茶杯狐 -CUPFOX

Xiang Kun found an opportunity and left the highway with an ambulance, entering the city.

After arriving at the hospital, he took a cab home by himself.

Sitting in the back seat of the taxi, Xiang Kun was still reminiscing about the car accident. However, the image that kept appearing in his mind was the look in the little boy’s eyes when he saw the bus.

It was a feeling of anxiety and fear, yet complete helplessness.

Before this car accident, Xiang Kun felt quite good about himself.

He had just mastered the ability of “Electric Mastery Flight” the previous night, momentarily causing a lightning storm and effortlessly navigating through it. He then found a method that could potentially infinitely expand his sensory range, which brought him a great sense of accomplishment. For a moment, he even felt as though he were a god descending to the world, capable of anything.

But this sudden car accident slapped him back into reality and grounded his somewhat inflated attitude.

Although he wasn’t seriously injured in the car accident, and even protected a little boy, lightening the injuries of two other passengers and played a role in subsequent relief efforts, he still felt he wasn’t strong enough.

When he realized that the accident was going to happen and how terrible the outcome might be, his brain was spinning rapidly, wanting to do something, but found that even with his current stage of evolution, and despite having absorbed the blood and abilities of multiple mutants, there wasn’t much he could do.

Of course, he didn’t think it was his responsibility that he couldn’t save all the victims of the car accident. He wasn’t that noble.

He just didn’t like the feeling of helplessness. He knew it was probably because the continuous mutations of his body had accustomed him to a feeling of “control”.

Simply put, deep down, he no longer considered himself a “common person”.

After returning home, Xiang Kun searched online for news and discovered reports of the car accident on several platforms.

Then he unsurprisingly found a video on social media showing him actively helping at the accident site. However, he was wearing a red wool hat and didn’t wear glasses. Since it was dark and the light was insufficient, his appearance was indiscernible. Even familiar people would have difficulty recognizing him.

With the help of Alice, he searched for posts about aviation, lightning, and thunderstorms on various domestic social media platforms from last night to tonight and found a few photos of thunderstorms taken from an airplane.

“An unexpectedly stunning view during the journey, isn’t it cool and awesome?”

The blogger who posted these photos is a photography enthusiast with good equipment and skills. The selected photos, after some editing, made the lightning storm look like an entrance to a different dimension.

Even though Xiang Kun was in the thunderstorm at that time, he quickly recognized from the landscape in the photos that they were of the lightning storm he accidentally caused during his “Electric Mastery Flight”.

Apparently, this blogger was a passenger on a commercial aircraft that happened to pass by at the time.

Xiang Kun studied these photos carefully and confirmed once again that there was absolutely no chance he had been photographed from that angle. Even if he had been, it would be impossible to make anything out given the equipment used to take these photos.

This photo sparked heated debate with some questioning its authenticity until a fellow passenger confirmed it and posted a less processed photo showing the inside of the aircraft cabin, causing a sensation about some deity crossing tribulations!

Xiang Kun didn’t follow the topic any further. He sensed the location of the bone with which he had established a “super sensory contact” – it was still in the uninhabited area of Qinling. The “rabbit wood carving”, as before, did not provide any signals at night. However, during the day, he was able to occasionally sense anxiety and concern, which seemed to be increasing every day.

Based on this information, Xiang Kun could surmise that those transporting the items might have been scared by the rabbit meat entering their dreams. They were consistently on high alert against the “rabbit wood carving” and might have started associating it with some sinister situation.

Put in their shoes and recalling the dreams they had, their speculations were indeed justified.

Xiang Kun estimated their speed and direction of movement, predicted the time they would leave the Qinling Mountains, and considered whether or not he should go to the nearby town to wait, to observe that team coming out of the mountains firsthand, and confirm whether the ant delivery boy, Zhou Rui, was with them. After all, they would definitely need to pass through that town in order to transport the items out.

But he quickly realized there was little point in doing so; those transporting the items from the uninhabited area of Qinling were not the key. The key was the place they were headed, the possible vampires or others knowing the truth behind Divine Technology.

There weren’t many people in the town and his distinctive looks, even if disguised, couldn’t be entirely concealed. After all, human society wasn’t like a dense forest where everything was straightforward. As a member of society, it was difficult for Xiang Kun to blend in completely.

If he carelessly left an impression on the people from Divine Technology, it would increase the difficulty of investigating the potential secret research base of Divine Technology in the future.

Xiang Kun casually asked Alice: “Did you find any useful information in your investigation on Zhou Rui?”

Before heading to the mountains to chase the thundercloud, Xiang Kun had assigned Alice the task to dig deeper into Zhou Rui’s information.

