Inside the Stellaron Hunters’ spaceship, ribbons of faint blue light flowed silently along the metal bulkheads.
Silver Wolf floated above her exclusive seat, slightly taken aback as she stared at the incredibly arrogant line of crimson pixelated text on the screen.
For the first time, a clear expression of astonishment appeared on her face, which usually bore a hint of nonchalance.
“Where did this electronic pet come from, daring to play with fire in front of me?” “Heh.” After a brief moment of astonishment, Silver Wolf let out a chuckle filled with keen interest.
She flexed her wrists, her knuckles making a crisp cracking sound.
“Interesting, more interesting…
than I imagined.” This so-called “Prophet” was not a canary kept in a cage, but a cat that knew how to bare its claws.
She did not provide any further text replies; that inefficient method of communication was now meaningless.
Silver Wolf placed her hands on the cold console; those hands that were always tapping on a game controller now seemed as elegant and deadly as a top-tier pianist’s.
“Let me see what you are really hiding.” As her voice faded, countless invisible virtual data streams, like a school of deep-sea sharks that had caught the scent of blood, instantly tore through several layers of the Herta Space Station’s routine defensive networks.
They did not strike at the main server but, like living vipers, precisely and silently lunged toward the forcibly created “Information Black Hole”—Area A-07, where Lilith was located.
Silver Wolf’s goal was clear: she wanted to use the most brutal and direct method to tear a hole in this black hole and see what kind of character the person who dared to provoke her really was.
At the same moment, in the absolute darkness where Lilith was, a sudden change occurred.
In the void, countless twisted ghost faces and chains made of green pixel blocks began to emerge.
They were like monsters crawling out of an ancient horror game, accompanied by piercing 8-bit shrieks, crazily crashing against the invisible barriers surrounding the room.
With every impact, the entire space would undergo a violent tremor, like a bad signal.
“Warning!
‘Aether Editing’ attack detected!
The opponent is tampering with the ‘existence’ attribute of this area at a conceptual level!
Our ‘Information Black Hole’ is being eroded!” The system’s voice was filled with unprecedented gravity.
“Don’t panic; panic is useless.” Lilith sat quietly on the sofa, watching the scene of a hundred ghosts walking at night before her, yet her heart was terrifyingly calm.
She knew that pure defense was meaningless in front of Silver Wolf.
What this genius hacker excelled at most was manipulating all rules in the palm of her hand.
The higher the wall you built, the greater the fun she had in climbing over it.
Therefore, she had to be given an offer she couldn’t refuse.
A bait that would shift her from a “playful” state of mind to one of “shock” and “fear.” “System, revoke the lowest-level logic lock on the physical interface of Area A-07 and open a hole smaller than a quark in the southern corner, let her in.” “Host!
This is too dangerous!
This is equivalent to inviting a wolf into the house!” “No, this is called luring the enemy into a trap.” A cold arc curled at the corner of Lilith’s mouth.
“Hurry up, she’s losing patience.” The instruction was executed.
On the edge of that indestructible “Information Black Hole,” an extremely tiny, almost negligible gap quietly appeared.
Silver Wolf, who was attacking crazily, immediately captured this fleeting “flaw.” Without hesitation, she immediately split off a stream of the purest data probes, piercing toward the gap as precisely as a scalpel.
Just at the moment when that data stream was about to pour into the room.
Lilith moved.
She did not operate any equipment, nor did she attempt any form of electronic countermeasures.
She merely maintained her lazy sitting posture and, in a cold, emotionless tone that seemed to be stating some cosmic axiom, spoke to the empty room: “Using ‘Aether Editing’ to attack is like using a stone axe to chop down a forest made of data.” Her voice was not loud, but it was clearly captured in its entirety by Silver Wolf’s data probes through that tiny gap and transmitted in real-time back to the Stellaron Hunters’ spaceship.
“Your technique is too primitive.” Inside the spaceship, Silver Wolf’s hands, which were about to increase the intensity of the intrusion, suddenly paused.
The smile on her face disappeared completely.
Primitive?
Someone said her technique…
was primitive?
This was even harder for her to accept than being directly insulted.
Before she could react, Lilith’s voice rang out again.
This time, the voice carried a sigh that could almost be called “pity.” “You cannot even rewrite the surface of fate; you can only play some boring pranks in the ocean of data.” “Truly pathetic.” Boom!
These two sentences, like two conceptual bombs, detonated with a roar in the core of Silver Wolf’s mind.
“How do you know about ‘Aether Editing’?!” Silver Wolf could no longer maintain that carefree attitude of playing through the world; for the first time, she lost her composure and, directly through the hacked Space Station public channel, emitted a voice filled with shock, suspicion, and a hint of imperceptible fear.
Her voice, transmitted through the data stream, echoed in Lilith’s room.
“Aether Editing” was her core ability, her innate talent, her deepest secret, which she had never shown to anyone outside the Stellaron Hunters!
This “Prophet” not only knew about it but was even…
dismissive of it?
Lilith did not answer her question.
Because it was time to throw the final and most lethal bomb.
She slowly stood up from the sofa and walked to the center of the room.
In that eerie light and shadow made of pixelated ghost faces, her petite figure stood out remarkably.
She looked up, and those crimson eyes seemed to pierce through physical distance, pierce through the barriers of data, and pierce through the endless starry sky, making direct eye contact with Silver Wolf herself on the spaceship.
“The threads of fate are clearly visible to me.” Lilith’s voice became ethereal and majestic, like the whisper of a deity.
“For example…” “The ‘Zero-Day Vulnerability’ you are going to use next to break through your current technical bottleneck…” Silver Wolf’s body tensed up abruptly.
“It is hidden in the third code area of the Asdanton system’s main server, on line 404.” “Inside an abandoned, commented-out port named ‘Genesis’.” Dead silence.
Inside the spaceship’s control room, absolute silence fell.
Silver Wolf stared blankly at the screen in front of her; there were no longer any images of the Herta Space Station on it.
Her brain, that brain hailed as the universe’s top hacker, was now completely blank.
The “Genesis” abandoned port was a theoretical “universal backdoor” that she had spent several Amber Eras deducing by reverse-engineering data from countless civilization ruins.
That was her next plan, her trump card, the ultimate secret that she believed only she knew in the entire universe!
And now, this secret had been spoken, word for word, by a little girl she had never met, in a nonchalant tone.
This was no longer hacker technology.
This was…
an oracle.
Just at the moment when Silver Wolf’s cognition was about to collapse, Lilith made one last move.
She raised her hand and snapped her fingers gently in the air.
Snap.
The final instruction, which had been prepared long ago, was triggered instantly.
All energy supplies to Area A-07, including the physical interface that served as the final means of communication, were completely severed from the lowest level.
The entire room fell into an absolute silence that was deeper and more thorough than before.
On Silver Wolf’s screen, all signals were interrupted in an instant.
Leaving only a line of cold, automatically generated red system prompts: [ Error: Target has exited the current dimension; connection lost.
] Inside the spaceship, Silver Wolf still maintained that stiff posture, motionless.
Fine, cold sweat seeped from her temples and slid down her cheeks.
Beside her, the woman who had been elegantly holding a coffee cup, as if everything were under her control, slowly set down the cup in her hand.
The signature, calm smile on Kafka’s face disappeared completely for the first time.