Chapter 29: Hacker Genius; Backtracked

“Look, it’s this person.”

Zhang Principal held up his phone to Qin Hanyue’s face, pointing to the post Qiao Yi had made on the forum to show him.

Qin Hanyue first glanced at the ID, and then was drawn in by the six pictures in the post.

He took the phone and looked at the pictures. His first thought was: This handwriting isn’t bad.

Then he read through the process of solving the problem.

Qin Hanyue was born in Zurich and grew up in Los Angeles. While studying in Country M, he had helped manage his family's enterprises there, and at the same time started his own personal company, successfully taking it public within a year. After studying abroad, he resolutely returned to China and enrolled in Capital University. At twenty years old he officially took over the Qin Group, and he had always been both student and friend to Zhang Principal.

Seeing Qin Hanyue looking at the problem, Zhang Principal said, “I was originally going to take this problem and ask you, but you’re so busy running your enterprises, this old man didn’t dare take up your time. It’s really not easy getting to see you!”

Qin Hanyue didn’t have much interest in the problem. After quickly glancing over it, he said, “Don’t they have real name registration on the forum?”

“No, if they had real name registration I could have just had the administrator look into it directly, why would I specially come find you? Our Capital University forum only requires real name registration for faculty and students here, these ‘visitors’ don’t need it, but their posts and comments do still need to be reviewed by the administrators before being published.”

Qin Hanyue: “Have you contacted him?”

“Both myself and your junior fellow student Xu Zhiyi have contacted him, this old man made quite a generous offer, but he just replied it was inconvenient, and after that he stopped responding to this old man. Your junior fellow student Xu Zhiyi was even preparing to get a hacker to look up his IP address, I figured that wouldn’t be too good, so I came to ask your help!”

“Then how do you want me to find him?” Qin Hanyue put down the phone.

“You have such great abilities, surely you must have a way? Just get one of your technical staff to help me check, that’s all.”

“How is that any different from Xu Zhiyi getting a hacker?”

“Uh...” Zhang Principal pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. It seemed there really was no difference. Seeing Qin Hanyue’s faint smile, Zhang Principal stubbornly said, “The nature is still different.”

Qin Hanyue didn’t say anything more, and had someone call over his assistant Qin Yan.

Not only was Qin Yan Qin Hanyue’s assistant, he was also the world’s 10th ranked hacker Q. Very few people knew this identity.

Many of the Qin Group’s security systems came from Qin Yan’s hands.

Having a top hacker like him look up a simple IP address really was beneath his abilities.

“How long will this take?” Zhang Principal impatiently asked, “The day he made that post, I happened to have a headache flare up and took medicine at home lying down all day, so I wasn’t able to contact him right away. I’m afraid he’ll feel I’m not sincere enough, and refuse to meet with me. That’s why I want to find him quickly.”

Most geniuses have unique personalities.

Xu Zhiyi was one such example.

“Very quickly, within three minutes.” Qin Yan opened up his computer and started operating.

Zhang Principal crowded in to watch. Seeing all that quickly flashing data he didn’t recognize any of it, and couldn’t help sighing at society and technological progress.

Qin Yan went through some operations, and was just about to lock onto the other party’s IP address, when a big blinking red exclamation mark suddenly popped up on the screen, warning of danger.

“What is this?” Even someone clueless like Zhang Principal could see something had gone wrong.

Qin Hanyue, who was sitting to the side looking at his phone, heard the commotion and asked, “What’s wrong?”

“The other side has set up a firewall.” Qin Yan replied. After some effort he successfully broke through it and confirmed the location of the other device. n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

“It’s in Yun City.”

Yun City again. Qin Hanyue’s eyes slightly lifted.

This little Yun City really has been a bit unstable lately.

Qin Hanyue: “Keep narrowing down the location.”

“Got it.” Qin Yan confidently responded.

But after a few minutes, his brow first furrowed, and then his mood lifted, as he said with interest, “How intriguing.”

Zhang Principal looked at the suddenly energetic Qin Yan, then looked at Qin Hanyue, wanting to say something but not daring to ask, afraid to disturb Qin Yan.

Qiao Yi was using his phone to look up information.

Suddenly a flashing exclamation mark and line of text appeared on the screen.

[Device is under unidentified network attack, system protecting, please repair as soon as possible]

After that the screen turned blood red, followed by a black skull appearing, giving him a fright.

Qiao Yi thought he must have accidentally tapped something. He wanted to close the background and return to the home screen, but no matter what he did the phone wouldn’t respond.

Trying to turn it off didn’t work either.

If this was his old phone from before, Qiao Yi wouldn’t have cared too much, and would have just waited until the next day to show Qiao Ying.

But this frighteningly expensive new phone had just been bought not long ago. He was normally very careful picking it up and putting it down, afraid of bumping or scratching it.

So Qiao Yi didn’t care if Qiao Ying was asleep or not, and hurriedly took it to show her.

Qiao Ying had just gotten out of the shower, and was bored, when Qiao Yi came to find her with the phone.

“Sis, I think my phone got a virus, look.” Qiao Yi had learned computer skills from his sister for two days, and knew quite a bit of technical vocabulary now.

“Were you looking at inappropriate sites for minors?” Qiao Ying glanced at it and arched a brow.

Qiao Yi’s ears grew hot. “I wasn’t looking at anything, I was just searching for study materials when the phone suddenly ended up like this.”

Whether it was a virus or an attack, how could Qiao Ying as the world’s number one hacker not recognize it instantly. She was just teasing him a bit.

Seeing Qiao Ying’s unconcerned, nearly laughing expression, Qiao Yi awkwardly muttered, “You sure do talk like...”

“Like what?” Qiao Ying was completely unbothered. She took Qiao Yi’s phone and opened up her computer.

Qiao Yi didn’t want to chat about such things with his sister, and hurriedly changed the subject, “Sis, what’s going on with my phone?”

“Someone attacked it.”

“Who?” Qiao Yi looked at his weird phone screen then looked at Qiao Ying’s nearly dizzyingly fast operations, involuntarily becoming nervous.

This was his first time encountering something like this.

“It’s not an indiscriminate attack.” Qiao Ying said instead.

——At that time, at the Qin Family and Qin Hanyue’s residence.

“Still not done?” Qin Hanyue put down his phone. It had already been over ten minutes.

Looking up he saw Qin Yan’s deeply furrowed brow and exceptionally solemn expression. Sweat was streaming down his forehead and temples without him realizing it, and the air around him had become stifling.

Zhang Principal looked between Qin Yan and the computer, not daring to ask a single question, afraid of disturbing Qin Yan.

Qin Yan’s hands sped up more and more, soon only the clacking sound of the keyboard could be heard. He felt his mouth go dry.

“The other side discovered me, not only strengthening their firewall but breaking through mine, and also...” As he operated he quickly explained.

And also: “My device got reverse traced.” Qin Yan’s hands abruptly stopped as he raised his head to look at Qin Hanyue.