Arriving at the Shanghai Postal Distribution & Transfer Station, Huang Ji had to confirm whether his money had arrived.
Before leaving, Huang Ji had found a way to mail out the safe; the location was the home of a friend of Zheng Xuan's.
Of course, Huang Ji wouldn't actually let the three million arrive at a stranger's home. He just had to collect the package first with his ID card before it was sent out.
It was fine even if he missed it. The ID number of Zheng Xuan's friend didn't match the information, he wouldn't be able to receive the package.
The package would be sent back and stay at this transfer station for another period of time, giving him one more chance to collect it.
What Huang Ji had to do now was just pick up the money safe at the transfer station before it arrived at its designated location.
"Well that was fast. It's already arrived." Huang Ji immediately took his package after confirming its arrival. The 93 pound safe was too troublesome for him to carry. He stopped a taxi and used it for transportation.
Unsurprisingly, he didn't take the money back to Zheng Xuan's apartment. Instead, he headed towards a high-rise apartment where he had already made an appointment with the landlord to check out some rooms.
Huang Ji didn't spare any expenses, paying with cash on the spot and renting an apartment with four bedrooms and two living rooms.
In the apartment, he opened the safe and took out another 200 thousand. Placing the money in his backpack, he started shopping around at nearby stores.
His main goal was a computer. Through Zheng Xuan, Huang Ji had already realized its importance. It was now the age of the internet.
Without much thought, he simply purchased a computer with the exact same specs as the one in Zheng Xuan's apartment. He also set up a fiber optic line and paired it with an all-in-one printer.
After sending off the delivery guy who had helped install the printer, Huang Ji stared at his computer with a smile on his face.
"There really is a difference between theory and practice..." said Huang Ji as he sat enthusiastically in front of his computer, controlling the mouse with a stiff hand.
He'd never touched this sort of thing before. While he'd already obtained a basic understanding of computers from Zheng Xuan, when it came time to actually use it, he was still like a complete beginner.
"Using the browser, I can visit thousands of web portals; I can also use powerful search engines to find what I want. Amazing... " Like everybody's first experience with the internet, Huang Ji browsed the web with ample curiosity and excitement.
From the news that was being pushed and online comments, to any word that piqued his interest, he didn't want to let any of it go.
What made Huang Ji's experience unique was that he could see past the information on the surface of the internet and view the torrential stream of underlying data!
"There's too much information..." Huang Ji inhaled sharply.
Probing just a bit deeper already gave him a splitting headache. He had to quickly block out the majority of the data again.
"I'll investigate deeper when I find something of interest"
Huang Ji opened the Bing search engine and typed one letter at a time, searching for 'aliens'. But what he found were only movies, company names, and electronic products.
Unable to find what he was looking for, he thought about it for a moment and then added the keyword--'moon'--after aliens.
With this, he finally found some information related to the real world. There were titles such as; 'Aliens on the far side of the Moon', 'USA saw UFOs during the Moon landing', and 'A base with alien spaceships on the far side of the Moon.'.
All kinds of UFO enthusiasts were discussing these topics on their own forums or Tieba4, the biggest forum platform in China. Huang Ji looked on with interest.
These were all fantastical things he'd never encountered before.
"I never thought there would be so many people like me who believed in aliens.
They don't have my ability, but they're able to prove the existence of aliens from just the small traces they've left behind.
"Aliens have always been with us? He's right, he's absolutely right!
"An alien base on the Moon? As far as I know it only exists inside the Moon, not on the surface, but maybe there used to be one on the surface too.
"So American astronauts have already seen them before? But...why was this never mentioned in school..." Huang Ji rushed to find the original poster of this post on twitter and read his ID.
"Nami the Whale?" Huang Ji blinked his eyes and the data related to this ID immediately flooded into his mind.
The registration location, the ID card used, their current IP address, their username, current password and past passwords...It even contained information like their online status, previous posts, browser history, login times, and the contents of all their private messages, including the ones that had already been deleted...
It was worth mentioning that all of this information was real, and it had nothing to do with whether it was recorded on the website's server.
Huang Ji could read their posts regardless of if they had been deleted or not. As long as it was posted or viewed by this account named, 'Nami the Whale', Huang Ji would be able to find this information in the data; information that not even the company of the website had!
It was to the extent where Huang Ji even knew that this person was currently sitting in an internet café called 'Star Diamond Internet Café' in Jinmen... He was sitting at computer #112, and he only had 15 yuan left in his balance.
In fact, this person called "Nami the Whale" hadn't even registered this account with his real ID.
He had used a random person's ID he'd found online. When Huang Ji was perceiving his true identity, he discovered that their ID used for registration didn't match the "True account holder" at all.
"Does the data I'm perceiving exist in some unseen form...could it be information contained within the universe itself? It doesn't need any physical medium that exists in reality to store it... I can find his true identity despite the fact that he'd hadn't even registered with it... If I was a security specialist, all of the world's hackers could say goodbye to the free world..."
By observing Zheng Xuan, Huang Ji had gained an understanding of a hacker's work, or at the very least his.
He had once hacked into the personal computer of the CEO of a stock brokerage firm on Wall Street, obtaining evidence of financial fraud. With just one line, "I'm friends with the FBI", Zheng Xuan easily extorted one million US dollars.
This was where the money in his American JP Morgan bank account came from. However, it also depended on the circumstances.
The reason this supposed Wall Street tycoon had chosen to settle things with money was because he wasn't clean.
He was too afraid to go after the hacker who'd blackmailed him and simply ran an investigation for appearances.
For him, it was just a million dollars. If the FBI had gotten of the evidence and taken him to court, the lawyer fees alone would have exceeded one million.
Even worse, if he had been found guilty, the fine would have been fifty times that, and he'd have gone to prison. What Huang Ji got from this was; with enough skill, making money was truly a trivial matter.
Zheng Xuan obviously didn't withdraw all of the money. The interest alone was enough to support his seemingly normal life in Shanghai.
This was all built upon his considerable skill. Without the necessary skill, even a sheep would turn into a vicious wolf.
In Huang Ji's first interaction with the internet, with just a glance of their username, he was able to obtain the person's real identity, and even where they were accessing the internet from... By way of any of a person's online accounts, he could know where they were accessing the internet from, and even if they weren't online, he could know where they'd last logged in... This probably wasn't limited to normal accounts, even the anonymous marks left behind by hackers were included...
At the very least, even if the hacker didn't leave anything behind, as long as they used the internet to send a message, or even a single character... If it was seen by Huang Ji, he could find who had sent that message...
He realized that he was, without any doubt, the bane of all hackers. Online anonymity? Data masking? Removing traces? VPN ? Botnets? They were all meaningless.