Looking at the entire Void incident, all of the information appeared only in fragmented form.

Inside the game, Xu Yuan and Entity 303 had pretty much pieced together the intel about the Void.

But what they didn't realize was that the puzzle that connected the entire incident was actually outside of the game.

Of course, even if they did know, they probably wouldn't be able to dig anything up.

As it happened, because of the Void, Entity 303 ended up getting in touch with Rookie.

And in fact, Rookie was the one most suited to investigate this matter.

After connecting with Entity 303, he could precisely access all the intel about the Void that Entity 303 had.

And in reality, given his identity and abilities, he was far more capable than ordinary people of finding something out.

Once he decided to investigate Brother Jiang, Rookie immediately activated administrator privileges, and then inspected the account Brother Jiang had logged into previously.

The result didn't surprise Rookie, last time Brother Jiang requested admin privileges, sure enough, he went into the Void.

And during his entire online session, he stayed in the Void the whole time.

"As expected, something's fishy."

"If I pull up the footage from that time, the truth should come out…"

Brother Jiang had used admin privileges to log into the game then. With admin privileges, the system automatically records first-person footage.

That was also company policy, every admin account was set up this way.

So long as he found the footage, they'd know exactly what Brother Jiang did in the Void.

Rookie skillfully started copying data, searched for quite a while, but couldn't find any footage for Brother Jiang's account.

"Just as I thought, figures it wouldn't be that simple…"

The result was actually within Rookie's expectations.

Whenever the Void or the events ten years ago were mentioned, Brother Jiang was always evasive.

It was obvious he wanted to hide something, so of course he wouldn't make such a rookie mistake.

If Brother Jiang were an amateur, that'd be one thing. But although his skills might not be on Notch's level, they weren't far off.

And Brother Jiang himself was making his own new game, so naturally he knew that admin accounts had a recording function.

Naturally, he'd also know how to browse with no traces.

Although Rookie couldn't get clues that easily, the fact that Brother Jiang deleted the footage was already as good as saying "there's no silver buried here."

That alone proved Rookie's line of investigation was correct.

Seeing nothing useful inside the admin account, Rookie logged out.

He then turned his attention to the dark web login screen.

Looking at Brother Jiang's account, he fell into thought.

"Someone this cautious… actually forgot to clear his dark web account records…"

"Then let's see what he's been looking up."

Since Brother Jiang's account was still here, to someone like Rookie, a technical programmer, the account didn't even need a password anymore.

Hacking an account was child's play.

But after thinking for a moment, Rookie gave up the idea of hacking Brother Jiang's account.

"No… if he notices, he'll definitely be on guard… After that, it'll be almost impossible to dig anything else up…"

Hacking Brother Jiang's account was the simplest method, but sometimes the simplest method makes things the most complicated.

If it were just some ordinary person's account, nothing would be detected.

But Brother Jiang wasn't ordinary. If his account held secrets, then no matter what, hacking it would leave traces.

And if Brother Jiang discovered it, then that clue would be completely cut off.

Thinking of this, Rookie let out a long sigh.

"Looks like I can only use that method…"

It wasn't that Rookie was out of options.

There was still one way to see Brother Jiang's account contents without hacking it, and without being discovered.

But that method was far harder than hacking the account.

That method was Rookie's specialty, "password cracking."

After all, back when he was bored, he had already figured out the passwords for Old Wu, Entity 303, and Notch's accounts.

As well as the bank card PINs for Old Wu and Entity 303.

The only reason he hadn't cracked Notch's bank card PIN was because Rookie had never actually seen Notch's card, so even though he already had some guesses in mind, he had no way to test them…

Of course, another reason was that Notch deliberately hid it. He was afraid that if Rookie saw his bank balance, he'd start pestering him to be his sugar daddy.

After all, with his subconscious in charge, Rookie really might have such bold ideas…

Given how cautious Brother Jiang was, Rookie's only option was to crack the password.

Normally, for Rookie, this was easy.

But right now, his expression wasn't relaxed at all.

He had easily guessed the passwords for Old Wu, Entity 303, and Notch because he knew them well.

But for Brother Jiang, Rookie wasn't familiar.

They had only met once, and Rookie could only judge whether he was a good person or not.

As for anything else, he couldn't tell.

Another issue was that right now, Rookie's main consciousness was in control, his thinking wasn't as expansive as when his subconscious was leading.

"Only five chances…"

On the dark web, if you enter the wrong password five times, the account locks for 24 hours.

In other words, if he failed three times, that clue from Brother Jiang would basically be gone.

So Rookie hesitated.

Normally, guessing passwords was just a fun game for him. But now, it felt like a mountain of pressure.

After thinking for a long time, Rookie finally decided to try once.

"Usually, a password is either your birthday, your lover's birthday, an anniversary, or your name plus birthday in upper or lower case…"

"Brother Jiang said he didn't have a girlfriend…"

"And from the look of him, he doesn't seem like the type to get caught up in romance…"

"Let's try his birthday…"

Rookie remembered Brother Jiang's birthday, because Notch had mentioned it once.

"19900318…"

[Password incorrect]

"…"

"Jiang900318…"

[Password incorrect]

"Could it really be Notch's birthday?…"

"19901010…"

[Password incorrect]

"…"

Rookie was getting flustered, three wrong in a row.

Now there were only two chances left, and he was scratching his head in anxiety.

Then, by chance, he glanced at Brother Jiang's account, and his eyes were immediately drawn to the last four digits.

"1227…"

"December 27…"

"This… was some special day, wasn't it…?"

Rookie vaguely remembered that someone had mentioned December 27 before.

He closed his eyes and searched his memory for anything connected with "12" and "27."

After a moment, he finally recalled it.

There wasn't a December 27 stored in his memory, but he remembered something Notch once told him.

———

("I remember, just after Christmas, maybe the second day after… Brother Jiang came home after work, looking completely downcast."

"That night, when I got up to go to the bathroom, I saw him crying hard on the sofa. On the coffee table there were over ten empty beer bottles, and the ashtray was overflowing with cigarette butts."

"In all the years I've known him, I'd never seen him like that.")

———

"Christmas is the 25th."

"The second day after Christmas… that's the 27th…"

"December 27th!"

Notch never knew why Brother Jiang was crying so bitterly that night. The excuse Brother Jiang gave him later was probably just something he made up on the spot.

He said he broke up with a foreign girlfriend.

And because it was such a casual excuse, Brother Jiang himself didn't even remember it later.

That's also why, in Notch's memory, Brother Jiang "had a girlfriend."

But Jiang himself always said he never had a girlfriend.

Because for Notch, that day left a deep impression, he saw a side of Brother Jiang he had never seen before.

And for Brother Jiang, that day was also extremely important, but his focus was entirely on the thing that made him so sad.

So naturally, he forgot the excuse he made up.

Thinking of this, the knot in Rookie's mind seemed to loosen.

"Account length is fixed… Brother Jiang's account name is already at max length."

"What he wants to commemorate is not just the date, but the event of that year, that day."

"So maybe the password isn't that complicated, it's just the numbers for that year and that day?"

With that thought, Rookie recalled what Notch had told him.

It didn't take long before he found the year.

"December 27, 2018!"

With that, Rookie typed 20181227 into the password field.

After typing, he took a deep breath, hesitated a moment, then closed his eyes and hit login.

This time, he didn't hear the system error sound.

Slowly opening his eyes, Brother Jiang's dark web account information appeared before him.

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