“And then he was caught again?” Zhu Yun could barely suppress her reaction. “Remarkable talent indeed.”
Li Xun heard the sarcasm and said, “He was caught twice in total. The first time, it was because his so-called friend got too greedy and left a trail of evidence. The second time, his friend was playing both sides — he had Hou Ning steal critical data from a company, sold it for a large sum, and then, when he heard the company’s owner was putting up a reward to catch the hacker, went and volunteered to catch the culprit himself. He sold Hou Ning out, pocketed another windfall, and fled abroad.”
Zhu Yun heard this and said quietly, “You can’t use that to excuse him. He’d already been inside once — and when he came out, he went right back to the same thing.”
Li Xun: “He has bad luck.”
Zhu Yun couldn’t help but argue back. “This isn’t bad luck. He knew what he was doing.”
Li Xun looked at her and said calmly, “When I say he has bad luck, I mean he never had a single person in his life who could pull him back from the edge.”
Zhu Yun was stunned. She felt there was a great deal that Li Xun was trying to express with that look — but before she could read it, he had already looked away.
Her cheeks grew warm. The two of them sat in silence for a moment, and she cast around for something to say. “So… why did he hack our data?”
Li Xun: “Before, he wanted me to go abroad with him. I turned him down.”
Zhu Yun felt a quiet wave of relief, then asked, “So he’s overseas now?”
Li Xun shook his head. “He should still be in the country.”
“How do you know? Didn’t you say you couldn’t track his IP?”
“He texted me.”
“…”
Li Xun said, “He’s been hired by Fang Zhijing.”
Zhu Yun’s expression darkened. “What?”
Li Xun said, “Though it’s probably not a direct line of contact. Jili’s game is going live right after the New Year and they’re in the middle of their final promotional push. Fang Zhijing has handed the project to someone on his team named Wang Ke. This was an idea from their marketing and publicity team — the thinking being, if they can completely destroy our game and drive all the users over to them…”
Zhu Yun bristled with indignation, then asked Li Xun, “How do you know all this in such detail?”
“Hou Ning told me himself.”
“Why would he tell you?”
Li Xun gave a short, humorless laugh, took out another cigarette, and put it between his lips. “He knows I have a grudge against that company and has had his eye on them this whole time. When he found out they were planning to cause trouble, he went and offered his services proactively. Wang Ke and the rest of them originally just wanted someone to write a cheat program, but Hou Ning said he could go straight into the database.”
Zhu Yun was so angry she could feel her teeth grinding.
“…That despicable man — he already picked my wallet clean before.” She slammed her hand on the desk. “We should report this to the police!”
Li Xun said lazily, “It’s not that simple. He’s been very careful this time. And filing a report could easily provoke him — Hou Ning is an extremely sensitive person. You risk him losing his temper and just scrambling all your user data entirely.”
Zhu Yun’s jaw tightened.
Li Xun saw how furious she’d gotten and said with a hint of a smile, “This is exactly why I told you to stay home and enjoy the New Year. You drove back here to fill yourself with nothing but aggravation.”
Zhu Yun couldn’t help but let her expression droop. “Why did he send you a message — to gloat?”
“Probably.”
“Could we pay him off?”
“It’s not about money. And besides — what does your little game even have to offer? You’re broke.”
Zhu Yun: “All right, I’ll give him that much — at least he has principles.”
Li Xun: “He just can’t stand that I’ve stopped caring about him.”
Zhu Yun: “He’s a grown man — is he a child?”
Li Xun: “His personality really is kind of like a child’s.”
Zhu Yun let out a harsh grunt. “Can you catch him?”
“Basically impossible.”
Zhu Yun gave him a look of undisguised contempt. Li Xun saw it and the curve at the corner of his mouth deepened. He turned toward her, teasing. “What — you think I should be able to catch him?”
“…Not exactly,” Zhu Yun said quietly.
But the honest answer was yes.
When Li Xun had first gotten out of prison, Zhu Yun had still been capable of weighing things against reality. But as time went on, her thinking had grown more and more untethered, and thoughts from when she was twenty had begun to resurface. She’d started to feel — increasingly, irrationally — that Li Xun was like a Transformer: invincible, capable of anything.
She held her now-empty cup and quietly reflected on herself.
Li Xun could read her thoughts just from her expression. He made no comment, just stretched his mouth into a slight grin, and unhurriedly smoked his cigarette.
Zhu Yun said, “So what do we do now?”
Li Xun: “I’ll try reaching out to him.”
Zhu Yun: “What if he won’t cooperate?”
Li Xun didn’t answer.
Zhu Yun pressed on. “Do you have a way to contact him?”
Li Xun: “No. He’s changed his number — the number he texted from earlier was a masked one.”
Zhu Yun: “How much data did he manage to get from the backend?”
Li Xun gave a soft, humorless laugh. “Our system is like a block of tofu in front of him. When he gets in, how much damage he does — it’s entirely up to his mood.”
Zhu Yun fell silent.
Li Xun glanced at her. “Upset?”
“No.”
“Different fields, different levels of expertise. He specializes in this sort of thing — naturally it comes easily to him.”
Zhu Yun: “You don’t need to comfort me. Just focus on figuring out how to handle this.”
Li Xun genuinely fell into thought. He reached for the cigarette pack again, and Zhu Yun suddenly said, “Don’t.”
Li Xun already had the cigarette between his lips, unlit. He looked at her. Zhu Yun said, “You’ve had one in your hand this whole time.”
Li Xun: “No I haven’t.”
Zhu Yun gestured at the overflowing ashtray. “Since I got here you haven’t stopped once. And you won’t think of a solution anyway, so stop wasting cigarettes.”
“Oh,” Li Xun said with a cold laugh, “so now even lighting a cigarette is a waste?”
Zhu Yun said nothing — just watched him. About five seconds later, Li Xun muttered a curse under his breath and threw the cigarette away.
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