Between life and death there is great terror; he could even imagine his brain matter splattering everywhere.
But at that split second, a big hand grabbed the collar at the back of his neck and yanked him hard.
He felt his body lighten, shot backward into the air, and at the same time a huge truck roared past in front of him.
The tin screeched past his nose; Wu Zhong’s hair stood on end, then relaxed as he realized he had dodged it.
He staggered, found his footing, and suddenly looked to the side to see a man in black wearing leather gloves. In that critical moment the man had passed behind him and given him a tug, saving his life.
With a clang the truck barreled into a roadside tree and crashed with a thunderous smash.
It was gruesome.
“Holy—” Wu Zhong’s eyes widened. He panted heavily, only now coming back to his senses as his legs went weak.
If he hadn’t gotten out of the way, he would have been dead.
And the driver was really dead.
The truck hit the tree at full speed; the front crumpled and shattered, the driver turned into a mangled mess that was unbearable to look at.
Some bystanders tried to help but stopped dead at the horrific sight and hurriedly called emergency services.
The hospital was right across the road; professionals arrived quickly to handle things.
Rain washed the ground and mixed with blood; Wu Zhong stood stunned, his head buzzing amid the shocked, noisy crowd.
Thinking about how close he’d been to becoming pulp, he snapped back to himself and hurried toward the passerby who had pulled him: “Brother, you saved my life!”
“Thank you! Thank you! If you hadn’t pulled me, I’d be dead!”
Having just faced death, he was still shaken and kept thanking the man over and over.
The man wore a plain black jacket, leather gloves, and held a black umbrella, standing unmoved in the rain and wind.
He glanced at the wrecked scene with an indifferent look.
He hadn’t given Wu Zhong a second glance the whole time and ignored his thanks; coolly, he turned to leave.
Wu Zhong followed, full of gratitude: “Brother, what’s your name? Can I get your contact? I really want to thank you properly.”
After walking the edge of the void, Wu Zhong’s mind was full of relief and gratitude; living felt wonderful—being alive mattered more than anything.
All his previous worries that had made life seem unbearable and made him want to die suddenly seemed like nothing.
If you die, you lose everything; his grandfather would be left alone with no one to care for him.
At the thought, Wu Zhong shuddered—how could he not have paid more attention in this heavy rain?
Although the driver was clearly at fault—probably didn’t slow down during the turn and ran off the road—Wu Zhong also reacted too slowly.
He wanted to smack himself awake, but he was alive, so he felt extreme gratitude to the passerby.
Even if the man had just given him a casual pull, that small effort was a lifesaving favor.
Even if the man demanded an outrageous price, he would accept it.
“No need.” The man remained cold and waved his hand to refuse.
Wu Zhong spoke earnestly: “Brother, I’m dirt poor and can’t offer much, but you saved my life. If you ever need anything from me, I won’t refuse... please give me a number.”
But the man, annoyed by the questioning and seeing Wu Zhong still trailing him, snapped: “Get lost! Don’t follow me!”
Wu Zhong froze.
For a moment he didn’t know what to do and stopped following.
He hadn’t expected that his gratitude would be shut down like that.
He’d only ever heard of rescued people being afraid of clingy saviors—never the other way around.
Wu Zhong stood in the rain and watched the man walk away.
Only when he could no longer see him did he carefully cross the street and head to his grandfather’s ward.
After that close call with death, he felt like he had returned from the gates of hell; his nerves calmed and his breathing widened.
There was no obstacle too big for the world—after all, he had superpowers. A person wouldn’t really be killed over a bit of money, right?
He first found the doctor to confirm the situation and to learn the details of his grandfather’s condition.
It had indeed worsened; the hematoma was pressing on and damaging some brain tissue.
“Operate as soon as possible,” the doctor said.
Wu Zhong clenched his teeth and nodded. “Okay—today!”
“Not today. The earliest we can schedule it is tomorrow afternoon,” the doctor replied.
Wu Zhong bowed his head. “Fine. Tomorrow. Doctor, it’s up to you.”
