Hongluan let out a breath and then replied:
"First, if Jin Jiu dies under unclear circumstances, it will cause many people in Pengcheng's business community to doubt the city's law enforcement system. Especially those with shady backgrounds—they are very likely to pull their capital and flee Pengcheng, which in turn will plunge the city's economy into crisis.
"Second, if Jin Jiu dies, the Jin Group will be left without a leader. Banks and many of the group's business partners will cut ties with it, causing the entire conglomerate to collapse and leaving a massive number of employees jobless.
"Third, if Jin Jiu dies, the Jin Group will descend into internal power struggles. This will lead to many ongoing projects being temporarily shelved, triggering an even larger chain reaction..."
Ye Huan listened quietly to Hongluan's words, feeling like his horizons had been broadened. He had no idea taking someone's life could carry such far-reaching consequences.
"Do me a favor and spare Jin Jiu. I will investigate all of his illegal and criminal evidence and bring him to justice through legal channels, minimizing the fallout from this chain reaction."
Hongluan looked at Ye Huan with a pleading expression.
Jin Jiu and Jin Peng were shaken to their cores, staring at Ye Huan in sheer disbelief. They wondered what on earth this guy's background was. He had killed the Butler, yet Hongluan—the Country-Protecting God of War—was completely unbothered, and was actually begging Ye Huan for a favor just to save Jin Jiu's life.
"Seeing as Jin Jiu and Jin Peng are so curious about my identity, why don't you tell them?"
Ye Huan said. This was, by all accounts, an indirect agreement to spare Jin Jiu's life!
"He is the Underworld King!"
Hongluan let out a sigh of relief and said.
"What?"
Jin Jiu and Jin Peng were so terrified they fainted on the spot!
"Wake them up!" Ye Huan instructed.
"Right away!"
Hongluan hurried to the restroom, fetched a basin of cold water, and splashed it across Jin Jiu and Jin Peng's faces.
"Spare us! Underworld King, please spare us! Spare our lives..."
As soon as they regained consciousness, Jin Jiu and Jin Peng dropped to their knees, kowtowing frantically to Ye Huan and begging for mercy.
At that moment, Jin Peng had completely forgotten about his severed arm and the agonizing pain in his body; the terror in his heart had entirely overshadowed his physical torment.
They had heard far too many legends about the Underworld King!
Offending the Underworld King didn't just mean getting killed—it meant having your entire bloodline wiped out!
"How about working for me from now on?"
Ye Huan nudged Jin Jiu's chin up with the tip of his shoe and asked.
"Huh?"
Jin Jiu had been so terrified that every single cell in his body was trembling, but upon hearing those words, he suddenly felt as though a sweet dew had fallen from the heavens, nourishing every fiber of his being.
He had offended the Underworld King, yet not only was he not going to be killed, but he was actually being taken in as a subordinate?
Damn it, the emotional rollercoaster of life was truly too thrilling!
"Are you unwilling?" Ye Huan asked.
"I am willing!"
Jin Jiu let out a howl, delirious with excitement:
"I'm willing, I'm willing, a thousand times willing! From this moment on, I, Jin Jiu, am willing to be a dog under your command, loyal until death!"
"Get up!"
Ye Huan was quite satisfied with Jin Jiu's attitude. He nodded and said:
"From now on, you are not permitted to give Lin Xi a hard time again!"
Jin Jiu stood up, standing at rigid attention: "Understood!"
Chapter 26: A Temper Bigger Than Her Chest
At that moment, Hongluan furrowed her brow: "What do you mean by taking Jin Jiu under your wing?"
The subtext of her question was that the Underworld King had always acted as a lone wolf. Yet today, within the span of a single day, he had first taken control of Hell Gate and now taken in Jin Jiu—this completely clashed with the Underworld King's past character.
"I need a foothold in Pengcheng!" Ye Huan replied.
Upon hearing this, Hongluan felt utterly depressed. Damn it, the Underworld King was already starting to build a foundation in Pengcheng! That meant he intended to settle down here for the long haul!
