Free Web NovelChapter 107: Chapter 102: Entering a Wartime State
September 29th. One day remained until the end of the Deadly Blood Plague.
The Strategy Research Room convened an emergency meeting. The expert researchers who received the notice and arrived at the office had no idea what it was about, and they were vaguely worried.
Typically, emergency meetings like this were only held when something bad and unexpected happened.
Everyone sat waiting in their seats, filled with apprehension. Before long, the man in charge, Gao Liangwei, entered the room. fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com
After taking a seat, he said, "This emergency meeting was called today for an announcement. But before I get to that, I want you all to watch these video clips."
Gao Liangwei had a researcher display some video clips on the large screen.
As they watched, they quickly realized the videos depicted conflicts breaking out in major cities. Some of the scenes were so gruesome they were difficult to look at.
Furthermore, everyone noticed that the people in the videos weren’t just ordinary civilians; there were also Bureau employees in black uniforms, as well as some armed squads.
When the video ended, Gao Liangwei said, "I’m showing you this so you’ll understand the deep rift this rule has torn in our society. All over the country, groups of the Infected, feeling that their survival is hopeless, have been wreaking havoc in the cities."
"..."
The room was silent.
In truth, this situation wasn’t entirely unexpected. Most people, upon discovering they were infected and would bleed out and die within 24 hours, would inevitably feel an immense sense of injustice.
They would think, ’Why me? Why was I the one who got infected?’ It wasn’t strange for them to act irrationally out of despair.
Out of ten of the Infected, perhaps nine would accept their fate and quietly await death. But as long as one went to the extreme, developing a destructive "if I’m going to die, so is everyone else" mentality, then given North Star Country’s massive population, this one-tenth of destroyers was more than enough to rip society apart.
Now, it seemed that scenario had become a reality.
Gao Liangwei said, "Although we don’t have detailed statistics yet, these rioters have directly or indirectly caused a large number of casualties and destroyed hundreds of Gathering Points. Many of our frontline government personnel have also been specifically targeted and attacked."
"Therefore, just an hour ago, after deliberations among senior leadership, the final decision was made... After this rule concludes, the North Star Country will officially declare a national state of war."
A national state of war!
Hearing this, everyone’s heart skipped a beat. Many of them knew what this meant.
"Some of you may be familiar with this, and some may not, so allow me to explain."
As a senior colonel, Gao Liangwei was perfectly clear on what a state of war meant.
"Once a state of war is enacted, the government will take over all major factories nationwide to coordinate production and construction. Supplies, including food, will be uniformly rationed per capita. Transportation and information will also be controlled. Leaving a city will require a valid reason; otherwise, all travel will be prohibited."
"Furthermore, all citizens will be registered and placed under unified management. Those wandering the cities and surviving on their own must also be brought into the system. Once the registration is complete, the first wave of shelters in each region should also be finished. At that point, people will be assigned a place based on the registration lists."
Everyone in the office listened to Gao Liangwei’s explanation of the state of war, their expressions all very serious.
It was clear that the chaos caused by some of the Infected during the Blood Plague had been so immense, to the point of actively undermining the organized resistance against the rules, that the higher-ups had finally decided to crack down with strict management.
After Gao Liangwei finished speaking, someone spoke up in support, "Excellent! I actually think we should have entered a state of war long ago! We should have done it after the first rule, since the casualties from the rules have already surpassed those of any war in history!"
"Exactly. I’ve been wanting to say this for a while. After food and other supplies were made free of charge, a lot of waste started popping up. Some people who clearly didn’t need them would grab huge amounts of supplies, only to let them spoil. It would be much better to ration them per person to ensure there’s no waste."
People spoke up one after another, the majority expressing support. But there were also a few dissenting voices. freёweɓnovel.com
"A state of war is enacted when the country is at war... Does enacting it now mean we’re treating the Fire Thieves as a wartime enemy?"
"After entering a state of war, all aspects of control will be strengthened, which will require a lot more manpower. Do we even have enough frontline personnel at the moment? I’m afraid we’ll have to expand recruitment..."
"The Fire Thieves are not just a wartime enemy of the North Star Country, but an enemy of all humankind," Gao Liangwei said in a heavy voice. "As for the manpower shortage, all regions will recruit new people to fill the ranks as soon as possible."
Everyone nodded and said no more. After all, this was a notification from the higher-ups, not a request for the Strategy Research Room’s opinion.
"The purpose of this meeting, besides informing you of this matter, is to have you adjust the direction and content of your work as soon as possible. Future work must be planned and advanced on the foundation of a ’state of war.’ That is all I have to say. Meeting adjourned!"
...
"Why isn’t any information coming back?"
Mask sat in front of his computer, biting his nails. He’d been awake for a whole day and night, waiting for the trojan he had implanted on the webmaster’s computer to send back data.
He was certain the webmaster had used his optimization pack—to ensure he would, Mask had worked himself to the bone for over a dozen hours, optimizing nearly every detail of the interface to perfection.