With the time set, he needed to pay the fees.
He opened a loan app and then returned to the ward.
He noticed his grandfather had woken up and hurried to hold his hand: “Want some water?”
His grandfather’s eyes widened slightly and he looked at Wu Zhong as if trying to recognize him.
Wu Zhong asked again; his grandfather shook his head: “No... no... I want clothes...”
“Clothes?” Wu Zhong was startled and quickly fetched some clothing: “Yeah, the weather changed, it’s pouring out—let me put another layer on you.”
As he prepared to change him, his grandfather said, “Not that clothing...”
Wu Zhong blinked and picked up another set. “How about this one?”
His grandfather frowned: “No, not this. I want to eat clothes.”
“Eat clothes? You mean eat food?” Wu Zhong set the clothing down and opened the boxed meal to feed him.
His grandfather shook his head and refused food: “No, not that. I want to eat clothes, eat clothes!”
Wu Zhong was baffled and looked at the caregiver.
The caregiver, playing with their phone, shrugged: “Don’t look at me; I don’t know what he’s saying.”
Wu Zhong frowned and held up a piece of clothing for his grandfather to see: “Eat—eat clothes? You mean you want to eat this shirt?”
“Yes. I want to eat clothes.” His grandfather had a look that meant “finally you understand.”
But Wu Zhong was even more confused: “How do you eat clothes? Please eat a little food?”
“No, no, not that food. Clothes. There’s an item in the room—bring me clothes to eat. Go, fetch it...” his grandfather said with effort.
Wu Zhong sighed: “What does that mean?”
“Don’t talk to him,” the caregiver advised. “His speech is confused.”
Wu Zhong’s expression fell. He tucked the blanket neatly around his grandfather and left the ward to think about money.
He certainly didn’t have the funds. Just as he opened the loan app, a message from Niguang popped up.
“@Wu Zhong, why are you asking about this again? I can replicate that bug; it’s very simple.”
Wu Zhong’s username was Wu Zhong Hatred; he hurriedly replied: “I retracted the message—how did you see it?”
Niguang sent back: “Ridiculous. I can still see retracted messages.”
Wu Zhong sent a sticker that basically said “you’re awesome” and then typed: “If you can replicate it, help me out. I want to try it.”
“???” Niguang sent three question marks.
Then a voice call came in.
Wu Zhong answered and heard a flat voice say, “Are you out of your mind? That’s illegal.”
Wu Zhong pursed his lips. He hadn’t meant to involve Niguang—he’d retracted to avoid dragging him in. He’d intended to do it himself.
He didn’t expect Niguang to still see it; also, he truly knew nothing about this technical stuff and had no time to learn.
After thinking it through, he forced himself to say, “I know...”
“Can you make a program to trigger the bug for me? I just want to play around...”
Niguang was silent for a moment. The background noise suggested he was in an office, but it quieted as he moved to a secluded spot.
He said, “Playing around? You’ve lost your mind. You think I don’t know why you want this?”
“I’ll tell you: a friend maliciously exploited this bug before and took 380,000 yuan. He got sentenced to two years and ten months; he’s still in there sewing clothing at the moment.”
Wu Zhong looked at the payment counter and the hospital’s comings and goings and found a quiet place to sit.
He held his phone with resolute eyes.
If this were before, Niguang’s warning would have stopped him. But his financial chain was already stretched to the limit—thirty thousand could bury him; he had no choice.
If it meant going to prison, then so be it—get the surgery done for his grandfather, prepay the caregiver for several years, and he could serve two years inside. Working inside might even be easier than outside.
“Since your friend already did it, you must have the program, right? Just send it to me and teach me how to use it.”
“You can delete me as a friend afterward; if I get caught, I won’t name you.”
Niguang chuckled: “You’re killing me—are you serious?”
“Okay, even if you don’t care about being caught, this still won’t work as you think.”
“I said I can replicate it because the platform never truly fixed that backdoor; they only patched the surface after closing it.”
