Chapter 22: ddos (4)
22 – ddos (4)
Seeing him remain silent, Qi Yun across from him fixed his eyes tightly on him and added, “My junior brother and I are here cultivating in seclusion. You disturb us without reason, surely harboring ulterior motives!”
Lin Xun still said nothing.
The more flustered and angry Qi Yun became, the more Lin Xun felt something was off.
—Moreover, with the mission guidance beforehand, these people gathering here definitely had something fishy going on.
Finally, he said, “It’s my first time visiting Qingcheng Mountain. I was just wandering around and happened to run into you.”
Qi Yun: “I was rude last night and lost to you once, so let’s call it even. If you insist on disturbing our cultivation, I won’t be polite either!”
Lin Xun narrowed his eyes.
He said, “You said the same thing last night.”
And last night, ten minutes after uttering those harsh words, Qi Yun was knocked down.
Shortly after, within half an hour of being knocked down and suffering a Qi deviation, they unfortunately ran into Old Man Huo returning from visiting friends at the Celestial Master Cave, and all were disarmed.
But what surprised him was that Qi Yun showed no fear this time.
He only heard Qi Yun sneer with a “hmph” and say, “I don’t know what sinister, unorthodox magic you used under cover of darkness last night, but today I won’t let you succeed.”
“And,” he emphasized each word, “since you’ve come here today, don’t think about leaving! The grudge of stealing my sword—I will never share the same sky with you.”
As he spoke, he suddenly drew his new sword: “Form the array!”
With several swishing sounds, the sword-cultivating disciples uniformly drew their brand-new swords.
Cold light flickered as they stepped in strange, irregular patterns, instantly forming an arc and charging toward Lin Xun!
Lin Xun had already experienced the same move yesterday evening.
He leaped into the air, treading lightly on the tips of the shrubbery like a dragonfly skimming water, then pushed off again to avoid the sweeping sword Qi from the cultivators.
The next moment, he tapped his keyboard, sending the Trojan file toward Qi Yun.
A gust of wind seemed to surge through the air, sweeping toward Qi Yun!
Lin Xun waited for the Trojan program’s operation interface to appear, but unexpectedly, nothing showed up.
And Qi Yun—was completely unharmed.
Lin Xun quickly slid to the left, dodging another wave of sword Qi.
He saw Qi Yun standing at the center of the sword array: “With your mere Qi Refining cultivation, how could you possibly break through the protective treasure my master bestowed upon me?”
As he spoke, he thrust his sword forward, a silver-white sword light shooting straight at Lin Xun!
Lin Xun blocked it head-on with his keyboard and swiftly retreated backward.
Qi Yun sneered, flicked his wrist lightly, changed the sword’s direction, and continued his assault.
His sword carried a powerful surge of Qi, even shaking the nearby shrubs and causing leaves to rustle down.
This time, the blade struck the firewall squarely, blocked by an invisible force.
However, at that moment, all the other disciples except Qi Yun stopped in place, closed their eyes, and seemed to enter a meditative state.
—Another DDoS attack.
At this moment, in Lin Xun’s eyes, these people were all high-speed computing computers.
A successful cyberattack requires massive computational power. Qi Yun alone was not a threat. But now, he was connected to all the other sword cultivators through the sword array, harnessing their combined computational power and concentrating it into his sword.
Lin Xun watched as Qi Yun’s sword edge pressed down toward him extremely slowly. Originally blocked by the firewall about forty centimeters away, it now inched forward bit by bit, having already advanced at least four centimeters.
He looked up and saw fine beads of sweat forming on Qi Yun’s forehead.
The next moment, Lin Xun smiled.
Qi Yun: “What are you laughing at?”
“Nothing,” Lin Xun said. “Your sword formation is quite impressive.”
“Good that you know,” Qi Yun raised an eyebrow, his gaze contemptuous. “You’re only relying on this protective barrier—prepare to die!”
His right arm muscles bulged as he exerted force, pressing the sword tip down another centimeter!
“I haven’t finished speaking,” Lin Xun said.
Qi Yun: “You won’t get to finish.”
Looking into Qi Yun’s eyes, Lin Xun was certain that in his view, he was already a dead man.
He felt no particular emotion, speaking calmly: “The sword formation is impressive, but…”
Qi Yun frowned.
The next moment, Lin Xun’s fingers rapidly tapped thirteen keys on the keyboard!
Adjust program, modify parameters, execute!
Qi Yun: “Futile resistance!”
Suddenly, he seemed to sense something wrong and glanced back.
The other sword cultivators remained in meditative poses, showing no abnormalities.
He turned back to Lin Xun.
“But…” Lin Xun said, “now it’s mine.”
He abruptly retreated, looking down at Qi Yun from mid-air.
You have protective treasures, I have firewalls.
But your junior brothers don’t.
You use distributed attacks to harness their computing power to breach my firewall—then I can also plant programs within them to compete with you for their computing resources.
While engaging Qi Yun, Lin Xun’s right hand flew across the keyboard. Ten minutes later, his attack platform was complete!
He launched another assault against Qi Yun.
This time, it wasn’t just his own power—all the sword cultivators’ strength was now at his disposal.
