Chapter 8

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Chapter 8: The Cyber Demon

The atmosphere in the hall immediately shifted.

It was no wonder even the experienced and knowledgeable old department head reacted strangely—their subject of investigation had sent them an email directly to their private inbox! Wasn’t this evidence that not only did the sender know they were being investigated, but also knew exactly who was doing the investigation?

“Is this… a provocation?” someone whispered quietly.

“Let’s take a look first.” Gao Wei tapped on the table, gesturing for everyone to quiet down.

The signal was quickly connected to the central screen, and the Intelligence Department representative clicked open the seemingly ordinary message before the crowd. After a simple animation effect, a large door made of red and black panels appeared in the middle of the screen, accompanied by the words “Click Here To Enter.” Below the door were more detailed explanations.

Zhang Zhiyuan, with his sharp eyes, read out aloud, “A new round of games will soon begin.”

“To enter Paradise, you may choose one of two tickets: $1 million or outstanding investigative skills.”

“In Paradise, everyone can enjoy unparalleled sensory stimulation and brand new cognitive experiences. Not only can you reap rich rewards from the game, your life and fate will also undergo entirely new transformations; whether these changes are for the better or worse is entirely up to you.”

“Paradise awaits your presence.”

“Amazing!” Choi Jeon-eun couldn’t help but exclaim in English, “This is no longer just provocation, right? What’s the difference between this and throwing down a gauntlet directly to our face?”

“What does investigation and detection skills mean? Are they planning on involving us as well?”

“You guys can’t figure out where this message came from?”

“No, there’s no data record in the gateway, it’s like it suddenly appeared in the mailbox,” The colleague from Intelligence spoke over the screen, clearly overwhelmed by work, “We’ve already cut off all external network connections and are currently investigating backdoor viruses.”

“Then can we register now?” Choi Jeon-eun asked with interest.

“Theoretically, there shouldn’t be any problems, since the email is still within the private mail box.”

“Try clicking it,” Gao Wei instructed.

The Intelligence Department followed his instructions, and they saw the red-black door slowly open, revealing a formal registration form for everyone to see.

“Eh… that’s it?” Choi Jeon-eun couldn’t help but ask.

In truth, this was what everyone was thinking—the image would have been fine if it hadn’t moved; its movement exposed how poorly made it was. The rough texture of the graphics, the choppy animation effects, and the door opening sequence—this could not only be done better by a seasoned programmer, even a university student majoring in computer science could do better than this. And the registration form itself had been created entirely using Microsoft Powerpoint. If drawn by hand, it wouldn’t take more than three minutes.

There was no way the Caribbean Company’s technical team could produce such low-quality work.

“It feels like something from a small company’s job application…” one officer couldn’t help but say.

“Someone is messing with us on purpose.”

“Little Zhang, what do you think?” Gao Wei directly addressed him.

Although Zhang Zhiyuan was only in his twenties, he possessed outstanding abilities and was proficient in multiple languages. After being transferred to the International Criminal Police Department, he had performed well many times, earning recognition from higher-ups, so Old Gao’s question wasn’t surprising.

“To be honest…I don’t know.” He scratched his head, slightly helpless; such an outrageous case had never been recorded in any of their files, let alone his own career. “But there is one thing we should pay attention to: we shouldn’t assume that Paradise has anything to do with Wayne Jenkins at this point. While it’s true that he participated in the game, he also took part in the Ocean’s Heart cruise, so we can’t assume the entire Caribbean Company is involved. With this premise, it would make sense to investigate further.”

“Mm-hmm, continue.”

“I’m also concerned about another point,” Zhang Zhiyuan pondered aloud. “If we fill out a few of these forms with three false answers and one true one, the worst loss would be one person’s basic information. But given that the other side can easily send emails to us, obtaining our surface level information shouldn’t be difficult either. Look…” He pointed at the screen, “This doesn’t even ask for job titles or positions, nor does it involve any details regarding cases. It only asks for height and gender; it feels almost like a trick of mind control.”

“Mind control? How?” Old Gao asked.

“When interrogating suspects before, if the suspect was particularly stubborn, the officer would start with some simple questions to let them answer easily and gradually lower their guard,” Zhang Zhiyuan explained, “These kinds of questions often revolve around things such as what day it is today or what they ate for dinner. After several rounds, the prisoner will unconsciously develop a sense of obedience.”

“How bold! So this is testing our obedience!” Choi Jeon-eun slapped her chair back.

“The key point isn’t this,” he continued. “We make prisoners obey because we need confessions, which means there exists a certain cooperative relationship between both parties. Then why does Paradise go through these motions? After all, simple mockery and provocation don’t require this level of effort.”

The words left everyone pondering.

Gao Wei spoke first, “That’s why you said we shouldn’t assume Paradise is connected to Wayne Jenkins before we investigate. That makes sense… However, they’re making a grave mistake if they think we’ll discuss anything with them. Hacking into government networks is already illegal; once we find out where these people are hiding, I will make sure they pay for their crimes!”

“Indeed,” Zhang Zhiyuan agreed. “Let’s try this. First, let’s register as volunteers and ask our colleagues from the Cyber Intelligence Department to track down the signal while coordinating with other regions’ police forces to surround the area. Even if we can’t capture Wayne Jenkins, we should at least have a chance to understand what he did during his last gathering.”

“Do we need to send someone over to Zhou Zhi to ask?” Choi Jeon-eun suggested.

“We’ll keep an eye on him for now. We don’t know whether he’ll participate in a second game, so it would be inappropriate to alert him.” Gao Wei thought briefly before deciding, “If he continues participating, then we won’t interfere. If not, we’ll take advantage of the time when the game starts to approach him directly and question him about the first gathering. Although I have a feeling that he won’t provide us much help.” At this point, Old Gao stood up, “So everyone… let’s begin.”

“Yes sir!” The team responded in unison.

…..

“… What a keen sense of smell,” Chaoyang murmured as he slowly opened his eyes, unable to help but sigh.

In truth, he hadn’t only sent the message to the other party’s mailbox; he had also observed the entire conference through the surveillance cameras in the hall. This was one of his abilities.

The moment of awakening, Chaoyang not only learned how demons lived, but also instinctively grasped what powers he himself possessed. To put it simply, demonic power could be divided into two main types: Deception and cybernetics. The former encompassed all demons’ abilities, while the latter was unique to him alone.

With the power of deception, demons could invade dream realms, create illusions, or construct objects with time-limits at the cost of increased Wish Power consumption.

Creating tangible objects required a vast amount of Wish Power, which made it practically suicidal on Earth where the power was scarce. If he hadn’t discovered this abundant power source in another world, perhaps he would have never been able to use this ability.

And finally, there were the powers that belonged solely to him, which served as the distinguishing mark between each awakened demon. Chaoyang’s power allowed him to effortlessly intervene within networks, transforming those abstract electronic pathways into intuitive channels and gates that could be understood by humans.

When he first used this power, even he couldn’t help but marvel at the wave of progress washing over humanity because even demons were adapting to modern times.

He named this ability “Cyber Eye.”

And thus, he became the first Cyber Demon of the twenty-first century.