Magical Girl Fan Bingbing

After obtaining crucial information from the other shore flower, Jiang Ran began making preliminary preparations.

The idea proposed by the other shore flower seems simple, but it's not difficult to put into practice.

Due to their special nature, the Watchers maintain a high degree of secrecy. Their bases are not visible on maps and appear as nothing more than a low-key gate with few signs.

If an average person were to attempt this task, they would most likely fail, and even if they forced themselves to continue, they would almost certainly be discovered along the way.

But Jiang Ran is different.

She only needs to use the simplest and most unpretentious method.

Every day after finishing her classes at school, Jiang Ran would drive her newly bought car to the main roads near the Public Security Bureau and act as a street urchin.

As a megacity with a population of 30 million, Tianhai City, despite its overall stable public security, still experiences a significant number of cases every day due to its large population.

When intelligence reports come in at various levels, the Watchers squads will be dispatched from the base in large numbers.

Jiang Ran kept a close eye on the Watchers squad. Once he spotted them, he would find a secluded corner, transform, cast an invisibility spell on himself, and then swagger after them.

When the Watchers went out on a mission, Jiang Ran followed them; when the Watchers returned to base after completing the mission, Jiang Ran also went back and marked the location of the base on the map.

Without a higher-level magical girl accompanying them, the Watchers squad would have virtually no chance of detecting Jiang Ran's concealment magic.

Ultimately, they were just ordinary people who had undergone magic-based human body modifications.

Using this simple yet effective method, Jiang Ran quickly figured out the locations of the Watchers scattered throughout Tianhai City.

Next comes the rather tedious data summarization and analysis.

Jiang Ran bought the largest physical map of Tianhai City from a stationery store and stuck it on the wall of her bedroom.

Then she started marking the data she collected each day on a map.

She drew each of the Watchers' journeys on the map with thin lines of different colors, showing which base they started from, which route they took, where they stopped, where they ended up, and where they returned.

A few days later, the map was covered with these fine lines.

Most of the lines are messy, pointing to various security tasks at the scene.

However, a small number of lines will repeatedly intersect in certain very specific locations—places that are neither the sites of security incidents nor any officially registered facilities, but which the Watchers regularly and frequently visit and stay for extended periods of time.

These intersections are the key nodes of the Magic Network.

Countless lines overlapped and converged on the map. Jiang Ran circled these intersections one by one, and then posted real-life photos of the corresponding locations, their specific coordinates, and the time patterns of the Watchers' squad's entry and exit on the whiteboard next to him.

When that whiteboard with the map was filled with dense information and photos...

Solo Mission: Watching the Sky and Sea, Initiate.

Jiang Ran looked at her work and couldn't help but smile.

She never imagined in her life that she would be seriously engaged in this kind of intelligence work at the age of thirty-five, right in her own home.

Looking at the box full of investigation materials, Jiang Ran suddenly realized that she actually had a pretty high talent for doing such bad things.

What's that saying again? People don't feel tired when they're doing bad things.

With the preliminary intelligence work completed, the next step is to verify the authenticity and reliability of the intelligence.

Having a map full of nodes isn't enough; Jiang Ran also needs to know something even more crucial—just how fast the Public Security Bureau can react.

……

That night, the clock had just struck midnight.

Jiang Ran, who was lying in bed pretending to be asleep, suddenly opened her eyes, transformed, and silently jumped off the bedroom balcony.

A gentle breeze steadily supported her slender body, then lifted her higher and higher, carrying her towards Tianhai Tower, one of Tianhai City's landmark buildings.

In the eyes of the public, Tianhai Tower is just an ordinary radio and television tower, nothing special except that it is often featured in major news reports as a landmark of Tianhai City.

But in reality, this is one of the most important magic network nodes in the entire Tianhai City.

Built in such a prominent location, it is the largest grove of trees.

Jiang Ran chose this location to test the actual reaction speed of the Watchers and the magical girls from the Security Bureau when the Magic Network faces an invasion.

Jiang Ran's slender figure was inconspicuous hundreds of meters in the air.

