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

2:30 a.m.

Xie Wang's attic was as stuffy and hot as a steamer.

The old-fashioned fan with only three blades emitted a creaking sound, laboriously stirring the damp, musty air in the room.

Xie Wang was shirtless, revealing the lean yet well-defined muscles of the young man. Because it was so hot, he even poured a bottle of cold water over his head, and water droplets slid down his cold jawline and dripped onto his collarbone.

But he couldn't feel the heat.

In his world now, there is only the screen in front of him, gleaming with a faint blue light.

"start."

He muttered to himself, his fingers landing on the polished keyboard.

In that instant, Xie Wang, the good-for-nothing who slept in class during the day, vanished.

Instead, a top hunter codenamed "X" took his place.

On the screen, dozens of black CMD windows were refreshing wildly like a waterfall.

[Building a dynamic proxy pool... Nodes: Buenos Aires, Frankfurt, Moscow...]

[IP spoofing complete.]

[Target identified: The web-based entry point of the "Sands" underground gambling website.]

This was a silent siege.

The opponent's defense system is very strong, using an expensive enterprise-grade WAF. As long as Xie Wang's attack traffic is slightly large, or his behavior is slightly abnormal, the opponent will immediately cut off the connection and even trace his physical address in reverse.

"Tsk, that's a bit slow."

Xie Wang frowned and glanced at the CPU usage in the lower right corner—98%.

This old computer is too outdated to run multi-threaded brute-force scripts. The fan is roaring wildly, and the chassis is so hot you could fry an egg on it.

Xie Wang skillfully took an ice pack from the refrigerator and roughly placed it under the laptop.

Physical cooling.

"Bear with it, old buddy. I'll get you a heart transplant after this job."

His fingers moved faster, and the tapping sound was as dense as a rapid drumbeat in the quiet rainy night.

[Injection of decoy script... Successful.]

[Administrator privileges bypassed... Successfully.]

[Retrieving database list...]

A huge data packet icon popped up on the screen.

That's what the employer wanted—the complete financial transaction details of "Jinsha" website for the past three months.

Download progress: 10%...35%...

Suddenly, the screen flashed red!

A glaring warning box popped up:

[WARNING! An abnormal data stream has been detected! The other party's security personnel have intervened! The source IP is being traced!]

Was discovered.

This kind of website involved in organized crime is indeed being monitored 24/7 by experts.

Xie Wang's eyes suddenly turned cold, but a crazy smile appeared on his lips.

Instead of retreating, he advanced.

"Trying to arrest me?"

Instead of severing the connection, he used his hands in a blur to quickly type a string of code into another window.

def chaos_mode():

create_dummy_traffic(10000)

scatter_logs()

[Activate "Chaos Mode".]

Instantly, thousands of fake attack signals bombarded the opponent's server.

It was like a thousand fireworks suddenly going off in the quiet night.

The other party's tracking system was instantly overloaded, with the screen filled with red dots, making it impossible to distinguish which one was the real Xie Wang.

"This is a feint attack."

Xie Wang sneered and, taking advantage of the moment when the other party was busy cleaning up junk data, pressed the final Enter key.

Download progress: 99%...100%.

[Data stripping complete.]

[Erasing visit logs... Trace removal complete.]

[Disconnect.]

"Smack."

Xie Wang closed his laptop, panting heavily as if he had just been pulled out of the water.

The chair was soaked with cold sweat from his back.

In just three minutes.

A race against time.

"bite--"

The encrypted phone vibrates.

The employer was clearly keeping a close eye on things; the moment the data was sent over, news arrived from the other side.

【K】：Awesome, the data is correct.

【K】: 50,000 yuan has been transferred to your anonymous wallet. Happy cooperation.

Xie Wang picked up his phone and looked at the numbers flashing in his virtual wallet.

He won.

Xie Wang leaned back in his chair, took a cigarette from the table, put it in his mouth, but didn't light it.

He stared at the mold spots on the ceiling, his tense nerves slowly relaxing.

Fifty thousand yuan.

First, take 40,000 to settle the old man's bad debts at the underground bank, so that those people don't actually cause trouble at the school.

Ten thousand left...

Besides upgrading the computer, maybe I could buy that girl a decent gift to return the favor?

After all, I took 10,000 yuan in cash from someone, so I can't really become a gigolo.

"never mind."

Xie Wang shook his head with a self-deprecating smile.

He and Su Qinghe were like two parallel lines. As long as the money was paid off, that was fine. Ambiguous things like giving gifts were not suitable for someone like him.

He got up, walked to the window, and opened it.

It was already four in the morning, and the eastern sky was beginning to lighten with a pale, fish-belly white.

The city is about to awaken.

In that sun-drenched campus of No. 1 Middle School, he was looked down upon as trash, a sleepyhead, and a loser.

Only in the dark and damp three in the morning, in the virtual world of code, is he the god who holds the power of life and death.

Xie Wang spat out the smoke from his mouth, his eyes returning to their cold and numb state.

"It's dawn."

It's time to put on the mask and go back to being that useless Xie Wang.