2026-06-29 22:16:33Lin Chen sat at his desk and closed the biomedical engineering book. He finally had the idea. And not just any idea, the one that had been forming quietly at the back of his mind since the night he walked out of that hotel room.
Before any of this happened, before the system, before the money, he had always made his living writing codes for programs, algorithms, and solutions for companies that needed things built that their own teams couldn't build. That had always been his way in. And now with everything the system had unlocked in him it was going to become something else entirely. He opened his laptop and started working on it as he researched, the next three days passed quickly. He read everything he could find on cybersecurity not just textbooks but technical papers, case studies, exploit documentation, vulnerability reports. With the beginner's intelligence the system had granted him, knowledge that would have taken weeks to absorb was locked into place in hours. He could feel his understanding deepening in real time, one concept feeding into the next, everything connecting. He barely left his apartment, his schedule included going downstairs for his sessions with Coach Chen in the morning, coming back up immediately. Having takeout delivered to the door, cans of energy drinks were lined up by the desk, with noodle boxes accumulating on the floor around him. He only slept for two or three hours daily and woke up already thinking about where he had left off. The system pinged rewards during those three days, he could see the notifications stacking at the edge of his vision, one after another, each one a subject crossed into mastery. He dismissed every single notification without looking at it and kept working. The money wasn't the point right now. On the third day he finally sat back sighing in relief. The antivirus was finally complete. He pressed enter and watched the final compilation run. Then he looked around at the disaster zone his apartment had become with lots of noodle boxes, empty cans, open books spread across every surface and exhaled slowly. It wasn't easy. But it was done. He checked the stacked system notifications now, going through them one by one. Day 1 — Cybersecurity Foundations + Virus Architecture DING. [Cybersecurity Fundamentals — Mastered: 96% → ¥950,000\] [Virus Architecture & Exploit Documentation — Mastered: 93% → ¥880,000\] Day 2 — Network Penetration + Malware Behavior DING. [Network Penetration & Vulnerability Analysis — Mastered: 91% → ¥820,000\] [Malware Behavior & Detection Systems — Mastered: 94% → ¥900,000\] Day 3 — Advanced Antivirus + Cross Discipline Bonus DING. [Advanced Antivirus Architecture — Mastered: 97% → ¥1,050,000\] [Bonus Detected: Algorithm + Cybersecurity + Virus Behavior = Advanced Threat Neutralization Framework unlocked.\] [Bonus Reward: ¥600,000\] His total balance: ¥5,000,000. Lin Chen looked at the number as he nodded in satisfaction, they were proof of his work. Then he looked away, the money mattered but right now it was the second most important thing on his desk. The first was the plan. He opened a fresh window and paused, what he was about to do next was different from everything before it. Studying and earning rewards was the system working for him. What came next was him making a choice. A deliberate one. The kind that couldn't be undone. He thought about Wang Hao standing in that hotel room with his arm around Su Xiaowan. The flat unbothered look on his face. ‘Knowledge without wealth is just a hobby.’ He thought about how they all laughed at him there, how the security guards grabbed his arms and threw him and Liang Hao out. He opened the dark web browser, three years ago a virus had torn through dozens of companies across the US and parts of Asia. A Python-based virus released by one of the most skilled hackers anyone in the cybersecurity world had ever tried to track. But till today nobody could ever find him. The virus was what made his name, used to hold corporations to ransom before he vanished completely. Devastating and elegant as he caused losses to various top companies drawing admiration from several tech enthusiasts, even him as he could remember vividly how he wished to be like him. The source code of the virus was leaked online afterward. It had been sitting there ever since, untouched. Everyone in the tech world knew where to find it, but nobody dared d******d it. Lin Chen found the virus source code. He sat with the cursor over it for a moment not from fear, from calculation. Once he did this the game changed completely. He wasn't a student anymore. He wasn't a freelance coder. He was going to reach into Wang Tech Industries and systematically take it apart from the inside. He clicked d******d, then he spent the next two hours cloaking it carefully, stripping any traceable signatures and repackaging it inside a spoofed vendor update email the kind that IT departments received dozens of every week, routine enough to open without thinking twice. He typed in the Wang Tech Industries server address and looked at it one more time. Then he hit send. He sat back in his chair and rolled his stiff neck around. One side of the trap was set., now for the other side. He opened a new project file and started building an antivirus named ClearShield.
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Chapter 20- The Recruitment Booth.
