Redemption from the Abyss: The School Beauty Insists on Pulling Me Out of the Mire

[January 1st, Room 1602]

On the first day of the new year, the snow in Jiangcheng had not yet completely melted.

The sizzling sound of frying eggs came from the kitchen.

"Click".

There was a knock on the door across the street.

Su Qinghe walked out wearing rabbit slippers.

Her eyes still held the languidness of someone just waking up, but when she met the tall figure busy in the kitchen, a faint blush rose to her ears.

The scalding sensation of our New Year's Eve kiss on the rooftop last night still seems to linger on our lips.

"Good morning, Teacher Su." Xie Wang turned around, deliberately drawing out the last syllable.

Happy New Year. Did you sleep well last night?

Su Qinghe forced himself to remain calm as he walked to the dining table, picking up a glass of hot milk to cover half his face.

"That's good, if you don't count the fact that someone tried to steal my mistake notebook in my dream."

Xie Wang chuckled softly, walked over, and sat down opposite her.

"Eat quickly, and after we finish eating, let's go see Boss Lu's grand ambitions."

……

Half an hour later, the two arrived at Xinghuo Network Technology Co., Ltd. in the old town.

Before the glass door was even pushed open, Lu Wen's arrogant voice echoed throughout the office:

"Old Zhou! Did you see that?! This is my business negotiation skill!"

Xie Wang pushed open the door and entered, shaking the snowflakes off his shoulders:

"I could hear you bragging from across the street. Did a pie fall from the sky?"

Today, Lu Wen, dressed in a burgundy suit, excitedly waved a contract stamped with a red seal and slapped it directly onto Xie Wang's chest:

"You fool! Sister-in-law! Our Spark's first major business deal isn't about repairing printers!"

Xie Wang glanced at it.

[Party A: Jiangcheng Lushi Group Logistics Supply Chain Branch]

[Amount: 200 million RMB]

"Your old man's here to support you?"

Zhou Zixu walked over with dark circles under his eyes, his face full of worry yet also filled with expectation:

"Mr. Xie, the old firewall code at Lu's is too redundant and riddled with vulnerabilities. If we patch it using the usual methods, it will take at least half a month. What should we do?"

No patch needed.

Xie Wang took off his coat and hung it on the back of the chair.

He walked to his workstation and sat down.

"An old house is leaky, and there's no point in patching it up. Lao Zhou, send me all the traffic logs from their subsidiary. I'll write a low-level dynamic defense matrix in two hours and rebuild it from scratch."

Su Qinghe sat down quietly on the sofa, opened the dark blue diary, and neatly wrote the second line on the financial accounting page of Xinghuo Network:

[+2,000,000 RMB (Lu's Logistics firewall upgrade)]

However, on this energetic New Year's morning.

A violent storm is quietly approaching.

……

[11:00 AM · Jiangcheng InterContinental Hotel Top Floor Suite]

Gu Nan sat on the leather sofa with his legs crossed.

Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city of Jiangcheng is covered in a blanket of snow.

His gaze swept beyond the bustling city center and landed in the distance.

That place is the land for the "largest commercial complex in Asia" that Tianlong Group just acquired with a huge investment and leverage of ten times.

Since the Hongyuan Trading money laundering case broke out, Tianlong Group's reputation and financial chain have suffered a severe blow.

Gu Nan flew to Jiangcheng in person to promote tomorrow's project groundbreaking ceremony, hoping to use this mega-project worth tens of billions of yuan to revive confidence in the stock market.

"Mr. Gu, the start-up funds for the South Suburbs project have all been secured." The chief assistant respectfully handed over a document.

"However, several local bigwigs in Jiangcheng, especially the Lu Group, have always been critical of our efforts to extend our reach into Jiangcheng and have secretly set up many obstacles."

Gu Nan swirled his wine glass and gave a dismissive laugh:

"A bunch of fools who're just lazing around on their little plots of land. How's it going with my order to secretly buy up Lu's scattered shares on the secondary market?"

"Everything is going smoothly; we can raise the sign and launch an attack at any time." The assistant swallowed, his tone becoming somewhat serious.

"However... while investigating the Lu Group's businesses, we followed the clues and made an extremely unexpected discovery."

The assistant placed a thick, top-secret file on the coffee table and opened it to the first page.

"The identity of the mysterious hacker 'X' who previously exposed our money laundering ledgers has been confirmed."

Gu Nan's eyes sharpened instantly: "Speak."

"Xie Wang, a senior high school student at Jiangcheng No. 1 High School. And..." The assistant took a deep breath.

"He was the son of Xie Wan, the former financial architect of Tianlong Group, who drowned in the river twelve years ago."

"Is it really him?" Gu Nan's eyes froze instantly.

"Gu Tianlong, look at the stupid things you've done."

"Not only that," the assistant continued, reporting to the leader.

