Reality Programming Association

Chapter 145 -60: Fortune-Telling and Curve Fitting

In the common room, Granny Shi’s exclamations gradually subsided.

Although Shi Zuozhou was still muttering about “the evils of capitalism,” his body honestly sank into the soft sofa as he fiddled with the Enoch Bracelet he couldn’t bear to put down.

Yu Xian didn’t dwell on the topic. He turned his gaze to Wen Xiao. “The tour is over. Let’s get down to business.”

Hearing Yu Xian’s voice, Wen Xiao suddenly sat a little straighter, even though she was still staring at her keyboard. She placed her hands primly on her knees.

“What’s the current development progress of Rabbit Hole?” he asked.

Wen Xiao took a deep breath and quickly turned her computer screen around. “Last night… I stayed up late and built the core ‘distributed storage’ contract architecture. The image file I gave you the day before yesterday contains the ‘Gossip Protocol’ update module. As long as the new version is signed with a private key, it can ‘infect’ every node.”

She glanced at Yu Xian and continued, “I also found some reusable code for the ‘point bidding’ algorithm and am working on it. There might be a preview version by this weekend. Next week, I can start working on the ‘asynchronous discussion group and forum’ features.”

Yu Xian nodded. The entire product was divided into four modules: the “Gossip Protocol,” responsible for version updates; the “distributed storage architecture,” responsible for storing user-uploaded content; the “point bidding algorithm,” responsible for regulating the work priority of all nodes; and the “discussion group and forum module,” responsible for user interaction and asynchronous information flow.

So far, Wen Xiao had completed the first part, “Gossip”—the BadUSB “You’re Naughty” tool they used to install nodes. The second part, “Storage,” was also finished and could be updated to the nodes at any time. The third part, “Points,” was currently in progress and, according to Wen Xiao, should be completed within the week. The fourth part, “Forum,” would be the main development focus for next week.

The progress had perfectly met, if not exceeded, expectations.

Looking at the neat lines of code, Yu Xian praised sincerely, “Very efficient.”

Wen Xiao seemed a little embarrassed by the compliment.

Yu Xian sensed a strange atmosphere. He couldn’t help but feel that ever since Wen Xiao had privately debugged the audio last Sunday and he had anxiously yelled at her, her state of mind hadn’t been quite right. No, it was probably even earlier than that. She had seemed a little off for a while.

He wondered if it had anything to do with those audio files, but Zhang Yang and Li Boxue hadn’t acted like this. However, now wasn’t the time to dwell on it. He would find time to ask her properly later.

“I’ll sync our progress as well.” Yu Xian took out the external hard drive from his bag. “Over the past few days, I’ve collected almost all the variant audio files currently available on the market. There are derived versions like ‘Horror Classroom,’ ‘Mysterious Hospital,’ ‘Master and Kitten,’ and ‘Cultivation Simulator.’ In total, there are about a hundred of them.”

At this point, Yu Xian calmly glanced at Wen Xiao. Their eyes met briefly in the air before Wen Xiao knowingly lowered her gaze and tightened her grip on her clothes.

Some things couldn’t be said here.

For instance, these audio files weren’t saved in their original form. Instead, they had gone through Wen Xiao’s “cleansing” process. The “black box patch” that might contain malicious commands was stripped out, and the clean, relatively safe MCH source file obtained from Senior Sister Yiyi was injected.

This bait-and-switch trick would prevent them from inadvertently becoming spreaders of the “Bus Series” audio files, thus stopping the unknown black box patch from causing a large-scale infection. But since the thirty-day overwrite period for the login logs hadn’t passed yet, they had to keep the circle of those in the know as small as possible.

Yu Xian paused and continued in a natural tone, “I’ve already classified and… organized all these audio files. Once the storage module goes online, they can be directly released as the first batch of resources.”

“A hundred?” Shao Yiyi clicked her tongue. “Isn’t their production speed way too fast? Are they really going to realize the ‘Metaverse’?”

Shi Zuozhou couldn’t wait to sit up straight, pointing out the window as if claiming credit. “Not only are the resources complete, but we’ve also got the super nodes sorted out.” ℯℯ𝑙.

He pulled up a map on his phone, his tone full of pride. “Thanks to Wen Xiao’s ‘You’re Naughty’ script, Old Yu and I ran ourselves ragged yesterday afternoon to implant node processes into dozens of public computers across the school.”

“‘You’re Naughty’ script?” Shao Yiyi cast a puzzled look at Wen Xiao.

“It’s BadUSB, the quick installation tool Wen Xiao wrote.” Yu Xian facepalmed, explaining Shi Zuozhou’s jargon for him. “As of now, nodes have been deployed in the main residential and teaching areas. As long as someone passes by these places, the Rabbit Hole signal can be automatically relayed.”

He glanced at the curtain of rain outside the floor-to-ceiling window. “However, it’s a bit more troublesome over here in the North Campus. These are all high-rise apartments, so the Bluetooth signals from the ground nodes will have a hard time reaching up here. There might be a gap in the signal relay.”

Shao Yiyi exclaimed in alarm, “Ah! Doesn’t that mean we’ll become an isolated island upon an isolated island?”

Shi Zuozhou slapped his thigh hard and held up the black Enoch Bracelet. “This is where our secret weapon comes in! As long as we have this thing, height and distance are no longer a problem!”

He extended his wrist to Wen Xiao, his finger swiping across the curved screen to bring up the pixel rabbit icon. “Look, you two! Recently, the main building has been giving out a lot of these bracelets for free. The signal is strong, it’s highly waterproof, and the standby time is long. What’s more, there aren’t many compatible apps on it, so students are all looking for usable software.”