America: I came here to study, not to show mercy.

Chapter 241 A Night of Infiltration and Turmoil
Paladin Arms, a technology research and development center in Silicon Valley, California.

It was already 3 a.m., but the lights were still on throughout the building. The work area was filled with employees who were dressed smartly but looked listless and dejected. Whenever a computer alerted them that the firewall was under attack, they would suddenly perk up and work together to analyze and investigate the network attack, and even trace its source.

In an empty restroom, a red door frame suddenly appeared in a half-open stall. The door immediately opened, and a young man seemed to step out from another dimension. As he stepped into this world, he quickly shrank into a tabby cat with black and white gradient fur.

[The limited-time Eye of Insight has been activated. Upon searching, the host has not received any attention.]

After quickly checking himself and confirming that everything was in order, Li Xiaoen breathed a sigh of relief. He then focused his mind on the entire building, searching for blind spots in the surveillance and any opportunities to take advantage of the situation.

To be fair, it's no wonder that this company can hold its position as a military giant in the war-torn United States. After carefully examining all possible blind spots in the surveillance, Li Xiaoen found that there wasn't a single one that could reach a simple networked computer.

But this doesn't bother him much; he can simply open the "Anywhere Door" again to bypass all surveillance and arrive directly at his destination.

With a fleeting thought, Li Xiaoen revealed a meaningful smile before turning and returning to his bedroom.

Whether it was due to a few employees slacking off or not, there were still quite a few work computers located in blind spots of the surveillance system.

The door to the restroom stall disappeared instantly, and when it reappeared, it was in a corner near the edge of a small office.

A tabby cat, carrying a USB drive in its mouth, tiptoed through the red doorway. It glanced warily at a small lounge next door, not wanting to see the scene of passion inside, but reluctantly maintaining the surveillance of its "Eye of Insight" for safety.

Luan is a young phoenix, and Feng is an old phoenix. Li Xiaoen never thought that he would have to witness such a thing with his own eyes. He sighed inwardly and controlled his mind to limit the monitoring range to outside the sofa.

The employees outside are working themselves to the bone, while the leaders inside are indulging in debauchery and revelry day and night—it's quite an ironic scene.

Li Xiaoen chuckled, moved behind the desk, spotted the computer case underneath, bit the USB drive in his mouth and plugged it in, then jumped onto the desk using the chair.

The USB drive contained the virus scripts he wrote when he first came into contact with the hacking profession, as well as copied files that he rushed to complete after returning from the studio this afternoon. Both tools were extremely convenient to use; as a cat, he only needed to control them with a few clicks of the mouse.

In this tense moment, just in case, and to be on the safe side, in order to detect the moment the man finished, Li Xiaoen had no choice but to cover the sofa in the small room with the [Eye of Insight] again...

"call--"

At one point, in the quiet office, the door to the small room suddenly opened, making a crisp knocking sound.

A middle-aged man, somewhat overweight and with thinning hair, walked out of the room, exhaling a long breath. He raised his hand and pulled down the tie around his neck, his face showing a satisfied yet bewildered expression.

Behind him, which he could not see, a red door frame quickly disappeared, returning to the original whitewashed corner of the wall.

The man walked up to the desk, picked up the coffee and took a big gulp. Only then did a young woman emerge from the room, her legs trembling. She was heavily made up, wearing a tight-fitting short skirt, and her hands were still carefully tidying herself up.

Snapped.

As the woman walked past him, the man slapped her hard across the face with his lowered hand. When the woman turned back in a reproachful manner, a lewd smile appeared on his face.

Just as he was about to say something, a noisy commotion came from outside the office. The man's smiling face suddenly turned gloomy, and he frowned and gestured to the woman.

"Call over a few managers from the department. We need to be fully engaged in defending against external hacker attacks. What are they arguing about at this critical moment?"

"Okay, manager."

The woman nodded, lowered her head, and quickly turned and left the room.

"Mr. Antonio, something terrible has happened..."

Just moments later, several anxious exclamations came from outside the door.

……

The next morning.

After staying up all night, Li Xiaoen woke up at 8 a.m. according to her biological clock. Since she didn't have class this morning, she took an extra nap. When she woke up again, it was already 10 a.m.

