"But this will cost lives," Xu Yang shook his head, "Kyoto Infinity has no available military forces, so they’re beginning to consume the blood of ordinary people. And this isn’t even the worst part, it gives people the illusion that staying in the city is safe."
"What should we do, then? People already believe she will share the fate of Anjiu City," Miyazato Kazama felt uneasy, "They will stay here, as if they have nothing to fear."
Xu Yang anxiously looked out the window. The white phosphorus bombs previously dropped by military aircraft had started a fire that continued to spread, and a similar bombing would occur again. By then, even more people would face mortal danger.
Miyazato Kazama picked up her phone, and saw that official updates kept coming in, implying that the military forces of Black Fire Innovation were very weak, and as long as the people were united, they could easily repel them and there would be no significant danger.
Anjiu City was too large, only a control system like the Century Pure Land could decide the fates of millions of people. On this scale, indirect methods seemed very weak, with tens of millions, perhaps even hundreds of millions of people reliant on the system from birth to death, never considering deviation from its guidance. Now, it had also become the best way to manipulate the thoughts of the citizens.
Since the outbreak on the Martinez, the majority of people had been fleeing the city, but after the push notifications from the Century Pure Land arrived, many were influenced and mistakenly thought they could overpower the military power of Black Fire Innovation.
It was necessary to stop the entire system from operating.
Xu Yang took a deep breath and began to trace the signal of the Century Pure Land back.
The "Century Pure Land" could no longer be allowed to deceive and manipulate people.
The original site of the system was heavily guarded, but it had become ineffective after being bombed by Black Fire Innovation. The defenses of the newly activated backup sites were much weaker. Xu Yang quickly located it, in a deep air-raid bunker in the suburbs of the city, codenamed "B9 Site."
He began penetrating the firewall of the site, which had updated its password library, making it tricky to handle. If Xu Yang had not been continuously learning advanced hacking techniques, he would have been blocked from entry right now.
What was even more deadly was that through external cameras, Xu Yang saw a security truck from Kyoto Infinity arriving, with around a dozen soldiers and several cyber security personnel jumping off—backup forces meant to ensure the security of the new server room.
Once they were in place, breaking through the Century Pure Land would become an incredibly difficult issue. Xu Yang could only start by taking control of the scattered, individual facilities, firstly locking down the entrance gate, no matter how much the local security tried to remotely control, they couldn’t let the vehicles pass.
Buy time. Xu Yang clenched his fist, the longer, the better. The B9 Site’s network defense system was intelligent, constantly adapting and updating passwords, leaving only a 3-second window for Xu Yang to breach before it would refresh the entire system, preventing any form of network attack.
Too slow. With the current speed of brain processors, it was impossible to complete the breach within 3 seconds, unless...
Xu Yang entered the control panel of the Digital Mind, setting up the return program and chemical drug application. Only one dose of the Cyanoacrylate Compound was left in the "Cloud Beast" nanometer armor, capable of waking him from a state of confusion and unconsciousness.
He held his breath, entrusting his brain to the machine, his main consciousness having left the body and entered the multitude of computer equipment in the building, instantly using all their computing power to restart the breach attempt.
Now, Xu Yang’s will was not controlling a human body but doubling the computing devices, and in this state, if he got lost, he couldn’t return! Many own a Digital Mind, but few dare to attempt such a venture for once lost within digital signals, he would cease to exist, both in body and in spirit. From this perspective, Xu Yang’s actions bore a pioneering significance.
Once he left his physical body and relied on the digital life comprised of connected computers, the speed of performing computations soared exponentially. The operating speed of a single brain processor was incomparable to the computing matrix core composed of the building’s computer terminals.
Even though Xu Yang had tried multiple times, he had to be extremely cautious, as he was given only a very short time.
He broke into the core code base of the Century Pure Land, with the return program leaving him less than a quarter of a second. In that instant, the only thing Xu Yang could do was issue a base-level command from within the machine:
Disconnect the network, cleanse the system, full format.
