Ten thousand I am across the heavens

Mo Chengzi looked in the direction his instructor pointed. He immediately saw a special scene built in a virtual space. However, it was different from the scene he had imagined, constructed from data streams. It looked like a teaching building that had experienced a brutal battlefield.

Wooden planks were nailed to the windows of the teaching building. Robots had even set up machine gun emplacements inside. Drones flew at high speed around this teaching building, which had been armed like a war fortress. Layers of barbed wire and fences covered the playground. It looked like a makeshift, armed military outpost.

"What you need to do next is extract the hidden data, whether through a direct assault or by infiltrating in disguise. As long as you can fool these low-level AIs and get the data, you'll pass the test."

After the teacher finished speaking, he let the students explore on their own. Normally, to pass the first-year high school final exam, an individual would need to find a way to retrieve the protected data. However, the students' current abilities are far from what they were before the end of their first year. So even if dozens of students worked together, it was unlikely they could extract the hidden data. This space was simply to give them a practical training opportunity.

Mo Chengzi tested the equipment he was wearing. He quickly became familiar with how it worked, since it was designed by the original owner of this body. The design wasn't particularly good, but it was still considered quite advanced for his class.

The powered armor he's wearing is primarily designed for speed. In a network context, it would be essentially a personal application whose main advantage is data transfer.

It can quickly launch attacks at different addresses of the firewall of the defense program, and the most intuitive manifestation of this after neural connection is high speed.

As for the intensity of data attacks, they are much weaker. A classmate of mine is equipped with offensive gear, which, from a data visualization perspective, looks like he's wearing heavy armor and is equipped with heavy firepower.

It might seem that the opponent has greater destructive power. However, the actual effectiveness in combat might not be very good. This is because they are learning hacking techniques, not formal electronic warfare techniques. These techniques are not taught in high schools; they are taught in university and are only mastered after joining a large company.

The former refers to the technology used by lone hackers like them to attack the fortresses in front of them. The latter refers to the technology used to build these fortresses. In other words, even if they graduate high school and acquire all their skills, the only thing they can ultimately do is accept jobs to steal data from the databases of large companies, or be hired by smaller companies to act as bodyguards around their databases.

In addition, personalized individual equipment is another reason why high school students are increasingly learning hacking techniques. It's because they need to explore beyond the firewall.

Beyond the black wall lies a data world dominated by artificial intelligence, where hackers cannot access the computing resources of servers within human networks. This is reflected in a visual perspective. The computing power of these servers is essentially equivalent to heavy equipment, ammunition, and energy.

Therefore, the best way to operate outside the Great Firewall and acquire its technology and intelligence is to travel as lightly as possible, leverage the advantages of human hacker thinking and inspiration, and venture out alone to obtain information.

Of course, that's a nicer way of putting it. The reality is that these hackers, whose abilities are generally mediocre, will most likely end up with a huge debt, forced to accept dangerous missions outside the Great Firewall, and then serve as a large number of cannon fodder, exchanging their sheer numbers for the opportunity to steal advanced technology from beyond the firewall.

Therefore, in the data world, the trend of massive server deployment is not suitable for hackers. Anyone can build up a large number of servers; that's just a matter of money. And money is no object for poor students like them. What they can do is maximize the effect with minimal resources.

However, there is competition among students. Those who can afford to retrain are wealthy students who strive for better grades, which in turn secures more training from the school. For them, spending extra money is worthwhile. After all, many industries have limited spots. It's only by spending money that you can squeeze in. Talent alone, without money, won't even get you a chance to get in.

Mo Chengzi knew that if he tried to work in the same way as the original owner of this body, he definitely wouldn't be able to compete with the wealthier guys in his class. They had already begun to heavily armor themselves, using chips and cloud servers to convert more data into energy and ammunition. This was equivalent to light infantry fighting tanks on the battlefield; the difference in strength between the two sides was naturally vast.

Even if Mo Chengzi now has some ways to make money, he still can't outdo these guys unless he can find other ways to earn money. But he's not in a hurry, because he feels that the test before him seems to be in his area of ​​strength.

He had almost mastered the programming logic of this world. To his surprise, the programming logic of the information domain in this universe was almost identical to the underlying logic of the code running in the Mountain and River Republic, which he was familiar with, and even had some rather strange aspects. They were remarkably similar.

Many syntaxes don't necessarily arise logically. In a naturally evolving programming language, achieving the same effect might require drastically different logic and syntax. If the underlying logic is different, learning that language will be significantly more difficult.

But this thing in front of him felt strangely familiar, making the doubts that had been lingering in his mind even more profound.

This situation is actually quite normal. The Ghostly Demon Lord ultimately only created a series of small worlds. He couldn't possibly maintain so many universes functioning normally like the real world.

The number of people he has eliminated so far is not too large. Much of the universe he maintains is like a single-player game; only the area observable by the protagonist is visible. Other areas are hidden to save on computation.

In other words, the world they inhabit is only as large as the area they can observe. However, this is something they themselves will almost never be able to verify.

Mo Chengzi may not see through this point, but the similarities in programming languages ​​are enough to make him think of many things.