Yawning as he went out, Li Xiaoen took out his phone and immediately saw that the Paladin Arms Company scandal had broken out online and was causing a huge uproar.

What's even more amusing is that, according to some insider, the company's R&D department, which is mainly engaged in network security, was instead invaded by a virus. All the computers in the office area quickly went out of control like wildfire, and the screens displayed a comical image of a husky burying its head in water and blowing bubbles.

Amused, Li Xiaoen flipped through page after page of online news and information, including both short and long videos and text-based content, all of which occupied a large portion of the page.

This wave of public opinion seemed to be fueled by an unseen force, escalating further, and his brows furrowed slightly.

These public scandals were naturally stolen by him when he broke into the office in the early hours of the morning. The virus was left behind by him casually. In order to avoid causing trouble, he packed up the company's internal documents, created a virtual address, and sent it to the email address of Catherine, a friend of Sophie whose family controlled a media giant.

Besides that, he ignored everything else. Could the escalating online controversy be the work of the arms company's competitors?

Unable to contain his thoughts, Li Xiaoen stepped downstairs and noticed that Su Feier had already called and sent several messages on the app.

"..."

After hesitating for a moment, Li Xiaoen walked towards the refrigerator while dialing Su Feier's number.

"Sufeil, what's going on?"

The call was quickly answered, and Li Xiaoen yawned before getting straight to the point.

Are you in the dorm?

Sophie didn't waste any words, "Your roommate isn't here, is she?"

"I'm here, he's not."

Li Xiaoen replied without even pausing after simply opening the [Eye of Insight].

"Okay, wait for me."

Sophie replied, "Did you just wake up? Shall I get you some brunch?"

"Hey hey hey..."

Even now, Li Xiaoen paused in his action of picking up the milk, suddenly perked up, and quickly asked, "Suffolk, are you coming over? Is there something you need?"

"I think you can find out what happened online."

Suffer gave a pointed reply, then hung up the phone after saying a few words to herself, leaving Li Xiaoen staring blankly at her phone.

Will Suffer suspect him again after what happened last night?

His face turned strange, and Li Xiaoen shrugged helplessly. He was very suspicious that if a meteorite were to fall one day, the other party would suspect that it was his doing.

In early spring, a light rain had just fallen in the early morning, and Princeton was still filled with a lingering, chilly atmosphere.

With the Eye of Insight activated, Li Xiaoen saw Su Feier enter the detection range. He opened the door, leaned against the door frame, and watched him walk closer, just as the girl had done before.

"Let's go in."

Handing the packaged food to the young man, Suffer walked into the house on her own, looking around the living room as if no one else was there. She then went upstairs first, heading towards the young man's room, saying, "Go back to your room." Li Xiaoen had no objection and followed Suffer's footsteps. The girl's hurried footsteps made him realize what was happening, and he quickened his pace to catch up.

As expected, Suffer stood in front of his bed, her eyes curiously looking around. Noticing his figure following closely behind, she sat down in front of the computer.

"Looking at you like this, anyone who didn't know better would think I've committed some crime, or am hiding something..."

After placing the food on the computer desk, Li Xiaoen pulled up a chair and sat down next to her, casually remarking, "Miss Holmes, have you discovered anything? Please allow me a moment to make up my story."

"I have reasonable doubts."

Rolling her eyes at the young man's teasing, Suffer explained and turned back to open a webpage. "Paladin Arms Company, isn't that the company you mentioned before that organized teams to participate in their firewall attack and defense bounty program?"

Without saying anything, Sophie immediately got to the topic that had been bothering her all morning.

“You have to understand, Sophie.”

Li Xiaoen explained helplessly, "Usually, these kinds of competitions don't involve hackers directly attacking their company's servers. Instead, they create an independent target with only irrelevant data or even an empty shell, to test their own firewalls that have been copied from the past."

"Let's not even talk about whether we can break through this era, even if we do, all we'll get is the attack script and some irrelevant information."

"I know."

With her red lips pursed, Sophie reluctantly agreed.

This was truly unbelievable, and she instinctively suspected it was the young man's doing—especially since the company computer had been attacked by a virus, leaving behind a hilarious animated image of a husky spitting bubbles, which was very much in line with the young man's usual style and actions.

