by The Red Fox
14 - Firewall (4)
When Jiang Lian woke again, it was already dusk of that day.
Old Man Huo stroked his beard: "Just now you let out a loud cry and fainted again. I have already performed acupuncture on you and given you pills. This medicine is called 'Ultimate Epilepsy Pill,' a secret family recipe passed down through generations. My family has practiced medicine for generations, with imperial physician heritage, so you can rest assured. If epilepsy symptoms appear again, it won't be too late to see a Western doctor then."
He changed the subject: "However, the cause of your episode still needs investigation. Before this, have you been to any strange places? Or encountered people behaving abnormally?"
Jiang Lian shook his head: "Nothing happened."
Old Man Huo looked serious: "This matter is of great importance. Are you sure you haven't encountered anything unusual?"
Jiang Lian: "No, the only unusual thing is you all—"
He stopped himself mid-sentence, perhaps out of politeness.
Old Man Huo sighed: "That's all we can do for now. Rest well, you'll recover soon."
Jiang Lian scanned the room.
Everything in the room was normal.
Jiang Lian looked at Lin Xun and the others.
They were all normal.
Wang Anquan stepped forward warmly: "Brother Jiang, it's off-duty hours now. Rest well. If you need to go to the hospital, we'll cover all expenses."
Lin Xun: "We also provide accommodation. The room next door is vacant. If you find commuting inconvenient, you can move in."
Jiang Lian's gaze had been wandering, but upon hearing Lin Xun's "you can move in," he suddenly became much more alert: "No, thank you for your kindness."
Then, Jiang Lian packed up his computer: "I'll head out first. See you later."
With that, he swiftly left the room, like an amusement park visitor fleeing a haunted house.
Zhao Jiagou nudged Wang Anquan with his elbow: "Do you think he'll come to work tomorrow?"
Wang Anquan didn't speak, signaling him with a look to keep quiet.
Zhao Jiagou: "..."
Wang Anquan leaned close to his ear, glancing sideways at Old Man Huo, and whispered: "We know too much."
Zhao Jiagou shivered instantly.
Old Man Huo stood with his hands behind his back, sweeping a stern gaze over them: "I suppose you two spend all day fixing computers and playing games at home, with no chance to interact with the outside world."
"Yes, Grandpa Huo," Wang Anquan said earnestly. "Actually, Xiao Zhao and I both suffer from three incurable conditions: intermittent deafness, intermittent blindness, and permanent muteness. We didn't see anything, didn't hear anything, and certainly won't say anything."
Old Man Huo: "Hmph, I'll trust you for now. However, Xiao Lin will accompany me to Shu tomorrow. You two will have to manage on your own."
With that, he strode toward the door and slapped a yellow paper talisman on the doorframe: "I've set up a barrier to protect your safety."
Lin Xun: "Thank you, Master."
As soon as Old Man Huo left, Lin Xun was surrounded by Wang Anquan and Zhao Jiagou.
"Algorithm, be honest," Wang Anquan said. "Am I dreaming?"
"I wish you were dreaming, but no," Lin Xun didn't hide anything either, recounting his experiences over the past few days in detail to them, and hearing the sound of their materialist worldview shattering.
Zhao Jiagou stared blankly out the window.
Wang Anquan slumped in his chair. After five minutes, he suddenly jolted upright as if revived from a near-death state: "So, algorithm, if I also practice cultivation, or if you write a 'helloworld' into my compiler, wouldn’t I be forever spared from the worry of hair loss?"
"Theoretically, yes," Lin Xun said.
Wang Anquan clicked his tongue in admiration: "That would be a wonderful thing."
Wang Anquan—his steadfast materialist worldview had finally shattered completely under the temptation of never losing his hair.
He said: "Brother Lin, count me in."
Lin Xun replied: "But right now, I can only write programs into my own compiler. I can’t change you yet. I’ll find a way."
At this point, he looked down at Wang Anquan: "For now, what you can do is provide me with feasible programs. I need a firewall. Send me one."
After Wang Anquan and Zhao Jiagou accepted reality, supporting each other as they stumbled weakly out of the room, Lin Xun immediately closed his eyes and sank his consciousness into the System Space.
The gift from the system had yet to be claimed.
A Chaos Treasure Box and a primary magical artifact.
