Chapter 58: Chapter 58: Hacked Into The System
Qiao Meixia raised a brow slightly. This man had already texted her yesterday, and now he was texting her again today. Was he really that free? She casually clicked on the chat window to see what exactly he wanted this time.
[MadDog]: Boss, NineHell increased the bounty reward again!
[Q]: Oh... How much?
[MadDog]: Fifty million. NineHell is fucking crazy.
Qiao Meixia stared at the numbers blinking on the screen. Did NineHell completely fail to hire another competent person to do the job, or were they just that desperate? Well, either way, fifty million was an exceptionally good reward. With her newly built rig ready to go, she was suddenly much more willing to take on the mission.
[Q]: Send me everything they have.
[MadDog]: Wait, you actually changed your mind?!
Qiao Meixia glanced at the immaculate, high-performance workstation humming right beside her. Her lips curved up into a faint, dangerous smile.
[Q]: Fifty million is a reasonable amount of money to get me moving.
Besides, she genuinely wanted to test out the raw computing power of her brand-new workstation anyway.
MadDog, who was sitting on the other side of the encrypted network, let out a slow, helpless sigh. His boss really loved money. He silently closed his eyes and offered a brief moment of sympathy for the target, hoping that the military’s firewall defence system was at least strong enough to withstand his boss’s terrifying onslaught for a few minutes.
[MadDog]: I have sent all the raw files and mission parameters over to you.
[Q]: Okay.
Not long after that short exchange, Qiao Meixia received the classified data packet she wanted.
The client, NineHell, wanted to obtain the highly classified, secret maritime trade route currently held by Westeria’s Navy Military command. As for why Westeria’s armed forces possessed that particular secret route, or what political schemes were involved, that was absolutely not Qiao Meixia’s job to figure out. Qiao Meixia would simply perform the task exactly as the contract description stated. If they wanted any information deeper than that, it would need to be paid for entirely separately.
Qiao Meixia immediately sat back down smoothly in her ergonomic chair, facing the multi-monitor setup she had just finished building earlier. Her fingers poised above the mechanical keys, and then, they started dancing across the keyboard with blinding speed.
With her unparalleled, god-tier hacking skills, she initiated her first strike, slipping past the external perimeter of Westeria’s Navy Military network in absolute silence. Her entry point was a minute, overlooked vulnerability in a secondary logistics server, a tiny digital crack that she widened effortlessly.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
The rhythmic sound of her typing filled the quiet penthouse as code cascaded down her monitors. Within seconds, her custom-built masking scripts were deployed, spoofing her IP address across a dozen phantom routing nodes located on three different continents. To anyone monitoring the military network, her presence was completely invisible. She was a ghost in the machine.
Suddenly, her progress halted as a massive digital barrier loomed on the screen. It was the military’s core firewall, an aggressive, state-of-the-art defensive AI nicknamed the "Iron Sentry." The moment her probe touched the outer layer, the screen flashed a warning. The defensive system began spinning up an active counter-trace, attempting to lock onto her physical location.
Qiao Meixia did not blink. Her expression remained utterly stone-cold.
"Nice." Qiao Meixia murmured under her breath.
The defences were far more complicated than those of ordinary corporations. Multiple security protocols overlapped one another, creating a complex maze of multi-factor authentication systems, heavily encrypted checkpoints, and active surveillance programs. No wonder NineHell was willing to raise the reward bounty to fifty million dollars. Most ordinary hackers would probably give up immediately after seeing this level of protection. Unfortunately for the military, she was not most hackers. A faint, confident smirk appeared on her face.
Her fingers flew even faster, blurring over the keys. Instead of trying to brute-force her way through the military-grade encryption, which would instantly trip the base alarms and lock down the entire database, she opted for a highly sophisticated, silent injection method. She coded a custom bypass on the fly, mimicking the exact digital signature of a high-ranking naval admiral’s clearance code.
The security system began a countdown. Three seconds before the counter-trace could lock onto her network, Qiao Meixia slammed the enter key.
The "Iron Sentry" accepted the forged signature. The massive digital walls dissolved instantly, parting open to grant her unrestricted, deep-level access. The system did not flag an alert. It recorded her presence as a routine internal data backup.
She entered the central military archive server in absolute, terrifying silence. No one on the military’s active cybersecurity team noticed her presence as she silently dug through the classified directories, bypassing folder after folder of military secrets until she finally located the heavily encrypted file containing the secret trade routes NineHell had requested.
With a final, elegant tap of her finger, she initiated the untraceable data download, pulling the fifty-million-dollar secret right out from under the military’s nose without leaving a single trace behind.
Qiao Meixia finally leaned back in her chair. She was completely satisfied when she closed out the programs. She immediately sent a brief message to MadDog.
[Q]: Hey, tell them to transfer the money. I already got the thing.
MadDog’s reply came almost instantly.
[MadDog]: Alright. I am going to relay the message.
[Q]: Don’t contact me again unless the money is already confirmed in our hands.
[MadDog]: Yes, Boss!
Qiao Meixia stretched her body lazily. Her shoulders and neck gave off several satisfying cracks after remaining in the exact same position for hours. She stood up and walked into the kitchen.
***This novel is a contracted work with w e b n o v e l. c o m. If you do not read this novel on w e b n o v e l. c o m, that means it has been stolen. Thank you, from your shameless author, ZerahNeko***