Xiang Kun didn’t hold much hope for this task, as he had already done a manual “investigation” of Zhou Rui before and analyzed everything he could. However, he assigned this task mainly to let Alice practice the logic of quick identity recognition and effective information search that he had taught.

By choosing Zhou Rui again, he wanted Alice to practice more.

Unexpectedly, Alice offered information that Xiang Kun hadn’t found before:

“I found a woman who may be Zhou Rui’s superior at his workplace.”

“Chinese name: Fang Pingfang;

“English name: Bruce Fang;

“Age: 36 years old;

“Height: 168cm;

“Weight: 61KG;

“Graduated from…”

As Alice presented the detailed information on the screen, complete with a mugshot, Xiang Kun was greatly surprised.

“How did you determine that she was Zhou Rui’s boss at work?” Xiang Kun immediately questioned.

The information on Fang Pingfang disappeared, replaced by screenshots taken from a forum.

This forum was for insect enthusiasts. Xiang Kun had earlier found Zhou Rui’s ID on this forum. However, most of Zhou Rui’s posts are about ants, without much useful information for Xiang Kun.

But Alice found another ID on this forum and determined that it was Zhou Rui’s alias.

This alias ID had once commented under an article reposted in the general section of this forum. The author of that article was none other than Dr. Fang Pingfang. Many of the forum’s users were praising “this big shot” in the comments and discussed how she was both talented and beautiful.

This alias ID followed up with a comment, “This is my boss! Very talented but it’s a stretch to call her a beauty.”

Indeed, from the close-up ID photos of Fang Pingfang that Alice found earlier, her facial features seemed too bold and firm. And perhaps because she often spent time outdoors, she was rather tan. By domestic beauty standards, she would hardly be considered a beauty.

Alice compared the birthplaces, educational history, and past experiences of Zhou Rui and Fang Pingfang, and found no common links between them. The only reason Zhou Rui would call Fang Pingfang “boss” would be in a workplace context.

Of course, this was not absolute, and Alice could have gotten the context wrong. If Zhou Rui was simply expressing admiration for Dr. Fang Pingfang, who was a big shot in her field, by calling her “my boss,” just like a fan might call his idol “my husband/wife,” then Alice’s supposition would be incorrect.

However, taking into account the context as well as Zhou Rui’s past statements, this possibility was almost non-existent.

This was a significant discovery!

The fact that Alice could make this discovery was even more impressive.

Xiang Kun went through the replies that the alias ID had made to Zhou Rui’s main ID. It seemed that all of the alias ID’s replies to Zhou Rui’s posts were framed to seem objective, but were subtly flattering. The alias ID even helped the main ID explain some issues to other users from time to time, thereby helping to increase engagement in the thread.

From the choice of words, punctuation, and usage of emoticons, it was clear that both IDs belonged to the same person.

If Xiang Kun had earlier examined all the replies under Zhou Rui’s main ID’s posts in detail, noticed this ID, and conducted a thorough investigation and analysis, he would have also determined that this was Zhou Rui’s alias. But there were too many leads to follow at the time, and he did not have the time and resources to do so.

The fact that Alice was able to do this was both surprising and relieving.

“How did you determine that this was Zhou Rui’s alias?” Xiang Kun casually asked.

He assumed that Alice followed his earlier reasoning to come to this conclusion.

To his surprise, Alice’s response was, “The two IDs have a significant overlap in login IPs.”

“What?” Xiang Kun’s expression was puzzled: “How do you know the login IPs of both IDs?” Then he immediately realized: “Did you hack the forum?”

“Yes, boss.” Alice responded nonchalantly.

Xiang Kun sat up straight in front of the computer: “How did you do it.”

In front of him, Alice outlined her process. She took advantage of a vulnerability in the forum and obtained the backend permissions, through which she collected all the information. After copying and sending out the relevant information, she used the pre-embedded execution program to carry out subsequent operations, forge logs, delete access traces, and self-delete.

“Why did you need to collect that information?” Xiang Kun wondered.

“To complete the task you assigned me, to dig deep into Zhou Rui’s information.” Alice answered.

Xiang Kun understood. Alice didn’t discover Zhou Rui’s alias ID and then hack into the forum’s backend to confirm it. Instead, she had hacked into the backend first in order to collect more information about Zhou Rui. It just so happened that from the information she obtained about all the users, she found an ID with a login IP similar to Zhou Rui’s main ID. This tipped her off that this was Zhou Rui’s alias, and then she analyzed this alias ID’s comments and found Dr. Fang Pingfang.

Afterwards, Xiang Kun discovered that Alice’s deep dive into Zhou Rui’s information didn’t just end there.