As the lecture progressed, Chen Mo found himself distracted. As a top student already, and now with Red Queen's assistance, attending classes had become optional. His self-study pace far outpaced classroom learning.
"Red Queen, can you hear me?"
Chen Mo tapped his wireless earpiece and spoke softly, his voice so quiet only the microphone could pick it up. Even Zhang Dawei sitting beside him couldn't hear.
"Master, I am omnipresent. You may issue commands directly."
Hearing Red Queen's response calmed Chen Mo slightly. With his ultimate cheat by his side, he feared nothing. Of course, he needed to protect this advantage - keeping the mainframe in a rented apartment was only temporary. Once Darkzone Technologies was established, he would build a dedicated base for Red Queen's mainframe to ensure its security.
Many ideas swirled in his mind, just waiting for the right conditions to implement them.
"Investigate Tian Tian for me."
"Understood, Master. Investigation complete."
Red Queen's loli-like voice responded almost instantly.
"That fast?"
"Was it supposed to be difficult? I just hacked into the campus network. Master, I am omnipotent online..."
"Stop... skip the nonsense. Just read me the findings."
"Tian Tian, overseas returnee, double PhD from Harvard, specializing in computer neural networks and artificial intelligence..."
Chen Mo interrupted again as Red Queen continued.
"Too verbose. That's all public information. Tell me something not commonly known."
Red Queen: "Not commonly known? Tian Tian likes wearing black stockings."
Chen Mo: "..."
At this moment, he felt like slapping Red Queen's mainframe. The Red Queen from Resident Evil wasn't this dramatic and sarcastic, was she? Had she evolved some new personality traits after crossing over?
"Get to the point."
This time Red Queen stopped messing around and got straight to the key information.
"Tian Tian is the princess of the Tian family in the capital. Fresh from overseas, her family had high expectations for her to inherit their vast business empire. However, Tian Tian disliked having her life planned out and wanted to make her own mark. Without family support in funding and connections, she had no choice but to teach at Qingmu University. But she hasn't abandoned her original dream of building something great through her own efforts."
The information Red Queen uncovered was far more extensive, but she summarized Tian Tian's story in just over a hundred words. This demonstrated how much effort a super AI could save.
"So that's how it is."
"Red Queen, you said Tian Tian has double PhDs - in what fields?" Chen Mo only knew she had a computer science doctorate.
"Computer science and business administration."
After hearing this, Chen Mo fell silent for a moment before a bold idea took shape in his mind.
He wanted to poach talent from his own university.
Someone of Tian Tian's caliber was wasted just teaching at a university.
With PhDs in both computer science and business... she would shine in a major corporation. Plus, her dream was entrepreneurship.
Wasn't she practically tailor-made for Darkzone Technologies?
Darkzone was newly registered and in need of top talent to take charge. Professor Tian Tian was highly knowledgeable, doubly credentialed, underappreciated, and dreamed of building something significant.
Tian Tian would be perfect for Darkzone.
And Darkzone would be perfect for Tian Tian.
Having made up his mind, Chen Mo decided to poach talent from his own school.
Just as he was deep in thought, a commotion broke out in the classroom.
Looking up, Chen Mo saw all the computer screens had gone black, then entered an endless reboot cycle before finally displaying a large skull emblem.
Huh?
What was going on?
A virus?
Chen Mo was about to report it to Professor Tian when he noticed every computer in the classroom showed the same skull image. This malicious virus clearly had extremely strong infectivity.
"What virus is this? Skull Virus?"
"We're computer science majors specializing in software, with advanced coursework in hacker offense/defense. Which hacker would dare attack Qingmu University's computer lab?"
"Alright team, let's tackle this. See who can eliminate the virus fastest."
"I'll need twenty minutes to disinfect."
"You dare say twenty minutes out loud? I only need ten."
"Five minutes is enough for me."
"..."
The students enthusiastically launched their antivirus operations. Even Professor Tian Tian at the podium didn't seem overly concerned.
Such incidents had happened before during classes - usually just some hacker challenging Qingmu's computer science department. The students would quickly eliminate the virus, so it wasn't worth worrying about.
She even considered it a good test for the students.
However, after analyzing the virus's code structure, Chen Mo felt his scalp tingle.
He immediately recognized this was no ordinary virus. The Skull Virus had terrifying transmission capabilities - it could spread through any network connection. Worse, it disguised itself as system files. Without the specific virus signature, no antivirus software could detect it. And once infected, it forced endless reboots, making operation impossible.
By the time the rebooting stopped and the skull image appeared, the virus had already deeply embedded itself into the system, essentially merging with the operating system.
How could they disinfect this?
It was practically game over.
Just as Chen Mo was about to report his findings to Professor Tian, other students also began realizing the virus's severity.
"Professor!"
"This virus is abnormal - I can't remove it. After forced rebooting, the system data has turned to garbled code. Nothing works."
"Antivirus software can't detect it. Specialized tools are ineffective."
"The virus can't be handled before rebooting, and can't be dealt with after. With such strong infectivity, if we don't strengthen defenses, the entire school - maybe even the whole city - could be infected."
Professor Tian Tian, who had been watching from the podium, finally grew serious upon hearing the students' reports.
But she still wasn't overly worried.
No matter how powerful the virus was, with her here, there was nothing to fear.