My absurd experiences in North America over the years

Looking out into the distance, the coastline of Malibu blends seamlessly with the sky, creating a breathtakingly beautiful scene.

After a quick tour, Li Fu could roughly understand why the wealthy liked this place.

Of course, the beautiful environment is only one of the reasons.

Most importantly, it's quiet enough that most of the beach is private and not open to the general public.

It took him a lot of effort to sneak in.

At this moment, he was sitting in an inconspicuous gray Corolla, the engine already off, the dim light from the instrument panel appearing somewhat glaring in the dimly lit cabin.

The distant waves crashed against the rocks, making a monotonous yet rhythmic sound.

He had been waiting here for three whole hours, his binoculars almost pressed against his eyes, his gaze fixed on the white yacht at the end of the dock.

That was Winthrop's private yacht.

Based on previous observations, he should be fishing in the surrounding waters today.

But at this moment, the yacht was completely empty.

Li Fu's brows furrowed even more deeply.

Something's not right.

Based on the patterns he had uncovered over the past week, and his own investigations, Winslop came here to fish almost every Friday afternoon, rain or shine.

His passion for fishing far exceeds what most people can imagine.

But he didn't come today.

A bad feeling rose in my mind.

Li Fu felt that Winslop must have lost his composure today.

He put down his binoculars, tapped his fingers lightly on the steering wheel, and carefully analyzed the situation.

In the past few days, Lucy has repeatedly refused Winslop's invitations and has even begun to deliberately avoid this "friend".

And there should be less than a week left before the deadline for the "white party" tickets requested by the mysterious broker.

Clearly, Winslop was in a panic and no longer in the mood to fish.

If Lucy stops following the "script" he set, this scumbag might tear off his disguise and reveal his fangs.

Li Fu did not waste any more time at the dock.

He started the car, quickly turned it around, and sped towards downtown Los Angeles.

His intuition told him that a real storm was brewing, and Lucy was right in the eye of the storm.

Upon returning to the city, Li Fu did nothing else but immediately go to the vicinity of Winthrop's villa.

He sat in the driver's seat of the Corolla and opened the laptop on the passenger seat.

It was a bulky ThinkPad T43, a typical business laptop, but in 2006 it was already a top-of-the-line tool for mobile office work.

In this era, Windows XP SP2 had only recently become widespread, and most people were still using SP1. Firewalls were riddled with vulnerabilities, and antivirus software was practically useless.

For someone like him, who had experienced countless red team/blue team exercises at major internet companies in later years and was well-versed in various zero-day vulnerabilities, breaking into the personal computer of a wealthy young man like Winthrop was a piece of cake.

Cybersecurity at the zero-foundation stage is like having a door wide open.

Li Fu took out a specially made USB data cable and connected it to his phone and computer. This was not an ordinary charging cable, but a "hacking terminal" that he had modified using his electronic knowledge.

The target IP address pointed directly to the wireless network at Winthrop Villa.

During his previous infiltration, he easily cracked Winthrop's completely insecure WEP-encrypted Wi-Fi by scanning signals.

To put it bluntly, many people are unfamiliar with setting Wi-Fi passwords these days, and quite a few are still using the default "admin/admin" as their router password.

The network connection was established quickly.

A stream of green code was flashing across the screen.

Li Fu's fingers danced across the keyboard, as if he were playing a symphony of death.

He doesn't need any fancy brute-force attacks; he can directly gain root access to the system by exploiting MS06-032 (a Windows TCP/IP remote code execution vulnerability) or a classic RPC vulnerability.

He quickly pressed the Enter key.

Access granted.

In less than three minutes, he gained access to Winslop's computer backend.

He had neither the inclination nor the time to pry into Winslop's private life, skillfully bypassing those ridiculous "hidden folders" and heading straight for his recent activity records.

Soon, an unsent draft email and an encrypted Excel spreadsheet caught his attention.

Decrypting files is a joke when faced with a local machine that has administrator privileges; simple encryption methods are a joke.

A table of contents popped up on the screen.

Li Fu's pupils instantly contracted to the size of needles.

That was a rough action plan.

Target: Lucy

Implementing party: Mexican gang

Time: Friday afternoon 16:30

Location: On the way from school to apartment.

