Chapter 72 Response

Chapter 72 Response

Once the New Year passed, everyone's vacation ended. The data experiments for the Volition Project had already completed fifty sets.

Starting from the twenty-fifth set, Jing Miao's Talent assistance was no longer needed. Zhong Yuan had simulated a pheromone environment with approximately 70% similarity based on Jing Miao's pheromone gene sequence.

The resistance rate had also increased to 27. According to regulations, the pharmaceutical department could begin preparing for the project proposal.

However, some issues arose within the Department of Genomics.

"If Director Xi cannot present the original pheromone Talent gene sequence, it's hard for us to be convinced. A mere 70% simulated environment could lead to vastly different final experimental data."

Xi Siyan pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling somewhat weary.

Research disputes were normal, but he couldn't hand over Jing Miao's complete pheromone gene sequence. The situation was also different now. At E-Yan's Gene Research Institute, he could have the final say, but here they were within the Alliance.

"Due to the Talent individual's wishes, I cannot comply with everyone's request." Xi Siyan displayed the statistics from tens of thousands of experimental runs conducted over the past months. "Looking at the reactor data, the rate of inert response has already exceeded 50%. This data was generated based on the simulated environment and aligns with our initial goal: to achieve scientific results with minimal reliance on the Talent."

Xi Siyan frowned, watching them argue heatedly.

Zhong Yuan rapped his knuckles on the table. "Everyone, isn't the Gene Inhibitor project timeline moving a bit too fast? If there are doubts about my simulated environment, we can also continue to increase the sample size."

"Director Zhong, since the Gene Inhibitor project was initiated, not to mention E-Yan with its most notable achievements, even Lanwu, as the city-state that first proposed the concept of gene inhibition, it's been seventeen years now."

Zhong Yuan tried to placate this Special Officer. "I understand. You've misunderstood my meaning. But we all clearly know two things: first, in scientific experiments, we absolutely cannot coerce any participant; second, the consequences of overly rapid technological advancement are obvious. I believe we should prioritize stability rather than attempting to make quick progress through shortcuts, right?"

"You!"

For a moment, the meeting room broke into an uproar. Apart from Xi Siyan, Zhong Yuan, and a few researchers from E-Yan, only Song Fuxue sat quietly, not saying a word.

"Professor Song, what do you think?" Unable to reach a decision or convince Xi Siyan, they could only turn to Song Fuxue, the most accomplished among them.

A faint smile touched the woman's lips, her voice cold. "This value doesn't pass muster for me."

The researcher who asked her breathed a sigh of relief. "If even Professor Song cannot accept it, Director Xi, you should reconsider."

She sat drinking water, her gaze meeting Xi Siyan's coolly.

Tsk, that little Alpha brat. Song Fuxue mentally complained about him. With a face like thunder, this Talent individual definitely isn't Gan Zisen.

"I haven't finished." Song Fuxue interrupted, cutting off their relieved expressions. "I believe the value doesn't meet the standard because the sample size is insufficient."

Xi Siyan raised an eyebrow, slightly surprised.

"Teacher Song, you..."

Before everyone could recover from Song Fuxue's apparent support for Xi Siyan's position, an alarm suddenly sounded outside.

"What's going on?" Zhong Yuan stood up abruptly. "Isn't that the combat readiness alarm?"

Xi Siyan put down the capacitive pen in his hand and also walked towards the window. He had just taken a step when his communicator beeped and connected: "Hello, Mr. Xi Siyan. This is the Tianfu Ze Command Center. An emergency situation has arisen. Please take the T4-3 shuttle at the second exit of the Genomics building to the designated location."

The voice cut off abruptly, leaving Xi Siyan's mind blank for a moment.

He grabbed his coat, put it on, and dialed Jing Miao's communicator.

It rang for a long time, so long that Xi Siyan heard the twenty-second call waiting prompt before it was answered. "Gege."

Xi Siyan let out a sigh of relief. "Miao Miao, listen to Gege now. In a moment, Gege will have Ji Yun come pick you up. Stay in the Mathematics Group and don't move. Gege has something urgent and can't pick you up from work today. Go have dinner with Ji Yun, okay?"

It seemed very chaotic on Jing Miao's end. Even the high-precision communicator had clear background noise. Xi Siyan, with his back to his colleagues, suddenly stopped walking towards the second exit.

He heard what sounded like glass shattering.

"Miao Miao?"

"Gege." Jing Miao answered slowly, even using a breathy voice. "Gege, our firewall seems to be under attack."

Xi Siyan's eyelids twitched.

A second round of alarms sounded outside. "The Tianfu Ze cyber defense system is under attack by an unknown origin. All network specialists of Level One and above are requested to assemble at designated locations immediately."

"What's happening?" Zhong Yuan's expression grew tense. "Tianfu Ze's network is an independent quantum energy field and satellite cluster. How could it be attacked?"

