Chapter 112: Xu Nuo's Bounty Hunt Order

Xu Yunzhou used his laptop to connect to his phone's hotspot.

First, he opened a search engine and typed three characters in the search box:

Kirigaya Nuo.

Enter.

The page refreshed. As expected, quite a few related reports appeared, but they were basically all Go news.

Xu Yunzhou browsed quickly, his eyes focused, his fingertips sliding rapidly on the touchpad.

Reports showed that around 2016, the Nihon Go girl Kirigaya Nuo dominated completely after becoming a professional, breaking into the finals of one of Nihon's most important title matches—the Kisei tournament—in one fell swoop with astonishing records and Go style.

And in the finals, with a clean and neat 4:0, she defeated Yuta Iyama 9-dan—the overlord who ruled the Nihon Go arena for many years at the time—winning the Kisei title and shocking the global Go world.

A seventeen-year-old girl defeated a king famous for many years, becoming the youngest Kisei in the history of Nihon Go.

She was hailed by the media as a "genius unseen in a millennium," the "Goddess of Go," and a "miracle of the Go arena."

The media exhausted words of praise. Her photos made the headlines of major newspapers.

That snapshot from the tournament of her calmly holding a stone, her side profile as exquisite as a painting, was revered as a classic by countless Go fans, and even printed on the covers of non-Go magazines.

But just as Nihon Go fans were boiling with passion, expecting Kirigaya Nuo to advance to the international arena to compete with top players from Great Xia and Goryeo to win glory for the country—

(TL: "Goryeo" is a historical name for Korea.)

Bizarrely, in 2017, Kirigaya Nuo suddenly vanished without a trace.

The official explanation given by the Nihon Go Institute was: She was ill and needed to recuperate, and went to America for convalescence.

From then on, besides some nostalgic reports and the guesses and longing of Go fans, there was never any new update.

Since then, she evaporated from the world.

Xu Yunzhou's brows furrowed tightly, his fingers unconsciously tapping the computer desk.

He didn't pay attention to Go before. It was only because the drama "God of Go" starring Shen Mingyue became popular that he self-taught the rules for a few days, and then quickly put it aside, not even considered a beginner. So he hadn't heard of the news about Kirigaya Nuo before.

Regarding Xu Nuo's disappearance, Xu Yunzhou actually wasn't surprised.

Xu Nuo dominated the Go arena relying on his help, but he would leave sooner or later, so it was very normal for her to retire early.

It's just...

Where did she go after retiring?

Why would she appear at the Wu family's old mansion?

Why did she have such strong hostility toward Song Jiaru? Even to the extent of needing "future me" to specially remind and personally escort her?

Xu Yunzhou recalled for a moment, closed the browser, and in the Run dialog box typed a long and complex IP address randomly composed of numbers and letters, and pressed Enter.

The page jumped, entering a private cloud drive with an extremely simple interface, no brand logos, requiring triple dynamic encryption verification.

This cloud drive was set up on a server cluster dispersed through blockchain technology somewhere overseas.

The entrance was hidden, data sliced and encrypted, and equipped with trigger-type self-destruct protocols and honeypot traps.

This "digital safe house" was one of the secret bases he casually set up when he bought the hacker skill experience card to possess Xu Nuo back then.

Inside were stored some special tools, scripts, and encrypted communication modules he wrote at the time.

As expected, it was still there.

Moreover, in the cloud drive directory, there were a few more unfamiliar folders. Looking at the modification timestamps, they should have been put in successively by Xu Nuo herself over these years.

From them, he downloaded an executable file with a black iconless appearance, named "XN-2016".

Double-click to run.

The interface was so simple it was almost crude, with only a few command line windows and status indicator lights.

His hands rapidly typed on the keyboard, fingertips flying, the typing sound dense and steady, echoing in the quiet car cabin.

First, bypassing conventional network monitoring, through multi-layer proxy jumps, connecting to a hidden node on the dark web requiring special verification.

Then, calling customized crawler tools, targeting keywords like "Crescent Group," "Kirigaya Nuo," "Xu Nuo," "Takemiya Susumu," to conduct deep correlation mining and knowledge graph construction.

At the same time, activating port scanning and vulnerability detection modules, attempting to penetrate certain non-public parts of the internal databases of the Nihon police, as well as the internal personnel and medical file systems of the Nihon Go Institute.

Although Xu Yunzhou's current technical level was merely Xu Nuo's level from early 2016, even so—it already stood among the top 5% of hackers globally.

