Chapter 54: The Guy Who Thinks He

Tony Stark's humiliation was quickly forgotten by this heartless man.

After signing two checks to donate to the school's library and the poor soul handling cleanup, he walked away without looking back.

Even if he wanted to crack the Joker virus, he'd deal with it slowly after getting home. He wasn't used to this keyboard. And he wanted to study CK's work in depth—that would take time.

Now Tony Stark sat with a group of computer guys in the lounge, discussing what had just happened.

"You're saying the host I hacked was fake?" Tony said, incredulous.

"Yeah, that's the most likely conclusion after I discussed it with others. And your initial approach was wrong."

"Where did I go wrong?" the arrogant heir retorted.

"CK's first hint was to protect yourself, not to hack him."

Tony had wanted to argue that if he succeeded in hacking the opponent and stopped any possible timer, he could have halted the virus infection.

But since a fake host space had been used to deceive him, Tony found no program related to the virus and thus prevented nothing—so his own computer got infected too.

"Has anyone found where that BBS is hosted?" Tony asked. If online couldn't solve it, meet offline for a real PK—that was an eternal truth.

"We checked. That IP belongs to the University of Chicago on the East Coast. But people in Chicago investigated and found no one in the server room had set up this BBS, and the server had no trace of it."

"Walter!"

In this early era of hacking, the main battles still centered on viruses versus antivirus software. Many techniques common in later years were groundbreaking at the time.

So it wasn't that Tony Stark's skills were inferior or he wasn't smart—he simply hadn't imagined anyone would do something like this.

In the computer circle, he could guess who KM and LT were. Even if they never showed their faces, he'd seen their names on other BBSes; LT even belonged to the academic circle.

But this CK nickname? He'd never seen it before. So Tony Stark asked the question everyone wanted to ask: "Who is CK? Could it be that underwear guy—Calvin Klein?"

"Everyone wants to know, but no one knows. At least no one has admitted elsewhere that they're CK."

Nobody knew that the mastermind behind the Joker BBS had, after finishing filming in the morning and having lunch, gone straight to the bookshelves of Caltech's library in the afternoon.

Henry heard what happened in the public computer area but didn't care. He was poring over the university's academic papers and internal journals—those never published externally.

Papers like these varied wildly in quality. Some ideas were creative but shallow; others were clearly half-assed.

Meanwhile, Tony Stark, trying to gather more info on the Joker BBS in the lounge, was approached by an unexpected visitor: Jia Siding Hammer, a student from Monaco.

It turned out not everyone feared Tony Stark; some were solely focused on flattering this Stark heir to land a job at Stark Industries.

But there were still those bold enough to confront this golden boy—just to cause trouble. Like Jia Siding Hammer, who, surrounded by a group, shoved aside the computer guys and took the seat beside Tony Stark.

The poor computer guys dared not provoke the wealthy young masters led by Hammer. Tony Stark wouldn't be their shield, so they scrambled to their feet and vacated their seats.

Sitting directly across from Tony, Jia Siding crossed his legs and said: "I heard you got mocked by the Joker. Is this really the Stark family genius? I feel sorry for your father."

Clearly, Jia Siding knew exactly how to piss this man off. Tony snapped: "Shut your fucking mouth! If it's already full of shit, don't open it to disgust people."

"What? A self-proclaimed genius fails, and you won't let anyone talk? You insist on wearing the emperor's new clothes and force everyone to play along with your delusion? Oh, Tony's awesome, Tony's the best."

"Fuck, I accept failure. What about you? Do you need someone to hand you a step-by-step guide and then copy it? And you don't even think when you copy—you think changing A to B makes it yours. Is that really how it works, oh brilliant Mr. Hammer?"

"So what? I'm good at spotting problems others miss and fixing them. If the result is good, my method is right. You're just jealous of my success."

"Ha! Your success? Have you ever succeeded? Give me one example. I'm too ignorant to know what you've ever actually accomplished."

"Ha!" Jia Siding Hammer laughed louder, slapped a sheet of paper on the table, and said: "The Challenger space shuttle, originally scheduled to launch on July 22, 1985, had its mission delayed and ultimately failed."

"But according to my calculations, NASA gave an incorrect re-entry atmospheric angle for the return trip. That means even if the shuttle launched successfully, it might never have made it back. My numbers are correct."

Tony Stark glanced at it casually and sneered: "NASA's number was wrong, but yours is too. Do you really think you two need to mock each other?"

"Where did I mess up? Tell me!" Jia Siding Hammer shouted, furious.

"This is such a simple problem that anyone with a brain could solve it. Oh, sorry—I just stated your brainless fact. You won't sue me for leaking secrets, right?"

"Fuck! Is this something you can just ask any random person to solve?" Jia Siding Hammer snapped his fingers at a passerby: "Hey, you! Yeah, you—come here! Can you solve this? Calculate the shuttle's re-entry angle."

The man stopped, bewildered, was none other than Henry—the Kryptonian, who had just heard his answering machine and was about to leave the library.

He didn't recognize any of them and hadn't paid attention before. He was just called over and handed a problem to solve.

He'd planned to walk away, but out of his belief in helping others as a source of joy, he gave a third number, different from the two on the paper.

Henry's number was very close to the first one. Tony Stark immediately said: "This guy's right—because it matches my answer."

New book has been contracted—please follow, collect, and recommend, thank you~~

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(End of Chapter)