Cyber Era Witch
Chapter 948 - 756: The Party and the Deal

Chapter 948: Chapter 756: The Party and the Deal

In the following days, Xu Yang spent his time on Kasongti Island.

Perhaps it was instinct, but whenever he thought about letting go of everything, he would come to Kasongti, this tropical island in the Southern Ocean was his private domain.

Last night, he did a lot of things with Pan Ruiyi and Rinne here; they consumed all the cold drinks and blankets, and a bed was broken by Pan Ruiyi. Most of their time was spent in the water—be it the ocean, bathtub, or their own.

Xu Yang was unaware of the blessings given to him by Yan Duo, which allowed him to gain greater strength as he helped more people. Thus, he was especially surprised by his own vitality last night.

He felt like an active volcano, the power he released was comparable to an earthquake, ten times stronger than his younger days.

The most shocked were Pan Ruiyi and Rinne, who only regained consciousness and left one by one this morning. Sadly, Farosa was cultivating and did not even send a duplicate.

When Rinne left this morning, her face was flushed, her eyes vacant, unable to think of anything. Pan Ruiyi had almost forgotten how to don her Witch Armor.

It was incredible, not just superficially, but soul-shaking.

If he wasn’t so powerful, they wouldn’t have been so entranced, doing it over and over again, as if never learning their lesson.

They did not talk business, obviously, in such a situation, it was all about loud exclamations, praising each other and expressing satisfaction with the status quo - their words full of contentment, which filled Kasongti with love and peace.

So good...

After they left, only tranquility remained on the island.

As the power from Pan Ruiyi and the wildness from Rinne gradually faded from Xu Yang’s body, what was left for him was the familiar and beloved scenery.

He lay on the deck of the white yacht, basking in the warm sunshine, like a sanctuary far away from the mundane world. After swimming, the sea water dried and hardened on his skin, leaving faint traces of salt, like the stripes of an animal.

The most powerful and hopeful age for a person is between 20 and 30. However, Xu Yang was already 34 and soon to celebrate his 35th birthday. He pondered over this fact repeatedly. Since birth, he had lived through a third of his life.

Previously, he felt mentally exhausted, a strange sensation gripping his throat, and he worried whether the stillness of twilight years had come upon him prematurely.

This was normal, as Xu Yang faced tremendous pressure, combating the entire established system of the world, with so many doubts and horrors waiting for him to challenge. It was as if he was using a tiny tool to pry open the cracks of history, never able to shake that colossal entity.

Fortunately, Xu Yang did accomplish some things, made breakthroughs and changes, he claimed a minor victory in the world’s bargaining. With so many people’s dedication and support, he felt not alone in the fight but supported by myriad strong arms! As if a thousand waves upheld the boat.

So he felt the power of youth return to him.

Xu Yang heard the sound of the waves, soft and lively, like the murmur of a woman. He could feel the breeze brushing through his hair, see the expansive horizon, shining brightly at the edge of the sky, like a portal to the heavens.

Compared to the nothingness of death, experiencing a long life is so wonderful, no wonder the concept of "Eternal Life" is always so popular.

He could feel the ocean currents slowly propelling the boat underneath, like the drift of time. Xu Yang’s thoughts were like a poet’s musings, floating, spiraling, dispersing, fading away.

What he sensed more was the data and electronic signals in his brain. Xu Yang couldn’t share this feeling with anyone; he never truly rested because he was always processing terabytes of computational data and protecting the network systems from attacks.

On the surface, Xu Yang looked calm, but his brain worked incessantly like a high-performance computer, bearing an immense load, radiating intense heat.

Without a real chance to relax, Xu Yang was also a leading workaholic, a never-off, tireless machine that hadn’t been disassembled for self-inspection in years, since any moment of relaxation could be exploited by others.

This is why sometimes Xu Yang felt an uncontrollable surge of energy mastering him, it was his way of releasing pressure.

Last year, he exterminated a nest of sea turtles on Kasongti, and now a new nest has arrived; this time, he did not cook them but watched them slowly crawl and lay eggs on the white sand, like greenish reefs.

Especially quiet... one could hear the sounds of the tide and the birds, and distinctly feel the weight of every bone and every implant in the body.

Introspecting, silently sensing the state of one’s internal organs, listening to the surge of blood, is also something many people don’t have the time to do.

He could feel the wires along his spine, the circuit boards in his brain, the electronic components, and the battery packs hidden under his ribs—the tough signaling chips in the back of his hands, all inseparable parts of Xu Yang.

He couldn’t help but recall the words spoken by the young fellow Nagase, "Once the transformation begins, there’s no turning back."

He could feel those things pricking him, and he could forever hear the hum of electricity in his brain, so he lived 24 hours a day in a state of low decibel disturbance.

Using the ancient language of Xia, implants are "against the harmony of heaven." Xu Yang found this laughable, yet it happened just like that.

The super credibility, the extreme work efficiency, and the advanced computational abilities converged in Xu Yang; sometimes he felt that the concept of "Humans" was no longer an apt description for himself.

