Chapter 81: The Earth-Shattering News That Shook the Entire Universe [Double Chapter—Please Keep Reading!]

Lu Chen still remembered that scene: after he had ruthlessly slain the minotaur Entil and flung him from the ship, he leapt atop the vessel and, with a single stroke, severed the minotaur's horns. There was no deeper reason—he simply disliked minotaurs.

But at that moment, perhaps thanks to the resonance of myriad fates, he suddenly felt a chill at his back. It wasn't danger, for otherwise he would have received a warning. It was merely… the distinct sensation of being watched.

Instinctively, he glanced back, and that fleeting moment was caught by a camera. Perhaps, conversely, it was because the other party had activated a high-definition camera that his intuition detected it.

Now he understood. It was the news ship from the Fishermen’s League—or, more accurately, the stealthy biomimetic craft masquerading as an invisible whale. No wonder the Imperial Entertainment Weekly claimed the Adventurers’ Guild was creating new stars: the photos they took were so clear and close it looked like a staged shoot.

Yet Lu Chen had been wearing a headless suit of armor, making no actual movement to turn his head—only the subtlest twist of his body. Even so, the camera captured a blurred afterimage, as if he were glaring straight at the photographer, exuding an overwhelming aura. It had seized the very soul of the moment!

No wonder even Aili had said it was handsome…

Lu Chen glanced over the news. The content, for the most part, adhered to the facts: capturing a god-grade bait, the interstellar locust, in an unknown starfield; selling the locusts on Mist Sea Star, enabling many to catch white-whiskered whales; entering the depths of the Mist Sea in violation of regulations and allegedly slaying the invisible whale, which caused a vast ascension of light particles; finally, turning the tables on the Horned Ship and escaping pursuit from the Fish Ket Ship…

Though the article lacked detail and was riddled with speculation, it was largely accurate. The reporter lavished praise on the Leonin for their spirit of adventure, marveling that they had won the respect of the white-whiskered whale, and, quite naturally, attributed all credit to the ship’s beastmaster—the wolf-girl, Aili.

This only further boosted Aili’s popularity! Die-hard fans even managed to dig up a rescinded bounty, speculating that Aili was the one imprisoned in a safe by Arden Fema. On one hand, they lauded Lu Chen’s heroic rescue; on the other, they organized a poll on the adventurers’ forum to form a group raid on the seventh planet of the Rogel System, hoping to liberate more wolf-girls.

Lu Chen checked the poll—over eighty certified adventurers had already pledged to join. He had to admit, there were quite a few shut-ins among adventurers. But if they really did storm Arden Fema, they’d be no mere shut-ins, but heroes freeing slaves!

Aili, however, wanted to grow strong and take revenge herself. She was not at all pleased that Lu Chen’s achievements were credited to her, pouting indignantly, “Why is the Adventurers’ Guild publishing fake news? Clearly these feats belong to the captain!”

Lu Chen patted her head fondly, smiling, “It’s no matter. After all, the crew’s achievements all belong to the captain!”

Gloria took a swig of wine and patted her chest in mock relief, “Good thing I didn’t act this time, or you’d have stolen my credit for nothing.”

Lu Chen was speechless. Wasn’t she the one who freeloaded?

That was why he insisted Gloria learn to pilot the ship—he couldn’t let her keep getting by on nothing.

Lu Chen continued reading the news. The author pointed out that the Primal Starvault Adventuring Team had earned ten thousand adventurer points from this battle. In just over a month, they had accumulated twenty thousand points, and for the first time broken into the annual top hundred, ranking ninety-sixth.

This meant that among the millions of teams who had set out this year, Primal Starvault’s score was already among the top hundred. And Lu Chen had only set out in September, with ten months of the year already gone…

Notably, the minotaur team Lu Chen had just defeated was ranked sixty-sixth—their ascent to the leaderboard was built on the minotaur’s corpse.

The author spared no words in praising Lu Chen and predicted that the Primal Starvault Team would break into the new generation’s top hundred thousand within three years!

“Small ambitions, too small,” Gloria guaranteed, patting her chest. “At this rate, we’ll make it in a year! Then I’ll finally get to drive the Galloping Horse!”

Lu Chen shot her a cold glance.

So all my hard work is so you can drive a Galloping Horse-class ship sooner? What a succubus capitalist!

Truthfully, Lu Chen could have them break into the top hundred thousand in a year, but there was no need.

“I’m not burning myself out for that. I need a good rest!”

After finishing, he browsed the comment section. For some reason, he was curious to see how this generation of netizens was hyping him up.

He was greatly disappointed.

The comments were mostly heated arguments, followed by Aili’s fan club, and only a few scattered voices praising Lu Chen or the team.

The crux of the argument was that Lu Chen’s front-page photo was so striking and imposing that the comments had split into two camps: those claiming it was staged, and those insisting it was candid. The debate was fierce.