The instant she flew close to the Sky Sea Tower, she could clearly feel a wave of magical energy sweeping across her body.

But the scan was completely ineffective against Jiang Ran's concealment magic.

It was already late at night, and the neon lights around the Tianhai Tower had been turned off, leaving only the flashing red aviation obstacle avoidance light on the top of the tower.

Jiang Ran, her toes barely covered by black stockings, lightly touched the very top of the Tianhai Tower.

From hundreds of meters above, this sleepless city is still bustling with people and traffic.

Jiang Ran raised her right hand, and blazing white lightning danced at her fingertips, like a gentle yet playful little beast.

Her gaze shifted, locking onto the magic network node disguised as a broadcast signal base station beneath her feet.

With a flick of his finger, the lightning at his fingertip instantly disappeared into the node.

The next second, the magic network node itself did not react abnormally, but inside the police station hundreds of meters away, the alarm bells blared instantly.

A security guard on duty, who had been dozing off while holding his phone, turned pale instantly when he looked up and saw the red box pop up on the alarm screen. He dropped his phone in fright and grabbed the internal phone on the table to make a call.

Here's a little-known fact: magical girls also need to sleep.

About two and a half minutes later, Jiang Ran stood on a tall building not far away and saw a certain unlucky magical girl rushing over from the other side of the city, hovering above the Skysea Tower with a posture as if facing a great enemy.

The magical girl had clearly been forcibly woken up from her sleep; her mental state was like that of Hakimi, who had been dragged out of bed.

The nearby Watchers squad reacted just as quickly; less than two minutes after the alarm rang, two black vehicles screeched to a halt at the foot of the Skysea Tower.

After the two sides met, they remained on high alert for a long time.

Then, nothing happened.

However, based on the principle of responsibility and the attitude that I shouldn't be the only one who can't sleep, the Watchers team still called for technical support, then took the elevator to the top floor of the Skysea Tower, and then climbed dozens of meters of steel-framed stairs to reach the very top.

Upon inspection, nothing was found.

After remaining on guard for a while and confirming that there was nothing unusual in the surroundings, the magical girl who had been dragged out in the middle of the night left, grumbling and cursing.

Jiang Ran was far away and couldn't hear what she was saying.

But I imagine they were some kind of heartfelt blessings.

However, while the magical girl can go back to sleep, the Watchers don't get that privilege.

They have to stay until dawn, waiting for a more professional technical team to take over and conduct a complete system check.

After this test, Jiang Ran roughly figured out the police station's reaction speed.

However, the sample size obtained from a single test is far from sufficient to make a stable judgment.

So Jiang Ran conducted several similar tests at different Magic Network nodes in Tianhai City at different times of day, such as late at night, early morning, morning rush hour, noon, afternoon, and evening rush hour, and finally obtained a set of stable average data.

If the alarm is accidentally triggered, she will have less than two and a half minutes to react.

In extreme cases, such as when the triggering node happens to be near the home of a magical girl, it might not even take a minute.

Jiang Ran was very satisfied with this set of data.

The consequence is that the project managers of the various contractors who contracted to build the Magic Network haven't had a good time these past few days.

The false alarm rate of this kind of infrastructure, which is related to the bottom line of urban safety, has inexplicably surged in a short period of time. It is estimated that several people will not be able to sleep well for a long time.

Jiang Ran could only silently apologize to them in her heart.

Then continue to move forward with your plans.

……

On a sunny afternoon, Jiang Ran officially began her operation.

The location she chose was a node at the intersection of the territories of multiple Watchers squads.

The location of this node is rather awkward, as the territories of three Watcher squads converge here. Normally, any of them can take charge, and none of them can completely ignore it. The node itself is located on the rooftop of an old office building, surrounded by abandoned old equipment.

Based on the data from Jiang Ran's previous tests, the average reaction time here is significantly higher than other nodes, making it the best target she selected.

Jiang Ran did not drive here.

She transformed directly from her home and flew over, passing through the slightly languid afternoon sky above the city, and landed steadily on the roof of that office building.

In broad daylight, Jiang Ran walked openly to the Magic Network node disguised as a 5G signal base station in the corner of the rooftop and began working on the spot.

