Chapter One: The Unluckiest Operations Engineer on the Internet

He left the server room as the rain-washed city woke. Little Seven lounged in the corner of his phone. “Administrator, seventy-three companies just asked who solved the incident. Highest offer: two million.” Lin stopped walking. For eight years, he had traded time for wages and silence for job security. For the first time, he saw that a crisis was not only blame. It could be a mine. “Don’t accept anything yet. Find where tonight’s abnormal traffic went.” Little Seven was silent for two seconds. Her smile vanished. A world network map unfolded. Billions of sparks streamed from every region toward a black coordinate absent from every map. In the darkness, something vast breathed like a city. 【Unknown region generating. Completion: 0.003%.】