“But if someone maliciously exploited the backdoor, it would be noticed immediately and the backend would shut down the exploit in no time.”
“The security experts are sharp. You don’t have time to profit and you’ll get caught. You can’t dodge it.”
Wu Zhong glared. He’d made up his mind and couldn’t be pulled back.
Especially after almost being run over, he felt like everything else could wait. Staying alive was all that mattered.
“You don’t need to try to dissuade me. I’m desperate for money. Ge, could you lend me some?”
“Cough...” Niguang cleared his throat. “Don’t deflect. Look, this bug isn’t impossible to use, but we need to plan long-term.”
“First, my dumb friend’s program is garbage. I have to fix it.”
“He brute-forced it to get fast results and got noticed instantly.”
Wu Zhong’s eyes lit up and he asked quickly: “Can you make it so they won’t notice?”
Niguang replied: “That’s impossible. Getting found is only a matter of time.”
“That’s why my friend did a brute-force job and got 380,000 in a short burst.”
“But if it’s small payments, I can hide it for a long time. If it’s only a few hundred at a time, I can guarantee it won’t be discovered.”
Wu Zhong said, “Who wants a few hundred? What am I gonna do with that?”
Niguang answered: “Exactly. Discovery is inevitable; it’s just a matter of timing. You can either be discovered late but have taken little, or take a huge sum quickly.”
Wu Zhong thought it over. Since discovery was inevitable, he should get enough money at once to put his family in order.
But then he paused: he had superpowers.
If he exploited it like Niguang’s friend and suffered the same fate, what good are his powers?
Patch it? Shut it down? If he opened the backdoor with his superpower, no security expert could fix it—right?
“Niguang, suppose they can’t fix it?” Wu Zhong asked.
Niguang laughed: “Ridiculous—how could they not fix it? If I worked there I could handle it.”
Wu Zhong asked: “But what if it’s truly unclosable? Can someone bypass the backdoor and fix the bug?”
Niguang explained: “Bypass? No way.”
“Do you know why the bug still exists after that big incident? It’s because it can’t be bypassed.”
“Old, large software may have a huge industry presence, but underneath it’s a mountain of garbage code with countless people slacking. Unless they rewrite the app, that backdoor will always be there.”
Wu Zhong’s palms sweated around his phone.
If the backdoor can’t be bypassed, then once he opens it he couldn’t close it—this bug would be impossible to truly fix unless the backend was shut down or the app was rewritten.
Either way, he’d have time to exploit it; the only remaining concern was not letting them find his real identity.
“Niguang, if they can’t close the backdoor, can you at least make it so they can’t trace the benefits back to my account?”
Niguang reiterated: “That’s impossible. I told you, discovery is a matter of time.”
“And it’s too easy to fix, you know that.”
Wu Zhong couldn’t explain that he could lock the backdoor; he only said, “I mean, don’t consider whether they’ll fix the bug.”
“If they really fix it, then I won’t be able to use it.”
“You know I don’t need a lot; I just need enough. The main point is not getting caught. Don’t worry about whether they can fix it.”
Niguang caught his meaning and laughed: “You can’t really mean ‘don’t care.’ For a bug like that, once triggered, the backend automatically patches it.”
“If I don’t take special measures, you wouldn’t even have time to complete one transaction.”
Wu Zhong fell silent, thinking how to put it.
Niguang continued: “But I understand what you mean—you only care about not being caught, regardless of whether you manage to get money, right?”
“If so, that’s simpler. Just make the bug’s beneficiaries not just you but the entire user base.”
“Not making it a one-way exploit saves me trouble. Basically, we reenact last time’s scenario.”
“Last time during the bug window, all users could profit, and the platform didn’t claw back because it was their own bug—they had to swallow the loss.”
“There’s precedent. So as long as the issue looks like a platform-side problem and many users across the country benefit, it’s fine. I can do that.”
“But the thing is the platform won’t make the same mistake twice. If the bug triggers again, it will be fixed instantly and you won’t be able to get money.”