"Miao Miao, listen to Gege. Find a safe room and stay there without moving." Before Xi Siyan could finish, he heard a loud *thud* and a person's scream from the other end.

Xi Siyan was stunned. "What's happening there?"

"Gege, don't worry." Jing Miao looked at his colleagues in front of him, somewhat confused. "Miao Miao is watching a live action show."

The researcher next to Jing Miao: "..."

Xi Siyan: "...Okay, then darling, don't move. Wait for Ji Yun to pick you up."

He patted Zhong Yuan's shoulder, indicating he needed to leave. The latter nodded. This time, Xi Siyan quickly headed towards the second exit.

Ten minutes earlier.

"I'm really fed up with you all. Setting up a quantum network in a quantum force field space? Are your brains broken? You math types should just focus on math stuff, okay?"

"But the modeling formulas are inherently designed for network security."

"That's your Lisia's approach. Our current focus is the ninth-generation computer. I think security issues can be temporarily set aside. The new algorithm test requires four eighth-generation quantum computers. Let's solve this problem first."

......

Jing Miao listened quietly to their argument, standing very focused in front of the initial machine for the ninth-generation computer.

"Little Jing Miao, what are you thinking?" Colleague Zhuang Xiaoyu, seeing him completely uninvolved in the debate, was curious. "Do you think the new algorithm should be applied to network security first?"

Jing Miao frowned, staring at the code jumping on the screen—noticeably faster than other computers but occasionally stuttering slightly. "Is it important?"

"What?"

"Is it important to debate what to apply it to first?" The Omega placed both hands on the operation keyboard and calmly began inputting and applying the new algorithm. "It seems very dangerous right now."

"Jing Miao!" The researcher who had been passionately angry earlier screamed and rushed over. "This is an initial machine with absolutely no computational power! How can you act on your own!"

Everyone looked at Jing Miao, this genius youth who had parachuted in but immediately perfected the new modeling algorithm. Usually very quiet, introverted, almost never arguing with them, and always voluntarily sitting in front of the experimental data logs for verification.

The Mathematics Group had a total of four eighth-generation quantum computers, four seventh-generation ones, and one ninth-generation prototype created with a national effort. It hadn't even entered the testing phase, serving as a redundant verification system to test parameters, running non-stop calculations and analyses every day.

Jing Miao used to have a vague understanding of the scope of mathematics. It turned out that all of Tianfu Ze's systems maintenance computations went through these eight machines in the Mathematics Group. And who checked the performance of these eight machines? That was the initial ninth-generation. The convenience was that the Mathematics Group personnel had access to the world's largest database. The difficulty was that it was hard to allocate one or two of them for the immersive simulation services required for ninth-generation development.

Thus, Jing Miao's job came into being. Everyone treated him as a human calculator. Jing Miao could simultaneously analyze ten completely unrelated datasets, remembering patterns he found noteworthy, sometimes freeing up a working eighth-generation machine for over ten minutes.

Zhuang Xiaoyu was initially very dissatisfied with the way these experts underutilized Jing Miao's abilities, only letting him do such boring work. But after a while, he realized...

Jing Miao himself liked it very much. He felt it was the easiest job and sincerely thanked these teachers for their kindness.

Perhaps some felt guilty, perhaps some still subconsciously couldn't accept that a twenty-two-year-old Omega's abilities had no discernible upper limit. Their tolerance towards Jing Miao stemmed from various reasons, and they usually didn't interfere with him using any computer to verify his data reports.

But he had never crossed the line to use the original Ninth-Gen system, especially under the current circumstances where it was fundamentally inoperable.

The head of the Mathematics Group was a highly respected senior professor, who was clearly frightened, clutching his chest and unsteady on his feet. If the new computational model at this stage couldn't adapt to the original Ninth-Gen system, it was highly likely to overload and shut down. Repairing and restarting it would be equivalent to jump-starting the development of the second-gen Ninth-Gen. Even with Tianfuze efficiently prioritizing resources, they still needed to test the model with at least 10 billion data points.

This was the heart of the debate over whether to prioritize network security or accelerate the second-gen Ninth-Gen.

Most people believed in conservative progress, prioritizing algorithm testing to avoid wasting manpower and resources; a very small minority hoped not to waste the original Ninth-Gen system's current powerful security and encryption, and to first establish Tianfuze's quantum network.

"Jing Miao! If the original Ninth-Gen system stops working, the responsibility falls on all of us collectively, not just you alone!"

Zhuang Xiaoyu watched the somewhat panicked researchers and stepped in front of Jing Miao: "Professors... Jing Miao isn't trying to..."

"You scared me." The boy's voice, sounding hurt, was weak. "You scared me."

The furious senior professor choked, raising his hand to pinch the bridge of his nose.