The “staged” camp argued: a photo this good couldn’t possibly be candid; besides, a level-thirty scavenger suit couldn’t possibly stand atop the Horned Ship. The “candid” camp countered: if it were staged, there’d be no need to look back at the camera. The armor detected the high-definition lens the moment it was activated. This was a headless suit—such a move could only be instinctual, something normal people wouldn’t even think of.

The debate raged to the point that no one was even discussing the news itself anymore…

Lu Chen reflected that the Adventurers’ Guild still held some credibility among adventurers. They might obscure some truths for the greater good, but they usually didn’t stoop to such petty tricks. Besides, the candid photo explanation was far more reasonable. In another photo from the Fish Ket incident, the Horned Ship was already hornless, now just a bald vessel.

But what had become of the comment section? Lu Chen felt as if he’d been transported back to his previous life.

There was no such thing as a perfect nation or system; none could fully remedy the greed of human nature. Some countries advanced, others regressed. Before the tides turned, this was a war—and the online discourse was one of its most crucial fronts!

Many still didn’t understand this, being led astray by paid shills—utterly foolish.

But there was nothing to be done; the side with superior technology and information would always have the upper hand in the opinion war. The Adventurers’ Guild was merely a coalition of organizations, and its technological and informational capabilities were far inferior to those of the old empires.

To test this, Lu Chen hacked directly into the guild’s news site comment system. He discovered that while all the commenters were certified adventurers, their posts had all been made from dynamic terminals.

He wrote a string of code to trace their origins. After some effort, he tracked the source to an unremarkable black ship—its air defense recognition code nearly matched that of the imperial intelligence vessel that had once tailed the Leonin.

The comments had come from the empire’s spy ship. They’d simply paid for the use of those accounts, ensuring their owners wouldn’t delete the posts or expose the operation.

As the galaxy’s foremost hacker, Lu Chen couldn’t stand idly by. With one stroke, he altered the guild’s website code to display whether an IP address came from a fixed terminal, and marked in red all the accounts using non-fixed, frequently masked terminals—exposing them to the entire network.

Suddenly, the shills were all revealed!

Righteous netizens quickly noticed the pattern, assuming it was a new comment section feature, and praised the guild’s wisdom while lambasting the shills.

Panicked, the marked accounts scrambled to delete their posts—only to find they couldn’t.

Those accounts—and their affiliated adventuring teams—were like cheaters caught in the act, nailed forever to the pillar of shame.

Only then did the Adventurers’ Guild realize their own comment section had been utterly compromised. They decided to observe for now, leaving the terminal trace display in place while attempting to track the hacker’s origin.

But they simply didn’t have the skill.

Soon, an encrypted imperial call came to the guild’s news office, pressuring them in all manner of ways.

The guild’s engineers scrambled to restore the code, only to discover that the remotely added code simply couldn’t be deleted.

The guild conceded defeat but refused to shut down the site, inviting the empire’s engineers to assist.

The imperial engineers tried remotely, but also failed—eventually resorting to rolling the server back by half an hour.

Yet the hacker’s code persisted.

This meant the server had already been compromised.

Even so, the guild refused to shut down the website and instead asked the empire for help disinfecting the system.

Unable to disinfect remotely, the imperial intelligence vessel had to summon more engineers to trace the virus.

After much tracing, they discovered the trail led right back to their own ship.

Lu Chen, having mastered the posting and masking methods of the spy ships, had used the same covert virus as their drone flies to simulate the imperial spy ship’s ID.

The guild remarked, “You’re hacking yourselves?”

The incident spread rapidly through the news comment sections and adventurer forums, even spilling onto the wider net, drawing in onlookers from across the galaxy to witness the spectacle.

Posts and comments flooded in by the millions each minute—all from certified adventurers.

Seeing they couldn’t disinfect or trace the breach, and unable to convince the guild to shut down the site, the empire resorted to hacking themselves, trying to crash the guild’s server.

But magic cannot defeat magic—there are levels to the craft. A random group of imperial engineers was no match for a heavenly-ranked hacker like Lu Chen.

Ultimately, the empire’s cube fortress at the end of the Dawn Route had to dispatch a level 100 administrative ship, laden with officials and top engineers, to personally disinfect Sea Knight Port.

One of the guild’s delighted engineers even exposed the whole affair in code…

Lu Chen was utterly satisfied.

Damn, isn’t this more exhilarating than any adventure?

Gloria and Aili watched in confusion, seeing Lu Chen’s hands flying over the glowing interface, utterly clueless as to what he was doing or why he was so excited.

But since the empire had resorted to administrative measures, Lu Chen decided to lay low for now and wait until the officials and tech team left…

Then he’d have his fun.

Truth be told, even for Lu Chen, such maneuvers were tiring—and didn’t earn him a cent—but the joy was worth it.

He took a break, sipping tea, and resumed reading the news.