The next day Lin Chen woke up with only one thing on his mind.Today was the day.He took his bath, put on a white shirt under a black blazer with black pants, looking clean and simple. There was no way he was putting on a suit, he wasn't trying to impress anyone, he just had to look like someone worth working for. This was the first real step in building the company, capital was in place, and deals came later so what he needs now are the first people who would build Athena Technologies with him. And he needed to get it right.His phone rang before he was even done, Lin Chen checked to see who was calling.Fatty Hao’s calling.He picked up. "Fatty Hao.""Lin Chen, where are you? I'm already waiting downstairs. Come down fast."He came down to find Liang Hao leaning against the car with both arms spread like he was posing for a magazine cover. His hair was gelled so aggressively it looked glossy. The suit he wore was a size too small for him and he had clearly tried to style it."How
Chapter 19- Building the team
Tap, tap, tap….The sounds of Lin Chen typing filled the room as code upon code kept popping up on the screen.He was building out the architecture of Athena OS, drawing on the artificial intelligence knowledge now sitting in his head, though still beginner-tier, and in preliminary stage, but even at this level he could feel the shape of something bigger taking form under his fingers: a compression algorithm that could genuinely change how software ran on old hardware.Most legacy devices couldn't run modern software not because the processors were too weak, but because of space. Storage and memory overhead choked them long before raw processing power ever became the real bottleneck. If he could compress data efficiently enough, old machines wouldn't need to be replaced to run new software. All they would need would be Athena OS. That was the idea taking shape, line by line, and the deeper he got into it, the more certain he became that it would work.Two hours had passed before he
Chapter 18: Athena Technologies
Lin Chen looked down below as the busy city as he plans of his empire unfolded in his head. When he heard the sound of something rushing at him as Liang Hao threw both arms around Lin Chen before he could even dodge, nearly knocking him into the wall."Lin Chen! Look at us! We're going to be the Steve Jobs of tomorrow, the Mark Zuckerberg of tomorrow! And when we've built the empire and people ask how it all started, I'll be the one telling the story. How I was there from day one, supporting you, well you deserve ay least sixty percent for the effort but I will at least have contributed forty percent and we can hire pretty secretaries with curvy bodies." By this time Liang Hao was already drooling as he was already lost in his imagination his eyes somewhere on the horizon of an imagined future.Lin Chen reached up and flicked him on the forehead. "Come back down. We don't have office supplies, we don't have workers, and the product isn't finished yet."Liang Hao rubbed his forehead
chapter 17: The Empire's Blueprint
Lin Chen finally stopped typing, his fingers hurt and he was tired already. He closed the laptop and moved to his bedroom, the exhaustion from the celebration hit him the moment he stepped through the door, as he switched his phone off without even reading the flood of messages waiting there, congratulations from people he knew, and from plenty he didn't. Tomorrow, the real work will begin. And the plan for his empire will start. He slept off as soon as he hit the bed dozing when he heard sounds that woke him up. Thud!! He woke up to the sound of knocking. Groggy, he stumbled to the door. "Who is it?" "It's me, Fatty Hao." He opened it to find Liang Hao standing there in a suit, a suit that had clearly declared war on his stomach. It looked too tight for his chubby stomach, only the middle button could close, and even that looked like it was losing as it was about to burst. Liang Hao sucked in his gut, held the pose, and announced with a straight face, "Comrade Liang Hao, report
Chapter 16
That evening Lin Chen sat alone at his desk.The apartment was quiet. Outside the window the city moved the way it always did, indifferent and continuous, full of people who had no idea what was being built in this room.He looked at the blank project file open on his screen.A week ago he had been sitting on a curb outside a restaurant with ¥15,461 in his account and a velvet box in his hand that nobody had wanted to open. He had walked back to a dormitory full of books that everyone told him were useless and drunk himself into unconsciousness and accidentally set his laptop on fire.And from that night from that exact low point everything had changed.Now, he had paid off his student loan, rented his own apartment. Built a tool that half the country's cybersecurity industry was now running. Sold source code for thirty million yuan. He stood on a stage in front of everyone who had ever doubted him and said everything he needed to say without naming a single person.He hadn't started
Chapter 15
On the day of the graduation, the graduation hall was fully packed.Every seat taken, the high ceiling above them catching and amplifying the collective noise of hundreds of people in gowns. Family members were in the galleries all waiting. Two local media camera crews at the back of the room.The ceremony moved through its formal stages. With the songs and administrative announcements. A long address from Dean Xu about the institution's legacy that the front rows listened to attentively and the back rows tolerated politely.Then Dean Xu adjusted the microphone."Knowledge and character have always been the twin pillars of this institution. Today I want to invite someone to this stage who has demonstrated in the three weeks since he graduated what those two pillars can build when they are combined." He looked out across the hall. "Our outstanding graduate. The student who used his knowledge to create a cybersecurity tool that secured a thirty million yuan deal before the ink on his
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