Chapter 565 - 536: Hidden Message

Honestly, if Lille didn’t know that these sighs were uttered by Tony Stark, and not the Tony Stark he knows now, Lille wouldn’t have felt any emotion at all.

Because he had seen too many similar sighs—

The Cyberpunk World had already fought several nuclear wars, and the world was in a prolonged state of collapse, with massive wars breaking out every once in a while.

From cities to wilderness, from the oceans to the skies, corporations were at each other’s throats, competing to the death for market share and profits.

The Marvel World, on the other hand, was on the eve of modern technology being used for large-scale war.

And Lille, in his former life, had completely experienced the eras of peace and prosperity, economic decline, and the subsequent escalations of friction and even the outbreak of war—

Unlike the Cyberpunk World, the state of global war lasted for decades, continuing until both parties were merely staring at sensors, radars, and satellite images to strategize, destroying islands, land, continental shelves, volcanic clusters, Antarctic glaciers, and even satellites in orbit.

They used celestial bodies in outer space as weapons, which ultimately led to a quite noticeable hole on the Moon.

Before the war, many people believed current technology could not shake the Earth, that it was just a human fantasy, but the reality was that, once the war began, the technology in Lille’s world skyrocketed in an explosive manner, with destructive consequences—

Right before Lille finished his former life, there were even serious discussions about the feasibility of detonating the Earth’s core to completely destroy the planet’s ecosystem.

Lille had no doubt that the Marvel World could come up with something even more ruthless; experience told him that there would certainly be people regretting, fearing, and being frightened by the destructive outcomes... and so on.

He had always thought that this Tony Stark was a pure villain, a genuine unscrupulous businessman version of Tony Stark.

But now it seems... the situation is a bit more complicated than that.

He actually has a conscience!

Mark Zero was a massive mobile fortress, its size closer to Tony’s suit forged in a cave in the movie "Iron Man."

However, the largeness of Mark Zero wasn’t because it was made from scrap—it was because Tony had not mastered controllable miniaturized Arc Reactors and thus could only use Rocksen’s high-energy concentrated petroleum.

These fuels required fuel tanks, combustion chambers, turbines, generators, heat exchanges, and emission systems...

A lot of things were needed. In addition to fuel, propellant for thrusters also had to be considered, and it was clear Tony would have preferred propellant-free thrusters, but that was unrealistic. High-energy concentrated petroleum had a very high energy density, even in theory, exceeding that of hydrogen fuel, but still...

Suddenly, Lille felt something wasn’t quite right: High-energy concentrated petroleum could blast oneself to another world, yet it fell short of an Arc Reactor?

But the data in front of him stated just that, the energy density of high-energy concentrated petroleum was quite high, even comparable to the SCFR reactors currently used by the Atlas Group, but it indeed could not compete with the theoretical nuclear fusion.

Tony had tried everything, but he couldn’t just whip up a miniaturized Arc Reactor like in the movies. According to him, it was as if physics wouldn’t allow it. Lille, from his past life, understood this feeling all too well.

The database was vast, mainly because Tony had many design concepts for the Iron Soldier. Frankly, this wasn’t something one person could manage—if it were an ordinary person, it would need a team laboring for decades to accomplish all these tasks.

For Lille... he wasn’t actually that proficient in mechanical engineering; this was like a rather detailed advanced textbook.

He could study it slowly, it’s just a pity that all the design details about the Arc Reactor were destroyed.

Even from the garbled code, it was evident that the data was not quite complete.

Just then, Lille, while looking at the garbled data, suddenly... felt something strange.

Tony’s name was all identical characters, which intuitively... seemed like encryption.

In the Cyberspace constructed by the database, Lille suddenly called out for Little Octopus.

[Lille: Pull up all these garbled codes, I sense there’s an issue.]

[Little Octopus: Okay, Big Bro...]

The octopus’s tentacles instantly transformed from a chibi appearance to precise data filaments, pulling the garbled code from the already disordered structure of the database.

