Ye Shaohua received the admission notice and then went to M Country.
After learning that Ye Shaohua was the provincial Number One Scholar, Ye's father had even thought about finding her and bringing her back. However, to his surprise, Ye Shaohua seemed to have vanished, as he could not find out anything about her whereabouts.
Gradually, Ye Shaohua was almost forgotten by both the Ye Family and the residents of Ning City.
Two years later, a gaming company named Xinghe Networks emerged in M Country, launching an IT product called Star Network, along with a game operated through brainwave sensors. Although it was still in the trial phase, it instantly shocked the world.
Nobody knew who was behind this company, but everyone was aware that within just a month of going public, Xinghe Networks had become the leader in M Continent.
Even the IT industry's tycoons could not deny that Xinghe Networks represented a revolutionary change in the digital era.
Numerous businessmen wanted to get involved with Xinghe Networks, yet they could not even find the person behind it.
Back in Hua Country, Ye Ke also began to make a name for herself.
She had been reborn ten years ago, and in these two years, she had skipped grades to enroll in University Beijing. With three ahead-of-their-time software programs, she was successfully recruited by a national laboratory.
Moreover, she was also familiar with the recent rhythms of the financial market changes. Consequently, she manipulated several stocks to acquire a few companies during market fluctuations, ultimately moving the Ye Family's headquarters to Imperial City.
Most importantly, her software was recognized by the Hacker Alliance.
She became the darkest horse in the business world in recent years, and a dazzling star in the computing realm, with many Veterans from national laboratories seeking her advice on her software development.
Online, people hailed her as the national goddess.
She was Ye Ke.
At this moment, Ye Ke was in the premier computing company of Imperial City, the largest in Hua Country. On the surface, it seemed no different from any ordinary company, but Ye Ke knew that its actual backers were the leading geniuses from the international Hacker Alliance, the champions of the previous global hacker competition, and crucially, their ancestors held high military and political offices.
If not for her memories of her past life, she would not have known that such a seemingly unassuming company had such a formidable backer.
In this life, she had long planned to establish a good relationship with the company's management, Gu Jingyan.
She lacked nothing but a powerful backer.
"Mr. Gu, a pleasure doing business with you," said Ye Ke as she signed the document, her curiosity peeking into the Waiting Room. Seeing nothing, she withdrew her gaze.
Over the last two years, Gu Jingyan had come to regard her with new respect. After all, the fruits of a decade of wisdom were hard to fault, so both had become friendly business partners.
Ye Ke had been worried that Ye Shaohua might still be in touch with Gu Jingyan, but over these years, she had never seen him communicate with Ye Shaohua even once. Thus, she finally put her mind at ease.
"The hacker competition is tomorrow, and you seem very relaxed," Gu Jingyan commented curiously.
"The organizer of this hacker competition is Xinghe Networks," Ye Ke mentioned, her eyes lighting up for a moment, "I aim to take first place. The people at Xinghe Networks are too mysterious; I can only meet their person in charge if I win."
Xinghe Networks wasn't present in her previous life, and Ye Ke thought this might be a butterfly effect from her rebirth.
She had also studied the software released by Xinghe Networks, realizing it bore no resemblance to anything she had seen in her past life and was unable to decipher any part of it.
This indicated that the creator of Xinghe Networks had far surpassed her in technology, even outpacing the Hacker Alliance, and therefore, she knew just how fearsome Xinghe Networks was.
"First place?" Gu Jingyan smiled meaningfully, "You're that confident?"
"Of course." Ye Ke replied very quickly this time. Apart from knowing the content of the hacker competition, she still had a decade's worth of global hacker wisdom in her head.
She had already stood out as Asia's Number One Scholar in the preliminary hacker competition, and no one had expected the virtually unknown Ye Ke from two years ago to outshine all the prodigies.
Hackers from other countries viewed this dark horse from Hua Country with envy and caution.