"Lu Wen, the young master of the Lu family, recently started a company called Xinghuo Networks."

"Xie Wang is their core technical partner. Just half an hour ago, the Lu Group handed over the security business of its logistics branch to this shell company."

After a brief silence.

"Heh... Hahahaha!"

Gu Nan suddenly chuckled softly, and the laughter grew louder and louder.

"I originally thought that the one that could force Tianlong Group to suspend trading for investigation was some international hacker organization with military background."

Gu Nan took off his gold-rimmed glasses and gently wiped them.

"So, it turns out it's just a bunch of high school students still in their uniforms playing a dramatic revenge game?"

"Mr. Gu, since he might have some trump card left by Xie Wan back then, should we try to keep him calm for now?" the assistant asked cautiously.

"He couldn't possibly have that. Gu Tianlong may be stupid, but he wouldn't be stupid enough to leave behind such evidence."

Gu Nan put his glasses back on:

"Since the project needs to establish its authority, let's start with the Lu family."

He stood up and walked to the temporary server array set up in the suite.

Two top-tier foreign hackers, hired at great expense from the dark web, are sitting in front of the screen, ready to fight.

Gu Nan tossed a piece of paper with an IP address written on it onto the table:

"This is the server port of Lu's Group's logistics subsidiary, notifying secondary market traders to short-sell all Lu's Group shares as soon as the market opens this afternoon!"

Gu Nan issued the execution order:

"At the same time, you two, within ten minutes, I want to see Lu's logistics database completely paralyzed."

"Yes, sir." The sound of keyboard clicks suddenly erupted like a torrential downpour.

……

[11:15 AM · Xinghuo Network Technology Co., Ltd.]

Xie Wang had just finished writing the defense matrix code and was preparing to connect it to Lu's server for final implementation and deployment.

"Beep—beep—beep—!!"

Suddenly, the monitoring computer in front of Zhou Zixu emitted a piercing, highest-level red alarm!

"Mr. Xie! Something's wrong!"

Zhou Zixu suddenly jumped up from his chair, staring intently at the data packets surging onto the screen like a tsunami:

"Lu's logistics servers have been subjected to a targeted DDoS attack! Concurrent traffic exceeds 800G! Moreover, it's a hybrid attack! It includes a polymorphic ransomware variant, frantically tearing apart their old firewall via the TCP three-way handshake protocol!"

Lu Wen's teacup clattered to the ground, splashing scalding tea everywhere: "Holy crap?! Who dares to attack the Lu family?!"

"It's Gu Nan."

Su Qinghe, who was sitting on the sofa, suddenly raised his head.

She had put down her diary at some point, and was now holding a phone with a live financial news feed on the screen.

"Not only is it a cyberattack, but Lu Group's stock in Hong Kong has suddenly experienced a massive sell-off, with the market plummeting!"

"Someone is maliciously dumping shares in the secondary market. They want to cut off Lu's physical logistics and financial links at the same time and create panic."

Lu Wen's eyes turned red with anxiety, like an ant on a hot pan:

"This is a project my dad just entrusted to me! If it gets crippled by hackers right after I took over, and the logistics network is disrupted, coupled with a stock market crash, my dad won't be able to explain himself to the board! You idiot, can you stop this?!"

"What's the panic?"

Xie Wang tossed his coat behind him and grabbed the keyboard.

He didn't turn around, but the terrifying pressure of a top hunter instantly enveloped the entire office.

"You want to smash my brother's plate right in front of me?"

Xie Wang's eyes were cold and sharp as knives: "Gu Nan doesn't have that ability yet."

The order was issued swiftly: "Old Zhou, abandon all resistance! Cut off the physical connection to Lu's real database, don't try to plug the loopholes!"

Zhou Zixu was shocked: "Not block it?! Wouldn't that expose the entire database to ransomware?!"

"Yes, that's exactly what we need to show them." Xie Wang's lips curled into a chilling smile.

"Move Lu's real IP mirror to redirect all 800GB of attack traffic into Spark's sandbox honeypot! I'm going to trap them!"

Zhou Zixu gritted his teeth, his scalp tingling: "Understood!"

The sound of keyboards clicking was like a torrential downpour.

Two minutes later.

"Traffic import into the sandbox complete! The ransomware is encrypting the virtual data!" Zhou Zixu shouted.

"Close the net."

Xie Wang pressed the Enter key heavily.

On the screen, the frantically flooding red attack code was instantly locked in a closed virtual dead end.

Moreover, Xie Wang used the long TCP connection channel through which the ransomware exchanged keys to send an extremely small but deadly logic bomb back into the other party's server.

"Cut off their springboard, lock the physical MAC address, and execute a memory overflow."

Xie Wang released his grip, leaned back in his gaming chair, and sneered, "Done."

It's that same trick again.

But no one can stop it.

……