Chapter 7: The Web Virus

Kicking up a storm was simple: Chen Xu's years-old forum account had just been tossed into the digital dungeon. 

It was pre-semester, summer boredom in full swing, and Chen Xu had been glued to the web. "KillSoft Home" was his long-time haunt—a forum where he'd rubbed elbows with regulars, a veteran newbie of sorts. 

Not every corner of "KillSoft Home" was about viruses and trojans; it had a watercooler section for chit-chat. That day, Chen Xu stumbled on a mind-numbingly dull post titled, "Check Out My New Pics—How Handsome Am I?" 

He clicked, expecting nothing much. Inside? A set of artsy photos—of a guy. 

Chen Xu had always figured men only bothered with fancy shots for weddings. Dudes who primped, slapped on makeup, and posed for keepsakes were either narcissists or, uh, leaning a certain way. Plus, this guy was annoyingly good-looking—way above Chen Xu's average mug. Jealousy kicked in, and he unleashed his venomous tongue, tearing into the poster like a hurricane. 

Your haircut doesn't match your face. Your face doesn't fit your build. Your build clashes with your vibe. No swears, just razor-sharp jabs—enough to make a proud pig hang itself. 

He fired off the reply and bounced to other threads, unbothered. But soon, locked-out alerts popped up on restricted boards. 

No way, he thought. He'd racked up plenty of forum cred—higher perms than most. Only the insane 255-point "Moderators' Lounge" was off-limits. A quick check revealed the truth: his account was banned! 

Years of grinding, thousands of posts—gone. Furious, he whipped up a throwaway account to demand answers. 

Turns out, the photo-posting pretty boy was minghui—the head honcho mod—using a side account! Then he banned Chen Xu's new throwaway too! 

Cross the top dog and expect to stick around? Fat chance. Minghui was pissed too—his first artsy shoot, posted for praise and maybe some fangirl swoons, only to get shredded by Chen Xu's roast. Worse, Chen Xu's rant rallied the forum's other sharp tongues, burying minghui in savage replies. He nearly smashed his monitor in rage. 

Blood feud: minghui vs. Chen Xu. 

Banned and bitter, Chen Xu stewed. That ID was his baby—years of effort torched! 

Right or wrong didn't matter online—everyone's a ghost, words fly without filters. Now, armed with a supercomputer, he was back to flex. He didn't have a plan—just a smug itch, like strutting past an ex who dumped you with a drop-dead gorgeous new date on your arm. 

He punched in the familiar URL. The page loaded—and bam—Xiaomin's melodic voice chimed, "Detected an embedded virus in the Windows system. Sample analysis identifies it as the infamous early 21st-century trojan 'Beacon Fire.' Kill it?" 

Chen Xu's gut reaction: Holy crap. 

A web Trojan—code baked into the page, sneaking into your system the second you click. Shameless as hell. His dad's porn-surfing disasters? Ninety percent of those viruses hitched a ride this way. 

But this was KillSoft Home! A antivirus hub! 

A site peddling virus-killers getting tagged with a trojan? If word got out, they'd be a laughingstock! 

Chen Xu's eyes gleamed. Minghui, big-shot mod, huh? Strutting around while his own turf's infected—and clueless about it. Embarrassing! 

He scoured the boards—no posts about a virus. Even threads from a minute ago were silent. 

"No one's noticed?" His grin widened. If he caught this first and squashed it, he'd get to play the hero—high on that expert buzz. 

"Xiaomin," he blurted, "can you kill this thing? Or whip up a targeted cleaner for Windows?" 

"With a specific sample, it's a breeze," she replied. An EXE file popped onto the desktop. "This cleaner roots out 'Beacon Fire' from deep system crevices, blocks reinfection, and keeps it gone." 

"Thanks, babe!" He knew she was virtual, but it slipped out anyway. He'd learned earlier—2086 still hadn't cracked true AI from sci-fi dreams. Xiaomin's near-flawless chats and problem-solving came from a massive database, not sentience. Unanswerable queries got a flat, "Sorry, no data on that." 

A tiny cleaner file—perfect. He registered a new account, "SMMH" (short for "Smack Minghui"), and posted a smug thread, crowing about spotting "Beacon Fire" and dunking on the mods and admins. To dodge revenge vibes, he skipped mentioning his old ID. 

Cleaner uploaded, he refreshed like a kid on Christmas, waiting for the forum to grovel—maybe even his old idols begging to be his apprentices! 

Refresh, refresh, refresh… 

Views climbed. Sofa-squatters ("First!"), bench-grabbers ("Second!"), and floor-sitters ("Third!") spammed their nonsense. Finally, a real reply. 

From JUN—a forum vet, honorary mod, self-proclaimed "master of masters." Chen Xu remembered snagging a cracked Rising Antivirus from him once. 

Seeing his idol thrilled him—until he read the post. Excitement flipped to fury. 

JUN mocked him hard. "Nice try on the cleaner—looks legit. But turn on auto-protection, and it flags every site with 'Beacon Fire' alerts. Sohu, Tencent, NetEase—China's biggest portals. Even foreign giants! If this guy's tool is real, 'Beacon Fire' has torched the global web. No such virus exists. He thinks he's smarter than every coder alive, spotting what the world missed." 

Chen Xu didn't rage—he froze. 

JUN's words sank in, chilling him. 

Hands trembling, he opened Sohu. Xiaomin chirped, "'Beacon Fire' detected." Tencent—same. NetEase—yep. He ran down HAO163's top portals—every one triggered the warning. His rock-solid confidence wobbled. Did this future rig glitch crossing time? 

"Xiaomin, did you screw up? What virus hits every major site? What's 'Beacon Fire' anyway?" 

Her reply gutted him: "The intact database has the sample but no background data." 

Oh, crap—an epic screw-up! 

Ugh, humiliating! Chen Xu had tinkered with computers for years, knew his way around antivirus basics. Maybe it was a system fluke. A future rig this advanced botching it? Unlikely. Could "Beacon Fire" be a false positive—a harmless code flagged as evil? 

He recalled a forum post—an expert dropped cryptic code online, saying, "Copy this into Notepad, save it as a text file. If your antivirus flags it instantly, it's top-tier. On save, great. A few seconds later, decent. Only on manual scan, weak. No alert at all? Congrats, you're using Kingsoft, Jiangmin, or Rising—ditch it." 

It was a bit unfair—the code hid a virus signature from the European Computer Virus Association. Chinese antivirus lagged behind foreign giants, likely missing the signature. 

This mess felt similar. Maybe modern web code had a snippet—benign now, but flagged as malicious by future systems. And he'd gone and built a cleaner for it. Talk about a faceplant. 

Different eras, huh. 

JUN's roast thread stung, but Chen Xu couldn't bear to stick around. Muttering "fail, fail, fail," he logged off—unaware his "blunder" was about to ripple worldwide…