At the global hacker competition, almost everyone would deliberately or subconsciously glance over here upon hearing the name Ye Ke.
This filled Ye Ke with a strong sense of superiority.
The hacker competition was unlike other competitions, where each participant had their own separate workspace equipped with cameras, to demonstrate the fairness of the competition. The difference was that each participant could choose to have an audience to watch the process.
Ye Ke brought along people from the Ye Family and the Fu Family, and even invited Gu Jingyan.
With confidence, she pointed at the Windows botnet on her computer screen and said to the audience, "This is an offensive and defensive competition. See that? I'm using this kernel vulnerability to execute remote code, then I seize control of the Star Network's browser to elevate system privileges. By the time other competitors find me through the vulnerability, I've already scored 11 points, I'm definitely going to be number one."
The people from the Ye and Fu families didn't understand, while Fu Jiachen looked at Ye Ke, slightly lost in thought.
Gu Jingyan, who understood these things, glanced at the screen and suddenly shook his head, "Miss Ye, don't celebrate too early."
Just then, the alarm Ye Ke had set up suddenly let out a sharp sound—someone had tracked her IP?!
How could this be possible?
Ye Ke couldn't believe it; the firewall and remote code she was using were those used by the previous world number one, which the official competition had improved over two years before releasing on their Official Website free of charge.
Such a nearly perfect firewall, even by current standards, couldn't normally be breached in a short period of time by the average person.
"Don't worry, my firewall comes with a virus. Those who want to attack me are still too green. Haven't they ever heard of something called 'phishing'?" Ye Ke immediately placed her hands on the keyboard, her tone filled with a touch of pride and mockery, thinking that someone trying to attack a firewall designed for two years later was simply too naïve.
She had great confidence in her firewall and remained calm, continuing to deploy her malware.
Only the last minute of the competition remained.
On the competition board, Ye Ke was leading as the first place with an advantage of 11 points.
However, that was when things changed. The code on Ye Ke's desktop crazily turned into gibberish, and someone used her captured browser as a springboard to directly invade the browser's internals!
That wasn't all; her computer screen turned black, and two white letters appeared out of nowhere—KO!
Ye Ke sharply turned her head, the competition board showed that the leading first place had been replaced.
Y, 19 points.
Seeing this, Ye Ke bit her lip hard, unable to believe it, "Y? How could it be Y? How could TA possibly participate in the hacker competition?!"
The hacker competition had age restrictions; only people under 25 years old could participate, and only once in their lifetime.
In the Hacker Community, Y also stirred up a trend, with everyone subconsciously assuming that someone with such skills must be of a certain age, perhaps a former champion of a hacker competition.
But unexpectedly, Y was not just young, it was TA's first time participating in a hacker competition!
"Y is indeed Y," Gu Jingyan said, seemingly having anticipated the result, so he wasn't surprised.
As soon as the competition ended, the teachers from the national laboratory came in. Ye Ke was the second place, which was a good result.
After hearing Gu Jingyan's words, he nodded in agreement, "Yes, the young people these days are incredible, 19 points, the last person who scored that was the Third Young Master, right? I'm certain that Y will be recruited by Xinghe Network, and TA's future accomplishments will be boundless."
"The most important thing for a hacker is to be able to create a new world on the internet, to program the most perfect software." Ye Ke had developed many software products for the Ye Family in the past two years, propelling the Ye Family into the global top 100. At nineteen years of age, for most people, this was nothing short of a miraculous presence.
As someone who was extremely successful in every aspect, Ye Ke naturally was very arrogant, "I don't deny Y's hacking skills, but that does not mean TA has achieved the same in programming. This world has never lacked hacker talent, but those who truly reach the pinnacle can be counted on one hand."
Her current achievements were something many people could not reach in several lifetimes, and Y was just a little talented in hacking, that was all. If it really came down to a comparison, she, a member of the Ye Family, could easily crush Y.