She asked: "Then are the police still going to investigate Jin Jiu's criminal activities?"
Ye Huan thought for a moment and said: "No need to investigate. Just have him confess on his own, but don't arrest him for now. If he steps out of line in the future or commits any more illegal acts, we can arrest him then."
In his mind, Jin Jiu rapidly analyzed the information packed into Ye Huan's words:
First, he had to honestly confess every single illegal and criminal act he had committed in the past to Hongluan;
Second, he had to obey—he had to listen to the Underworld King;
Third, he must never engage in any more illegal or criminal activities from now on, unless ordered otherwise by the Underworld King.
"Fine!"
Hongluan nodded. She picked up on a deeper meaning in Ye Huan's words: since Ye Huan was building his foundation right now, he needed Jin Jiu. Once that foundation was firmly established, Jin Jiu would lose his usefulness, and at that point, the police could arrest him whenever they wanted.
"Speaking of which, the Global Official God of War Summit is about to be convened. Why aren't you going to the meeting instead of constantly trailing me?"
With the issue resolved, Ye Huan shifted topics and chuckled.
I was worried you'd go around slaughtering the innocent... Hongluan thought to herself, but aloud she said:
"I am under orders to protect you!"
"Do I look like I need your protection?" Ye Huan asked.
Hongluan: "..."
"Don't worry, Pengcheng is my hometown. I won't go on a rampage here."
Ye Huan patted Hongluan on the shoulder and turned to leave!
Hongluan watched as Ye Huan walked out of the villa, then pulled a few tissues from the coffee table to wipe the sweat from her forehead. Earlier, she had genuinely been afraid that Ye Huan wouldn't give her any face and would slice Jin Jiu apart with a single knife!
...
When Ye Huan returned to the bar, the birthday party had reached its climax. The thumping music and swaying bodies were thoroughly infectious.
Lin Xi had transformed into a DJ queen, mixing tracks, swaying her hips, belting out songs at the top of her lungs, and taking the occasional sip of alcohol.
As for the fifty hoodlums brought by Jin Peng, along with the shattered tables and chairs, they had long since been cleared away by the bar staff, and even Su Lei's bodyguards had been sent to the hospital.
"This girl is quite interesting!"
Ye Huan found a corner seat and sat down, admiring Lin Xi's performance from afar.
At that moment, a young woman walked over holding two glasses of alcohol, sat down right next to Ye Huan, pressed herself tightly against him, and gave him a sultry, alluring look:
"Want to go play in a second-floor private booth?"
Because the bar's DJ volume was so high, the girl had to shout to talk to Ye Huan.
"Play what?" Ye Huan asked loudly.
Without a hint of shyness, the girl replied: "I want to experience Xiang Yingxin's pain!"
Ye Huan: "..."
"Let's go!" the girl shouted.
The corner of Ye Huan's twitching mouth jerked: "My prostate is acting up a bit, let's make it another time!"
"Alright then!"
The girl wasn't disappointed; she simply asked for Ye Huan's contact information before heading back to the dance floor to continue dancing.
Not long after she left, another girl came over, also wanting to experience Xiang Yingxin's pain, only to be politely turned down by Ye Huan.
Next!
Girl after girl came looking for Ye Huan, and their purpose was entirely the same!
Ye Huan was practically speechless. What on earth was wrong with the heiresses of Pengcheng's elite families? Were there no men left in Pengcheng? Or were the men in Pengcheng just that useless?
At that moment, Shen Huamei walked over holding a bottle of alcohol.
"Do you want to experience Xiang Yingxin's pain, too?" Ye Huan asked loudly with a look of shock.
Shen Huamei glared at Ye Huan and roared: "Who let you in here? Get the hell out!"
Ye Huan let out a breath of relief. A normal person had finally arrived! He yelled:
"What did you say? I can't hear you!"
"I told you to get out!" Shen Huamei roared at the top of her lungs.
"Use the restroom together? No thanks, go ahead by yourself!" Ye Huan shouted back.
Furious, Shen Huamei took a deep breath, leaned right up to Ye Huan's ear, and bellowed:
"Get out!"
