Searching for someone in northern Myanmar, and you call that earning tuition fees?

Jiangcheng, an old neighborhood of tenement buildings.

The morning mist hadn't yet dissipated, but steam was already rising from "Wang's Noodle Shop" at the alley entrance. The pot was bubbling and churning, and the air was filled with the aroma of alkaline noodles and lard.

Su Ming, wearing a faded gray T-shirt and flip-flops, sat in a corner against the wall. He skillfully poured half a dish of aged vinegar into a bowl, added a spoonful of bright red chili oil, stirred it with his chopsticks, and steam wafted out.

"Boss, another fried egg, runny."

"Hey! Xiao Su, you're back from your trip? I haven't seen you in a while, you've gotten quite tanned." The boss, Lao Wang, greeted him cheerfully while cracking an egg.

"Yeah, I went for a trip to the mountains in the south. The ultraviolet rays are strong there," Su Ming replied indistinctly, slurping a mouthful of noodles.

If Zhou Zhenguo of the Criminal Investigation Corps of Jiangnan Province were to see this scene, his eyes would probably pop out of their sockets. The "scholar" who reaped lives like a ghost in the jungles of northern Myanmar and calmly extorted more than 100 million yuan under heavy encirclement was now frowning slightly because there weren't enough scallions in his noodle soup.

At that moment, the old-fashioned color TV hanging on the wall of the noodle shop was broadcasting the morning news.

"...Breaking news. Early this morning, under the strong leadership of our police, in conjunction with Interpol and border enforcement agencies from the three parties, a transnational operation codenamed 'Operation Thunder Sweep' was launched."

The elderly men and women eating breakfast in the noodle shop all looked up.

The scene shifts, no longer to the studio, but to a violently shaky battlefield.

Flames shot into the sky.

That was K District after Su Ming left.

But this time, it wasn't just the park where the vault was destroyed. The camera zoomed out, and from the drone's overhead view, the entire Angla region, and even the several hidden outposts extending behind it, were marked on the map like dominoes, one by one, lit up and destroyed in red.

"...It is understood that the reason why this operation was able to achieve a historic breakthrough is because the police have obtained the most core data on the flow of funds of the criminal group and the list of the protectors behind it."

The news anchor's voice was impassioned and powerful: "This top-secret intelligence is accurate down to the IP address of every money laundering account, and even includes the coordinates of the criminal group's secret underground servers."

Su Ming broke the runny egg with his chopsticks, and the golden egg liquid flowed onto the noodles.

That was the last thing he did before leaving District K.

When he extorted 150 million from Kun Ge, it wasn't entirely for the money. During the one-minute window between transfers, he used his modified Nokia phone to send a web crawler through Kun Ge's transfer channel to the other party's entire internal network.

He wrote that web crawler when he was bored in his second year of high school. The logic was very simple: follow the money.

Wherever the money goes, the data will be captured.

Kun thought he had only lost money, but little did he know that the dozens of overseas accounts he had urgently mobilized to pay that huge sum of money were all exposed to Su Ming at that moment, and then turned into an encrypted data packet, which was stored on the USB drive that Su Ming gave to Zhou Zhenguo.

This is the "scholar's" killing technique.

A knife can only kill, but data can pierce the heart.

On television, one after another, impeccably dressed "big shots" who wielded immense power in Southeast Asia were escorted off luxury villas, five-star hotels, and even private yachts by heavily armed special police. Their faces were filled with disbelief and terror, as if they still couldn't understand how their multi-million dollar security systems and firewalls could crumble like paper.

"Good! Well done!" In the noodle shop, an old man watching the news excitedly slapped his thigh. "These damned swindlers should have been wiped out long ago!"

"I heard a mysterious hero performed a great service this time?"

"Hey, it's all over the internet, they're saying it's a college student."

"Don't be ridiculous, how could a college student have that kind of ability? It must be a special forces king going on an incognito visit."

Hearing the surrounding chatter, Su Ming smiled shyly. He picked up the bowl and drank the last drop of noodle soup clean.

"belch--"

Su Ming took out a tissue to wipe his mouth and then took out his phone to scan the QR code.

"Boss, the money's gone."

"Alright, take care, Xiao Su!"

Stepping out of the noodle shop, the sunlight pierced through the thin mist and spilled onto the street. Su Ming stretched, his joints cracking softly.

That night in northern Myanmar, filled with the stench of blood, gunpowder, and desperate cries, seemed like nothing more than a bizarre and surreal nightmare.

At this moment, a thousand miles away.

Command Center of the Criminal Investigation Corps of Jiangnan Province.

Zhou Zhenguo, sporting two huge dark circles under his eyes, stared at the constantly changing arrest data on the big screen, unaware that the cigarette in his hand had burned down to his fingertips.

"Report to Headquarters! The entire core of District K has been apprehended! Based on the intelligence provided by 'The Scholar,' we've also uncovered two distribution rings hidden within the country!"

"Report! Illegal funds totaling 7.3 billion have been intercepted! The freezing process is currently underway!"

Good news keeps coming.

The entire command center erupted in cheers; the technicians were overjoyed, and some even embraced and wept. This was the most brilliant victory in the history of China's fight against fraud, bar none.

Zhou Zhenguo stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray and exhaled a long breath. He stared at the black USB drive in his hand, his expression extremely complex.

"Boss, this kid..." The deputy captain next to him swallowed hard, his voice trembling slightly, "Did he study finance or hacking? His data mining skills are even more ruthless than the information warfare experts in our provincial department."

Zhou Zhenguo gave a wry smile, locked the USB drive in the safe, and affixed a "top secret" seal.

He said he was taught by a carpenter.

"Huh?" The vice-captain was bewildered. "A carpenter teaching coding?"

"He called it 'logic'." Zhou Zhenguo recalled the young man's harmless smile and the phrase "studying physics is to reason calmly." "In his eyes, a firewall's loophole and a crack in wood are probably the same thing."

"This is simply a monster."

"Yeah, a prodigy." Zhou Zhenguo walked to the window, looked at the rising sun outside, and murmured, "Fortunately, this prodigy was born under the red flag, and he's a good student who wants to take the postgraduate entrance exam."

At the same time, Su Ming's phone vibrated.

It's a bank newsletter.

【您尾号XXXX的帐户于08月27日08:30完成一笔大额捐赠支出，金额：50,000,000.00元。收款方：江城孤儿院慈善基金会（定向医疗及教育专款）。附言：好心人。】

Su Ming looked at the remaining balance of 100 million yuan and shrugged.

Having too much money is also a problem. Keep some for living expenses and tuition, and use the rest to buy tea for the old dean.

"What's next?"

Su Ming kicked at the pebbles by the roadside, looking at the empty summer vacation that was almost over.

"There are still several days before school starts, I'm so bored."