Criminal Psychology

It was an abandoned high-rise building.

As the city developed rapidly, unfinished buildings gradually increased. This high-rise seemed nothing but an ordinary, unfinished one among many others. Except for its remote location, there was nothing remarkable about it.

The lower part of the building still had some curtain wall glass attached, while the upper part was entirely empty.

When looking up, one could vaguely see the hollow floors erected by rebar and cement, which looked like a dark nest hiding some sinister creatures. However, unless you rose to the same height, you would never know what was hidden in these hollow floors.

Even if you sent up a drone, you wouldn’t be able to see what was inside. After all, a geek’s den wasn’t so easily spied upon.

In fact, to reach the floors of this abandoned building, one must make a special contribution in a certain field and also avoid being recruited by the government. Such special contributions include hacking into the official website of a country’s Ministry of Defense, and after completing this task, you must publish all the code online. Otherwise, it wasn’t cool enough.

These complicated rules, peculiar interests, and a lack of clear regulations had made this building a holy place for many “special talents”.

However, for Wang Chao, all he had to do to get upstairs was to step into the elevator.

Beside him were constant buzzing of electricity and the sound of wind sweeping past his ears. Sometimes, the wind was so strong that he even had the illusion that he must hold onto the table tightly or else he would be blown away.

Every time this happened, he would yell in anger, “Damn it, why can’t you guys install a few pieces of glass?”

His shouting had the violent temper of a Xing Conglian, which proved that his mood was indeed very bad at the moment.

Meanwhile, someone around him would often appease him in the sycophantic tone of Xing Conglian. “Boss, we need to properly cool down these servers. Didn’t we choose this building because of its gloomy atmosphere?”

Wang Chao wanted to curse, but at this moment he couldn’t spare any mental capacity to scold others. Only he knew how crucial a role he was playing in the whole plan.

Simply put, he had to locate the enemy’s server within 24 hours, and then someone else would be responsible for finding it.

This operation was necessary for three reasons:

First, the behind-the-scenes boss was likely to use the darknet to issue tasks, so controlling the server would cut off the enemy’s communication network. Although this was a temporary solution, it was better than nothing during special times.

Second, locating the hosting server meant finding the enemy’s weak point, where every byte of information was extremely important to them.

Third, if the operation was successful, it would mean that they had developed a deterrent against the enemy.

However, while the ideal was beautiful, unless they could infiltrate the system like the Americans over several years, it would be hard to find an exact way to eliminate a darknet site completely. But almost impossible didn’t mean completely impossible.

In reality, there were some algorithms that could estimate the location of the host based on the linear relationship between latency and geographical distance.

With topology information to reduce location errors and probability statistics to summarize the distribution rule of latency and geographical distance, as well as linear mapping of latency and geographical distance, they might be able to narrow down the server’s location to an area of 50 to 100 square kilometers. After that, it was a matter of exhaustive search.

In the beginning, the national government exerted great effort, and he also utilized all of his and his boss’ connections to lay numerous measurement nodes globally. Although there were still blank areas, they couldn’t care less about that.

To ensure the accuracy of latency measurement, it was best to have an accurate time point, which was why 12:00 noon GMT was chosen.

He remembered when he tentatively asked his A’Chen Gege and got the affirmative answer of “should be able to”.

Damn it, A’Chen Gege really made it happen.

So now all the pressure was back on him. Whether it was useful or not, he had to find the location of that damn server as soon as possible.

Time was ticking away.

He was still immersed in the sea of data streams. Sometimes he even felt that writing an AI program might be easier than locating a dark web server here.

But obviously, he didn’t have time to write an AI program now, let alone time to reassess the difficulty.

All he could do was sort everything out before the enemy got desperate.

But just then, someone gently tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Boss Chao, I must interrupt you. You said you must be informed at this time.”

Wang Chao stood up abruptly.

……

It was a long and vast queue, stretching as far as the eye could see.

Under the scorching sun, an untold number of people were lining up.