Method: Staging a car accident and forcibly removing the person from the scene.

Follow-up: Filming a "special video" to obtain video footage by pretending to rescue someone in an accident.

This was likely an email Winslop was going to send to the mysterious person, but for some reason it wasn't sent.

Li Fu quickly scanned the area, a surge of murderous intent rising within him.

What angered him even more was a screenshot of a bank transfer in the attachment, showing that Winslop had wired $50 to a Swiss bank account belonging to a Mexican gang through an underground money transfer agency.

This madman really went to great lengths to get a ticket.

He quickly closed his laptop.

With time running out, Winslop's plan was even more outrageous than anticipated, willing to completely destroy Lucy.

He took a black rectangular device from the glove box in the back row.

Inside was a somewhat bulky black metal box with two foldable whip antennas inserted on top, and exposed heat sinks and a rough switch on the side.

This was assembled and modified by Li Fu using military-grade electronic components he acquired from the black market, based on the knowledge the original owner gained in the army.

Its principle is very simple and straightforward: it uses high-power radio frequency noise to cover signals in a specific frequency band.

In this era, mobile phone signals were mainly GSM (2G) networks, and the coverage of the nascent 3G signal was also incomplete.

This rudimentary yet powerful device is powerful enough to turn any cell phone into a "brick" within a certain range.

Li Fu stood the antenna of the jammer upright, stuffed it into his trench coat pocket, leaving only a small section of the antenna sticking out.

Want to play kidnapping? Then he'll let Winslop experience what it's really like to be "out of contact".

He immediately drove his gray Corolla like an enraged beast, bursting into traffic and heading towards the street where Lucy was returning to her apartment from school.

This time, the roles of hunter and prey have been completely reversed.

Winslop then chose the most direct and violent method, which surprised Li Fu.

He truly hadn't expected the other party to be so crazy.

The operation took place at 4:30 p.m., when Lucy should have been driving home. He barely made it in time.

As for the Mexican gangs in Los Angeles, they were not entirely a group of desperate outlaws with no means of livelihood. Los Angeles at this time was experiencing a period of high gang violence and very sharp racial tensions.

Gang warfare, particularly between Latinos and African Americans, is escalating in the streets.

Li Fu doesn't yet know how Winslop contacted them, but this group is known for their ruthlessness.

They attacked Lucy on her way home, managing to avoid the police and security at the school and the upscale apartment complex, making it unlikely that Lucy would escape unscathed.

According to Winslop's plan.

He would play the role of the "savior who arrives just in time," using family connections to "rescue" the victims. In the process of this so-called "rescue," he would naturally "accidentally" find those obscene videos.

In this way, they could completely control this heiress from a political family in Tennessee.

The methods used were extremely despicable and vicious.

However, it must be admitted that if executed smoothly, the goal can be easily achieved.

Los Angeles' rush hour traffic is incredibly congested; every second feels like dancing on a knife's edge.

Li Fu's heart pounded violently. He felt an overwhelming surge of suppressed anger. If anything happened to Lucy, he would make the Winslop family pay with their lives.

A sharp screech of brakes tore through the nearby streets a dozen minutes later.

As Li Fu's car rounded the bend, the scene ahead made his blood freeze instantly: a black van was blocking the middle of the road, stopping Lucy's usual Porsche Cayenne.

Several burly, tattooed Mexican gang members jumped off the van, brandishing steel pipes and pistols, and roughly pulled at the van doors.

Lucy was terrified, but her voice was muffled by the thick car windows, sounding utterly desperate.

Li Fu didn't have time to think. He floored the accelerator, and the gray Corolla roared as it crashed into the parked bread truck like a cannonball.

The massive impact caused the bread truck to skid violently to the side, and a large section of the door was dented.

Several thugs who were about to smash the car window immediately panicked and hid.

"Fuck, who the hell is messing around?"

Two or three thugs reacted quickly, drawing their guns and pointing the dark muzzles at Li Fu's beat-up car.

Without the slightest hesitation, Li Fu pushed open the car door the instant of impact and rolled to the ground under the cover of the car body.

At the same time, he raised his right hand, and a cold light shot out.

That was a tactical dagger he always carried with him.

Besides close-quarters combat, he can also use it as a throwing knife.

