single time, it was as if they were completely seen through.

"This doesn't make sense," muttered Tom, the team's network protocol expert. "Unless... unless they can monitor our network traffic in real time, or there's a mole among us?"

He voiced a possibility that no one dared to consider yet couldn't help but doubt.

"A mole?" David suddenly looked up, his sharp eyes sweeping over everyone in the team, but all he saw were faces filled with shock and confusion.

He quickly dismissed the idea; the team was handpicked by him, and their loyalty and professionalism were beyond question.

Besides, who the hell would turn against someone for a worthless cheat that doesn't make any money?

"The only remaining explanation is..." David said with a dry voice, "Their technical strength and understanding of network protocols far exceeded our expectations. They have one, or a group of, true geniuses. We must re-evaluate our opponents."

This conclusion struck everyone as somewhat absurd.

The Microsoft S1 team, representing the pinnacle of software security at Microsoft and even globally, was now feeling a sense of unease at being outmatched by a game cheat.

Damn it, is the screenwriter sure they didn't pick up the wrong script?

(End of this chapter)