Continuing to play dumb, Ye Huan shouted: "Make me dance? I don't know how! I'm a butcher—I'm alright at castrating pigs, but I can't dance!"
Watching Ye Huan play the fool, Shen Huamei was completely out of options. Seething with anger, she stomped back to the dance floor to keep dancing.
"This girl's temper is bigger than her chest!" Ye Huan chuckled.
Just then, DJ Queen Lin Xi received a text message. The moment she read it, her pretty face changed drastically. She immediately ran over to say a few words to Shen Huamei, then dashed out of the bar while frantically typing on her phone.
A moment later, Ye Huan received a text message from Lin Xi:
"Come with me to the company!"
Ye Huan hurriedly chased her out of the bar, got into the car, and asked:
"What happened?"
"All the computers at Lin's Group are under a simultaneous hacker attack!"
Sitting in the passenger seat with a dark expression, Lin Xi urged him:
"Step on the gas! Don't worry about red lights or anything, just get to the company as fast as humanly possible!"
"Got it!"
Ye Huan promptly started the car and floored the accelerator, shooting forward like a rocket.
That instant burst of G-force made Lin Xi feel as though her back was about to smash right through the seat cushion. And that wasn't even the half of it—Ye Huan's subsequent maneuvers scared her out of her wits.
He slammed the accelerator straight to the floor, pulling off heart-stopping drifts and overtaking cars left and right like a professional race car driver.
"Slow down! Drive like this and we'll crash and die before we even reach the company!"
Pale as a sheet and terrified out of her mind, Lin Xi screamed.
"Relax, even Louis, the World Racing Champion, would be ashamed of my skills!"
Showing no intention of slowing down, Ye Huan said with carefree ease.
Lin Xi rolled her eyes: "I've discovered you really do know how to brag."
Ye Huan: "..."
Why was it that when he told the truth, nobody believed him?
Dropping the subject, Lin Xi said in a grave voice:
"Rumor has it there is a master hacker within the Jin Group. I bet you pissed Jin Jiu off, and out of fury, he ordered his hacker to attack Lin's Group."
"Jin Jiu definitely didn't do this," Ye Huan stated with absolute certainty.
"On what grounds can you say that?" Lin Xi asked.
"Jin Jiu cried and begged to work for me, so I didn't have the heart to cripple him. Therefore, the hacker attacking Lin's Group was definitely not arranged by Jin Jiu!" Ye Huan said.
"You're bragging again!"
Lin Xi was practically speechless at Ye Huan's habitual boasting.
Too lazy to explain, Ye Huan took the steering wheel with one hand while pulling out his phone with the other to call Jin Jiu. Once the call connected, he switched it to speakerphone.
"Who is this?"
Jin Jiu's deep, domineering voice came through the phone.
"It's me!" Ye Huan said.
"Ah, it's you, Master! Whatever you need, just give the order—I'll gladly charge through a mountain of blades or a sea of fire!"
In a fraction of a second, Jin Jiu's deep and imposing voice transformed into the flattering, ingratiating tone of an obedient grandson.
Upon hearing this, Lin Xi's jaw dropped in shock. She was far too familiar with Jin Jiu's voice; this couldn't possibly be faked.
"Little Jiu, sing a nursery rhyme for me!" Ye Huan commanded.
Jin Jiu: "Two little honeybees, flying among the flowers, flying, flying..."
Chapter 27: Flashy, Mind-Bending Operations
At that point, Lin Xi finally believed that Ye Huan wasn't just blowing hot air!
She stared in shock at the side profile of Ye Huan's face as he drove, scarcely able to believe her eyes. Who was Jin Jiu?
He was the founder and chairman of the Jin Group, a corporate empire valued in the hundreds of billions;
He was an underworld boss whom the police wanted to arrest and the courts wanted to convict, yet after more than twenty years, they hadn't been able to gather a shred of criminal evidence against him!
And yet, a peerless overlord like this had actually been subdued by a mere butcher!
"You believe now that the hacker attack on Lin's Group wasn't Jin Jiu's doing?"
