Chapter 588 - 559 When Happiness Knocks on the Door

Under the bright sun, the Voodoo Gang’s turf was stormed by the Animal Gang—

Taiping State was a place not so well-informed; they only knew a group of burly athletes had stormed into the Batty Hotel. As for the rest, they knew nothing.

However, the sudden explosion in the building scared them out of their wits:

Just last night, there was a huge explosion off the coast of Taiping State, and today it reached the upper floors of this building?!

Did NCPD make their move?

Or... could it be the legendary Burger King?

Whoever was responsible, the right move was to run first. Watching drama unfold is human nature, but not dying for it—find a spot far enough away, then watch.

Suddenly, with the Batty Hotel as the epicenter, people within a two-kilometer radius were all running; the effect was even better than the Voodoo Gang’s bans.

As for inside the building, this attack had completely paralyzed the Voodoo Gang’s network—

This LAN was known as the "Sea God," which was fundamental to their hold over the Voodoo Gang.

Cameras, as surveillance devices, must have a communication line that sends back information. With proper packaging, attack data can be included in the data packets, entering the network and scanning for more devices to attack.

Humans conducting cyberattacks often can’t target tens of thousands of scanned pieces of information simultaneously due to the limitations of their thought processes and abilities. They rely on experience and knowledge to write programs, letting the programs do the thinking for them. As defenders, they can only do the same.

Compared to AI, humans’ biggest issue in cyberspace is the inability to apply creative and flexible thinking to as many details as possible.

Moreover, unless in cyberspace, humans can’t process electrical currents directly—AI is different.

AI is different. Munemasa can respond meticulously to every piece of return information—

The Voodoo Gang might have guessed that Matt was going to send in a Magic Doll to conduct a cyberattack through surveillance nodes, but they didn’t anticipate that the kid didn’t need to look for ports.

The mere working voltage of the surveillance devices was enough to support Munemasa’s access to the network through the power grid.

Ultimately, Munemasa might not be a network technology expert; its ability to move unseen and set network traps may be limited, but its expert traits mean that once it finds a physical port to hack into, it can cause outrageously exaggerated physical damage.

The Voodoo Gang was too confident in their technology, yet simply switching and changing communication protocols could never stop Munemasa from attacking—unplug the power source and then put the equipment in a Faraday cage to have any chance of getting away unscathed.

But for the Voodoo Gang, it was impossible.

The Batty Hotel was littered with corpses. Some unlucky individuals were at critical nodes during the attack; the massive data volume induced abnormal electrical currents, and their brains couldn’t handle the heat—a better outcome was instant stupefaction, the worst was immediate death on the spot.

Some were luckier, their brains could handle the heat, or their equipment was slightly better—they could still move, and their consciousness was somewhat clear, though their bodies didn’t respond well and kept trembling.

The attack mainly targeted the "Sea God" LAN’s network equipment. Harm to people?

That was just collateral damage.

Placid was one of the luckier ones, the attack burned out his signal receiver, the high temperature melting through the Cyber Modulator’s capacitors or circuits, but it didn’t turn his brain into mush.

But he couldn’t muster any strength in his legs, and his hands were shaking...

Shaking like someone with Parkinson’s disease.

Unfortunately, the counterattack he envisioned would never be possible.

In his eyes, in the prosthetic eye that hadn’t completely failed him, all the lines that were once theirs were flickering with red and black streaks. The degree of image tearing far exceeded his brain’s capacity for processing—as if the imaging crystal was damaged, black squares and mosaics kept flashing, with each pulse and flicker causing intense pain.

A wave of nausea overwhelmed his motor nerves, his stomach contracting violently, then he vomited a mouthful of acid mixed with blood!

Ptui—

The pistol fell, and even lifting his head became difficult.

Clack.

Unbeknownst to him, someone had approached him.

Ragged hacker attire, a slender figure.

But... but in his prosthetic eye, the person seemed to be bathed in the black-red gaps.

