Inside the Cypher Nexus China headquarters in a Beijing building, Qingdao, wearing thick-rimmed glasses, was monitoring the forum's activity logs with great interest.
Qingdao appeared to be in his thirties, somewhat thin, but he exuded a strong scholarly air.
However, Qingdao is not his real name; it's just a codename. Basically, anyone with access to the CypherNexus internal forum knows that Qingdao is not only one of the three forum moderators but also one of only two nine-star hackers on it.
As he was reviewing the promotion requests, something caught his eye.
"This XXM is a bit strange. He completed almost twenty reward missions in one hour, and each mission took less than three minutes. How did he do it?"
A hint of surprise appeared in Qingdao's eyes. Those reward missions were a piece of cake for him, but even if he were to solve them, he wouldn't be able to complete nearly twenty in an hour. Completing about ten would already be terrifying.
"It seems this XXM might be a hidden master. Hmm, let's test him."
Qingdao's face showed more interest, and he then replied to XXM's three-star promotion evaluation on his Cifrador profile.
"This is a reward mission that only a highly skilled genius could complete. If he really is a hidden master, it shouldn't be a problem."
After replying, Qingdao felt a surge of anticipation.
Within CypherNexus, there are many low and mid-level Cifradores. Qingdaohad always thought the name was a bit vague; it had become an inside joke among the founders. Even the internal members had heard the forum legend that one of the founders, when creating the 'Cypher Nexus,' had simply taken the first word and assigned it to the members. It was a logic so lazy it was almost crushing, but the name stuck. However, the truly worrying part was the clear shortage of high-level Cifradores. There are only thirty-six high-level Cifradores in all of Cypher Nexus China, which contrasts sharply with the thousands of mid-level Cifradores.
Therefore, Qingdao was very pleased and eager to discover a high-level genius.
XXM was Du Cheng's codename in Cypher Nexus. Du Cheng was unaware that his anomaly had caught Qingdao's attention, much less that his promotion evaluation had been escalated to a higher level without his knowledge.
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Inside the ward, Du Cheng received a response from the CypherNexus server after waiting less than ten minutes, and an expression of excitement appeared on his face.
However, when Du Cheng opened the background message, he was completely stunned.
"This is so difficult..."
With just one glance at the evaluation task Qingdao had assigned him, Du Cheng already knew this task was completely different from the reward missions he used to accept, and much, much harder.
Grey Lion is a very aggressive malware that has spread rapidly on the internet. It can infect executable files on any operating system, lodge itself in the computer's memory, and then continue to infect other executable files.
Most importantly, the danger of the Grey Lion lies in its ability, once activated, to overwrite the data on the computer's hard drive, causing it to fail. It can also overwrite the computer's bootchip, thus preventing the computer from starting up.
The mission was for Du Cheng to crack the Grey Lion virus without causing any system damage or file loss.
For a hacker or computer expert, the Grey Lion virus wouldn't be a difficult task, but for Du Cheng, the story was very different. The most important thing was to protect the client's system and data, which made the task of cracking the Grey Lion virus even more difficult.
"What's wrong, dear DuCheng? Is this virus difficult?"
Xin'er, however, was completely different. To her, this virus was extremely simple. With her powerful abilities and advanced technology, she wouldn't even bother with this tiny Grey Lion virus.
"Yes, it's quite difficult for me. Even if I try my best, my success rate probably won't exceed 30%," Du Cheng said frankly; this was undoubtedly a very difficult task.
"Do you want me to help you with this?" Since her "Master" was perplexed, Xin'er, naturally, would not stand idly by.
"Don't worry about it now. I'll try to solve it myself. If I can't, then you can step in."
Du Cheng didn't want to rely completely on Xin'er, because he knew that such dependence wouldn't be good for him.
"Alright, Xin'er will simulate a virtual system for you to test it on." Xin'er's main program is practically immune to viruses, so if Xin'er wants DuCheng to test it, she has no choice but to simulate a system from this era.
Du Cheng nodded. After Xin'er simulated the virtual system, Du Cheng had the Grey Lion virus infect the virtual system directly and dedicated himself to cracking it.
Du Cheng was very skilled at cracking viruses. Although viruses come in all shapes and sizes, they all boil down to a few basic methods. However, cracking a simple virus would take much more time.
Time flew by, and finally, around one in the afternoon, Du Cheng managed to crack the Grey Lion virus. However, he knew that, with his current skill level, he had actually failed this mission.
The reason is simple: although Du Cheng managed to crack the Grey Lion virus, he couldn't completely save all the infected files. Therefore, Du Cheng's mission could be considered a failure.
"Xin'er, come on, it looks like we still need you to take action."
Although he failed after two hours of effort, Du Cheng knew he had learned a lot. Most importantly, he knew that if he tried a couple more times, he could undoubtedly complete the task. However, due to lack of time, Du Cheng had to hand the task over to Xin'er.
Besides, Du Cheng needs money urgently. Although with Xin'er's powerful abilities he could easily use her to get money illegally without a trace, he doesn't want to do that.
Luckily, CypherNexus can meet Du Cheng's needs for the time being. Du Cheng knows that starting from the mid-level reward missions, the rewards will gradually increase significantly.
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"He's done it. It seems this XXM has the skills of a computer expert. It just took him too long. I think we should let him train in the mid-level reward mission area first."
Inside the CypherNexus China headquarters, Qingdao, who had just finished eating, sat down and soon saw the message indicating that XXM had completed the reward mission.
This further reinforced Qingdao's confidence in XXM's abilities. For Qingdao, adding another high-level expert to the Chinese region of CypherNexus was something extremely exciting, so he began to follow XXM closely.