Qingge's average typing speed is 32, with a peak speed reaching nearly 40. However, in hacker battles, it's often a matter of both sides being equally strong. Therefore, Qingge realized at this point that her typing speed had actually reached its maximum.
But why are they not as good as the other side?
Chen Xu is now fighting against him and his bots almost single-handedly. He has the advantage in hand speed, but there are so many bots. Why can't he gain the upper hand?
His chickens were being chopped up like vegetables, one by one! Because of his defense!
Love Song immediately noticed that he was inputting nearly 40 commands per minute, but half of them were defensive to counter the opponent's attacks! Meanwhile, the opponent's 35 commands were entirely used for offense!
The difference in quality is immediately apparent!
He didn't spare a single bit of energy for defense? Did he really think this hacking competition was purely for friendship, and that it wouldn't matter even if his IP was exposed?
With that kind of attitude, he doesn't deserve to be a hacker at all!
Because the battle between hackers is no child's play; many hackers have a hidden side, or rather, they don't want to reveal their online identities. So, being exposed is the ultimate defeat for a hacker… just like when SMMH punished the arrogant Snake. Publicly revealing the identities of all of them was the ultimate punishment for them!
Love Song felt she needed to teach this kid a lesson.
The current competition is like having to defend against the opponent while simultaneously attacking. The result of being distracted is naturally no match for his single-minded and all-out offensive. And Qing Ge has to admit that if it were him, not to mention whether he could completely let go and attack without defending, in terms of style alone, he could not achieve Chen Xu's wildness and passion.
Style, habits.
When a hacker pays special attention to his defense, his offense will inevitably be hampered.
Of course, hackers don't always have to be so blatant; attacks on love songs also have their own unique methods.
Avoid their strengths, bypass their most powerful attacks, and use the lure of easy prey to keep them from dealing with you!
Using this method, Qingge bypassed Chen Xu and entered his system.
Just as he was about to destroy the system and win, he found that his data deluge had crashed into a shield!
Zhan Jing is behind Chen Xu!
Chapter 240 Chen Xu's Shield (Part 2)
The computer playing the love song quickly went out of control and was compromised by Chen Xu. After eliminating another opponent, Chen Xu didn't linger and rushed to the next battlefield, raising his long sword to strike down the next enemy.
Love Song, however, was stunned in front of her computer.
Daylily and water lily!
It must be her!
Love Song had faced off against Xuancao Jiangli before, and the impeccable defense and the fatal blow at the crucial moment had left a deep impression on him!
Xuancao isn't a girl with exceptionally fast hand speed; her average hand speed is only forty effective outputs per minute, a fact known to some hackers in the Red Hacker Alliance. While forty per second sounds impressive, relative to Xuancao's skill level, she's considered one of the slower players.
The top members of the Red Hacker Alliance all have an average hand speed of over 55!
But what's most terrifying about Xuancao is that her hand speed of 40 is enough to rival those masters with a hand speed of 60 or higher!
Because of her meticulous operations, or micro-management for short.
Hackers need two things when inputting commands: speed and accuracy. But beyond accuracy, there's another level... the effectiveness of the commands!
Correct instructions and valid instructions are not entirely the same thing.
A correct command simply means that the command output by the hacker in that single second is correct and can achieve its intended purpose. However, effectiveness means that the command output by the hacker in that single second can restrain the opponent and play a significant role!
To put it simply, correct execution is like the number of times a boxer lands a punch, while effective execution is like striking the opponent's vital points!
To output this kind of operation, the most crucial factor is having fast mental calculation speed! You even need to be able to anticipate the other person's actions and then use effective actions in a timely manner!
For hackers, thirty correct outputs per minute is a threshold, but in terms of effective operations, ten effective operations per minute are considered a mark of skill.
Even someone as skilled as Blue Baby, with an average hand speed of 60 clicks per minute, could only execute no more than 25 effective commands!
As for Xuancao Jiangli, also known as Zhan Jing, her average hand speed is only forty moves per minute, but her effective operation is comparable to that of Blue Baby!
In other words, her success rate in effectively operating the system is 60%!
The highest in the entire Red Hacker Alliance!
This is a level of skill that commands respect; even Blue Baby had to admit that her apprentice had far surpassed her in effective execution, truly demonstrating that the student has surpassed the teacher.
So the love song immediately recognized that the person behind ICE was actually Xuan Cao Jiang Li!
No wonder this kid is focusing all his energy on offense and completely abandoning his defense! He knows he has a master player with over 60% effective execution behind him!