"Right, Sean."

Suddenly remembering something, Suffer asked again, "How's the project progressing in your studio?"

"Are you confident of success? I heard that because of this incident, their firewall has many vulnerabilities and is not maintained in time, which has increased the success rate of breaking through it."

Upon hearing this, Li Xiaoen paused in his bread-eating motion, causing Su Feier to frown slightly in confusion.

"Let me guess..."

Giving her a meaningful look, Su Feier hesitated for a moment before carefully choosing her words, "Your studio had already completed the attack on their firewall, but it failed due to some kind of obstruction from the other side, which happened before this online uproar."

Am I right?

Lowering her voice, Suffer turned her head and stared intently at any change in Li Xiaoen's expression.

What the f**k……

Since you're so smart, why don't you guess the props for the "Anywhere Door" too?

Li Xiaoen couldn't help but exclaim inwardly, shaking his head with a wry smile on his face.

“You guessed right, Sophie.”

He took a deep breath and nodded in agreement, "The situation in our studio is roughly as you guessed."

Regardless of whether anyone else in the studio has mentioned that matter online, considering the potential pitfalls Suffer might have dug for himself, if he chooses to lie and gets exposed, then even without any evidence, Suffer would be certain that he does indeed possess some kind of superpower.

"So, all this online turmoil today is your revenge?"

Sophie raised an eyebrow and looked over with her big, curious, and excited light blue eyes.

"No."

“I’ve spoken with Catherine, and all this information was sent to her from a virtual address.”

Sophie lowered her head and listed them off, "I've checked too. The animated GIF of that virus is exactly the kind of image that's very popular in China for chatting, just like the ones you used to send me all the time!"

"No matter what you say, it's all speculation, without any evidence, isn't it?"

With her heart pounding, Li Xiaoen took a sip of coffee helplessly. "Besides," she said, "I saw some analysis online from professionals who said that the company conducts prior checks, analyses, and controls on all software downloaded and installed on computers. The virus must have been deployed locally. There's a high probability that there's an inside job within the company, isn't there?"

"Otherwise, who spread the virus that infected the company's computers?"

Because the manager's position wasn't high enough, and the inside story wasn't damaging enough, that's secondary. As an arms company, with the development of the modern internet, online security systems are also an indispensable part of its business. This company that provides online protection was successfully hacked by a virus, which destroyed all the computers in the entire office area. This incident unintentionally hit the other party's Achilles' heel.

This is a blatant slap in the face, in front of everyone.

Upon hearing this, Suffer took a deep breath, turned to look at the computer, and fell completely silent.

"Could it be that you have some kind of time-traveling superpower?"

Sophie stared at the computer screen and muttered to herself, "Or perhaps, you have friends, relationships, or even mutual interests with those in that arms company that you can completely trust and cooperate with?"

Before he could finish speaking, Suffer didn’t notice the stunned look on the young man’s face and quickly shook his head in denial.

She had checked Li Xiaoen's family background and even visited China in person. Although they were a well-off family with no worries about food and clothing, they clearly couldn't afford such a thing.

"Could it be a competitor of Paladin Arms Company?"

Li Xiaoen snapped out of her daze and tentatively voiced her question, "I see there's a lot of commotion online, and it feels like some forces are stirring things up."

"you are right."

Sophie readily nodded in agreement and glanced sideways at the young man.

"The competitors of the arms company are naturally those with the same business."

Naturally understanding the girl's implication that she wanted him to guess, Li Xiaoen pondered for a moment before tentatively saying, "The company's scandals and secrets are secondary; this is an attack on their online business, meaning the opposing company must also be involved in this business, and on a considerable scale..."

"Um……"

Sophie gave a soft hum and nodded.

"Could it be... Serafina's family business?"

Anticipating Suffer's intention in asking him to guess, Li Xiaoen tentatively asked.

He racked his brains, ruling out Mary, who was completely unaware of the family business, and it seemed that only Serafina's family, who was in charge of security, could be involved.

Security companies, in addition to providing personal safety services for employers, also offer online protection services, which is a natural thing to think of.

"you guessed right."

Taking a deep breath, Sophie nodded, a strange look in her eyes as she looked at the young man.

(End of this chapter)