Chapter 230: The Case From Ten Years Ago (1/2)

Xiaotao felt that there was a risk of exposure if we proceeded rashly. If Third Young Master was indeed a member of this secret website, he must be very cautious. At present, the best way forward was to get Lao Yao’s assistance.

I called Lao Yao, put him on speaker and explained the situation. To which he replied, ”Okay, leave it to me!”

Obtaining this person's registration information through the forum's database was a piece of cake for Lao Yao. But a few minutes later, the entire forum suddenly disappeared. ”Aren’t you going a little too far?” I blurted, shocked by his move. “Why remove the entire forum?”

”It wasn’t me. As soon as I hacked into it, the database crashed. I was up against an expert!” Lao Yao sounded unhurried.

”Can you recover the information?” I asked.

A wry smile spread to his lips. ”I’ll give you an example. If you enter a house to steal something and the other party blows up the house, can you get anything?”

”Well think of something else then!” I urged.

All of a sudden, Lao Yao roared, ”What the fuck?!”

Everyone froze in puzzlement. I assumed he meant me and after I repeated his name a few times, Lao Yao finally replied, ”That asshole just crashed my system by attacking me with more than a hundred zombies at the same time!”

In my mind, Lao Yao was the expert of experts, yet someone managed to crash his system!

Lao Yao’s competitive spirit was aroused. ”I’ve rewired my system. Damn it, I must return the insult!” He gritted his teeth, refusing to contemplate the idea of failure.

Hence, Lao Yao began a long-range battle with the other hacker. Although the situation was broadcast live on the phone, I couldn’t really understand what was going on either. The other party must have infected Lao Yao’s system with a virus or forced a large amount of data to paralyze his system. It seemed the two were equal in strength.

Like watching the Gods go to battle, us laymen listened to the rapid-fire clatter of his keyboard. Xiaotao raised her doubts, ”Why would there be an expert hacker on such a small forum?”

”Could this be the work of the people behind that secret website?” I speculated. “Being on the internet means they bear the risk of exposure, so perhaps they got a skilled hacker to act as their protector. When the other party senses a potential leak of information, he’ll nip it in the bud.”

Xiaotao shouted into the phone, ”Lao Yao, don’t just focus on fighting him! Make sure you get a good grip on this guy!”

But no reply came from Lao Yao, only the powerful tapping of his fingers on the keyboard. After a while, he took a deep breath and announced, ”I totally wrecked that guy! But I’ve also burned my CPU and hard disk. At least I got my revenge!”

”I don't care about your situation,” Xiaotao rapped her knuckles on the table. “Tell me what you’ve found.”

”Xiaotao-jiejie,” Lao Yao drawled. “I use proxy servers so my IP addresses are all foreign. Not revealing one's IP address is the basic requirement of a hacker. Of course, I wouldn’t reveal that!”

”What's the point of telling me this?!” chided Xiaotao.

”Talk to you later! I have to get a new computer. Bye!” he cooed. And with that, he hung up.

Xiaotao sighed, ”The trail has gone cold again. This website is too well protected.”

”I'll go back and discuss with Lao Yao to see if we can find some other way,” I suggested. “That hacker can't be online 24 hours a day, seven days a week, can he?”

”I think it’s possible,” Dali chimed in. “They might be a team of hackers.”

There was some truth in Dali’s words so it didn’t seem like we could continue investigating the case from this angle. Right then, Bingxin ran into the room and yelled, ”Come with me! I’ve found something!”