After sending the optimization pack, he quickly noticed the "Ascender’s Home" website had completely changed, which was a clear sign his pack had been loaded.
This made him ecstatic. He was sure the trojan had been successfully planted on the other party’s computer and would soon send back data like the computer’s backdoor, IP address, and more.
However, he waited and waited. It had been several hours since the optimization pack was loaded, yet no data had been sent back. He manually tried to initiate a remote wake-up and remote access several times, but all his attempts failed.
This led him to the gradual realization that the trojan he had hidden in the optimization pack had probably been discovered and scrubbed clean by the webmaster, who had only kept the pure website optimization content.
’...Don’t tell me I’ve actually run into a true master?’
Mask couldn’t believe it. He was just casually browsing a forum and had stumbled upon a post, and it turned out to be published by a top-tier technical master. The odds were ridiculous.
But what he couldn’t understand was, if the other guy was so skilled, why did the website initially look so atrocious? It was obviously made from a simple template.
’He wasn’t deliberately going for that "under construction" website style, was he? No, that doesn’t make sense... If he intentionally made it so crude, why did he load my optimization pack now?’
Mask was completely stumped; he just couldn’t figure it out. He’d gone so long without rest that his thoughts were becoming sluggish.
"Hm... Huh?!"
Just then, he casually refreshed the page and discovered there was new content on the website.
There was a new post in the intelligence section, and the author was the webmaster himself.
Post Title: "Unlocking the Hidden Treasure of Holy Grail Island: The Holy Grail"
"The Holy Grail?" Mask was surprised to see the title.
He hadn’t managed to pass the "Fasting Therapy" rule, so he never received an Invitation Letter and didn’t participate in the Ascender tournament.
But information had leaked after the tournament, and after reading it, he naturally knew what the "Holy Grail" was.
He clicked into the post, and after reading the main text, he was completely stunned.
"Is this for real?!"
The two pieces of information mentioned in the post—the text on the base of a statue and the effect of holding the Holy Grail—were things he had never seen anywhere else.
His drowsiness vanished in an instant. Mask immediately opened his big data tool and performed a search across the entire web.
His tool supported multiple languages and could search all public information on the global internet. When the search was complete, the result was "No Matches Found."
’...No matches. That means there’s no related information anywhere on the internet. The info in this post is a world-first, an absolute exclusive!’
Mask was overcome with excitement.
If he had seen this post under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have believed its contents, assuming it was likely just fabricated by someone with too much time on their hands.
But through their previous "cyber battle," he had already confirmed that this webmaster possessed some extremely powerful and unusual network security skills.
Therefore, in his eyes, any information published by this webmaster had its credibility increased exponentially!
’I remember seeing from the information other contestants posted that the Holy Grail was held from start to finish by the tournament’s winner, Shadow... Does this webmaster have a connection to Shadow? Is he getting his information from him? Or could it be... that the webmaster *is* Shadow himself?’
Mask desperately wanted to figure it all out, but after their two encounters, he felt he had been completely defeated.
’Looks like I can’t do this on my own.’
After thinking for a moment, Mask opened a forum.
The forum was called "Anonymous," a platform where the world’s top hackers casually chatted, shared experiences, and sparred with one another.
Mask was considered a god-level figure on this forum. He created a post explaining his defeat and expressed his hope that other masters would try to see if they could breach the defenses of the "Ascender’s Home" website.
His post quickly attracted a lot of replies.
"A defense that even Mask can’t break? Interesting."
"Have Master Mask’s skills gotten rusty? He can’t even crack a personal website."
"I’ll give it a try."
"Ascender’s Home? A secure website that’s absolutely untraceable? This webmaster sure is arrogant."
"Is the content of his post for real? Infinite Psychic Power while holding the Holy Grail?"
"Huh? My tool actually failed..."
Mask was very well-known on the "Anonymous" forum. After he published his post, all sorts of hackers came out of the woodwork.
Some expressed surprise, while others accepted the challenge.
In an instant, traffic to Guan Tong’s small website surged as all sorts of hackers threw their custom-developed cracking tools at it.
However, they soon discovered that this seemingly simple website had defenses that were practically godlike.
All kinds of attack tools failed; they couldn’t even use batch registration to try and crash the site with high-concurrency requests.
Soon, another expert hacker posted: "I’m getting a strange feeling. It’s like this website is ’conscious’ or something; it seems to be able to detect our intent to attack."
"I noticed that too," another expert replied. "I can register an account normally without a problem, but if I use an account registration tool, whether for batch registrations with changing IPs or even a single attempt, it fails... This kind of detection technology is beyond my comprehension."
"Could it be reverse-locating our real IP addresses and locking them to a single registration? That doesn’t seem possible..."
"Could a new, high-level AI be running this website?"
"Even current AI can’t do that... I have a suspicion. Could it be that the computer running the website, or the website itself, is some kind of Psychic Power artifact? That’s the only way it could be doing something so unbelievable."