The Chaos Treasure Box randomly produced items, but what about the primary magical artifact… what could it be?
Lin Xun was filled with curiosity about this.
He approached the task interface and suddenly froze.
"I…" He nearly blurted out an uncivilized word. He couldn’t believe his eyes.
What was this thing?
Floating in the void was unmistakably a Cherry keyboard!
Exactly the same as the one in his room!
Lin Xun felt a headache coming on and reached out to take the keyboard.
The moment his fingers touched it, the object instantly dissolved, transforming into streams of light composed of countless binary data flows, which then entered his body.
The system voice announced: "Magical artifact transformation completed."
Lin Xun rubbed his temples and then picked up the Chaos Treasure Box in his hand.
Based on his gaming experience, this kind of random reward loot box system had its own intricacies. If one’s luck was particularly poor, they needed to rely on some metaphysical methods.
He closed his eyes, pretending not to care about the box, and then, at a certain moment, while the box was "unaware," he suddenly opened it!
Lin Xun opened his eyes.
"Fuck…"
—He finally couldn’t hold back.
Inside the silver Chaos Treasure Box lay a portable hard drive.
Judging by its appearance, it vaguely resembled the one he used most often.
Lin Xun held it in his hand, and sure enough, just like the Cherry keyboard earlier, it dissolved into streams of light and disappeared into his body.
The system’s mechanical voice remained dull and monotonous: "Magical artifact transformation completed."
Lin Xun felt that this world was utterly unreal and bewildering.
But the next moment, the system voice sounded again: "Congratulations on unlocking the rare magical artifact 'Primordial Jade,' with a probability of one in a thousand."
Primordial Jade?
One in a thousand?
So, that portable hard drive was actually a rare drop with a one-in-a-thousand probability?
He scanned the System Space but found nothing new or special, so he returned to reality.
The Cherry keyboard that had knocked Jiang Lian unconscious and saved his life still lay in its original spot, but the keycaps had been restored to their complete state, and… there was an indescribable feeling about it.
Lin Xun always felt as if it was faintly glowing.
He picked up the keyboard. The touch was still the familiar coolness of metal, and the weight hadn’t changed, but the connecting cable was gone.
What did this mean?
He tried placing his fingers on the familiar-feeling keycaps, and suddenly, the world before him rippled like water.
As the invisible ripples shimmered, a layer of phantom imagery appeared before his eyes.
A blue interface unfolded before him in a semi-transparent form, overlapping with the real world.
Lin Xun tried pressing a few keys on the keyboard.
Letters appeared on the program interface.
So that was it.
The function of this keyboard... was to write commands into the compiler within his body?
If so, that meant he no longer needed to enter the System Space. Even in the real world, he could compile his own programs!
And this was merely a basic magical tool.
What function would the rare magical tool with a one-in-a-thousand drop rate, specially announced by the system, have?
Lin Xun walked over to the computer desk and took out his portable hard drive from a compartment on the table.
The hard drive was black, but it now looked drastically different from its ordinary appearance—transformed into a dazzling, iridescent black.
So, how should he use it?
Lin Xun pondered but couldn’t figure it out, deciding to return to its fundamental nature.
A portable hard drive was a storage tool, with larger capacity and faster read speeds than a USB drive, but essentially no different—it still needed to be plugged into a computer.
He turned on the computer, connected the hard drive, and opened the folder.
It was still the familiar interface, nothing special about it... just as ordinary as before.
Lin Xun scrolled down the file directory.
Suddenly, his gaze froze.
There was something extra.
At the bottom of the list, quietly lay a folder named "l."
Lin Xun had been working with computers since childhood and knew well the consequences of disorganized files. Which files belonged in which folders, how folders were categorized and clearly named—all were fixed. He would never give a folder a meaningless name like "l," one he would forget the reason for within half a year.
His mouse hovered cautiously over the "l" folder for three seconds before he opened it.
Three C files.
One "helloworld," two loops.
Lin Xun felt his breathing quicken slightly.
These were the three programs from the system within his body...
So, this folder named "l" was connected to the folder within his body.
He opened another folder where he stored C language programs and copied one over.
Sure enough, this program file also appeared in the world within his body.
Lin Xun’s spirits lifted.
In other words, external programs could be directly copied into the world within his body and run freely, without needing to type them in manually?