"I discovered 49 abnormal data points, from after the New Year until now." Jing Miao clutched the two pompoms on the front of his collar, his eyes bright but nervous. "They bypassed the security system and have been showing subtle numerical fluctuations at the edge of the simulator. The variation... the variation value is √17 / 3, very stable."

Everyone present was a highly intelligent genius. Even without Jing Miao's extraordinary sensitivity to numbers, if 49 data points with the same variation were discovered among hundreds of millions of edge data points, what that meant was obvious to everyone.

The senior professor reacted almost instantly, quickly dialing the command post: "This is the Mathematics Group. Please have Network Engineering and Security immediately check and verify if there are any suspicious IPs trying to crack our comms channels. We've discovered..."

"It's not a channel," Jing Miao added. "They were probably just testing a government communication satellite. That satellite's approximate location is near our satellite cluster, creating interference. But there's an expert among them; they pinpointed our floating firewall through the interference."

The senior professor paused, then calmly said, "Hello, did you hear clearly? We need to centralize satellite signal management authority."

"Received. The technical team will conduct a full-system scan and enhance security."

"I already enhanced it." Jing Miao twisted the pompoms in his hands again, looking a little scared by the suddenly serious senior professor. He lowered his head a bit more, almost hiding completely behind Zhuang Xiaoyu. "Just now, I saw that abnormal value flicker on Little Nine's screen... It was the first time I saw it."

One researcher quickly reacted, swiftly taking control to trace the floating IP, while another immediately performed trajectory extrapolation.

The latter's expression suddenly turned grave: "The results show they will simultaneously test over 700 predicted floating firewalls! Quickly! We can't let outsiders locate Tianfuze's satellite cluster!"

"D-don't worry..." Jing Miao blinked his beautiful eyes. "Miao Miao already set up a decoy."

The senior professor hurried to the original Ninth-Gen system, staring at the screen where numbers flashed by rapidly, then asked, his voice hoarse, "You... why didn't you tell us when you discovered it? Was it because you were unhappy with us assigning you to manual analysis?"

Jing Miao tilted his head in confusion: "You didn't ask Miao Miao."

Everyone: "..."

If this weren't the genius boy who had led the Polaris Inverse Theorem, the senior professor would truly have thought he was talking to a fool.

He took a breath, his tone much gentler: "Jing Miao, how did you quickly modify that computational model into a decoy firewall?"

Jing Miao pouted slightly, even more puzzled: "Just four transformation steps. It's reshaping. It's very simple."

"..."

Zhuang Xiaoyu's mouth slowly formed an 'O': "Jing Miao, the new quantum modeling has only been changed to the second transformation. How did you reach the fourth?"

The boy was getting tired from standing and quietly moved two steps to the nearby small sofa, he sounded hurt again: "I wrote the fourth transformation two days ago..."

The room fell into silence, everyone exchanging glances.

The senior professor felt even more like facepalming. He let out a sigh and was about to speak again when a red alert suddenly sounded outside.

Everyone's emotions were abruptly disrupted.

A few seconds later, Jing Miao received a call from Xi Siyan. He watched their flustered state somewhat distractedly, answering Xi Siyan in fragments. One researcher, panicking, stared at the original Ninth-Gen system and discovered that Jing Miao's decoy firewall had swiftly deflected all the probes and accurately displayed the location at the exact center of the South Pole.

The professor's cup fell and shattered. Excitedly, he hugged the person next to him, only to realize he had embraced a female mathematician. She reflexively smacked him on the head. The senior professor held his head in pain, crying out, a comical sight.

"Brother, I'm watching a human performance."

Zhuang Xiaoyu: "..."

Jing Miao hung up the phone and obediently headed toward the safe room. Before leaving, he even said to Zhuang Xiaoyu: "Brother told me to find a place to stay quietly. I have a little child; I can't perform with them."

Zhuang Xiaoyu forced a dry laugh: "But the alarm just said the firewall was attacked."

"Huh? But they attacked the fake one." Jing Miao shrugged, touching his belly under his clothes. "I'm so tired. Bye."

The boy waved his hand at him. That face, already beautiful like an angel's, now seemed to Zhuang Xiaoyu to be bathed in a holy light.

He was filled with deep respect, bowed ninety degrees, and said with a firm voice: "Goodbye, Teacher Jing!"

"All attacks have failed. The decoy firewall is effective. All of Tianfuze's network systems and channels remain unaffected. All notified personnel, report to your stations."

Amidst the relieved laughter and exclamations of many who let go of their tension, the broadcast announcement sounded again.

The emotionless mechanical voice finally matched the red alert. The sky pressed down, the snowfall stopped, and the angle of the setting sun foretold the approaching night.

"Notification: Tianfuze is expected to enter the wartime reserve period 16 hours ahead of schedule. Please have the medical and security teams fully activate Level 2 response within this timeframe."

--------------------

Senior Professor: Why didn't you tell us?

Miao Miao: You didn't ask me.

Senior Professor: Help...

(Two updates today.)