Bro, did you hear?"
Zhang Chao's voice broke Lin Yi's focus as he looked up from his laptop. His roommate sprawled across the lower bunk, phone in hand, screen blaring another social media video.
Lin Yi blinked, eyes adjusting from the darkness of his GhostNet terminal to the real world. "Hear what?"
Zhang Chao grinned. "QuickBox just signed a deal with a national courier company. They're scaling citywide now! Their boss even gave an interview saying some mysterious AI boosted their system."
Lin Yi froze for a second.
"They didn't say what AI?"
"Nope, just called it 'a third-party performance enhancer'—whatever that means. But netizens are already calling it 'the ghost system' online."
Zhang Chao laughed. "Cool name, right? Sounds like something out of a hacker movie."
Lin Yi gave a noncommittal nod.
But inside, his mind was racing.
[System Alert: GhostNet Node Recognition Surpassing Acceptable Threshold – 62% Awareness Zone Reached]
[Warning: Public speculation may lead to real identity exposure]
It was spreading too fast.
He hadn't even pushed GhostNet beyond a regional test phase.
But now, corporate deals were being signed using his system… without his name, his team, or his protection.
And worst of all?
Someone was talking.
Later that afternoon, Liu Fan appeared in the hallway outside the engineering building, his backpack hanging crookedly off one shoulder.
He looked nervous.
"Lin Yi," he said, glancing around. "I think I messed up."
Lin Yi stepped aside, motioning him into the shadows beneath a stairwell.
"What happened?"
"I showed someone GhostNet's dashboard. I thought he was just a curious classmate—he's always asking about machine learning. I didn't give him access, just showed him the front-end…"
Lin Yi's voice dropped. "What did you show exactly?"
Liu Fan swallowed. "The node map. Some stats. The predictive layer graphs."
Lin Yi's eyes sharpened.
"That's enough."
[System Update: Privacy Breach Detected – Source: Liu Fan → Awareness Spread Risk: 12%]
[Action Suggested: Lock Down Node | Deploy Trace Protocol | Engage Loyalty Reassessment]
"I'll fix it," Liu Fan said quickly. "I didn't know—"
"It's not about knowing," Lin Yi interrupted. "It's about protecting the thing that protects us."
He pulled out his phone and tapped a few commands.
[Node Access: Liu Fan – Temporarily Suspended]
[Trace Deployed: Subject 'Wu Peng' (Target of Exposure)]
A new window popped up showing Wu Peng's digital footprint. AI-clustered behavior matched his activity to multiple online searches about underground tech startups, AI disruption trends, and—worst of all—usernames posting on forums speculating about "the ghost system."
Lin Yi's face darkened.
Meanwhile, at Jiangcheng Tech Ventures, Vice Director Feng Yuliang smiled grimly as he reviewed an anonymous tip submitted through the internal cybersecurity portal.
An intern named Wu Peng had allegedly seen a private AI system operating on unauthorized architecture—capable of real-time prediction, multi-source data parsing, and self-adjusting routines.
Feng's fingers tapped the table.
If this "ghost system" existed… and it wasn't under the company's control… it was a threat.
"Bring Wu Peng in," he ordered his assistant.
"And track everything this GhostNet touches."
Back at the dorm, Lin Yi's door swung shut behind him as he activated SilentRoot and summoned both Zhou Xinyue and Liu Fan into a private encrypted voice chat.
"We have a situation," Lin Yi began, no emotion in his voice.
"Wu Peng?" Zhou Xinyue said. "Saw him digging through GitHub mirrors and cross-referencing public APIs earlier this week. Persistent little rat."
"He's already reported it," Lin Yi replied. "But he doesn't know who built it yet."
"Should I wipe his system?" Zhou asked calmly.
"No," Lin Yi said. "Not yet. We don't want to scare him. We want to feed him."
A pause.
"You're going to let him sniff around?" Liu Fan asked.
"I'm going to mislead him," Lin Yi corrected. "He wants GhostNet? I'll give him GhostTrash."
By midnight, Lin Yi had written and deployed a decoy system named GhostShell—a bloated, half-functional AI riddled with fake data leaks, false developer logs, and intentionally flawed code.
The system looked like a genius's failed prototype.
When Wu Peng tried to trace his way back to GhostNet through the dashboards he thought he saw?
He'd find GhostShell—and a sloppy trail that led to an abandoned GitHub alias and a fake university student in Shandong.
[System Prompt: GhostShell Decoy Live – Activity Detected: Subject Wu Peng | Misdirection 92% Effective]
[Reputation Damage Risk: 0% | Exposure: Neutralized]
[Reward: +4 Stealth Points | Liu Fan Loyalty Restored: 89%]
At 3:12 a.m., Lin Yi finally leaned back in his creaky chair.
The crisis had been averted—for now.
But it had taught him something painful.
He couldn't trust everyone.
Even the curious ones.
Even the ones close.
[System Suggestion: Begin Development of Loyalty Seal Program – Encrypt Node Access Based on Moral Stability Index]
He clicked "Accept."
From now on, trust wouldn't just be a gut feeling.
It would be calculated, encrypted, and locked down.
Because the world was watching now.
And Lin Yi was no longer invisible.
He was a ghost…
But even ghosts could bleed if seen.