Zhu Yun followed behind Li Xun.
There had actually been another question she wanted to ask, but when she entered the office and saw the bedroll spread out on the sofa, she decided there was no longer any need to ask it.
Only Li Xun’s computer was on. Zhu Yun went over to look at the screen, which was covered in multiple windows. She read through them — it was the at command.
After all her years studying computer science, Zhu Yun had always taken the straight and proper path. When it came to hacker techniques, she wasn’t completely ignorant, but her knowledge barely scratched the surface.
She knew that at was a program that accessed the network and related information at the kernel level — capable of providing TCP and UDP monitoring and generating reports on process memory management.
Zhu Yun turned around and asked Li Xun, who was over by the water dispenser.
“Are you trying to trace the attacker?”
Li Xun didn’t answer. He came back with a cup of water, and on his way past Zhang Fang’s desk, he reached into a drawer and pulled out a tin of cocoa powder. Zhang Fang had very similar tastes to Zhu Yun and absolutely loved sweet things, but he found it embarrassing for a man to have a sweet tooth, so he hid all his candy and snacks in the deepest corner of his drawer.
Li Xun tore open a packet of cocoa powder, stirred it into the hot water, and set it in front of Zhu Yun.
Zhu Yun said, “You didn’t even stir it.”
Li Xun looked at her with a blank expression. Zhu Yun accepted the cup graciously.
The warm cocoa went down, driving out the cold that had settled into her bones, and Zhu Yun was immediately washed over by a deep sense of contentment.
She held the cup and sat down beside Li Xun, watching the screen alongside him.
“Will that actually track him down?”
“No.” He pulled a cigarette from the pack on the desk, lit it, and said, “This only shows current connections. If the other party isn’t actively attacking, there’s no way to detect them.”
Zhu Yun searched her shallow knowledge of hacking and ventured a suggestion. “What about setting up a scheduled task — have the system automatically send out a command at intervals, on the chance that the other party happens to be active at the same time…”
Li Xun, cigarette dangling from his lips, leaned back in his chair and slowly shook his head.
“He isn’t that kind of amateur.”
“He?” Zhu Yun caught the word immediately. “Is it someone you know?”
“Yes.” Li Xun gave her a sideways glance, unhurried. “Someone you know too.”
“…”
Zhu Yun looked at his expression — and in an instant, a certain person came to mind.
“Is it that lean, slight man you were with before?”
“Right.”
Zhu Yun set down her cup. “I forgot to ask you at the time — who exactly is he? After I saw him that once, he never showed up again.”
Li Xun tilted his chin at the computer screen. “And now he’s shown up.”
Zhu Yun was at a loss for words. Li Xun took the cigarette from his lips, tapped off the ash, and said, “I met him inside. As for what he does—” He pointed at the screen. “—that’s what he does.”
“A hacker?”
“Yes.”
“Is that what he went in for?”
“More or less. He broke into a publicly listed internet company and siphoned off a considerable sum. He was sentenced to seven years.”
Zhu Yun said under her breath, “I knew there was something off about him.”
Li Xun’s expression went cold. “And do I look honest to you?”
Zhu Yun stared at him. Li Xun held her gaze at first, but eventually — perhaps because her look was too unwavering — he slowly looked away.
Zhu Yun: “Why do you always defend him?”
Li Xun said nothing. Zhu Yun went on, “I’m speaking to the facts — I’m not making a comparison to you. I can understand your feelings toward him, but the two of you are fundamentally different people.”
“We shared the same cell block — what makes us so different,” Li Xun said, giving Zhu Yun a sidelong look. “And besides, he’s genuinely skilled. Far above you.”
Zhu Yun thought to herself that she was nearly thirty now — she’d be ridiculous to still fall for such a simple attempt at provocation.
“Fine by me,” Zhu Yun said, completely unfazed. “Skill is a good thing. Why don’t you recruit him? Then with you, him, and Dong Siyang, we might as well rename the company The League of Reformers.“
Li Xun simply turned his head away and refused to look at her.
Zhu Yun asked, “How much damage did he do to the database?”
Silence.
Zhu Yun tried again: “If we can’t catch him, maybe set it aside for now and patch the backend vulnerabilities first.”
Still nothing — he didn’t even glance at her, cigarette in his mouth, every inch of him broadcasting that he was in a sulk.
Zhu Yun: “…”
Something felt off. Zhu Yun didn’t quite know what to say.
The truth was, she could guess at the reason for his attitude. That man, for all his wrongdoing, had perhaps been Li Xun’s only friend through those long years in prison. And with both of them being technically gifted people who had ended up behind bars, her clear resistance to him was bound to make Li Xun uncomfortable.
But Zhu Yun was just petty like that. She refused to accept that Li Xun was the same as the real criminals inside.
When it came to computer science — a field her mother had initially forced her into, only for her to genuinely fall in love with it — Li Xun had played a pivotal role. It was he who had first sparked her interest in programming, and it was he who had made her believe that technology should be used to benefit society. That was why she had such a particular contempt for those who wielded their skills for harm, and for those who committed their misdeeds and then strutted around feeling pleased with themselves.
“Hou Ning had his reasons for ending up inside,” Li Xun said to her while she was lost in thought. “He was socially withdrawn. He got badly bullied when he was young. Then someone saw he was good with computers and approached him as a friend. He ended up going along with whatever this person said, and was tricked into account theft. He did half a year in a detention center. When he got out, the same person came looking for him again — and he trusted him all over again.”