Love Song sighed helplessly, pushed away the keyboard, and only then did his teammates realize he had lost. They quickly called out, "You lost?"
"We lost." Love Song sighed: "In terms of direct combat, none of us could stop that crazy guy who only knows how to attack, and behind him, Xuan Cao was responsible for defense."
"Daylily?!"
Love Song looked at the screen with a hint of jealousy. ICE, do you know that ever since Blue Baby got married, Xuan Cao has been the top unmarried female hacker in the country? I've heard she's incredibly beautiful, the dream girl of countless hackers. And what makes you so special? That Xuan Cao Jiang Li can be your shield? What makes you so special that Xuan Cao Jiang Li willingly gives up her attacks and quietly stays behind you?!
It's important to understand that Xuan Cao's true strength lies not in her defense, but in her offense!
Chen Xu didn't know all this. Zhan Jing was an enigmatic girl to him. In fact, besides Gao Xiaojie, who was rather straightforward, the other two girls around him were also like mysteries. Even the most straightforward Gao Xiaojie had her own hidden thoughts.
As the saying goes, "Boys shouldn't try to guess what girls are thinking," so Chen Xu simply stopped thinking about it. As for Zhan Jing, he didn't know Xuan Cao Jiang Li's status and true strength in the Red Hacker Alliance, but he relied on his intuition. He trusted Zhan Jing and believed that she could protect him.
Not for any other reason than trust. There are still seven enemies left, but you must know, Young Fatty is no pushover. Although Chen Xu is in charge of the main attack, this fatso won't let anyone escape once they fall into his hands. So, Young Fatty quickly took out two, one from the betting team and the other from another team whose name is unknown.
When they learned that the person behind ICE was the renowned Xuancao, the others, who didn't know what name to use, instantly lost their momentum. If their morale wasn't high enough, they were clearly a step below, especially when facing a hacker like Chen Xu with such overwhelming presence; they felt utterly powerless.
So soon, two more people, whose names were unknown, were killed by Chen Xu, and the psychological pressure on the last remaining person instantly reached its peak. At this moment, he was ambushed from behind by Zhong Ziyu.
Originally, Zhong Ziyu was no match for him, given his strength. But at this moment, the man's mind was in turmoil, and the immense psychological pressure caused him to make frequent mistakes, which Zhong Ziyu managed to overcome.
If you don't know what name to choose, the whole army will be wiped out.
Only the betting team was left, and at this moment, Chen Xu eliminated another member of the betting team, leaving only two players.
Accepting defeat, the five people who didn't know what name to choose were initially disappointed, but then they all burst into laughter.
Although they were still somewhat resentful, they accepted their defeat wholeheartedly. The most important reason was that they knew their opponent, Xuancao Jiangli, hadn't used her full potential throughout the entire battle. And ICE, his progress was also rapid; it was foreseeable that he would become a rising star in the Chinese hacker world in the future.
"But he can't always rely on daylilies for defense." After a discussion, the group concluded, "If his offense continues to be trained like this, he will truly be invincible. But this style is like the Seven Injury Fist, which almost always injures himself first and then the opponent. This style can even allow him to defeat opponents stronger than himself, but it is also easy for the opponent to find a loophole and deliver a fatal blow."
But at this moment, Chen Xu was having a great time.
The real battle allowed Chen Xu to better understand his current style, which is characterized by all-out attack without having to consider defense.
And indeed, he doesn't need to defend.
Even without Zhan Jing behind him, he has Xiao Min. Xiao Min is the strongest shield in the world, and Chen Xu only needs to focus on becoming the strongest spear in the world!
At this time, Wu Yuan was probably the one who accomplished the least.
Since entering this system, Wu Yuan's task has been to patch up this completely unprotected operating system.
Even now, despite the fact that the other side has only two people left while the other side has not lost a single person, Wu Yuan is still diligently patching up this riddled operating system.
Patching a system during a hacker's operation is not as simple as an ordinary person downloading a patch from Microsoft's website and then simply double-clicking to install it.
First, if it's an installation, then you need to copy the installation files into the target system... That's several hundred MB of data, how long will it take to copy it in?!
Therefore, hackers usually use disk mapping to map the other party's system disk to their own computer.
Patching doesn't always involve using installation packages; in many cases, it involves modifying system settings manually.
Because Microsoft's patch updates are designed to cater to all users, these updates must be extremely user-friendly. Therefore, Microsoft updates require virtually no user input; they are completely automated after successful download and installation.