Under immense pressure, Qi Yun’s protective treasures were no longer impenetrable, developing vulnerabilities under the relentless data attacks.
Meanwhile, the Trojan files that had been continuously bombarding him finally succeeded in breaching during this momentary weakness.
—What followed was standard procedure.
Create bugs, induce malfunctions.
The sword cultivator disciples tumbled and rolled across the ground. Though Qi Yun maintained consciousness, he could no longer lift his sword.
Gasping for breath, his eyes wide with fury, he demanded: “You… you demon, what… what sorcery is this? Who are you?”
Lin Xun removed the black bracelet from his right wrist. Instantly, it lengthened in his hand into a black iron chain about the thickness of a little finger and five to six meters long.
—That day at home when he knocked out Jiang Lian and bound him with blankets and jump ropes, Old Man Huo had been thoroughly unimpressed, promptly gifting him this item called the “Demon-Binding Chain.”
Having gained experience in restraining people, Lin Xun soon had Qi Yun’s upper body securely tied up.
Lin Xun asked him seriously: “Did you really want to kill me?”
Qi Yun panted: “Why… why wouldn’t I?”
Lin Xun confiscated his sword again, lifted the chain end, and pulled the man up, saying: “Are you legally illiterate?”
Then, ignoring Qi Yun’s feeble curses, he began surveying the surroundings.
He had no intention of asking Qi Yun what was unusual about this place—though the man didn’t seem particularly bright, even fools occasionally have moments of insight. If interrogated, he might well provide false information to sabotage him.
So, leading Qiyun along, he began inspecting the various platforms in the area, searching for clues.
After walking a distance, two figures trembling against the mountain rocks appeared in his line of sight.
It was Old Big and Old Second—it seemed their curiosity had ultimately gotten the better of them, and they hadn’t stayed put as told but had come over instead.
And they had seen something they shouldn’t have.
Old Second was trembling uncontrollably, no longer calling him “brother,” and stammered, “B… Big Brother, y… you all—”
“It’s fine now,” Lin Xun said. “They couldn’t beat me.”
Old Big: “Ah… okay… you…”
Lin Xun frowned slightly. “What?”
He suddenly noticed that both of them were staring at his keyboard.
The keyboard was lit up—perhaps during his earlier flurry of keystrokes, he had accidentally pressed a function key and turned on the keyboard’s backlight.
Keyboard backlighting was an extremely practical feature, ensuring that programmers could clearly see the letters on the keys even in pitch-black environments, rather than straining their eyes to identify key positions under screen light.
Lin Xun thought he might have discovered the source of the problem.
Keyboard backlighting came in two types.
One was called RGB lighting, which was multicolored, sometimes even shifting colors, and was quite popular among guys.
But Lin Xun didn’t like it—he found such lighting too flashy, too frivolous.
His keyboard backlight… was monochromatic, red.
And his keyboard, with its silver-gray base, black keycaps, and dark red backlight—
After the system’s modifications, the glow seemed even more conspicuous than before, appearing rather sinister.
Then, Old Second spoke up: “Big Brother, are you… that legendary… member of the Demonic Sect?”
Qi Yun: “So you really are a sorcerer?”
Lin Xun: “”
He turned off the keyboard backlight. “I’m from a righteous sect.”
Qi Yun: “Yeah, right.”
Lin Xun couldn’t be bothered to engage with him and continued moving while using his crawler program to scan the surroundings.
—And he actually found something amiss.
There was one spot the program couldn’t probe, a blind spot no matter what he tried.
He led Qi Yun toward that spot, with Old Big and Old Second trailing closely behind.
The final destination was a dead end—mountains to the left, mountains to the right, and mountains straight ahead.
Mountain walls, rocks, and green vines cascading down like a waterfall from above…
Lin Xun reached out and pushed aside the vines.
A pitch-black opening, roughly one person tall and two people wide, was revealed.
Lin Xun pondered for a moment, then pushed Qi Yun inside first.
“F—k—” Qi Yun seemed to curse, but Lin Xun automatically filtered it out.
Five seconds later, he also stepped into the cave.
The next second.
A dull, heavy thud echoed.
“Thump.”
Something heavy slammed shut behind him.
Lin Xun stepped back, only to feel the cold, hard surface of a stone wall against his back.
—The exit was blocked.
With the outside light cut off, Lin Xun’s vision plunged into complete darkness, unable to see anything.
He heard Qi Yun’s ragged breathing.
He tightened his grip on the chain in his hand. “What is this place?”
Qi Yun: “A place you can’t leave.”
The man continued, “Let me go, then beg me, and I’ll use my sword’s glow to light the way. Otherwise, we’ll see who starves to death here first.”
Lin Xun: “How should I beg?”
Qi Yun said, “Big Brother Qi Yun, no, Father Qi Yun, I was wrong. I was blind and didn’t recognize your greatness, offending you.”
He gradually got into the role, his tone growing more emotional: “It’s your unfilial son’s fault. Your son will make amends right now, begging Father to use his Qi to light the way for—”
Lin Xun: “”
The next second, Qi Yun’s voice cut off abruptly, like a duck whose neck had been suddenly wrung.
—Lin Xun expressionlessly turned on his phone’s flashlight.
The cave lit up as bright as day.