It should be understood that yesterday's modifications by Motan had drastically narrowed down the search parameters. There wouldn't be significant progress in a short period, however, an impossibility had occurred. Unless...
Unless, overnight, countless individuals who simultaneously matched these exact conditions appeared in the world: 'female, East Asian, aged eighteen to twenty-five, Chinese citizen, mother alive, never purchased Innocence Company peripheral products, not outdoors on the night of 31st December 2048.'
This, of course, was impossible!
Therefore, the conclusion was quite simple...
"Stop the search." Motan smirked, a trace of mockery playing on his lips as he spoke softly into the microphone before him, "Immediately switch to the Necronomicon System, initiate address spoofing, and start clearing traces."
A second later, the monitor's display had turned completely white, dotted with numerous red points that were rapidly disappearing.
"Heh, you're very smart. Pity though, just unfortunate…" Motan exhaled lightly, chuckling as he looked at the game cabin in the center of the living room, "Seems like luck is on my side this time~"
...
Somewhere in China
A sleep-talking voice echoed in the dark room. Several seconds later, a slender figure with disheveled hair struggled to sit up from the bed, casually putting on the deep red headset from the bedside, and shuffled slowly to the chair beside her bed.
Taking a soda from the edge of her table, she popped the tab and drained it, smacking her lips contentedly, then let out a crisp and ethereal laugh.
Even though the thick black curtains completely blocked out sunlight, confining the room in perpetual darkness, it didn't hinder her sight. Acquiring this near night-vision ability wasn't difficult as long as one could endure the confined and dark space for a long period; most people could do it.
With a snap of her fingers, the monitors around her illuminated the room and her figure. She appeared to be a skinny teenage girl, around seventeen to eighteen years old, perhaps a couple of years older due to her thin frame.
At this moment, the girl was wearing only a plain white tank top and underwear, her exposed skin was pale, a sort of unhealthy pallor. She had an innocent, pure doll-like face and messy, long black hair cascading down her back.
Her name was Mu You, almost twenty years old, a "hikikomori" without education, employment, or parents.
"A strange girl who never greets anyone, probably has autism."
That was the unanimous opinion from neighbors who only saw her once in a long while. Yet, in this society, nothing was really unusual. A strange girl wasn't gossip-worthy over tea or meals.
No one knew of Mu You's several other identities...
The legend of the hacking world known as Black Sun, the human Mage called Double Leaf in [Realm of Innocence], the anonymous genius who earned top qualifications in psychological and computer fields and several related doctorate degrees from online exams.
"Ah~ Nothing beats a can of Dr.Pepper after waking up!" Mu You let out a pleasurable sigh akin to a middle-aged salaried worker who had just chugged a bottle of chilled beer after a hard day's work. She set the beverage known as 'the intellectual's drink' on the table, looked up at the numerous monitors slowly lighting up in her room and smirked, "Let me see the results, NAVI~"
"Yes." The pleasant electronic synthesized voice echoed from all around.
"Let me hear the stats on the access count of those fake profiles I arranged before within the last 24 hours~" Mu You said casually as she stretched her body, unconcerned about her revealing attire. After all, the only other one in her room was a high-intelligence AI named NAVI, who was also set to female.
After a silence of approximately two to three seconds, the screen on the wall to Mu You's left suddenly turned emerald green. Rows of golden characters started scrolling rapidly. NAVI calmly reported, "Type I Virtual Bait was accessed 27 times, Type II 15 times, Type III, IV and V each 9 times, Type VI Virtual Bait was accessed... 3254259 times."
"Hook, line, and sinker~" Mu You clapped her hands and squatted on the chair. She tapped on the keyboard-like yet unusually large elliptical device on her table. The reflection of countless screens showing rapidly refreshing data and IPs gleamed in her glasses. Chuckling, she murmured to herself, "Let me see~ let me see~ You can't escape this time~ Oh, a virtual address and disguise again? NAVI, help me count these!"
...
"NAVI?"
...
"No way?!" Mu You exclaimed, hurriedly jumped off the chair, and dashed barefoot to the corner of the room. She lifted a thin crystal panel and took a peek inside, then screamed, "Huh? It's crashed?!"
The girl rolled her eyes, stuck her hand in to mess about a bit to restart the AI automatically, then marched back to her desk with wide eyes. She clenched her fists tightly and grumbled, "I'll do it manually!"
She pulled open the top drawers on both sides of the desk and split the oval-shaped keyboard in front of her into two halves with a click, placing them on the opened drawers on either side of her. Then she took a more ordinary external keyboard from behind and plugged it into the mainframe right in front of her, then set it in front of herself. Her hands danced rapidly and gently like playing a piano, playing a piece at the level of the "Flight of the Bumblebee"...
The whole room lit up.
It wasn't that the sunshine finally penetrated this enclosed space, but nearly a dozen monitors in the room were refreshing data streams at an insane speed...
"You bastard!" Mu You yelled, maintaining operations at at least 600 AMP with her slender fingers, gritted her teeth and snapped, "Your reaction speed is way too fast! You've done over half of multi-point disguises and forced blocking out of more than three million visits, is your computer made by aliens? Even NAVI... I'm about to crash...!!!"
However, the girl's eyes sparkled with an almost fanatic leer even as she spoke. Clearly just a somewhat malnourished little girl, Mu You was now exuding an unusually strong aura! Despite being a tad over five feet, she seemed...more like five foot three...
In short, she seemed formidable!
This girl who initially encountered Hei Fan in [Realm of Innocence] no longer possessed the languid demeanor from back then. Her lips curled upwards, and her pale eyes filled with irrational pleasure, with her hands seemingly dancing into a blur around her!
"I will definitely win! After all, the one showing weaknesses...is you!"
...
Ten minutes later
"Huh?" Accompanying a wind chime-like notification sound, Mu You's hands stopped. From the beginning till now, she had almost instantaneously eliminated one-third of the targets with the aid of the logic system and her extremely keen intuition. However, the remaining ones became increasingly troublesome. Some traps that could mask the truth were so cunning that a cursory query could incur irreversible consequences, compelling her to slow down.
[Maybe... I won't catch him this time either...]
Just as she started to feel slightly disheartened, she was suddenly startled by an abrupt ding. After the briefest of pauses, she pounced onto the bed and switched on a green notebook casually thrown on it, launching a phishing website's homepage.
A heap of carefully curated chaos was present at the bottom, with a string of tiny numbers swiftly refreshing.
"What's happening?" Mu You blinked, memorizing these numbers at high speed while muttering, "Even if you realized I was looking into you, there's no need to contact in advance, right! What on earth are you trying to say..."
She didn't return to continue the catch-the-mouse game which was likely futile but sat cross-legged on her bed, shut her eyes, and began to rapidly decode this string of information in her mind.
Soon, an image of a newspaper silhouette fulfilling the criteria appeared in her mind.
She had found the cipher.....
Chapter Thirteen: End