"... roaming... AI..." Placid’s voice was paper-thin, his eyelids almost too heavy to lift.

However, the individual was kind enough to grab his dreadlocks, lifting him right up...

Seeing the approaching figure, Placid felt his blood freeze.

In his nearly obscured vision, weighed down by heavy eyelids, appeared the face of Lille.

This face, not fully healed from extensive burns, was riddled with large swathes of scar tissue. The artificial facial bones, installed for improved heat dissipation, protruded through the thin patches of skin.

This was frightening enough, but even more terrifying were his eyes:

Lille had only one eye left, bloodshot due to inflammation and dryness. The other eye socket, devoid of an eye, brimmed with circuitry, evidence that a prosthetic eye once resided there.

The horror lay here: the chaotic arrangement of lines at the bottom of the socket showed that Lille had torn out the prosthetic eye with his bare hands, leaving the circuits utterly irregular.

When he initiated hacking, those exposed circuits flickered with electricity, casting red and black afterimages in Placid’s field of vision with every pulse...

The lines of the prosthetic eye were directly connected to the visual cortex, meaning any malfunction there would send pain straight to the brain.

And red signified roaming AI.

Placid had heard from the boss: if someone delved too deep into the Black Wall...

They might be attacked by a roaming AI and end up in a fate worse than death.

It seemed that was the case.

"This guy is lucky," Lille’s voice, as heard by Placid, was thoroughly saturated with a sharp and chaotic noise, like the sound of metal being scratched, "The memory and hippocampus implants can still recover. Throw him to the living corpse frame."

A surge of strength hoisted Placid up, and before he lost consciousness, he heard gunshots and the sound of bullets striking flesh.

The Voodoo Gang was finished.

...

Compared to second-in-command Placid, the Voodoo Gang’s boss Brigitte was less fortunate, having been completely brain-damaged—

Not in the slang sense, but genuine brain paralysis, with the body entirely out of control, all parts below the scalp paralyzed.

Her head could still think, though her cognitive abilities were reduced to less than half.

The good news was that she was in Cyberspace at the time, so she was thrown into the "dead" frame, which is forcefully keeping her in Cyberspace.

In Cyberspace, Lille watched as Brigitte’s consciousness gradually stabilized. This was because Lille performed an "amputation surgery" on her head in reality, essentially restoring her consciousness.

While treating her, Lille spoke to the "Samurai" Munemasa, who was sitting beside him:

[Lille: What is this procedure called? The NetWatch booklet doesn’t mention this.]

[Munemasa: Jack Attack, used to prevent hackers from logging off. It used to be very common. Now... NetWatch obviously doesn’t want to teach you programs meant to be used on people.]

[Munemasa: Moreover, using a Jack Attack requires substantial technical understanding of the deep dive interface. Wild hackers rarely get enough device information to study and then implement this kind of attack.]

Preventing hackers from logging off, Soul Killer had this functionality as well.

Having an AI that had lived for fifty years by his side did indeed help Lille fill in the gaps of knowledge that NetWatch was unwilling to leak. Munemasa’s straightforward work brought him quite a few benefits.

[Lille: She is waking up. I’ll handle the rest of the negotiations. You and the Animal Gang fix the antenna. I need to talk with the people from Evil Land.]

[Munemasa: It’s going to be hard. I’ll have to use a NetWatch vehicle to bridge. It might get scrapped.]

[Lille: Go do it.]

Munemasa, kneeling on the ground, vanished from Cyberspace, and Brigitte, opening her eyes, was dumbfounded.

They were attacked, and within less than five seconds, they were completely routed online, which was shocking.

She wanted to know how the enemy did it, but the answer...

Seemed both reasonable and...

Preposterously unbelievable!

[Brigitte: ...Is that... a critical hazard body?]

[Lille: Mhm, surprised? I hear you love messing with the Black Wall, dabbling with AI. Now the AI is here. Surprised? Happy?]

Brigitte’s mind short-circuited.