177: Chapter 177 The Stubborn Hong Alliance

Half an hour later.

"So..." Wang Shuo looked puzzled. "You sent the entire Hongmeng Alliance to attack the Pentagon, and not only did you fail, but you were also utterly routed by their firewall's autonomous counterattack?"

"It wasn't exactly an utter rout... and... it wasn't the entire Hongmeng Alliance."

Han Xiaoxin rubbed his nose awkwardly and defended himself in a low voice.

In fact, this whole incident had left him completely baffled.

The initial intrusion had gone very smoothly, and they had even reached the core database. If their deductions were correct, the things they were looking for were likely stored there.

But just at that moment, they must have triggered some kind of alarm system. Their remote connection was instantly severed, and they were pursued by the other party's data stream, which tracked them back, bounce point by bounce point.

At that moment, he even felt like he was facing his boss again.

That sense of panic and helplessness, of only being able to watch as the opponent closed in, was something he had only ever experienced with Wang Shuo.

In desperation, he subconsciously shouted, "Zero, help me."

The next moment, he witnessed Zero's power once again.

In just one-hundredth of a second, Zero utilized its superior speed to instantly hack into over a hundred thousand overseas servers and personal terminals, turning them into bounce points. It handled everything—tampering with intrusion logs, injecting Trojan self-destruct programs—and it even had time to randomly jump and hide their own IPs.

These weren't particularly sophisticated methods; they were all things he had taught Zero.

But... if someone could manage to hack into hundreds of thousands of personal terminals within a second, or control hundreds of thousands of personal terminals to launch an attack, then even the simplest move would become terrifying, wouldn't it?

This was simply beyond the scope of what humans could achieve; this was the absolute advantage of Artificial Intelligence in its professional field.

Even so, the opponent's data stream continued to track the path jumps Zero had newly generated. It wasn't until they had jumped through nearly half of the bounce points that they finally lost Zero's trail due to speed limitations.

This left Han Xiaoxin and the others breaking out in a cold sweat. If not for Zero, they wouldn't have lasted long before being caught. At that point, they would have had no choice but to pull the plug.

But what was the point of pulling the plug without clearing their tracks? As long as the IP was obtained, their information would likely be sitting on the desk of the United States Secretary of Defense by the next day.

Given the Pentagon's nature, it wouldn't be surprising if they turned the whole world upside down. He and his team within China would be fine, but what about the team members abroad? Just let them get caught?

Fortunately, his boss still cared about him and hadn't given up on letting Zero monitor him.

For the first time, Han Xiaoxin felt that being monitored was such a fortunate thing.

"You didn't just capsize in a gutter," Wang Shuo summarized while rubbing his chin. "You were an egg hitting a rock, and a rock made of iron ore at that."

Han Xiaoxin was speechless. If Xu Kexin had said this, he could have argued back a bit to let the girl know the dangers involved, but Wang Shuo... forget it.

"Based on what you've described, the Pentagon truly lives up to its reputation as the military core of the United States; its defenses are very strong."

Wang Shuo continued to ponder.

A single firewall almost wiped out the entire Hongmeng Alliance. What kind of level is that?

Wang Shuo had experienced the strength of the Hongmeng Alliance through Han Xiaoxin. To be honest, it was already quite a decent level among hackers. When they launched a concentrated attack before Zero had a supercomputer, even he had been flustered for a while.

And Han Xiaoxin was certainly not among the best in the Hongmeng Alliance.

A group like this was almost wiped out by a single server? Wasn't that a joke?

In that case, wouldn't China's network defenses be completely undefended in the face of this data stream from the Pentagon?

This was... interesting.

Watching Wang Shuo lost in thought, Han Xiaoxin called out cautiously, "Boss?"

Wang Shuo looked up, his gaze deep as he watched him.

"This..." Han Xiaoxin swallowed his saliva. "Our leader is very grateful for your help this time and would like to invite you to meet. What do you think?"

"Meet with me?" Wang Shuo returned to his senses and shook his head. "If it's to recruit me, forget it. I'm not interested, and I don't have the time."

Han Xiaoxin had already guessed this answer, but hearing Wang Shuo say it himself, he was still somewhat disappointed. However, he didn't try to persuade him further, consciously placing himself in the position of an employee.

"Right," Wang Shuo suddenly remembered something. "After saying so much, you still haven't told me why you invaded the Pentagon?"

"This... I'm not too sure either."

Han Xiaoxin rubbed his head and said, "I heard that the United States side had some operations in China previously and stole some confidential technical documents. These documents are very likely stored in the Pentagon. The leader's task for us was to search the database, find the files containing the key terms, copy them, and then destroy them."

Wang Shuo nodded in understanding. Looking at it this way, the Hongmeng Alliance was very likely a semi-official organization. At the very least, it definitely had connections with the authorities; otherwise, they wouldn't know so much inside information, nor would they take such aggressive action.

"Boss." Han Xiaoxin hesitated for a moment and said, "Can I request that Zero help us during the next Hongmeng Alliance operation?"

"If Zero can help, the Pentagon's firewall is nothing at all."

"Sure." Wang Shuo nodded.

Han Xiaoxin was so excited he almost jumped up, but the next moment, Wang Shuo's words left him frozen in place.

"But you need to upgrade your permission level."

"If you want Zero to hack the Pentagon," Wang Shuo said indifferently, "your permission level needs to be at least level five. You are currently only at level nine."

Patting Han Xiaoxin, who was stunned in place, Wang Shuo spoke earnestly.

"Keep it up. Upgrade your permission level early and achieve your dreams."

After saying this, he had Zero generate a permission upgrade manual for Han Xiaoxin and then left.

Han Xiaoxin turned his head blankly and looked at the permission upgrade manual on the screen. His lips moved slightly, then he glanced at the camera in the corner, closed his mouth, and became even more blank.

...

After leaving the room, Wang Shuo leisurely walked to the second floor.

From a distance, he could see Xu Kexin in the finance office typing rapidly on the keyboard, her expression focused and serious, occasionally taking notes on something.

He nodded with satisfaction.

This girl had been performing quite well over the past two days; the speed and quality of her work had improved significantly.

It seemed he would have to consider giving out some bonuses at the end of the year.

Taking out his phone, Wang Shuo dialed Liu Yemei's number.

"Mr. Wang."

Liu Yemei's voice was still calm.

"Sister Liu, is everything ready?"

"Everything is ready," Liu Yemei replied. "We can start at any time."

"Then... let's begin."