Chapter 130: Helping Psycho

Chapter 130: Chapter 130: Helping Psycho

[Psycho]:My beloved boss, you can’t possibly find it in your heart to ignore my desperate plea for help!

Qiao Meixia read through the frantic walls of text line by line. Her expression remained cold, neutral, and unbothered. Her slender fingers immediately began dancing across the mechanical keyboard, deploying a trace protocol to pinpoint the exact physical location from which the distress signal had been dispatched.

A set of geographic coordinates flashed onto her main display.

Moscow, Russia.

Qiao Meixia raised a delicate eyebrow in slight surprise. She genuinely wondered what in the world that eccentric guy was doing all the way over in Russia. However, that interrogation could wait for later.

Even though Psycho was notorious for being a chaotic troublemaker within their ranks, he was far too proud to ever issue an emergency distress call to her unless he was genuinely backed into a corner. After all, he was officially ranked among the most elite master hackers in the entire global organisation. If someone of Psycho’s terrifying technical calibre was forced to cry out for backup, then the situation unfolding on his end was undoubtedly critical.

Qiao Meixia immediately moved to inspect Psycho’s live digital battlefield. Her fingers moved at blinding speed across the keycaps as she breached the external security layers of the system he was actively defending.

Scanning the incoming IP headers, she realised he was single-handedly fending off a coordinated assault from twenty top-tier black-hat hackers simultaneously. No wonder he had resorted to begging her for intervention. Twenty high-level digital attackers targeting a single isolated server at the exact same second was a brutal, overwhelming siege. Even for a genius like Psycho, managing that many simultaneous intrusion vectors was a nightmare.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Qiao Meixia joined the digital conflict.

Psycho detected her authorisation signature the exact second her system linked to his node.

[BOSS IS FINALLY HERE!]

His eyes lit up with sheer ecstasy on the other side of the globe as he saw her signature override his defense matrix.

On the opposing side of the net, the squad of attackers instantly plunged into utter chaos. One by one, their aggressive intrusion protocols were violently dismantled and turned against them. They barely had time to comprehend what was happening before another one of their proxy systems was completely compromised and taken offline.

It felt as though they were suddenly locked in combat with a ghost. An all-seeing entity that anticipated their every move, counter-attacked before their commands were even executed, and predicted every line of code they wrote.

One by one, their external connections were forcibly severed. One by one, their local terminal systems were remotely locked down and bricked. In the end, despite all their frantic countermeasures, there was absolutely nothing they could do to halt the absolute annihilation. The entire digital battle was brought to a decisive end in mere minutes.

On the other end of the line, the remaining attackers erupted in absolute rage and fury at their ruined hardware. Yet, no matter how much they cursed, the outcome was set in stone. They had been utterly defeated.

Qiao Meixia leaned back into her ergonomic chair, letting out a quiet breath as her eyes scanned the clean line of status logs on her display. Seeing that Psycho’s local server was no longer under fire and all hostile traces had been purged, she felt a wave of relief. She stood up, stepped out of the workroom, and made her way into the kitchen to grab something to drink.

Fortunately, she had taken the time to stock up her refrigerator with plenty of bottled mineral water over the weekend. Reaching into the fridge, she pulled out a cold bottle, twisted off the cap, and downed half of it in one continuous gulp. Refreshing herself, she tossed the cap aside and returned to the workroom. She slid back into her desk chair in front of the warm monitors.

Unsurprisingly, a fresh batch of incoming messages from Psycho had already populated her chat window while she was in the kitchen.

[Psycho]:Boss, thank you so much... I love you to pieces for coming to my rescue! If you had not stepped in, I honestly don’t even want to imagine what terrible things would have happened to me today.

Qiao Meixia was well accustomed to his flamboyant personality and his habit of dramatically teasing everyone around him. Naturally, she did not pay any mind to his grand declarations of affection. She simply reached out and typed a short, direct query onto her keyboard.

[Q]:What happened?

A few seconds later, Psycho’s reply popped up on her screen.

[Psycho]: Ah, it’s really nothing major, boss.

Qiao Meixia’s brow furrowed slightly at his evasive response. She keyed in the exact same command once more.

[Q]:What happened?

She repeated the question with absolute firmness. This time, she was not about to let him laugh it off or slide out of giving a full account.

[Psycho]:Well... I kind of repeatedly killed this guy in an online game... He got extremely salty about it, lost his mind, and hired a bunch of elite hackers to wipe out my computer.

Qiao Meixia sat frozen, staring blankly at the text lines glowing on her monitor. Slowly, her eyebrow arched upward in utter disbelief.

[Q]: There were twenty of them operating in unison. That is not a normal response for a simple gaming grudge.

Psycho stared at his glowing screen, frozen. He knew with absolute certainty that lying to his boss was an impossibility. She would see right through him in a heartbeat. Yet, a part of him was genuinely terrified to lay out the cold, hard truth. He knew he was practically guaranteeing himself a swift, harsh punishment for dragging her into such unnecessary trouble.

After desperately weighing the pros and cons of coming clean versus attempting to keep it under wraps, he finally decided that honesty was his best resort. Telling his boss the truth directly might at least spare him from an even more painful, deeply humiliating ordeal if she inevitably uncovered the mess from someone else down the line.

[Psycho]:Boss... I took a high-paying contract from a gang over in Ukraine, but it turned out to be a complete setup. I ended up offending a rather powerful figure back then, and now they’ve tracked me down to get their revenge.

Qiao Meixia let out a heavy, exasperated sigh. This unrepentant troublemaker seemed to have an endless knack for finding new ways to get himself killed.

[Q]:Then what on earth are you doing in Russia?

[Psycho]:Boss, how on earth do you already know my exact location?! Well, you see, Russia happens to have a phenomenal abundance of breathtakingly gorgeous women.

Qiao Meixia’s expression turned instantly frostbitten.

[Q]:Get your useless rear back here immediately. Otherwise, I will personally fly over and put an end to you myself.

[Psycho]:Understood, Boss! I am booking the very next flight out right this second!

[Q]:You’d better come home. I will check your location later.

Seeing his immediate compliance, Qiao Meixia felt a quiet wave of relief wash over her, glad that nothing truly catastrophic had befallen him. Deep down, she had been genuinely concerned that he was in critical danger beyond even her ability to fix. For all his erratic, chaotic behaviour, that troublemaker was practically family to her. Without his brilliance, the Red Mansion might never have risen to its current heights in the underworld.

That was precisely why she held each of them in such high regard. Even though they could be a massive headache at times, they were the very people who had stood unwaveringly by her side through thick and thin for years. To her, they were not merely subordinates or members of an elite organisation. They were her true family.

Closing out the encrypted message thread, Qiao Meixia leaned back into her plush chair, letting out a soft breath.

Suddenly, her stomach let out an unceremonious, loud growl. She looked down at her lap with a dry smile. She had been so intensely hyper-focused on saving Psycho from his self-inflicted digital siege that she had completely forgotten about her own basic physical needs.

Opening her favourite food delivery app, she began browsing through various menus, looking for something hearty to fill her empty stomach. Naturally, she did not forget to add a selection of delicate desserts to her cart to round out the order. Once her order was placed, she set her phone aside and returned to her computer to tend to her remaining tasks.

Twenty minutes later, her phone chimed with a call from the delivery rider, informing her that he had arrived in the main lobby.

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