Once the disguised outer shell is removed, the intricate magic array embedded with dozens of magic crystals inside is revealed.

Jiang Ran squatted down, stretched out her hand, and a faint magical power extended from her fingertips, gently merging into the magic network node.

At first, Jiang Ran thought that hacking into the Magic Network to obtain remote access was an extremely difficult task.

After all, with the full support of the ten councils and the government, the Magic Network has undergone several iterations and comprehensive upgrades over the years. This masterpiece, which embodies the wisdom of countless people, must have very strict internal defenses.

However, when Jiang Ran actually began to analyze the underlying architecture of the Magic Network, she was shocked to find that things seemed to be quite different from what she had imagined.

The so-called latest generation of Magic Network underlying architecture in front of us is simply a huge, monstrous mountain of code.

The core logic loops are layered upon layered, as if every generation of developers over the past twenty years has been patching, adding plugins, and connecting new modules, but no one has dared to completely refactor the old code.

Some of the most critical underlying functions even use the original magic circuits from the first generation of the Magic Network.

The antiquated code is barely functioning under the new generation of advanced magical shell, and the interfaces between some modules still rely on some extremely crude compatibility layer to force communication.

As for why Jiang Ran could recognize it as an antique left over from the first generation of the Magic Network at a glance, the reason is very simple.

Jiang Ran was one of the main people in charge when the Magic Alliance built the first generation of Magic Network.

Some of the underlying architectures and functional magic loops that are still in use today were built by her personally.

She could even recognize at a glance the familiar processing method on a certain section of the magic loop. It was a temporary optimization measure she had left behind to meet the deadline back then. She originally planned to use it temporarily after it went live and then change it in subsequent optimizations, but it ended up being used for twenty years.

As for why later generations didn't change this loop, it can only be said that the predecessors believed in the wisdom of the successors, and the successors believed that their ancestors must have had their reasons for doing so.

They went their separate ways.

For Jiang Ran, hacking into the current Magic Network was as easy as opening the door to his home.

The whole process was incredibly smooth.

Access, privilege escalation, account creation, authorization, notification policy settings... the key steps were executed flawlessly, taking less than a minute.

A hidden super administrator account was successfully created and granted the highest priority alert notification permissions.

From now on, Jiang Ran will be among the first to receive notifications of any developments in Tianhai City.

After doing all this, Jiang Ran spent a few more minutes cleaning up all traces of her presence, even carefully erasing the few lines of operation records she had just written in the bottom-level log.

She came quietly, and she left quietly.

……

After returning home, Jiang Ran had just hung her keys on the hook in the entryway when her phone vibrated in her pocket.

She took it out and glanced at it.

[A cross-dimensional monster attack has been detected near South Road 1, Tianhai City. Analysis indicates a signal confidence level of 5 sigma and a threat level ranging from Iron to Bronze. All nearby combat units have been notified.]

Jiang Ran's lips curled up imperceptibly.

When the magic network detects fluctuations in magic power, it does not immediately issue an alarm. Instead, it analyzes the information autonomously first. Only after a certain level of confidence and threat is met will it issue a combat notification to nearby combat units.

Jiang Ran's super administrator account has the permission to define notification conditions independently.

Any information she wants to know, regardless of whether it reaches the official threshold, will be sent to her directly as soon as possible.

The time difference between these two events provides Jiang Ran with an excellent window of opportunity.

She could even receive the notification seconds or minutes earlier than the regular magical girls in the police department.

The trade-off is that her phone might vibrate much more frequently afterward.

Just as I finished thinking that, my phone vibrated again.

[An abnormal fluctuation of magical energy was detected 500 meters south of the coastal avenue in the East District of Tianhai City. Confidence level: 0.8 sigma. Threat level: None. Ignored.]

……really.

Jiang Ran put her phone on vibrate and tossed it onto the sofa.

"All we have to do now is wait."

====

The first elbow strike failed to pass the review; the second round is underway...

I need to focus my energy on military matters these next few days.

So there will only be one update, but the word count will not be reduced.