55: Chapter 55: Stirring up the waters, the entire internet tracking system crashes!

Zhou Ye's brain raced.

A few seconds later, he had an epiphany.

Disguise!

This was absolutely a low-level cover identity used by the Boss to obscure the truth!

Those truly heaven-defying methods and massive capital flows must be hidden by some more advanced means at the deepest levels of the Deep Web or the Dark Web, such that even national-level databases were fooled by this perfect "ordinary person" facade.

To be able to craft the identity of an ordinary programmer so seamlessly, with even social security records and food delivery bills matching up, the power behind the Boss was simply hair-raising.

Zhou Ye took a deep breath, his awe for Lin Zhe rising to yet another level.

"Boss." Zhou Ye turned around to report. "I have pulled up all of your basic records. But it is difficult to erase them completely right now."

Lin Zhe raised an eyebrow.

"It is not a technical issue, but insufficient device computing power." Zhou Ye patted the MacBook in front of him. "Modern network data is cross-verified. If I delete your records directly, the data chains between the banking system, social security system, and transportation system will break. Such large-scale logical gaps would immediately attract the attention of the cyber-monitoring department and end up exposing you."

"To achieve a traceless erasure, I need to build a massive virtual logic network to fill these gaps. This computer's CPU would burn out before it could calculate that."

Lin Zhe nodded; this was indeed an objective limitation.

"What is the backup plan?" Lin Zhe asked.

"Information Fog." A flash of excitement crossed Zhou Ye's eyes. "Since we can't delete it, then we won't. I will muddy the waters."

Zhou Ye placed his hands back on the keyboard.

"There are tens of thousands of people named Lin Zhe in the country. I will write a crawler script to scrape data from a thousand of them who are around your age."

The sound of keyboard tapping became extremely intense.

"I will scatter your biometric data, consumption habits, and movement trajectories, and randomly mix them into the files of these one thousand people. Then, I will fabricate tens of thousands of false records out of thin air."

Fake surveillance footage and consumption bills began to pop up frantically on the screen.

"From now on, in the network monitoring system, you might simultaneously appear to be playing games at an internet cafe in Jiangcheng, buying instant noodles at a supermarket in Yanjing, or even swiping your card to enter a subway station in Shenzhen."

Zhou Ye hit the final Enter key.

"Done. Now, if anyone tries to track your location via big data, their computer will be overwhelmed by these tens of thousands of contradictory, false trajectories within three seconds. Unless they send people to physically verify these thousands of locations, you will be an ungraspable fog on the internet."

Lin Zhe watched Zhou Ye's operation, feeling quite satisfied.

The Dark Gold trait bought with twenty million was money well spent.

"Once the billion-dollar server room is set up, I will use a supercomputing array to help you perform a thorough, traceless cleanup." Zhou Ye added.

"Very well." Lin Zhe lifted his chin slightly, signaling to A-Gui who was standing nearby. "Check his."

Zhou Ye immediately shifted targets and began searching for A-Gui's information. Soon, the sound of keyboard tapping paused for a few seconds.

Zhou Ye moved his gaze away from the computer screen and turned to look at A-Gui, who was standing behind the side of the sofa.

"Brother Gui." Zhou Ye pointed to the blinking search box on the screen. "Are you a transparent person in this country? I ran your facial feature data through the national household registration database and the underlying data of the three major telecom operators, and aside from your activity trajectory over the last three years, everything before that is completely blank."

A-Gui glanced at Lin Zhe, and Lin Zhe nodded slightly.

"Don't waste your effort in domestic systems." A-Gui's voice was muffled. "I only smuggled my way back from the Yunnan border five years ago. I spent all my time making a living abroad before that."

Zhou Ye's eyes lit up, and he placed his fingers back on the keyboard.

"You should have said so earlier. Overseas networks are my backyard."

The interface on the screen switched instantly; the original waterfall of green code turned into a pitch-black underlying console, interspersed with a large amount of unrecognizable garbled text.

Zhou Ye's hands hovered over the keyboard as the [Cyber Dominator] trait went into full operation.

"Found it." Zhou Ye pressed the Enter key.

A fragmented file popped up on the screen, written entirely in a mix of English and the language of a certain Southeast Asian country.

"Brother Gui, you kept a low profile while working abroad." Zhou Ye translated as he quickly browsed through it. "Codename 'Night Crow,' main area of operation was the Thai-Myanmar border and the Golden Triangle. Eighty percent of the jobs you took were intelligence gathering, targeted elimination, and poison assassinations."

Zhou Ye turned his head and glanced at A-Gui.

"However, there is a very interesting piece of data here." Zhou Ye pointed to a combat damage assessment report on the screen. "In the years you spent abroad, you participated in a total of forty-seven missions, with only three records of direct firefights. And in those three times, you escaped by relying on the terrain and concealment methods; not once did you win a head-on confrontation by wiping out the enemy."

A-Gui stood where he was, his expression not changing much.

"I am a scout." A-Gui explained. "My rule is: if the first strike doesn't hit, retreat immediately."

Lin Zhe sat on the sofa and took a sip of water.

This matched the trait provided by the system perfectly.

Extreme stealth capabilities came at the cost of insufficient frontal combat power.

If he encountered a true expert and was dragged into close-quarters combat, A-Gui's survival rate would plummet.

Of course, that was all in the past.

Now that A-Gui had fused with Old Mo's [Master of Assassination] and [Beast Instinct], his frontal combat ability had greatly improved.

"That certainly fits your style." Zhou Ye continued to flip through the data. "While your resume isn't exactly dazzling, you did manage to make a big enemy."

Zhou Ye swiped his finger across the trackpad, and a striking red pop-up window suddenly appeared in the center of the screen.

It featured a skull icon, followed by a long paragraph of Thai text, accompanied by an extremely blurry side-profile photo.

The person in the photo was wearing black tactical gear, with half of their face hidden in shadows, but one could tell they looked seventy to eighty percent like A-Gui.

"What is this?" Lin Zhe set down his water glass.

"An A-level bounty from the Dark Web." Zhou Ye quickly interpreted the information above. "The issuer is a major warlord in Northern Myanmar named Somphat. The reward is five million US dollars."

Zhou Ye turned to look at A-Gui.

"Brother Gui, what big thing did you do? This old guy doesn't even know your real name, yet he's been hunting you for a full five years based on just a blurry side-profile photo."

Upon seeing the skull icon, A-Gui's breathing became noticeably heavier.

"It happened five years ago." A-Gui's voice was somewhat hoarse. "I had been lurking in Somphat's camp for half a month, originally intending to get my hands on an arms trade list. But when I was retreating, I happened to run into Somphat's most beloved youngest son torturing a few kidnapped tourists from back home."

A-Gui paused, his fists clenching slightly.

"I couldn't hold back, so I just twisted his son's neck. Then I let those people go."