The dagger traced a perfect arc of death in the air, precisely piercing the throat of a thug who was about to pull the trigger.

Blood gushed out, and the man clutched his neck and fell to the ground, making a strange "gurgling" sound.

"Fire! Take him down!"

The leader of the thugs, his eyes blazing with fury, frantically pulled the trigger.

The deafening gunshots echoed through the narrow streets.

Li Fu's figure moved like a ghost, quickly weaving between several cars. His movements were frighteningly calm, without a single wasted effort.

As a warrior who has faced countless life-or-death trials, he was confronted by a group of rabble who only knew how to engage in street brawls.

He has an overwhelming psychological advantage.

He used the bread cart as cover to get the gun from the thug who had died.

Then, as if venting his anger, he began a massacre of the gang of desperados.

He fired his gun calmly and accurately each time, quickly killing two thugs. One was shot between the eyebrows, and the other was shot in the chest, both fatal blows.

When have these thugs ever encountered such a powerful enemy?

Street gang warfare is close-quarters combat involving both firearms and melee weapons; the precise killing on the battlefield is far too unfamiliar to them.

The gang leader was filled with fear, and his way of releasing that fear was to unleash a torrent of ammunition. Bullets struck the hard road surface and concrete, sending sparks flying and stray bullets flying everywhere.

As Li Fu moved, he calmly calculated the trajectory of the bullet and the opponent's reaction time.

He was like a chess player on a board, calculating the opponent's fatal path with every move.

Soon, with a side shot, he killed another gang member. Then, with a roll, he used sound to pinpoint the location and fired two more shots, taking out another enemy who was trying to flank him.

In just a few minutes, most of the menacing gang members had fallen.

The petty boss panicked completely.

He realized that they had provoked a monster they shouldn't have, and that a direct confrontation would lead to certain death.

He suddenly rushed to Lucy's car, violently smashed the door, yanked the trembling Lucy out, and then held a sharp switchblade to her neck.

"Don't come any closer, or I'll kill her!"

The underling's voice trembled, and sweat mixed with blood streamed down his face.

His blade had already slashed through Lucy's delicate skin, and a trickle of crimson blood flowed down the edge.

Lucy's face was deathly pale, tears welling up in her eyes, but she bit her lip tightly and didn't make a sound.

She knew it was Li Fu who had come; the man was trying to rescue her amidst gunfire and smoke, which gave her a sense of security.

Li Fu had no choice but to stop.

But the gun in his hand was pointed steadily at the enemy, and the muzzle did not even tremble.

"Let her go," Li Fu's voice carried an unquestionable authority.

"Fuck you, drop the gun, or I'll slit this chick's throat right now!" The gang leader was hysterical, pressing the blade even tighter.

Lucy let out a muffled groan of pain.

"I'll count to three. If you don't release them, you'll face certain death," Li Fu coldly announced. "Three..."

This wasn't his first time rescuing hostages, and he knew all too well that compromise was futile, especially when dealing with desperate criminals from the lower rungs of society.

"If you dare to shoot, I'll kill him right now. Get back."

"two……"

"You madman, I told you to step back..."

The junior leader was clearly panicked.

"Fuck you, we'll all die together!" The gang leader's arm muscles tensed instantly from panic and excitement, ready to kill Lucy.

Li Fu fired with lightning speed, the bullet accurately hitting the wrist joint of the small leader who was holding the knife.

His calculations were spot on; the bullet would most likely pierce the wrist and enter the opponent's right scapula.

"Ah..." The thug let out a scream, and the knife in his hand fell to the ground as he was in pain.

But he was, after all, a desperate man, and in his excruciating pain, he instinctively swung his other hand, trying to grab Lucy again.

Li Fu fired again, and with a muffled thud, the thug's body fell straight backward like a log, his pupils dilated, dying with his eyes wide open.

Startled, Lucy instinctively ran towards Li Fu.

The last gang member who had been hiding behind the car was terrified and immediately seized the opportunity to escape.

There was a lot of traffic congestion around, and the other person quickly disappeared from sight.

Li Fu didn't give chase. He quickly pulled Lucy into the car and headed to their apartment. He knew who was behind it all, and this matter wasn't over yet.