Kyoto Infinity’s cybersecurity personnel finally breached the pesky access control, raced back to the server room through the pouring rain, only to find the data of 7.5 million residents of Anjiu City vanishing rapidly. Countless rows of records entwining their entire lifetimes blinked into oblivion, and the whole software system was deleted, plunging into immense chaos.
Such a vast amount of data was irrecoverable. They could only watch helplessly as each disk plugged into the panel was formatted, and documents and logs on the servers, including the essential operation files for the Century Pure Land system itself, were damaged. Thousand of screens all slipped into darkness, like a vast wall of silence.
Returning to human form from a digital life, Xu Yang felt his head was about to split open.
His earlier work, too, involved massive amounts of data processing, but it was nothing compared to the tasks he handled in his digital life form. What’s more, this was his first time using a Net Avatar to solve a real-world problem. His methods were crude. He even felt as though he had left something of his consciousness in the terminal of the building and would have to retrieve it next time.
"My, my..." Miyazato Kazama was stunned.
"What’s wrong?" Xu Yang, feeling extremely tired, leaned on his knees and took a long breath.
"It’s gone—" Miyazato Kazama showed Xu Yang her credit code, "Empty, the whole page... disappeared—where did it go? Mine—"
"It left." Xu Yang said wearily, looking out of the window.
"This is... too unexpected." Miyazato Kazama was momentarily speechless, gasping for air.
She looked down at the page on her mobile phone, gone. The data monitoring system that had hovered over her since birth had collapsed, like a collar wrapped around her neck being torn open.
Miyazato Kazama looked toward Xu Yang with a kind of delirious gaze and couldn’t help but smile. It was the happiest moment of her life.
Elsewhere, the Hundred-eyes Demon continued to forward the documents Kirino Reisei had asked it to send to all the residents of Anjiu City, urging them to fight a desperate battle against Black Fire Innovation, but its biggest interface for completing this task—the Century Pure Land System—at least in Anjiu City, had already gone offline entirely.
"Sorry," the Hundred-eyes Demon reported to Kirino Reisei, "I cannot complete the task, the Century Pure Land System is unresponsive."
"..." Kirino Reisei nervously fiddled with her fingers. Without the Century Pure Land, people would run wild like stray dogs and animals, and all kinds of madness would occur.
She once felt she held a thread in her hand with the lives of millions of humans at the other end. With a pull, countless people would act as she wished. But the current situation was entirely different. In an instant, those slave-like tiny figures scattered on the ground.
In the information network meticulously woven by Kyoto Infinity, Anjiu City stood out like a sore spot, an eyesore. The Century Pure Land was distributed throughout the Northern Archipelago’s major corporate cities, conspicuously missing just Anjiu City.
Even if they won this war and then reintroduced the Century Pure Land to Anjiu City... how fierce would the rebound be? Anyone who had seen the sunlight would no longer submit to such a system. Those citizens seemed particularly troublesome overnight.
She browsed the company intranet reports. Only those with hard interests tied to Kyoto Infinity were still fighting to the death. The rest of the citizens suddenly seemed to realize they had the right to distance themselves from this war that wasn’t theirs. They either fled or surrendered to Black Fire Innovation, but few were genuinely willing to crash their heads against combat drones.
Xu Yang had done a big job and needed to rest. He communicated with Lila.
"Master... we’ve turned against Kyoto Infinity." Lila replied, "They originally tried to conscript us into battle, and I could only refuse."
"That’s right." Xu Yang said tiredly, "Keep Aizu City safe. No matter how the situation changes, Aizu City is our most important territory."
Looking around the Shijin Mansion at the various Witches, they all seemed fine. 101 had recovered from shock trauma, 102 was healed, Mizuiro Yoshioka was on patrol, Shallow Dream was reviewing the latest consultations, and Miyazato Kazama was present too, huh? It seemed someone was missing.