He immediately copied his entire C language folder over—it contained all the functional C language programs he had written since childhood. Though he wasn’t sure if they would be useful, having them was better than not. Possessing a rich, readily accessible program library filled him with a sense of security.
Three minutes later, the copying process was complete. He removed the hard drive, left his room, and knocked on Wang Anquan’s door.
—And so, Lin Xun spent most of the night debugging, verifying, and renaming the existing programs, not sleeping until two in the morning.
But surprisingly, when he woke up the next morning, he felt refreshed and clear-headed, with none of the usual aftereffects of staying up late.
A Cultivation practitioner was indeed different from ordinary people.
Lin Xun got dressed, washed up, started the microwave to heat breakfast for the three of them, and after tidying up, went out to take out the trash.
The Galaxy initiative sparked a global wave of intelligence, with not only autonomous driving but also smart home technology gradually maturing and entering people's lives. However, due to various issues such as wiring, old residential communities remained unable to complete intelligent upgrades—original residents moved away one after another, leaving behind temporary tenants or nostalgic elderly people.
While Lin Xun was taking out the trash, the young neighbor across from him happened to step out as well. This person seemed to be a fitness enthusiast, with well-developed muscles.
Lin Xun nodded at him in greeting—he didn’t go out often, let alone visit neighbors, and was merely on nodding terms with everyone in the building.
After the greeting, he paid no further attention to the man, heading downstairs to the garbage disposal area to toss in the trash bag.
Once that was done, he glanced toward the eastern horizon, at the sun behind the thin mist.
The sun rose and set, life repeating day after day, but ever since discovering that program interface three days ago, his world seemed to have undergone some unknowable change.
Footsteps sounded behind him.
Suddenly, Lin Xun heard the rush of wind behind his ear!
He didn’t move—there was no time to move—and only caught a glimpse in his peripheral vision of the neighbor’s thick arm and clenched fist swinging straight toward his skull!
It was about to hit!
But, at that critical moment, the neighbor’s movement abruptly stopped.
Fifty centimeters away from Lin Xun’s body, his fist seemed to be blocked by a thick barrier, unable to advance any further!
Lin Xun turned around.
The neighbor’s eyes were pitch-black and lifeless. Failing with the first strike, he actually pulled out a watermelon knife from behind his back!
Veins bulged on his forehead, clearly exerting all his strength to stab at Lin Xun—yet, once again, the knife stopped just short of him, unable to penetrate.
"Hello, friend," Lin Xun said, looking into his eyes. "Do you know what a firewall is?"
The neighbor stared at him intently, saying nothing.
Lin Xun didn’t know why these demonic entities had targeted him, but he... had full confidence in Wang Anquan’s firewall.
"A firewall is a barrier established between an internal network and an external network—the internal network is me, and the external network is all of you," he explained leisurely. "The purpose of a firewall is... to deny entry to all unauthorized users."
The neighbor, having lost all reason, stabbed at him from every possible angle with the knife.
Lin Xun patted the neighbor’s shoulder and said pityingly, "Alright, I get it—you’re not well-educated."
With that, Lin Xun walked straight past him and headed back toward the building.
Under the morning sunlight, he saw his own faint shadow cast on the ground. Behind him, the neighbor’s shadow was frantically closing in.
Lin Xun blinked, turned around, and locked eyes with the neighbor.
In the next moment, he grabbed the keyboard he had been holding under his left arm since leaving home that morning!
After being attacked by Jiang Lian, he had become aware of the dangers of this new world. Even when taking out the trash, he hadn’t left the keyboard behind in the room.
His proficiency with the keyboard was exceptional. With a few swift keystrokes using one hand, he selected a program file—a meticulously crafted worm virus by Wang Anquan.
In Turbo C, Ctrl+F9 is the shortcut to run a program, but Lin Xun was now holding the keyboard with one hand, leaving only one hand free to operate, making it somewhat difficult to press a combination of keys. However, he had anticipated this issue and had set up a macro command for the keyboard, allowing the single key F11 to replace the effect of Ctrl+F9 and run the program.
Lin Xun’s finger hovered over F11, about to press it. As he looked into his neighbor’s eyes, his expression remained blank, but his tone was utterly sincere.
“You started it.”