Ye Huan hung up the phone and asked.
Lin Xi didn't answer, but she believed it. Her mind was racing with a new question: if it wasn't Jin Jiu, then who on earth had hired a hacker to target Lin's Group?
Seeing Lin Xi deep in thought, Ye Huan didn't disturb her. He drove at full speed, rocketing all the way to Lin Building.
The moment the car stopped, Lin Xi bolted out, and Ye Huan hurried to keep up.
The two of them rushed into Lin Building and headed straight for the elevators.
It was already past ten o'clock at night, but a fair number of employees were still working overtime at Lin's Group, along with the on-duty security guards.
They arrived at the network security department of Lin's Group.
"President Lin!"
Spotting Lin Xi's arrival, Wang Bin, the head of the network security department, hurriedly stepped forward to greet her.
"What's going on?" Lin Xi asked.
"The virus invading our corporate network is a novel network virus we've never seen before. I'm currently leading the on-duty team members trying to crack it, and the rest of the team is on their way here," Wang Bin reported rapidly.
"Are you confident we can win this cybersecurity defense battle?" Lin Xi asked.
"Yes!" Wang Bin answered with absolute confidence.
"Good!"
That reassurance put Lin Xi's mind at ease. She said:
"Get back to work, don't mind me!"
"Understood!"
Wang Bin immediately returned to his workstation, his fingers hammering away at the keyboard like he was having muscle spasms.
The rest of the on-duty staff in the network security department were doing the exact same thing.
"Need any help?"
Ye Huan looked at Lin Xi, who looked extremely nervous while trying her best to maintain a calm facade, and asked.
"What help can a butcher possibly offer? Smash the computers?"
Lin Xi glanced sideways at Ye Huan and retorted tartly.
"Actually, I happen to be a very professional hacker, too!" Ye Huan said.
Furious, Lin Xi hissed in a low voice: "Would you die if you didn't brag? If you were a professional hacker, would you be working as a butcher?"
In Lin Xi's eyes, hackers were elite technical professionals proficient in programming; any company would happily pay them a handsome annual salary, far exceeding what a butcher could ever earn.
If Ye Huan were a professional hacker, there was no way he'd be doing brute-force manual labor like butchering pigs.
Besides, Ye Huan was someone abandoned by his biological parents, trafficked by kidnappers, and deprived of a higher education—how could he possibly be a professional hacker?
"Oh no, the other party is downloading company data right now!" Someone gasped in alarm at that moment.
Lin Xi quickly looked over and saw that every single computer screen in the network security department had gone black, replaced by a line of text: 'Data downloading 1.5%...'
"Stop them immediately! We cannot let them steal the company's data!"
Panic gripped Lin Xi in that instant!
Once company data fell into the hands of outsiders, it would deal a fatal blow to the firm.
Especially since the company had an active R&D department; if their research results and proprietary data were stolen, the consequences would be utterly unthinkable.
Without needing her reminder, Wang Bin and his team members were already trying desperately to intercept the transfer, but it was completely useless.
Data downloading 2.1%...
Data downloading 3.5%...
Data downloading 5.4%...
Watching those numbers tick upward at breakneck speed, Lin Xi broke out in a cold sweat.
"This guy is a pro!"
Ye Huan walked up behind Wang Bin, watched for a moment, and remarked in surprise.
Wrinkling his brow, Wang Bin—who was still furiously hammering his keyboard—snapped:
"Please don't interrupt my work!"
At that moment, Lin Xi hurried over, pulled Ye Huan aside by the door, and scolded him in a low whisper:
"Whether the company survives this crisis depends entirely on Wang Bin and his team. Why are you causing trouble for them?"
Glancing at the line on the screen that read 'Data downloading 8.2%', Ye Huan said seriously:
"Not to look down on Wang Bin and his people, but I'm afraid they won't be able to stop the intruder from stealing Lin's Group's data and files."
"What do you know?!"
