Her hacking skills were merely "pretty decent"?
Fine. Lin Xiyue had truly pulled off the ultimate flex.
Chen Ge narrowed his eyes slightly, already picturing her smug, arrogant grin. Being someone who knew when to yield and when to stand tall, he didn't hesitate for a second and quickly changed her contact name to "Xiyue."
Chen Ge: *Yueyue, let me ask you something!*
Xiyue: *Mmh, not bad. At least you know how to behave. Add 'gorgeous beauty' to it and I'll be even happier. Yueyue? You're acting shady. Here, let me send you a link—let's chat in there. WeChat isn't secure, you know the drill.*
A moment later, Lin Xiyue sent over a web link. Chen Ge clicked it, and it opened into a minimalist, clean chatroom.
L: *Spit it out. Need my help? Let's get one thing straight: I don't do anything illegal!*
C: *Look at you, being all distant again. We grew up together, Yueyue. Give me the real story—just how good are your hacking skills?*
L: *I'm an international student at Moscow State University's Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics, a junior this year. As for how good I am? Not to brag, but no joke: if there were a global hacker leaderboard, I conservatively estimate I'd rank in the top thirty worldwide!*
Chen Ge bared his teeth. If that wasn't bragging, what was?
C: *Where did you learn all that? I remember your grades used to be totally average.*
L: *Buster, don't look down on people. When I was little, I had low self-esteem and was socially withdrawn, not stupid. In middle school and high school, I was first in math for the entire grade. In seventh grade, I had already mastered calculus, linear algebra, and mathematical physics equations. By ninth grade, I'd self-studied real analysis and functional analysis. My teachers all said my brain was naturally wired with mathematical structures.*
L: *I taught myself computer science too. Math and low-level computing are fundamentally the same thing. Gödel's incompleteness theorems, lambda calculus, Turing machines, computational complexity—learning those was as natural to me as breathing. Vulnerability mining is essentially just logical deduction and state-space search. If you can do topological analysis in your head, finding buffer overflows is like playing Minesweeper.*
L: *To be exact, I'm someone who writes code through mathematical thinking. Other people see assembly as instructions; I see it as algebraic structures. Other people look for exploits based on experience; I rely on logical certainty. Being in the global top thirty isn't hot air. The exploits I write are as elegant as mathematical proofs. Want to see? I can let you appreciate one.*
Chen Ge blinked and scratched his head. Everything Lin Xiyue was saying sat squarely in his blind spot.
Still, he had to pretend he understood, or she would never let him hear the end of it.
C: *Yeah, send it over and let me look. If your hacking skills are so amazing, why didn't you ever look me up?*
L: *Why would I look you up? Are we that close? Well... actually, I did look you up once back in 2019. Once I found out you'd gone to Russia, I stopped digging. I'm a hacker with principles—I don't snoop into people's private lives.*
C: *Then why did you hack my buddy's phone?*
L: *Hahaha, I was curious about what you've been doing these past few years and wanted to get to know you on a deeper level. If you mind, well, there's nothing I can do about it. I just wanted to see, that's all.*
Chen Ge's forehead filled with dark lines. His blood pressure surged, and he had a sudden urge to hit someone.
L: *Holy crap, you're even more badass than I imagined! You've taken part in a lot of missions over the years—your combat strength is insane! You're not a sniper, you're a mortarman? Impressive. How do you raise your hands and just fire, and hit dead-on every single time?*
L: *Dammit, someone dared to conspire against my Abs Bro? I'm posting the evidence of this dog's betrayal straight onto the web. Die, trash!*
L: *Done! I've wiped all the records on your Falcon Hunting Team. Just snap a few spicy photos of yourself as my consulting fee, and we'll call it even.*
Lin Xiyue was typing blazingly fast—or maybe it wasn't typing, but speech-to-text. Chen Ge couldn't even find an opening to get a word in.
He stared dumbfounded at his phone screen, his brain buzzing.