For example, if a file needs to be upgraded, Microsoft won't tell you where the file is; it will handle it automatically. While this upgrade method is convenient, it's not suitable for hackers. Wu Yuan, on the other hand, used his self-extracted and integrated installation packages to apply patches while simultaneously using manual methods to fix critical vulnerabilities.
Even with victory within reach, Wu Yuan is still working diligently.
Seeing this serious attitude, both Yingnian Zaofei and Zhan Jing couldn't help but nod in satisfaction. Although Wu Yuan's skills weren't up to par yet, and he didn't have the talent of Chen Xu or the private tutoring from SMMH, just based on his serious attitude, even if it took him a little longer than Chen Xu, he could still become a high-level hacker... As for the top level, that would depend on Wu Yuan's own destiny.
It can be said that neither Yingnian Zaofei nor Zhan Jing used their full strength in this competition, so they now have time to observe the actions of others and thus gain a better understanding of the situation.
Zhan Jing spent most of her time observing Chen Xu. Judging from this match, she found that Chen Xu still had great potential for improvement, regarding his playing style, his mechanics, his hand speed...
Chen Xu didn't dwell on those thoughts. He was exhausted—he'd issued countless commands in the battle so far—but he was also incredibly excited. This was the first time he'd ever felt such exhilaration as a hacker! And in that exhilaration, he was experiencing things he'd never encountered before while studying!
Chen Xu is making progress little by little.
Continuously progressing towards the goal of becoming the world's number one hacker...
Chapter 241 Regrouping
This three-way battle ultimately ended in a complete victory for Chen Xu's "Dogtail Grass Team." A complete victory indeed, as Chen Xu single-handedly defeated the remaining two members of the Spinach Team, nearly single-handedly overcoming seven opposing hackers… Of course, this victory wouldn't have been possible without Zhan Jing's crucial role behind the scenes.
This was originally a friendly competition where the outcome mattered more than the final result. So after Chen Xu and his team won, the other two teams generously offered their congratulations and expressed their hope to have another chance to compete with Chen Xu and his team.
Originally, Qingge wanted to give Chen Xu a few more pointers, but when she thought about how she had just been beaten to death, she realized that it wouldn't be appropriate to speak in the manner of a senior instructing a junior. Besides, Chen Xu had Xuancao and Jiangli by his side, so why would he need to waste his breath?
So the love song was just a simple congratulatory message, wishing them even better results, and then it ended there.
The penultimate round of the hacker competition concluded, and surprisingly, of the original nine groups with 27 teams, only one official match was played in this round—by Blue Baby's group. The remaining eight groups, totaling twenty-four teams, remarkably opted for a three-way free-for-all, a private match. Then, just as the penultimate round was about to begin, seventeen teams simultaneously announced they were outmatched and withdrew from the competition… Sixteen of these were the two teams that lost the three-way battles in the other eight groups, and the last one was Blue Baby's group… Upon learning that their opponent was none other than the leader of the Red Hacker Alliance, she promptly forfeited the match. This left the Red Hacker Alliance's leadership both amused and exasperated.
There's no way around it; the most important aspect of the hacker spirit is freedom.
These hackers were all used to being laid-back. Although the Red Hacker Alliance had a military background, none of them considered themselves superior. Everyone chatted very peacefully, and as long as it wasn't too outrageous, it was okay to joke around.
So this is the result of too much freedom!
Nobody cares about the schedule arranged by the organizing committee anymore; they just type it out themselves and have fun!
After all, this wasn't a particularly formal competition.
But this has put a lot of pressure on the reporters at those portal websites who are preparing follow-up reports.
The first two rounds of the hacker competition weren't particularly exciting. It wasn't until the third round, the round of 27, that things started to get interesting. This was because some weaker teams had been eliminated, and the competition truly reached its climax at this point.
The problem is that these habitually undisciplined hackers don't seem to care about the organizing committee at all. They got carried away and started forming their own gangs to fight amongst themselves... I heard that two teams even swapped groups!
Once hackers are grouped, they definitely can't be swapped. It's like when China was grouped for the World Cup; they didn't want to be in the same group as Brazil and wanted to be in a weaker group... How could they possibly let you switch?
These laid-back hackers were just participating for fun, and then two teams swapped names... Anyway, their team names were just random choices, without any special meaning or purpose for fame. So, the teams ended up switching groups...
What a tragedy!
Lion, the founder of the Red Hacker Alliance, couldn't help but twitch his lips after learning about this. He uttered a classic line: "Organized, but undisciplined!"
So now the top nine have been decided. The nine teams, a total of forty-five people, are gathered in a chat room, where Big Sister Blue Baby is pointing at this group of organized but undisciplined guys and scolding them.