Gino led him to the back of the boxing gym. The staff passage was filled with stacked goods, and gang members sneaking a smoke and watching prohibited Super Sensing Chips during patrol time. The corridor was lit by only a few dim lights. She lifted the plastic sheeting and nimbly climbed onto the pile of junk. John followed behind Gino’s rear, crawling through an old abandoned pipe section... They actually ended up on the second floor of the boxing gym. "This is the storage area, and my temporary bedroom too." Gino and Macao both relied on running the boxing gym to make a living. Compared to the often-vacant rental apartment, the few square meters of this cubicle contained the girl’s childhood and most of her youth. John stood on the creaky scaffolding, and if he listened closely, he could hear various noises coming from the gaps. The bustling customers. The languid whispers in the dark corners of the mall. Using a storage area as a room wasn’t a unique idea; every homeless or cost-saving business owner would do the same. John also saw the lock Gino mentioned. It was just an old industrial U-shaped iron piece— you could buy a synthetic burger for the orphans in the alleyways, and they’d unlock it for you. Behind the small iron door was her independent workspace. But Gino didn’t touch the lock. After narrowly escaping death from a Ghoul, she had given Macao, who was exhausted, ample assurance. John glanced around, caught by certificates with curled edges on the wall. [Item: Graduation Certificate] "Holy shit, you’re a graduate of Eden Public School? And in Network Engineering to boot!" "Macao likes that piece of paper more than I do." Gino flicked a cigarette out and tossed it to John. "That damned place, aside from burdening poor folks like us with unpayable loans, only had campus bullying and class discrimination." "What about the company’s recruitment program?" "Signing those contracts that make you drop dead, enjoy a medical package to replace organs with electronic ones after liver failure." Gino took two drags. "Idiots whose grades were way worse than mine sat in spacious offices, calling female employees in for queue ’casting couch’ sessions through the speakers." John let out a couple of wry chuckles. "Who got kidnapped this time?" John blurted out a name. He mentioned that just a few hours ago at Harbor Company, he had spoken with the hacker in the Deep Diving Suit about her. "You’re friend from the same circle?" She started to brief John. Within the public network of Eden City, there are many small gateways leading to hidden spaces, where many hackers gather to exchange and explore, engaging in various trades. Some talented hackers not absorbed by companies grouped together, forming small organizations. They learn from each other, share their technical achievements, and become friends. Gino’s organization is called the Wanderer Alliance. The members are economically underprivileged city dwellers but possess unique talents in certain tech fields, frequently sharing their lives and emotions online. The founder of Wanderer Alliance went missing. Her nickname was Serum, frequently guiding other members, and was a renowned super hacker in the underground world. "You want me to find your online friend?" John felt a bit prickly. "Serum has been missing for over half a year." Gino shook her head. "She left a Pandora’s Box online, rumored to be hidden in the data labyrinth which attracted much attention, but there’s still no concrete evidence that it truly exists." "Everyone cares about her legacy, but only the friends of Wanderer Alliance worry about Serum’s safety." Until the day before yesterday... A member named Baseball Bat reportedly found clues related to Serum’s disappearance, tied to the Plato Company’s recent warehouse explosion case. ʀᴇᴀᴅ ʟᴀᴛᴇsᴛ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀᴛ 𝓷𝓸𝓿𝓮𝓵•𝓯𝓲𝓻𝓮•𝓷𝓮𝓽 He also mentioned something about memory-related technology. He didn’t get a chance to upload the relevant information before being forcibly taken offline. Hearing a few keywords, John’s eyebrows twitched. "Tinfoil and I both suspect Internet Surveillance is involved." The network world of the Cyber Era is quite special. Due to a world-class terror action, the old network completely collapsed decades ago. Then with rampant smart AIs, coupled with corporate wars and city-state independence incidents, the new network we use today was finally built. Its bottom-level structure is very rudimentary but extremely deep, almost extending its tentacles into every aspect of life. The world has been divided into independent cities, each human settlement having its own LAN. To safeguard public safety, the Cyber Era has a dedicated organization managing the network environment, called... Internet Surveillance. "Let me get this straight." John rubbed his brow. "You guys stretched your hands into a company with a complete network department and cutting-edge market firewalls to investigate a friend’s disappearance, and now someone’s missing!" "Earlier, Baseball Bat came online again, sent a mobile coordinate and a plea for help, saying he had information about Serum." She thought John was reluctant to get involved because he found it troublesome. "Serum’s intel could sell for a high price on the black market. We just need to know what happened to her, sell the news, and then you take the money!" John was a bit surprised. But Gino shook her head with a wry smile. "We can all be concerned about Serum, but with just the strength of Wanderer Alliance, we can’t stir up any storm. Only by getting more treasure-seeking hacker hunters to join this game can we possibly dig out more clues."