The Ghostly Demon Lord cannot create a real world. Therefore, it's even less likely that he could evolve a completely different programming language logic from scratch; this is indeed a loophole. Because programming, compared to mathematics, is actually closer to a language—a language with a more rigorous logical structure.

Language, whether hieroglyphic or alphabetic, lacks inherent consistency. Its grammar isn't governed by natural laws but rather by human design. Therefore, even subtle differences in the development of civilization can lead to vastly different syntaxes in programming languages. However, even if this flaw exists, few would be aware of it. With increased exposure to different worlds, they could easily dismiss it using theories of projection effects between them. The idea of ​​parallel universes remains quite convincing.

Mo Chengzi didn't voice his doubts. No one else suggested it either, but he took advantage of his strengths in this area. Since the programming language's logic was similar to that of the Shanhe Republic, he had a lot to learn. He could draw upon the techniques of the finished programs.

While he might not be considered a top-tier technical expert, nor particularly outstanding in the field of information technology within the Republic of Shanhe, he certainly lacked mastery of the most advanced technologies. It's like asking any random Earthling to program a large-scale language model of artificial intelligence from scratch—that's something he couldn't possibly do.

Even if many large language models are packaged together, they are only a dozen gigabytes in size, which is not something that just any ordinary person on Earth can handle.

However, if you randomly pick an Earthling and ask them to program a program that can output "hello world", the probability of them being able to do it is much higher.

If we raise the difficulty slightly, to the point where we can independently create a stable, small program, then we can still find plenty of people who can do that.

As an elite qualified to apply for immortality, Mo Chengzi's level in the field of information technology in the Republic of Shanhe is roughly equivalent to that of a programmer on Earth who can independently undertake some outsourced projects.

While not top-tier, such a person is certainly far more professional than the average person. Even if you threw them back to the late 20th century, when computer technology was far less advanced than it is now, and when there weren't nearly as many useful programming tools, they could still use their accumulated knowledge to spark a technological revolution that would change the times.

The cyber-era world before them served as precisely such a stage, and the information technology level of the Shanhe Republic was several levels higher than that of the cyber-era. This gave Mo Chengzi, a programmer who was merely considered decent in China, a significant advantage upon arriving here. Although he didn't yet possess a technical advantage over local hackers, that was because he hadn't yet upgraded his programming tools.

It's like even the most skilled programmer. If you throw him back into the era of operating computers with punched paper tape, he would first have to drive technological development and thoroughly study how punched paper tape was used before he could gradually leverage his leading-edge advantage.

However, once this advantage accumulates, it will snowball, growing bigger and bigger. Just like now, after backing up his equipment on the school's server, he, like the other students, took that same gear and went to that heavily guarded fortress school to his death.

What he needs to do now is test the effectiveness of these programs on his body and then make improvements based on his own ideas.

As expected, he had just charged into the fortress academy's firing range in his power armor when he was driven back by the fierce fire of the sentry guns. If he hadn't been a speed-type character and hadn't run fast enough, his entire suit of equipment would have been destroyed.

Back in the rest area, as he expected, after opening the command-line interface of his program, he saw one red error message after another.

This is the state the program appears to be after it has been attacked. To fix it, the malfunctioning program must be corrected. They were operating within a virtual machine at the school. If this kind of intrusion were performed using one's own physical device, after an attack, it's not just necessary to repair the program; the hardware damaged after the attack must also be repaired, and any viruses remaining on the hardware must be cleaned.

However, in the school's simulated environment, these problems are easy to solve. If you feel your equipment isn't worth repairing, you can simply format your system from the school's server and replace it with your own saved copy.

The simulated environment on the server won't directly damage the school's hardware. After all, the hardware is their own. The students' programs are essentially running on simulators partitioned within the server. Deleting the simulator itself will also remove any viruses that might interfere with the programs.

Unlike his classmates who directly formatted their damaged equipment, Mo Chengzi quickly operated in the command-line interface. This is where his previously honed skills came in handy. Thirty hands were projected onto his screen, rapidly writing and inputting code.

You can't use your thoughts to perform neural connections in the command-line interface. Code needs to be as precise as possible. Changing even a single character could cause the entire program to crash.

Therefore, the vast majority of code must be done manually. Even if you want to reduce your workload, you might as well just copy and paste someone else's finished code. When pasting, you should try your best to understand the content of the other person's code, and at the very least, you should understand the functions and interfaces in detail.

After most students failed miserably in their attempts to break through the defenses, they started searching online for and purchasing paid resources. In this era, manually programming to improve one's offensive program is clearly too inefficient; after all, the code you painstakingly devised may have already been written by someone else. It's much better to download a ready-made solution than to write it character by character yourself.

However, in this highly cyber-industrialized society, programs also have copyrights and prices. If you want to use those programs with outstanding effects, you have to find a way to buy them. If you encounter those tough opponents with patents, you have to buy patent licenses. As long as you use this code, you have to pay patent fees every once in a while.

Therefore, if students want to become better, they not only need to learn the principles of programming, but also need to learn how to save money and how to buy the best finished program with the least amount of money.

[To be continued]

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