Chapter 36

“Okay, it’s a deal.” Stefan’s icy gaze was fixed on the ‘Run’ button on the screen. “Go ahead.”

“Awesome!” Haze clicked on the button without thinking twice.

Everyone held their breath, and all eyes were focused on the monitor screen. Some of Phoenix’s fans *clenched their fists, their hearts pounding in excitement.

“Almost there! Almost there!”

“The identity of the mysterious legendary hacker Phoenix is going to be exposed!”

Fifteen minutes seemed to fly by. Everyone started counting down.

*10, 9, 8, 7…”

At that moment, Renee nonchalantly returned to the scene.

“Aren’t you done yet?” She asked mockingly as she watched Haze, who was frowning deeply. “Are you sure you can do it? I think there’s some errors in your code. If it turns out that you’ve been chasing your own tail this whole time, aren’t you worried that you’ll have to call someone Daddy instead?”

“What does a woman like you know about coding? All you know how to do is clean up garbage.”

Haze was so full of disdain for Renee that he didn’t even bother to look at her. He despised women like her who were not willing to leave their cheating husbands, but instead tried to compromise in every way just to remain with them. She had no brains, no self-respect, and no talents to speak of how could someone like that know anything about coding?

The crowd also believed that Renee was speaking nonsense. Haze’s codes had always been flawless, so there was simply no way that there could be anything wrong with them.

“3! 2! 1!”

The long-awaited moment finally arrived. Anytime now, once the program finished running, the information everyone wanted to see would be displayed on the screen. The screen flashed, and everyone watched closely.

“But that…”

The whole room instantly fell silent as soon as they saw that the picture displayed on the screen was of Haze himself.

The room erupted into chaos. Haze had just shot himself in the foot!

“See?” Renee crowed triumphantly. “I was right! There really was something wrong with your codes!”

She stifled a smile and patted Haze’s shoulder before saying sweetly, “No matter how high you think you’ve climbed, there’s always a higher mountain out there, young man. That’s why you shouldn’t be so arrogant.”

“Impossible!” Haze burst out, eyes wide in shock. “Absolutely impossible! There’s no way I made a mistake in my codes! I’ve spent three long days and nights on this… There simply can’t be any problem with it!”

He opened up the back end and went through it again and again, but still could not find any problems anywhere.

“This is exactly why you shouldn’t go around telling people to call you Daddy!” Renee added gleefully.”

Since It’s clear that your skills aren’t up to par, the best thing to do is just own up to the fact that you’ve lost.”

Renee’s words felt like little daggers piercing through Haze’s heart, but he could not think of any words to throw back at her since his mind was focused on finding the bugs in the program.

Stefan pursed his thin lips. He was not paying any attention to Haze’s blunder at all. Instead, he was staring at Renee shrewdly.

Why was this woman acting all cocky, he wondered. Even if it was true that there were some issues with the codes, why was she so smug about it?

“Looks like the so-called legendary hacker turned out to be mediocre,” he said finally. “You’re just wasting my time.”

He glanced at his watch and made for the exit.

Everyone in the IT Department was disappointed in Haze as well. It appeared that legends and icons.

really only existed in the realm of imagination. As soon as they came in contact with reality, their whole.

facade would crumble.

“Wait!” Haze shouted suddenly. He had finally returned to the real world. “I’ve found the source of the problem.”

Stefan raised his brows and motioned for him to keep talking.

“The only reason it went wrong was because the target had decoded the logic of my codes and launched. a targeted systematic counterattack, replacing the result retrieved by the program with a picture of myself.”

Seeing how the others in the room were confused by his words, he explained, “In other words, Phoenix, the person we’ve been searching for, is in this room, because only the people in this room have seen my coding composition.”

“Which means,” Haze continued, “that anyone who left this room while the program was running is a prime suspect!” 1 Everyone in the room exchanged looks with each other.

“But apart from Mrs. Hunt, everyone else stayed here the whole time… No one else left the room!