Lin Xi snapped back without a shred of politeness:
"Ever since Lin's Group was founded, we've weathered countless hacker attacks. Every single time, Wang Bin has led the team to beat back the enemy. I believe Wang Bin and his team can work a miracle this time, too."
Just as those words left her mouth, Wang Bin and everyone else in the network security department stood up one after another.
With a look of shame and utter despair, Wang Bin rose to his feet and said:
"President Lin, all of the company's computers have been remotely hijacked by the intruder. We can no longer stop them from stealing the company's data."
Color drained entirely from Lin Xi's face. Her legs wobbled, and she staggered backward, nearly collapsing to the floor. Wang Bin's words were, without a doubt, a death sentence for Lin's Group.
Once all their data was stolen and landed in the hands of their competitors, it would only be a matter of time before Lin's Group went bankrupt!
"Let me try!"
Ye Huan caught Lin Xi just as she was about to collapse.
Those words felt like grabbing the last straw of a drowning man to Lin Xi. She blurted out:
"There's a master hacker at the Jin Group! Call Jin Jiu right now and have him send that hacker over!"
"There's no time!"
Ye Huan shook his head.
"I'm the only one who can try right now!"
Desperation gripped Lin Xi once again.
Meanwhile, Wang Bin and the others turned to look at Ye Huan, none of them recognizing him.
Wang Bin said: "President Lin, though I don't know who this gentleman is, we're just sitting here waiting to die anyway. We might as well let him try—treat a dead horse like a live one. Even if he fails, he can't possibly make the crisis any worse."
Taking a deep breath, Lin Xi said to Ye Huan in a feeble voice:
"If you want to try, go ahead."
It was the tone of someone thinking, *do whatever you want, Lin's Group is doomed anyway!*
Without wasting a second, Ye Huan strode over to Wang Bin's workstation and sat down. He pulled out his phone, opened an app that neither Wang Bin nor Lin Xi had ever seen before, and tapped the screen a few times. Suddenly, his phone linked directly with Wang Bin's computer.
A split second later, countless black windows filled with cascading lines of code erupted across the monitor.
Ye Huan's index fingers began hammering the keyboard with the speed of a muscle spasm.
"What kind of operation is this?"
Wang Bin and his team members crowded around, staring like a bunch of idiots at Ye Huan's flashy, bewildering maneuvers, completely unable to make sense of what they were seeing.
Lin Xi stepped closer. She couldn't understand it either, but Ye Huan suddenly looked remarkably professional. For a brief moment, he became the sole ray of hope to save Lin's Group.
Right now, she had no choice but to trust him!
"Lin Xi, what the hell are you playing at?!"
At that exact moment, several senior corporate executives burst into the network security department, led by a middle-aged man who roared angrily.
It was Lin Xi's uncle, the Vice President of Lin's Group, *Lin Qingyun*.
Upon seeing Lin Qingyun, a flash of undisguised disgust crossed Lin Xi's pretty eyes, and she said in a cold voice:
"Uncle, I'll explain the situation outside."
She didn't want Lin Qingyun shouting and screaming and disrupting Ye Huan's work.
Chapter 28: Hacker Invasion, the Final Hope
"No need to explain! I already know everything that's happened!"
Pointing a finger at her, Lin Qingyun bellowed at the top of his lungs:
"Lin Xi! Ever since you took over as president, the group has been plunging from one crisis into the next. Now we've even been hit by a top-tier hacker invasion! Are you some kind of jinx? Are you trying to drive this company straight into bankruptcy?"
Anger flared within Lin Xi. She lowered her voice and said, "Uncle, please keep your voice down."
"Keep my voice down? Are you afraid the network security department colleagues will find out you're the company's bad-luck charm? There's no need to hide something like that—everyone up and down this company already knows it!"
Lin Qingyun glared at her with wide eyes.
Lin Xi's expression grew even uglier, and she whispered:
"Uncle, the company is currently facing a hacker attack. As the Vice President, you should be joining forces with me to ride out this storm instead of making baseless accusations and framing me!"
Looking Lin Qingyun straight in the eye with an icy stare, she spoke in a firm, resolute tone.
"Framing you?"