With this pull, the database within the Cyberspace also began to shift in sync—

Little Octopus could only retrieve characters, but clearly, Lille and it both thought of a possibility:

If it was data steganography, then the changes in the database structure caused by retrieving characters could also be a part of the decryption process.

As the garbled data was extracted, the database structure became even more chaotic, the once-readable messages lost their meaning, yet something more primitive...

Because the timestamps and file numbers became readable. These were two pieces of information that one could say were the least important, also among the very few completely problematic parts of the entire database.

After a transformation, there indeed was hidden information.

Lille raised his head, briefly exited Cyberspace, and looked at Pepper across from him, "Is the data processed?"

"Yes," Pepper said matter-of-factly, "these data blocks were all garbled when they were taken out, so I could only restore them using the methods Tony taught me."

[Little Octopus: Big brother, it’s machine learning adversarial; the data is all encoded.]

Machine learning adversarial, a technique specifically aimed at covertly transmitting information to known AIs, generates adversarial samples that are difficult for AI learning logic to detect, interfering with the AI’s recognition and discrimination capabilities...

This technique, which requires an intimate knowledge of the target AI, allows for effective information to be hidden beneath surface data and transmitted right under the AI’s watchful eye!

Tony Stark... was he deceiving an AI he was very familiar with?

Lille immediately said, "Tell me how you did the decoding, and all the decoding methods he taught you."

"That’s a bit much, isn’t it..."

With that kind of technology, wouldn’t it mean that their company had no secrets left?!

"Miss," Lille hesitated for a moment, then emphasized, "I believe you now, and I am certain that the process of you stealing the information has already been exposed, exposed to the one controlling Stark... Do you want to continue dragging this out?"

Pepper immediately took out a tablet from her bag—

She only knew how to use it, not the underlying technological principles.

All the data was fed into Little Octopus’s head, and the chaotic data framework in Cyberspace began to change, starting the decryption process—

The basic key for steganography was the unchanged symbol ψ₤≈, representing his own name, Tony.

The name, used as a key to decode multi-layer encryption, provided temporal information that perfectly corresponded to the memory storage area, revealing the next layer of distributed storage code, followed by multiple asymmetric encryptions...

[Little Octopus: Big brother, this person is really cunning; even the content we read just now is part of the adversarial sample.]

[Little Octopus: But this person is also very confident, unless the AI he’s trying to deceive is one he wrote himself.]

[Little Octopus: Ha ha, but to be kidnapped by his own written AI, that’s just too silly.]

In Cyberspace, Little Octopus, clinging to Lille’s head, stared at the massive data, the beginning of which was a short message clearly added recently.

[Tony Stark: I don’t know who will see this, but I’ve been held captive by my AI.]

[Tony Stark: But I guess, with high probability, it’s you, Lille Lee.]

[Tony Stark: Maybe you’re right, I’ve been blindfolded, I... I’ve made many mistakes.]

[Tony Stark: Damn, I even think if it weren’t for the current situation...]

[Tony Stark: Never mind, talking so much is meaningless, I can only take a gamble, this is the last thing I can do, I hope Pepper finds the right person.]

[Tony Stark: I hope the right person is holding the stars in their hands—]

[Tony Stark: And also, don’t forget to save me.]

The final set of data was quite substantial—

Because that was the part Lille sadly hadn’t received.

Tony’s detailed substantiation of Arc Reactor theory and the parts he believed Vibranium would be effective.

Lille glanced at Little Octopus on his head and thought silently...

It was a good thing it wasn’t rebellious, much like Tony’s Jarvis.

Indeed, Lille had confirmed that Tony had been kidnapped by his AI—although he had no idea why.

"Good," Lille brought Little Octopus to his eyes, "as a reward, you can focus your energy on V’s side for some time."

[Little Octopus: That’s too perfunctory!]

The smooth octopus head rubbed against Lille’s face as if in protest, rubbing off data blocks from his Cyberpunk avatar...

"Stop rubbing! Get to work!"