Chapter 9: Crushed, Five Minutes Flat!

Celia Greaves halted mid-step. She licked her lips and pressed a finger to her brow, forcing down the irritation simmering there. "I'm going to the restroom." Once inside a stall, she lowered the lid and pulled a silver magic cube from her backpack. Her long, pale fingers tapped it a few times, then settled onto the fingerprint sensor. The entire magic cube immediately began to reconfigure itself. Three seconds later, a sleek, finely engineered silver laptop rested in her hands. White code streamed across the black screen in a constant flicker. Celia's fingers flew over the keyboard. Lines of obscure symbols spilled onto the display one after another. Five minutes passed, and it was over. She wanted to peel a candy and pop it into her mouth, but after remembering where she was, she let it go. After a brief pause, she typed a few more lines and hit Enter. A tiny return gift. Nothing worth mentioning. The corner of Celia's mouth curved. She entered one final command, and the laptop folded back into the shape of a magic cube. She tossed it into her backpack and walked out of the restroom. ------------------------------ On the twenty-first floor of a high-rise, a scruffy bearded young man hammered at his keyboard. Five years ago, a hacker boss with the codename Calamity God had appeared out of nowhere in the underground. In less than half an hour, Calamity God cracked the firewall of Celestial Axis, the hacker site they treated like holy ground. Then he went on a rampage through every scrap of information on the site, like he was hunting for something specific. Their big-name hackers, the ones who sat proudly on the rankings, rushed in to stop him. Calamity God ground them into the floor without mercy. After turning their site inside out, he simply left, leaving behind a wrecked database and a storm of probing warnings from information hubs and organizations around the world. That was right. According to what they heard through internal channels, information centers and official departments across the globe had been hit almost simultaneously by that boss. Several major network hubs had nearly been crippled… Worst of all, every region suspected the attacker belonged to someone else. How were they supposed to explain it? Admit that Celestial Axis, the gathering place of the world's "legendary elites" and the so-called ceiling of the hacking world, had nearly been brought to its knees? So the Calamity God became famous overnight, rising into an untouchable legend no one in the hacking world could surpass. Over the years, countless people tried to challenge him, to outdo him. They all crashed and burned. And they discovered something even more maddening: Calamity God's trail grew harder to find with every passing year. This time, they had gathered several bosses from the Hacker Heavenly Rankings and prepared for three full months. At last, they'd managed to dig up a thread of his location. As they neared the point of breaking through the firewall Calamity God had set, hackers separated by cables and continents burst into cheers, half-laughing and half-crying. Then… In a single minute, the celebration died. They watched, helpless, as the firewall repaired itself and reinforced layer by layer. Three minutes. A flood of garbled symbols exploded across their screens at a dizzying speed. The counterattack was savage and immediate. Their formation shattered in an instant, routed beyond recovery. That hand speed was inhuman. When the dust finally settled, the young man felt as if a century had crawled by. He checked the time. Five minutes total. After it ended, no one had the mood to say a word. Before long, they all dispersed. The young man stood, walked to the window, and lit a cigarette with a trembling hand. The dark circles under his eyes looked ready to spill bitter tears. He didn't even know why he refused to live a peaceful life. Why did he insist on throwing himself into this and begging to be abused? What he didn't know was that it still wasn't over. The next day, when he carried his laptop into a meeting, an upgraded version of "I Want O-Pao" blasted at maximum volume, impossible to shut off, and nearly sent him to an early grave on the spot. Of course, that was a story for later… Back at the mall, Celia soon finished picking out what she needed. Then she turned, her expression sharpening with a hint of seriousness, and walked into the pet supplies section next door. Evan Quinny couldn't help finding it strange. He thought Celia had come to Star City to buy clothes. Instead, she mostly bought household necessities. She only picked three or four outfits, then turned around and headed into… a pet store? He followed her in and found Celia crouched in front of the counter, carefully choosing pet beds. From where he stood, he could even see the faint struggle on her face. Evan felt like he'd seen a ghost. He'd watched how little effort she put into buying things for herself. Yet the moment it came to pet supplies, she looked like a completely different person. And the prince actually crouched down beside her, seriously comparing options with her. Because of that, the two of them chatted easily, even warmly. Evan could tell. Celia, who had been so cold to the prince before, had softened. In the end, Celia even ordered two glass tanks, each twenty-six feet long and nearly twenty feet wide. Evan had no idea what she planned to do with them. At the register, after the cashier tallied everything up, her smile brightened even more. "Hello, sir and ma'am. The total comes to two million three hundred seventy-five thousand." Evan stared, tongue-tied. Unbelievable. Everything Celia bought for herself didn't even add up to a tenth of the total. The rest was all bizarre, expensive pet gear. He stood off to the side, relaxed, ready to watch the usual scene: Celia pretending she'd pay, only to "reluctantly" accept Ray Reves's kindness in the end. No malice. He'd just seen it too many times. Sure enough, Ray had already pulled out a bank card when Celia still rummaged through her backpack at an unhurried pace. Just as the cashier reached for Ray's card, Celia lifted her head and said evenly, "You pay for yours." Ray had casually added a small cake, freshly made to go, only ¥158. Evan didn't think much of it. Celia said she'd pay. Like Ray would actually let her? But the next second, Celia took a card out of her bag. It was black, edged with a faint gold trim, and it looked unmistakably special. For a moment, Evan almost thought it was a black card. Then he looked closer. It wasn't quite the same. "Celia Greaves, who gave you that card?" "Someone," Celia said. That person had told her it could be used at any Star City location nationwide. Evan laughed as soon as he heard that. "You got scammed. A black card doesn't look like that." As he spoke, he tipped his chin toward Ray. "See? The one in Ray's hand, that's a black card." Celia didn't bother explaining that hers wasn't a bank card at all. She only asked the cashier, "This one. What discount does it get?" The cashier hadn't paid much attention to the black card talk. Ray pulling out a black card was already enough to numb her senses. Another one didn't seem that… impossible. But when Celia mentioned a discount, the cashier finally realized it might be the mall's membership card. She focused on it. Her eyes widened, and she jolted like she'd been struck, so excited she nearly forgot how to speak.