The Dawn Route was long, with more than just the Mist Sea Star along the way; few cared about up-and-coming adventuring teams. Instead, the aftermath of the guild’s hacked news site drew the attention of the entire galaxy.

Lu Chen was so pleased that he couldn’t help but compose a poem:

Ten lines of code to fell a foe,
A thousand accounts erased in one go.
Your business done, with robes a-fling,
Tea in hand, you hide your name.

Ha! What a poem!

Seeing Lu Chen nodding silently, Gloria sighed in confusion, “This kid is hopeless.”

Just then, Aili reported, “Captain, look— the Guernica Adventuring Team just posted on the forum, and the moderators have stickied it in red.”

Lu Chen recalled his deal with Scorpio the Scorpion Girl; his adventurers’ bank account now reflected a thousand spirit stones!

He quickly opened the forum.

On the Dawn Route board, the top stickied post was from the Guernica Adventuring Team, authored by their chief news officer, the Adventurer Dove.

Its title:

“Imperial Entertainment Weekly is the Real Culprit Behind the Trap Laid for Adventurers on Sion Star!”

The post detailed, with ample evidence, the crimes of the Imperial Entertainment Weekly.

The forum exploded.

Now, the forum’s traffic wasn’t just adventurers—spectators from across the universe had come to watch the hacking drama, and now found themselves drawn into an imperial intelligence scandal.

The two converged, instantly igniting a wildfire of public opinion.

It was as if the masses had awoken, finally recognizing the horrors of opinion warfare and the repulsiveness of public intellectuals and paid trolls, furiously condemning the empire’s sinister intentions.

The Guernica news officer was careful not to mention the Primal Starvault Team, making it seem as if Guernica alone had risked everything to expose the truth.

Some even mistakenly believed the earlier hacking was also Guernica’s doing!

Soon, the guild announced the dismissal of the moderator who had stickied the post. But the post remained—no longer red or pinned, but still there.

After all, the incident had already occurred; the guild couldn’t delete the post and risk the wrath of their members. But to save face for the empire, they symbolically dismissed the moderator, blaming him as a temp, while secretly allowing him to return under a new account.

It was explosive.

A tidal wave of condemnation swept the net. The timing of Guernica’s post was flawless.

Lu Chen didn’t mind the misattribution, though he regretted not asking for more money at the time.

But soon, Aili’s devoted fans dug out the previous news posted by the guild, presenting detailed clues and evidence to clarify that it was the Primal Starvault Team responsible for the feat!

That was why the Leonin had been pursued by the Justice Hunter, and possibly later by imperial spy ships…

The entire net fell silent.

No one discussed the Guernica Beastmaster Team anymore.

Moments later, a torrent of frenzied praise for the Primal Starvault Team erupted like a tidal wave.

“What kind of legendary team is this?”

“It all makes sense now… Captain Lu won the Idealist Medal of the Uncrowned Kingdom!”

“Now I see… that headless armor photo was definitely candid! The pilot was Captain Lu—he even sensed the hidden photographer!”

“Just realizing? If I’m not mistaken, the hacker incident was also Captain Lu’s doing!”

“Think about it… How could a level-thirty modified civilian ship defeat the level-forty Horned Ship?”

“He’s a hacker—he must be! I bet Captain Lu is not just a helmsman and spirit-mechanist, but secretly a top-tier hacker. He hacked the Horned Ship’s flight controls and broke into the news comment board to clear his name!”

“Absurd! Is every member of this team a genius?”

“No, that lady swordsman seems like just a pretty face…”

Gloria, seeing this, was so angry she almost smashed her bracelet.

Lu Chen quickly pointed out another comment to her—

“That’s not fair. The lady swordsman is not only pretty and well-built, but she’s no mere flower vase—I saw her in a live broadcast during the flight test, single-handedly hijacking the Octopus Ship… She made me lose money; I resented her so much. But now I see she’s a genius too!”

Beautiful, well-built, and a genius…

Gloria was elated by the praise, bustling to serve Lu Chen tea, rub his shoulders, and massage his back.

Lu Chen’s thoughts, however, were entirely on this opinion war.

He had to admit—it was absolutely thrilling!

The adventurer forum’s servers were overwhelmed, and browsing became nearly impossible.

The onlookers soon flooded the news comments, liking and sharing the Primal Starvault Team’s stories, boosting their visibility back to the front page.

Yet Lu Chen couldn’t help but feel that, though he was the protagonist, people only praised him out of obligation. All agreed he was a genius, a top hacker, but it was Aili and Gloria who received the true adulation.

Lu Chen could only sigh.

There was nothing to be done. Among adventurers and those interested in interstellar exploits, men vastly outnumbered women. And the few women who did follow such news cared only about their own favorite guys…

As the situation spiraled out of control, Imperial Entertainment Weekly hastily published a blockbuster story, hoping to redirect attention and ignite the galaxy’s curiosity—

At once, the entire network fell silent.

(End of chapter)