The following day, when He Lixue arrived at the office, she found that she was amongst the last to show up.
Everyone who had shown up earlier was still in the conference room, looking at the firewall that she had created the day before.
Even Manager Mo had been trying his hand at breaching it but to no avail.
Yang Shirou and her female friend had not shown up yet, but He Lixue had a feeling that when they saw the attention that these co-workers were giving her firewall, they would become jealous and they would try to target her again.
When Lu Nanfeng had arrived the day before, they had already left; hence they were unaware of the relationship between the two of them.
"Well, things will not get boring as long as they are here to entertain me," He Lixue muttered to herself with a smile on her face.
She was not afraid of what problems they might cause. If she could not even handle a bit of office drama, how could she have stayed alive in the dark abyss that was her previous life?
Her eyes flashed with a certain coldness, but before anyone could catch a sight of it, it had vanished, once more been disguised with the appearance of an innocent and naive young woman from the upper class of society.
"He Lixue, you are here!" Manager Mo saw that He Lixue had arrived, and he was excited.
"Tell me quickly, how did you write the code on this firewall? I do not understand it at all; it is so innovative and different that I feel lost. I can't think about a way to breach it at all, and I have never even heard of this method before!"
He Lixue smiled slightly, looking quite shy. "Thank you for your praise, Manager Mo," she said gratefully. "I have been quite interested in everything that had to do with computers since I was a child, but it was never something I thought about making into my profession before.
"I had no teacher. Hence I was forced to learn on my own, and what I learned was quite different from the standard methods."
What she said was a lie. She had always been forced to learn on her own, but she did have a teacher. In her mind, she could not help but pray to the gods that he would not get mad with her if he realized the truth one day.
Thinking about her teacher, she was suddenly saddened. Had he become depressed after her passing, or was he as apathetic as always?
One day, when she had solved all the problems of this He Lixue and managed to live a peaceful life, she would return to meet him. Even if he did not believe it was her, she was still eager to see how he was doing.
Not just him, she also wanted to see how her only friend was doing, but this was so far away in time that she could do nothing about it for now.
Manager Mo noticed a bit of sadness in her eyes, but he thought it was merely because of her upbringing. She was like a princess in a castle, like a canary in a cage.
He Lixue quickly masked her emotions and returned to smile at Manager Mo.
"I guess I can teach you how to make these firewalls, and we can see if it is feasible to implement some changes to the new security system you are developing.
"I don't know how far you are with it, but I am sure that I know a few ways to improve the safety of it, I have always been more focused on creating unbreakable safety systems."
This was not a lie. She had created safety programs for many gangs and mafias throughout the world. She had been capable of producing one program after another, and while she had never favored anyone, many had turned their backs on her after she had helped them. This was done for the sake of getting access to their competitors information and secrets.
He Lixue had personally never participated in any killings, but her teacher had eradicated some gangs because of this. As to his background, even He Lixue was unaware.
She was an orphan, left alone in front of an orphanage when she was merely a few days old. Here she lived for the first five years of her life, but after the orphanage closed, no one cared about what happened to the kids, which resulted in them ending on the streets.
Here she began stealing to survive. At the start, she was a part of a small gang of kids from the orphanage, but some found a brighter future; others just vanished. Eventually, she was alone.
When she was seven years old, she had tried to steal from a youth who seemed to be around sixteen years old. He had caught her in the act, but when he saw her eyes filled with a tenacious will to live, he was surprised, and a smile erupted on his lips.
Back then, he had offered her a better life, and she had taken it without any hesitation. He had never backed down on what he had promised. While he was only nine years older than He Lixue, he was much more mature than others his age, and he had taught her everything she knew.
He was also the one who paid for her to enter school, the one who taught her hacking, and while he did eventually lead her down a narrow and dark road into the abyss, he never left her alone.