The next morning Yang Dao called his teachers and directly asked for five days' leave of absence. His skills and knowledge were not doubted and the teachers all knew how capable this guy was. So they approved the leave.

Yang Dao planned to use these five days to complete the coding. Also, brush up on some knowledge and factual arguments about his upcoming debate. After dealing with the college he hailed a call to Yurika.

"Hellooo..." a lazy voice came from the other end. Seemingly the girl woke up just about now. Yang Dao raised his wrist and glanced at his wrist. He said in a scolding manner, "Say, Rika, do you think that I own the company you can be lazy? It is already 9. You should be in the office by now."

Yurika sensed that she was in for a scolding from the boss. So she said, "I am just leaving. I promise not to be lazy and late in the future."

Yang Dao only snorted and disconnected the call. He then dialed Mary's phone, he first told her to not be easy on Yurika, also to deduct her salary for the day. Then he asked her to find him a company that manufacturers proximity sensors and order a carton for him.

Mary was already at the office and when she heard how Yang Dao talked to her with a neutral tone. She had a thought in her heart, 'These two siblings sure have similar ways of doing business.'

After disconnecting her phone Yang Dao sat down in front of his PC. He started coding and forgot about the rest of the world. He never felt any discomfort regarding the temperature and thus did not even switch on the Air Conditioner. It was already lunchtime when he decided to take a break.

Just as he was about to stand up. The computer system sent him a notification. The boy raised his eyebrow as he muttered, "So, they finally could not hold back."

The notification was sent by the firewall protection he built on his computer. He sat back down in the chair and did not move. He observed what the other party was doing. A smirk appeared on his face. His fingers snapped, a rhythmic sound erupted. His fingers turned into afterimages as he countered the incoming attempt to heck his computer.

The other party was trying to invade and then plant a monitoring bug inside his system. They will be able to steal and monitor his activities. Both personal and professional. How could Yang Dao let them do it?

The boy did not need to defend himself so what he did was to track down the invader. The invading party was clever. They used signal jumping. As soon as Yang Dao was about to reach the rope's end, the location will change. Suddenly the rhythm of his typing changed. After a few minutes, the invasion stopped.

...

Crypto Nation, Cyber Police Bureau.

A young man sat in front of a PC. His age was slightly older than Ray. He had blonde hair, between his lips a cigarette was placed. A few moments before he was typing rigorously and trying to heck into a personal server to place a monitoring bug. What he did not expect was the other party to counterattack them.

On the screen, a dialog box was flashing. The prompt said, 'Hello, how do you think of my skills?'

The Youngman dared not to reply or engage in a conversation. he directly pressed a button place beside him. This button was like an alarm. It was present on all the desks. Soon the whole place rang out with an alarm.

Soon a lot of officials gathered by his side. A bald man asked, "What happened? Why did you press the alarm?"

The young man said, "We were counter hacked."

Everyone was surprised and then they all started laughing. They all thought that it was a joke. The bald man said, "Duke, how can someone hack us. We are the Crypto nation. Do you mean that hairy kid from the heap of shiny stones can hack us back? You sure can joke."

The young man shouted, "YOU OVERCONFIDENT PIECES OF SHIT. WE WERE COUNTER HACKED. DO YOU THINK I AM JOKING?"

His roars interrupted the laughter. They all saw the young man pointing at the computer. There was a dialog box on the screen.

The atmosphere suddenly descended into chaos. As the people were thinking about how to deal with the prompt, whether to reply or not, another alarm went off. The People were shocked because the alarm came from the mainframe. The gathered staff quickly ran to the mainframe room and they yelled anxiously, "Cut off from the grid. Quickly."

A technician pulled the plug down quickly. The whole mainframe was forced to shut down. This was the first time something like this to happen. Within fifteen minutes the whole nation found out that one of the major governmental departments was hacked and forced to shut down. The government denied any of such questions and pretended to be normal on the surface.

The young man responsible for hacking Yang Dao's system was interrogated on how did this happen. He told everyone about the process and they were all shocked. To think the most powerful hacker in their department could not get past the firewalls. Yet the other party countered and even tracked them down. They had no idea how much Data did the other party copy.

They decided to hold a meeting with the higher-ups, they cannot take such a thing lying down.

...

Sapphire lake residency. Jewel nation.

Yang Dao sat in front of the computer screen, gazing and studying a lot of notes. What he did was not copy the data, but use the mainframe of the CPB to invade the closed net of Crypto nation. He speculated that the opponent will shut down the system so he prepared a two-pronged plan. The invasion was done in two steps. The first step was to invade the mainframe, trigger the alarm, distract people from safeguarding the closed net entry. Patch the code to his hack and using the mini window enter the closed net.

When Yang Dao visited the crypto nation in the past. He had already gathered a lot of information for the future. How did he do it? He wrote a patch software for someone he met in a cyber cafe. That person made money and gave him all the info he needed. (Yes, that is the plot armor. But I am trying to be as logical as possible here.)

What he did after invading the closed net was to cover his tracks and extract the information regarding his two projects. He was learning for the people, improvising it, and then make it yours. He called Atsuji Kurogame. The call connected after a few minutes.

Yang Dao spoke, "Elder Atsuji. I have some information you might find useful..." the two people talked, and then the boy sent an encrypted file to Atsuji. This file contained a list of agents and spies planted inside the various departments of the government and the society of the nation. Some were high society civilians while some were just poor beggars. Every single one of them was listed in the file.

Not only that, but he also found a list of such people inside the allied nations and sent it over. The motive was to strengthen and scare those nations that since they found about the Crypto nation's snare. They can find out about them as well.

Using the code Yang Dao discovered from the hack he rectified some flaws in his own code and then also improvised some areas. The codes he wrote were in a different language than the Crypto Nation's but the knowledge was similar. It took him one hour to complete his debugging. Just when he was about to go at it again.

The door was knocked, Lisa walked inside. She spoke softly, "Young Master your meal."

Yang Dao looked at her and the monitor and then he stood up to pick the food. A soup and two main dishes were prepared. He took in a bite and asked, "Did you learn it from the net?"

Lisa nodded shyly, "Yesternight, you cooked. I felt bad and since you said I should learn then I started with cooking."

Yang Dao nodded and said, "Salt is to be used according to your own preference. Do not follow everything down to the words. Explore more, and then you will rectify your flaws. Only when you stumble and fall, can you actually learn about the true balance." his voice was calm and he ate with no change on his face.

Lisa was enlightened by his words though. After the meal, Yang Dao went back to coding. His speed after learning from the codes he got from the Crypto nation. His speed and efficiency increased. It was evening when a guest arrived.

This guest was both uninvited and hostile to Yang Dao.