The code on the screen scrolled like a waterfall.

Green, red, and yellow status lights flashed continuously.

Xu Yunzhou was fully engrossed, all his attention focused on the screen. Everything in the outside world—the warm and fragrant Song Jiaru beneath him, the rapidly retreating night outside the car window, even his own breathing—seemed to have disappeared.

He entered that state of flow, with only data and logic in his eyes.

In the driver's seat, Song Jinxuan secretly cast a glance through the rearview mirror.

Seeing Xu Yunzhou's side profile, focused to a terrifying degree as if merged into one with the computer, she swallowed a mouthful of saliva, shocked in her heart.

This really is a god...

With a beauty in his arms, warm and fragrant jade, he can actually work so seriously? Without any distractions?

I suddenly understand... why cousin, Song Jiaru, and Shen Mingyue are all so... infatuated with him.

This kind of man focused to the extreme indeed has a fatal attraction.

And Song Jiaru, lying on Xu Yunzhou's lap, just quietly watched his focused side profile.

Her eyes were gentle and satisfied, a shallow, happy smile at the corners of her mouth.

So nice.

Big Brother is by my side.

Doing his important things.

And I can accompany him like this, watch him, occasionally be needed by him.

This is enough.

Mhm, it's just there's something poking my back... is it the computer power adapter?

Feels a bit uncomfortable...

Forget it, not important, I can't move, otherwise it will disturb Big Brother.

Half an hour later, Xu Yunzhou fell silent.

He collected some incomprehensible data.

First, from the recent internal encrypted communications of the Crescent Group, the name "Kirigaya Nuo" had completely disappeared.

Replaced by a "cleanup" bounty order published deep in the organization's dark web:

Target: Xu Nuo (Former name: Kirigaya Nuo).

Registered agent of the Shadow Organization, codename "Scavenger," secondary codename "Web Weaver."

Characteristics:

Asian female, currently holding a Singapore passport, name "Jin Xian."

Approx. 26 years old, height 168cm, highly proficient in Go, hacker technology, close-quarters combat, various firearms, masters five national languages and three dialects.

Danger Level: S (Extremely dangerous, suggest action by teams of three or more, may shoot to kill directly if necessary).

Bounty Amount: One billion Yen (approx. fifty million RMB).

Status: Incomplete.

Published Date: Early 2023.

What puzzled him even more was that he tried to trace Xu Nuo's activity trajectory and original identity in Great Xia before the age of sixteen, before going to Nihon—and the result was a hair-raising blank.

As if an invisible giant hand had completely erased all traces of her teenage years, so clean it was as if she never existed.

In addition, there were also some scattered public news:

The time of Takemiya Susumu's death was exactly the day Kirigaya Nuo finished the final game of the Kisei finals.

It was also her last public game in the public eye.

Xu Yunzhou could almost conclude that Takemiya Susumu was personally killed by Xu Nuo—using the highly anticipated Go game as cover, completing the assassination at the peak moment, and subsequently fading into the darkness.

But why, after that, did the Crescent Group turn around and issue a bounty to hunt her down?

Internal strife? Silencing? Boiling the hound after catching the hare?

(TL: "Boiling the hound after catching the hare" is an idiom for getting rid of someone once they've outlived their usefulness.)

Or did Xu Nuo grasp some fatal secret during the mission that touched the core of the organization, or even implicated broader forces, and had to be eliminated?

What alarmed him even more was—when did Xu Nuo become an agent of the "Shadow" organization?

And simultaneously possess the dual identities of "Scavenger" (field operations) and "Web Weaver" (intelligence network)?

Over these years, what exactly did she experience to evolve into a multi-faceted agent wandering in the dark world?

He wished he could open the "Goddess Nurturing Game" right now, switch to Kirigaya Nuo's perspective, and see what exactly happened during that time.

But...

From the corner of his eye, he glanced at Song Jiaru, who was looking at him blinking her large eyes, and the highly elevated mouse pad.

Mhm, "playing" Xu Nuo on top of Song Jiaru's body... doesn't seem quite appropriate.

After all, this is his biggest secret.

Can only wait until going back, when alone, before doing it.

Suddenly, his gaze focused.

In the folder of that foreign cloud drive, a new file appeared.

Just now when he was focused on analyzing data, it quietly appeared.

A txt file, the file name in Chinese:

Teacher, is it you?