The Nerd Who Conquered The World

Chapter 10

Lin Chen finished his last set and stepped back from the equipment.

Coach Chen crossed his arms and looked at him with open surprise. "You must really be something. I demonstrated that movement only once and you already do it better than students I've been training for six months."

Lin Chen smiled and reached for his towel. Just then the system pinged.

[Basic Exercise — Understood. Reward: ¥100,000.]

[Combat study and full body alignment — yet to be mastered. Reward pending.]

He made a mental note, as he turned to Coach Chen. "Can I add some basic self-defense to the sessions?"

"No problem at all." Coach Chen waved toward the far side of the gym. "But our self-defense instructor is away this week. Come back next week and we'll start on it."

"Sure."

When he went back upstairs. Liang Hao was still lying on the bed, one arm hanging off the side, snoring with complete commitment. Lin Chen went to the kitchen and started making chicken soup. He had read three recipes on it before and had been waiting for a reason to try one properly.

The aroma reached Liang Hao before the soup was even finished. There was a shuffling sound from the bedroom, then silence, then more shuffling, and then Liang Hao appeared in the kitchen doorway in yesterday's clothes with his eyes half-open and his nose raised as he sniffed.

"That." He pointed at the pot. “Is that chicken soup?"

"Sit down first."

Liang Hao dropped into a chair as Lin Chen set a bowl of soup in front of him. He took one sip and his eyes opened properly for the first time all morning.

"Hssss, when did you learn to cook like this?"

"I read it from a book."

Liang Hao put his spoon down and looked at him. "Lin Chen. If learning from a book produced results like this, everybody would be a Michelin chef." He picked the spoon back up. "You have really changed. I keep saying it but I mean it. Your whole aura is different."

"It's just in your mind."

"It is not." Liang Hao pointed the spoon at him. "The decadent nerdy aura you had before now is completely gone. Something replaced it. I can't name it but it's there." He kept looking at him with a ‘i know you’ look. "You're planning something, aren't you."

Lin Chen met his eyes steadily. "I'm always planning something."

Liang Hao held the look for a long moment longer than usual, the comedy completely absent from his face. Then he seemed to reach an internal decision and went back to his soup. "Fine. Don't tell me." He ate his soup as he slurped loudly in anger

Lin Chen chuckled at him. He picked up his bowl and went to sit at the laptop.

---

He opened the campus platform and checked the ClearShield page.

Five thousand downloads since last night, he refreshed the page again. Five thousand one hundred and forty and a minute later. Five thousand three hundred and twelve. The numbers were climbing by the hundreds every minute, recommendations spreading through group chats, tech forums, word of mouth moving faster than any advertisement could have managed. People were tagging each other. Someone had written a short review calling it the best free security tool they had seen in three years. That review had been shared forty times.

Lin Chen sat back and watched it all for another full minute then he closed the page and opened his next textbook.

---

Meanwhile at Fenglin Cybersecurity the morning briefing had taken an unexpected turn.

The office was exactly what a cybersecurity company's main floor looked like with rows of screens running continuous monitoring feeds, the low hum of servers behind the walls.

Their tech advisor Li Mu was being shown a browser tab by his colleague, who was brimming with excitement.

"Have you seen this ClearShield? It's everywhere this morning."

Li Mu leaned over and looked at the d******d page, the forum threads, the review. "I've heard people mentioning it. How is it actually?"

"I ran a full analysis last night." The colleague pulled up his report. "It clears eighty to ninety percent of common viruses, reduces popups. The detection speed is faster than anything else in the free category by a significant margin. Whoever built this knows exactly what they're doing." He paused. "And it's completely free. That's what's increasing the appeal."

Li Mu studied the interface for a moment and his expression turned grim. "Can we replicate it?"

"Not quickly, we need at least three months minimum, and that's if we dedicate a full team."

"Then find the developer." Li Mu straightened up. "Get a name and contact details. I want to know who built this before someone else gets to them first."

“Already working on it sir."

The same conversation was happening in offices across the country that morning.

...........

At Wang Tech Industries the day had started badly and was getting worse.

Wu Jianbo had been awake since four AM, running every diagnostic tool he had access to and getting nowhere. By mid-morning he was scrolling through forums on his personal phone under the desk,something he would never normally do at work when he came across the ClearShield page.

He read the review and showed it quietly to Zhao Mingtao beside him.

"Try it," Zhao Mingtao said immediately.

They downloaded it and ran it against the infected system. The room watched the progress bar move as the numbers climbed. The scan was actually finding thing, surface corruptions, secondary infections, visible damage that their own tools had been struggling to isolate.

For a few minutes it genuinely looked like it was working.

Wang Hao was standing at the back of the room scrolling his phone, visibly bored by the whole situation. Wang Jinlong had stepped out for a call. The three external firms were watching from their corners with professional neutrality, trying not to look relieved that someone else might be solving the problem.

Then the system crashed again, this time harder than before.

Zhao Mingtao stared at his screen. His expression moved from hope to disbelief to something that was very close to despair. Across the room two engineers groaned simultaneously. One of the external firm representatives closed his laptop without a word.

Wang Hao looked up from his phone. "What happened?"

"The Basic version cleared the surface layer," Zhao Mingtao said, his voice flat. "But the core code is completely untouched. Running ClearShield actually made it worse. It destabilized the surface containment and now the virus has more room to move."

Wang Hao stared at the screens showing cascading error codes.

Wu Jianbo was very quiet at his desk. He looked at the ClearShield page still open on his phone. Then at the error codes on his screen. Then back at the phone.

Something about this felt deliberate. The virus was too clean and targeted. And a free tool appearing at exactly this moment that could touch everything except the one thing they actually needed to fix.

He closed the thought down as he had no proof. And saying something like that out loud in this room right now was not going to go well for him.

He put his phone away and kept working.

..........

Wang Jinlong came back into the room. Wang Hao straightened up instinctively.

"Well?"

Li Dampeng stepped forward. "We found a free tool, ClearShield , uploaded from Lingtong University, that was able to address the surface layer. But the core virus is beyond its capability. The scan actually destabilized our containment."

Wang Jinlong was quiet for a moment. "Find the developer of this tool. If they built something that can reach the surface of this virus, an advanced version might go deeper."

He turned to Wang Hao. "The upload originated from Lintong University. That's your university."

"Yes."

"Then the developer is likely someone you know or can reach through people you know." He stepped closer. "That is your task. Find this developer and bring them to me."

"Dad, I can't just"

"Get out." Quieter than anything he had said all day. "Don't come back until you have the developer."

Wang Hao left grumbling as he moved.

..........

In the corridor he pulled out his phone and opened the university group chat. Typed quickly.

Does anyone know who developed the ClearShield antivirus? I need to find them urgently. Important.

He sent it and stood waiting, watching the read receipts climb.

---

Lin Chen was sitting on the couch playing a game with Liang Hao. Liang Hao was losing badly and blaming the controller when the notification appeared in the group chat. He recognized Wang Hao's username immediately.

He read the message once. Put the phone face down on the cushion. Picked up his controller again.

Liang Hao scored an accidental point and erupted. "YES! See! The controller is fine! I'm just warming up!"

Lin Chen smiled and kept playing.

Somewhere across the city Wang Hao was standing in a corridor outside his father's company, desperately asking strangers on a group chat for help finding the person who had already destroyed him.

He put the phone down and let Liang Hao celebrate his one point.

The prey had finally come looking for the hunter. And the hunter was sitting at home playing video games.