Chapter 314: Hacker Counterattack: Victory of AI Defense

Zhao Jianguo stared at the Main Control Console screen, his fingertips tapping a short series of clacking sounds on the keyboard. The recent data surge hadn't fully settled, and system resource usage lingered around 89%, swinging back and forth like the pendulum of an old clock. He unscrewed the lid of his insulated cup, blew a breath; a few broken tea leaves floated on the surface, and the water was just hot enough to burn the mouth.

"Again?" he didn't even raise his eyelids, his fingers already pulling up the firewall logs. Login requests surged, IP addresses scattered overseas, east here, west there, like sprinkling sesame seeds. Yet the routes were oddly twisted, with unusually low latency between several jump servers, clearly a seasoned veteran testing the waters.

He sipped his tea, set the cup on the edge of the table. With his left hand he pressed the mouse wheel, his right fingertip swept the touchpad, and in a few clicks he cut into the AI defense system's low‑level interface. A green progress bar began loading, labeled "Traffic Cleansing Protocol Initiating." The red connection lines that had been flickering across the screen turned gray one by one, as if an invisible hand had pulled their plugs.

"Pretty persistent," he muttered, and casually clicked "Reverse Trace." The system instantly returned coordinates—an abandoned data center on the outskirts of Minsk, Belarus; the registrant info had long been wiped clean, but the server fingerprint matched, confirming it as the permanent hideout of the organization called "Dark Web Loop."

The screen flickered, and a new prompt popped up in the upper right: "Encrypted tunnel establishment attempt detected, source: second‑level jump server (Romania)."

Zhao Jianguo curled his mouth into a grin, "Alright, taking a different route?"

He didn't rush to block; instead, at the Control Console he entered a command: "Open test channel Three-Zero-Nine, inject simulated organism module data packet."

The AI system was silent for a second, then responded: 【Bait Response Mode Activated】. A virtual folder appeared at the network edge port, its name unapologetically blunt—"G-7 Plant Whole Genome Atlas and Ecological Model."

In less than twenty seconds, that folder was targeted.

A new connection line lit up, heading straight for the bait. The opponent moved swiftly, the download progress surged, and they even left a little tail—a Trojan disguised as a log file, intending to silently exfiltrate local operation records.

"Whoa, bringing a side‑grab too?" Zhao Jianguo laughed, his finger hovering over the Enter key for half a second before confirming.

The AI system instantly switched states, no longer passively blocking but using that Trojan to push interference packets backward. The first wave sent timestamp‑scrambling commands, making the opponent's backend display all devices fast‑forwarded by seventy‑two hours; the second wave injected a looping script that replaced their surveillance screens with a scrolling Siheyuan Cafeteria breakfast menu—fried dough sticks, soy milk, salty vegetable pancakes, under a red‑lettered title: "Welcome to the Eastern Life Research Center."

He leaned back against the Chair, crossed his legs, and the sole of his shoe brushed a small clump of dust lodged in a floor‑tile seam. Outside, it was very quiet; not even a radio from any upstairs apartment sounded. Only the host's fan hummed, like a well‑fed bee perched by his ear, dozing.

Squinting as he considered whether to brew a second cup of tea, the main screen suddenly popped up a video connection request.

It wasn't a standard communication protocol but a hard‑wired signal hijack; the picture jittered badly, the background a dark void, barely enough to see a hat‑wearing man sitting at a computer, his face mostly obscured by shadow.

"Cough," the man began, his Mandarin tinged with a stiff retroflex, "your security system… is rather interesting."

Zhao Jianguo didn't move, nor did he shut off the interfering content playing off‑screen. He merely lowered the volume a notch, listening to the intermittent background noise—someone cursing something in Russian, followed by the sound of a chair toppling over.

The corner of the mouth beneath the brim twitched: "We merely wanted to test your technical protection level, no malicious intent. This mode of communication… we hope caused no inconvenience."

Before the words faded, Zhao Jianguo's right index finger tapped lightly.

【Voice Overlay Protocol Initiated】— the system executed the command.

The opponent's voice cut off abruptly; the mouth on the screen kept moving but produced no sound. Immediately, the entire main screen flashed red‑blue interlaced warning lights, like rotating sirens, while the speaker emitted a solemn melody.

It was the national anthem.

At a measured pace, note for note, it played in full from the first bar. The AI system not only retrieved the standard broadcast version from the nation's radio, but also pushed it simultaneously to all identified attack terminals, forcibly displaying the lyric translation fullscreen in the official Song typeface, scrolling line by line.

The man on the video suddenly jerked his head up, his hat askew. He reached to adjust his headphones, then patted the monitor, yet the music kept ticking steadily. A shout rose nearby, someone yelling "Cut the power," but no one dared to act—this spectacle resembled a reverse takeover by his own country's security bureau.

Zhao Jianguo took a sip of the now‑cooled tea; tea leaves lodged again between his teeth. He flicked his tongue and spat them into the wastepaper bin.

"Test?" he whispered, "then you'll have to listen a few more times, to cement the memory."

Ninety seconds later, the anthem finished. The system automatically terminated the connection, marking all intrusion paths as "Permanent Ban," and appended a note to the log's end: 【Recommend default interception of that organization's IP range for the next ten years】.

The screen cleared, leaving only a line of green text: Attack terminated, connection cleared.

The host fan's speed dropped, and the room fell so quiet one could hear the faint current humming through the electric wires in the wall.

Zhao Jianguo flexed his wrist, reopened the resource monitoring panel. System usage had already fallen back into the normal range, the AI defense module entered a low‑power standby mode, its icon shifting from red to green, like a sleeping child.

He sat there unmoving, his fingers unconsciously drumming on the desk, the rhythm matching exactly the prelude of the anthem he'd just heard. His eyes fixed on the final log entry, which read: "Countermeasure completion: 100%. Psychological suppression effect assessment: High."

Footsteps echoed from the hallway outside, growing louder, then pausing at the doorway.

"Engineer Zhao?" the duty officer called through the door, "Was there an alarm just now? I heard the speaker go off."

"Nothing," Zhao Jianguo replied, his voice neither loud nor soft, "just played a song."

"Oh…" the other paused, "it sounded pretty solemn, like a flag‑raising ceremony?"

"Pretty much," he said, finally standing, walking to the cabinet, opening a drawer, and pulling out a blank USB drive. The label paper was still unwritten, spotless. He wrote three characters with a pen: "Backup No. 3."

He then inserted it into the interface and began copying all of tonight's attack‑defense logs.