Therefore, he needed to establish subsystems to share the computational tasks of the main body, and Cyber Specter is an excellent example. It is a subordinate unit that secretly infiltrated and took control of 30,000 computing terminals and network units in the Hot Tree Continent, automatically processing a vast amount of information, relieving Xu Yang of many tasks, and expanding the boundaries of his information control capabilities, making his work significantly easier.

Xu Yang is like an insatiable information devourer, and Cyber Specter is just one externalization of his psyche, a major advantage that far surpasses other hackers.

Farosa can control the ocean to an extent and command the Ocean Descendants, which greatly facilitates Xu Yang’s work.

He plans to lay a submarine fiber optic cable connecting Jialong Slope and the Hot Tree Continent, and once it is built, he will truly become an information overlord towering above the networks of the three continents.

As the tide rises and falls, the yacht drifts to the shore.

Xu Yang received a core signal from Xia’s Hinterlands.

As he looked up at the sky, his vision turned into a screen of ever-changing data, blocking the azure horizon.

The signal entered the anonymous site "New World Mechanism," making a brief declaration to talk to Cyber Specter.

"Who are you?" Xu Yang tapped into the other party’s signal.

"Hello, respected Mr. Cyber Specter. My name is Zhou Yan. I work for Kyushu High Pavilion and am a first-class Neural Network Engineer."

"Why ’Mr.’? Maybe I’m a woman. Why did you preemptively assume I’m a man?" Xu Yang felt irritable today, so he decided to provoke the other party.

"Apologies, respected Cyber Specter."

"But I am in no way respectable. I’m just a ghost in the network, a monster."

"Understood, Cyber Specter." Zhou Yan’s message was brief and cautious, in line with Kyushu High Pavilion’s style—efficiency above all. "I am responsible for providing network security support for our company. Our communication channel with you is protected by the latest security patches and has defensive protocols ready to respond to any vulnerabilities, so please do not attempt to exploit this channel."

"I know. You don’t interest me."

"In that case, Cyber Specter, I would like to purchase some data fragments left by other companies in the Hot Tree Continent from you," Zhou Yan said.

Data for training. Xu Yang realized what Zhou Yan intended to do.

Cyber Specter had already eroded the network system of the Hot Tree Continent. Before being infected by electronic viruses, these were network sites established by other companies in the Hot Tree Continent, holding a wealth of precious data records, now all archived by Cyber Specter.

Many data sets weren’t retrieved by these corporations, and Zhou Yan was interested in buying these archives.

With the technical strength of Kyushu High Pavilion, they could restore some specific information from these archives, such as corporate habits, user data, and code characteristics. Every trace helps Kyushu High Pavilion ultimately defeat its enemies.

"I have what you’re looking for here." Xu Yang released some information to Zhou Yan to start pricing. "I’ve stolen a lot of data from the Iris Group in Maghreb; I’ve obtained information about Namisis Group’s new projects in the northern central part of the Hot Tree Continent; and the data from Nine Seas Electric Power Company and Sinopec Petrochemical in the east and south are all on my disks."

"We would like to purchase this information," Zhou Yan said, "especially the information you dug up from Zanges."

The other side is well-informed indeed. Xu Yang mused silently.

Before being leveled by the Destiny Weapon, many corporations viewed Zanges as a springboard for their business plans and set up high-standard information centers there, including some sensitive data such as personal information of employees and managers, financial budget status, business operation plans, production blueprints, and customer big data.

Although it seemed they were annihilated in the Destiny Weapon’s attack, most were actually stolen and utilized by Cyber Specter.

It appeared that because the East Union had initiated some new plans, they decided to purchase this information from Cyber Specter, making use of it before it loses its timeliness.

"How much are you willing to offer?"

"It seems you are being pursued by hackers like Laughing Star; my side can provide you with some of their vulnerabilities in exchange, making it easier for you to root them out and eliminate them," Zhou Yan sent.

"No, Laughing Star is just a rookie. I want to establish a long-term data cooperation channel with you. I will dig up information fragments from the West Coast Pact, and you will purchase them at an appropriate price."

"What currency do you value for such a transaction?" Zhou Yan inquired.

"Technology. The kind that can nourish and grow me."

"Perhaps this will satisfy you: I work at the Kyushu High Pavilion II, 2 Network Attack and Defense Center, and my authority allows me to trade with you the technology to exploit the Helis Sea vulnerability, facilitating your infiltration into the West Coast Pact or Nestor Corporation’s Helis Sea."

"You already know how to decrypt the Helis Sea?"

"Yes, ’Kyushu High Pavilion’—consider the meaning behind that name. We have the world’s largest resource network, naturally including almost infinite manpower, financial, and technical resources. The moment the concept of the Helis Sea was conceived, we had already started designing tools to destroy it. The West Coast Pact claims that Helis Sea technology will eclipse all past information warfare programs. But it’s all part of the plan," Zhou Yan said.