Chapter 1: Hacker Ability Upgrade

“Hey, deskmate, help me fix my computer.”

Evening self-study.

Haicheng University of Medicine, Nursing Department's Third Class, Yang Chen whispered to Chu Tian who was playing with his phone.

Chu Tian. Eighteen years old. University freshman. After hearing that male nurses were more popular in demand, that it was easier for male nurses to find jobs post graduation, Chu Tian decided to apply for the Haicheng University of Medicine’s Nursing Department.

The reality was as the saying goes. The country was indeed in a shorter supply of male nurses.

But, Chu Tian never expected for the Nursing Department to be one with such an imbalance of genders.

The Nursing Department’s Third Class composed a total of thirty-one students. However, only two were male.

One was Chu Tian and the other was a fellow called Li Kang.

Perhaps because more women were unskilled with computers, Chu Tian became known as the computer guru in the class after helping a classmate reinstall her computer operating system not long ago. Because of that, whenever someone has issues with their computers, they will seek him to help them fix them.

Seeing the smiling Yang Rong, Chu Tian smiled, “What’s wrong with your computer this time?”

“I don’t know,” Yang Rong placed her laptop before Chu Tian, “Strange pop-ups kept popping up. Even after I close those pop-ups, they’ll continue to reappear. Here, look.”

Seeing the pop-up with english words on it, Chu Tian couldn’t help but facepalm.

A virus!

He truly couldn’t help but be in awe of Yang Rong!

Yang Rong must’ve closed 361 Antivirus again.

[1. 361 Antivirus is a parody on 360 Safeguard/Total Security, a popular free chinese antivirus.]

As Chu Tian had used Yang Rong’s computer before, he knew very well of Yang Rong’s habit — she would close all the programs she didn’t find pleasing on the lower right corner after turning on her computer. 361 Antivirus was one of the many programs that she would close.

Sure enough!

Chu Tian looked to the lower right corner of the screen and saw that 361 Antivirus’ icon was not there. Chu Tian opened the 361 Antivirus and said, “It’s nothing serious. Your computer has been infected with a virus. We just have to kill the virus.”

“Ah? Virus?” Yang Rong grew nervous. Anxiously, she asked, “Killing this virus wouldn’t break my computer, right?”

What?

Chu Tian looked to Yang Rong like he was looking at an idiot. With a smile, he said, “Rest assured, it wouldn’t break your computer.”

While speaking, Chu Tian clicked on the ‘Quick Scan.’

Soon, in less than a minute, a trojan was detected.

Chu Tian clicked confirm and removed the trojan. After doing that, he returned the laptop to Yang Rong, “Done. In the future, make sure to not download random stuff. A lot of those stuff contains viruses.”

Seeing that no pop-ups were appearing on her screen, Yang Rong smiled gleefully, “That’s so quick! Hehe, it’s truly great to have a expert hacker as my deskmate.”

Expert hacker?

The corners of Chu Tian’s mouth twitched after hearing those words.

What the heck?!

At the very most, he’s only a novice in terms of computers. How did he become an expert hacker in Yang Rong’s eyes?

That said, Chu Tian knew that he couldn’t properly explain this sort of thing to a computer idiot who doesn’t even know how to use antivirus programs.

At the time when Chu Tian was planning to return to playing with his phone, a sudden stream of computer knowledge poured into his head.

He felt as if the door to a new world had opened in his brain in an instant. Those were all knowledge and skills related to computers.

In a split second, Chu Tian felt his grasp of computer technology had ascended from a novice to an omnipotent guru level.

This…

The sudden arrival of knowledge completely stupefied Chu Tian.

He looked blankly to his phone before abruptly turning his head over to look at Yang Rong.

Sensing Chu Tian’s gaze, Yang Rong also turned her head around. She smiled and revealed her spotlessly white teeth.

The two pairs of eyes looked at each other. Chu Tian revealed a frown and spoke in a probing manner, “Deskmate, you… what did you do?”

“Ah?” Yang Rong spoke in confusion, “I didn’t do anything? Deskmate, what’s wrong?”

Seeing the confused look on Yang Rong, Chu Tian stared at her for two or three seconds before shaking his head, “Oh, it’s nothing.”

Right at this moment, a sudden bell sound was heard.

Class dismissal!

Once he heard the dismissal bell, Chu Tian immediately placed his phone into his pocket and left the classroom in a hurry.

……

9:20PM!

Upon returning to his rental apartment near the Haicheng University of Medicine, Chu Tian rushed into his bedroom and turned on his desktop computer.

Different from ordinary college students, Chu Tian’s parents had died in an accident during his second year in junior high.

[2. Equivalent to 8th grade in the USA. So 13-14 years old.]

Because of that, Chu Tian has been providing for himself all these years.

While going to college, Chu Tian possesses a relatively stable job. He works as a ghost-writer for web novel authors.

His pay rate wasn’t high, only 10 RMB per thousand characters.

[3. 10RMB is roughly 1.43USD.]

But, to Chu Tian, this was already a very decent job.

The reason for that was because he could write roughly ten thousand characters in the time after his evening self study and 1AM at night. In other words, he could make roughly 100RMB.

While 100RMB might not be a lot, it was enough for his daily expenses.

But, as the school dormitories were noisy and possessed a 11PM lights out policy, Chu Tian ended up renting an inexpensive old apartment outside the university. It was all so that he could write at night.

Half hour later!

Seeing the desktop computer before him, Chu Tian was completely astonished by himself.

In this short half an hour, he had not only managed to hack into several major online corporations, he even managed to hack into the four major banks and some state secret departments.

[4. China possesses four major banks. They’re the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), China Construction Bank (CCB), Agricultural Bank of China (ABC) and Bank of China (BOC). There’s also the Bank of Communications (BoCom) that’s extremely popular there. All of them are state owned.]

In fact, Chu Tian believes that if he wanted, he could hack into anywhere the internet is connected to.

But, why would things be this way?

How did he suddenly become such a powerful computer hacker?