“If they fix it, I can’t help you; I have no ability to stop that.”
That was enough for Wu Zhong.
If everyone could profit, it was simpler—lots of people missed the opportunity last time and would kill to get another chance.
Let it happen again. As for repairs—this time he would weld the backdoor shut with his superpower.
He had already solved the hardest part with his ability.
“Okay, do it your way,” Wu Zhong said eagerly.
Niguang was silent for a long time, then suddenly asked: “You’re not really indifferent to whether you get money—you’re saying you can make this bug hard to repair, right?”
Wu Zhong was stunned; Niguang had guessed.
Well, he’d been obvious. Niguang wasn’t an idiot.
And if the bug were exploited later and the platform couldn’t fix it for a long time, Niguang would suspect it was him.
Wu Zhong chose his words carefully and was vague: “Yes, I have a method, but it’s deeply involved and touches things beyond imagination. It could be very dangerous; I can’t tell you...”
“If something happens, I can protect myself, but you can’t. I don’t want to drag you down.”
He wasn’t bluffing—he had prepared mentally to accept exposure.
He didn’t care about his worthless life; if it came down to it, he could hand himself over to the authorities—what would be so terrible?
Some people talk about dissecting superpowered people; he didn’t buy it. In reality, authorities would treat superpower research materialistically; they wouldn’t do senseless mutilation—it would be degrading.
Niguang replied: “Oh? Playing mysterious, are we?”
“All that ‘involved, beyond imagination, extremely dangerous—better not to know’ stuff...”
“What, are you a superpowered person?”
“Haha, too many novels, right? Just tell me straight—how do you make it so they can’t fix the bug?”
Wu Zhong took a deep breath. Since Niguang was jumping to the superpower conclusion, he decided to come clean: “Okay. I have superpowers; I can weld the bug shut.”
“Hahahaha!” Niguang replied bluntly. “You went with my joke? ‘Weld the bug shut’...”
“Come on, be honest. Don’t bull me. Do you have someone inside Sesame Door Group?”
Wu Zhong fell silent. He had already been frank, but Niguang didn’t believe him.
He said, “Don’t ask. The answer is superpowers. It’s deeply involved, beyond imagination, extremely dangerous...”
Niguang sounded knowing: “Pfft. People in this line know: if you want a bug to be unfixable, the best way is to have an insider.”
“The so-called ‘social engineering.’”
“Maybe they don’t want to trigger it themselves and need an unrelated outsider to trigger it.”
“An insider could tip you off; to stay covert, they don’t give you any small program, they tell you to find the person to trigger it.”
“That severs ties and reduces exposure risk, hehe.”
Wu Zhong was speechless but it made sense—Niguang was a programmer; his first thought would be social engineering.
Niguang had often said that for top hackers, skill isn’t the only key; psychological manipulation, scams, rumors, acting, seduction, forged documents, and networking matter more.
There are countless ways to break in.
Niguang’s earlier mention of superpowers had just been him stirring the pot.
Since Niguang had filled in the theory, Wu Zhong didn’t bother to elaborate further.
“Don’t ask. The answer is superpowers,” he repeated.
Niguang continued: “I suspect the last bug incident wasn’t simple. How could a huge company like Sesame Door Group have such a stupid backdoor?”
“There’s deeper water. Anyway, it’s not my business. If you have a channel to ensure the bug won’t be quickly fixed, it’s profitable.”
“The key with such bugs is the window. Last time it lasted half an hour; many people missed the chance.”
“I sure missed it. You got a few transactions through—I was green with envy. You weren’t lucky; someone must have tipped you about that time window, right?”
“A distant relative? Someone you met?”
Wu Zhong had no answer and simply said again, “Don’t ask. The answer is superpowers!”
“Alright, alright...” Niguang saw Wu Zhong’s stubbornness and stopped prying. “In any case, when you start, you have to tell me the time.”
“All transfers get 20% off—so that’s a stable 20% profit per order. I’m going all in!”
“Left hand to right hand, one million becomes one million two hundred thousand.”