People rarely conversed, just moving forward one after another, entering the blue tent to cast their votes before emerging.

This scene was like a well-ordered and massive ant migration, and humans were just another such group.

No one knew exactly when this state of affairs had started.

Many people came out because they were influenced by this scene on the news, while others simply wanted to vote in person at the polling station, only to accidentally hit the peak.

Among those in line, some were young, some were old, some were students in school uniforms, and some were mothers holding their children.

None of them had a particularly unified label that could categorize them, and even their expression and the choices they were about to make varied.

And looking at this scene, one might even think: Are there really so many people in this world?’

What are they here for? To participate in an absurd choice that could only appear in TV dramas and movies?

But when you saw so many people standing right in the middle while you were among them, you realized that, in fact, everyone made choices and judgments every day, and these choices and judgments often became the past in an instant.

So, it was rare to have such a unified moment for everyone to leave their homes and to make a “yes” or “no” decision on a very simple question.

There were, of course, journalists stationed on the scene, but at this moment, they too gave up taking pictures and interviewing.

Initially, it was because many people were silent and shook their heads. Although some people answered the reasons, everyone’s thoughts were very different. Later, even the journalists who wanted to dig deeper didn’t want to disturb this state.

Meanwhile, the family members who were distributing flyers were still doing so, and there were citizens voluntarily helping them, but there were no more cries and pleas at the scene.

The atmosphere here was heavy, serious, somewhat sad, yet extraordinarily resolute—it was difficult to describe in words.

But when people were doing the same thing without any agreement, there would always be an awe-inspiring moment.

What Wang Chao saw was exactly this live broadcast from Yongchuan TV Station.

There were people he knew and didn’t know around him, among whom were geniuses who naturally had a hard time perceiving normal human emotions, but when facing this scene, the entire empty floor was silent. It was like everyone seemed to have lost their ability to speak.

It took a long time for Wang Chao to recover with great effort.

He forced himself to look at another monitor data screen—the government voting website that he coded himself. The figures on it had reached the critical point calculated by Lin Chen before, meaning the real peak of voting; the moment when people had thought carefully and decided to make a choice, had arrived.

Wang Chao felt unprecedented pressure.

To put it in a humorous way, he didn’t have much time left. After all, there was no knowing when that lunatic would realize that this vote was a complete trap.

The vote wasn’t to prove the selfishness or selflessness of human nature. Its only purpose was to force most people to think carefully about moral dilemmas. If one must explain forcibly, solving the initial voting dilemma and delaying time were also its purposes.

And now that the purpose had been achieved—the only matter left was to put it into action!

“What are you all stunned for? Get to it! Are we really going to lose to a bunch of idiots I don’t even look up to?” The teenager roared, rushing back to his computer, and finally looked back at the voting screen, seemingly gaining some kind of strength from this silent operation.

……

On campus, Fang Aizi, who just finished her physical education class, splashed water on her flushed cheeks. She took out her phone from her zippered pocket, opened the page, and chose “No”.

Outside the hospital ward, Mr. Zhai had just parted with Mrs. Su. Despite the gentle lady’s advice not to be too obsessed with this matter before parting, he still took out his phone without hesitation and chose “Yes” before passing by the emergency room.

On the street, Jiang Zhao, who had been maintaining order at the voting site, filled out his ballot. He cut in line and asked a construction worker about to open the curtain to put his ballot in the box for him. He chose “No”.

In the laboratory, the analysis hit a wall again. A bunch of old experts were talking in low voices. Xiao Zhan looked at that pile of chemical bonds, finally made up his mind, and made the bravest choice in his life. He chose “Yes”.

In front of the desk, Zhai Yong, who hadn’t made a choice, still refused to make one.

In the beef noodle shop, the old shopkeeper who was boiling soup ladled out a spoonful of chili oil, and almost uncontrollably, extremely angrily splashed it on the television.

On either side of the square table in the detention center, Shen Lian asked Lin Chen, “So, how would you choose, Consultant Lin?”