C: *Didn't you say you wouldn't dare hack the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense? How did you even hit the GRU, Wagner...???*
L: *I didn't dare to before because I value my life. But if I didn't scrub and wipe your dossiers, records, and photos clean, you'd be in massive trouble. Don't worry, it's fine—it won't trace back to me. Chen Ge, you'd better be careful. Fame brings danger just like fattening up a pig brings slaughter. Falcon Hunting Team's record last night was too flashy. Wagner high command will definitely send you on even more dangerous missions, and the Ukrainian military will be hunting for you too!*
A wave of warmth surged through Chen Ge's chest. He felt touched by this unexpected show of concern.
After a moment's thought, he got up, walked over to the desk across from his bed, took a fresh pair of boxer shorts from his pack, and slipped them on. He opened his camera, striking angle after angle before the full-length mirror, snapping dozens of photos, and sent them over to Lin Xiyue.
C: *I'm not good at speeches of gratitude. If you ever have enemies or trouble in the future, just say the word. I'll take care of them for you.*
L: *Slurp~ This body is an absolute masterpiece! But you're covered up way too thoroughly! You hid the parts I wanted to see most! Help, I can't take this!*
Black lines covered Chen Ge's face, and he nearly threw his phone. What kind of feral words were these?
C: *Please calm down. Moderation in all things—overdoing it harms your health!*
C: *What the hell... do you not have a boyfriend?*
L: *Nope. Single since birth. Haven't met anyone who makes my heart flutter. They're all too stupid. Honestly, I could tolerate stupidity, but what I can't stand are guys whose heads are stuffed with filthy thoughts while pretending to be upright gentlemen and deeply devoted lovers. It's completely nauseating.*
Chen Ge pulled a long face and furrowed his brows, making the classic face of an old man squinting at a phone on the subway.
The clash between Lin Xiyue's appearance and temperament versus her actual personality was jarring. It felt like watching Lin Daiyu speaking in a wildly unsexy local dialect while jacked with bulging muscles, fully capable of knocking out Mike Tyson. It gave him an intense sense of cognitive dissonance.
In his memory, when Lin Xiyue was in fifth grade, her family bought a villa in the urban area of DL, and she went to Xiaguan No. 1 Middle School for junior high. After that, they had barely ever crossed paths.
Sure, people changed—their looks, their builds, their personalities, heavily shaped by their environment and social circles. But this change was simply too drastic, wasn't it?
Moreover, he vaguely sensed that Lin Xiyue seemed to possess a split personality: one side pure and sweet, the other unhinged and wild.
C: *What on earth did you go through all these years to turn out so absurd?*
L: *You looking down on me? Hmph, I don't need you to like me anyway!*
L: *It's a long story. You've probably heard about my mom's temper. Ever since I was little, she used suffocating, high-pressure discipline on me. It was stifling. At the end of seventh grade, when I didn't place in the grade's top ten on the finals, she slapped me right in front of everyone at school. After that, fragile little me fell into depression.*
L: *Through eighth and ninth grade, and all three years of high school, I stayed depressed. Aside from studying, all I did was shut myself in my room and dive into hacking. Only on the internet was I truly free. I could do whatever I wanted, and I loved that feeling of having total control. Maybe that makes me a psycho.*
L: *I was just too exhausted from pretending at home, and the domestic internet regulations were too strict, stifling my computing talents. That's why I decided to study abroad. At first, I planned to go to the US, but my family refused, worried I'd fall into bad habits—doing drugs, sleeping around, all that. Still, they couldn't stop me from going overseas, so they let me come to Russia instead.*
L: *Compared to the US, Russia is pretty normal! Moscow State University's pure mathematics program is really solid too. I can actually learn things here.*
L: *Chen Ge, running into you again makes me happy! Genuinely happy. Strictly speaking, you've always been that lingering ache from my youth. When we were kids, I really looked up to you. Your grades were incredible, and you were so good-looking! After the gaokao, I heard your grandparents passed away in February, and even though you took the top score in the prefecture, you gave up college and vanished without a trace. My heart ached for you, and I felt so much sorrow. I hated those bastards who deserve to have their entire families wiped out—the ones who destroyed your family and ruined your life... Sigh. Now that I know you became a mercenary, my heart aches even more. Your life shouldn't have turned out like this!*
Chapter 28