Chapter 29: The Dark Web

Chapter 29: The Dark Web

After securing the Energy source, Bai Ge felt much more confident.

Over a day, 480,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity came in. Gradually, he didn’t have to worry about lacking resources anymore.

He listened as Ling Dang repeatedly reported the Energy growth, and the electricity bit by bit accumulated.

While storing that Energy, he decided to enrich his knowledge first.

He bought several high-performance computers and started browsing the dark web.

The knowledge on the surface web had been drained. To gain more knowledge, he needed a certain level of skill to get it himself.

The dark web was a network that couldn’t be searched. It was like a hidden giant in the deep internet, over twenty times bigger than the surface web known to ordinary people.

It took up more than ninety-five percent of the world’s internet data. The amount of data that could be guessed was at least eight zettabytes.

This network data truly existed, but ordinary people just couldn’t search for it or access it.

Broadly speaking, any place that search engines couldn’t find or struggled with could be called the dark web.

That meant a lot of info or stuff people wanted to hide and not share lived in the dark web.

This included major study centers, high-tech companies, secret groups of countries, and private networks of top schools.

There were even networks for crime and illegal talk. All these were “invisible,” “unfindable,” and “untouchable” parts of the dark web.

Only insiders could log in, using secret, changing ways to access.

The internet was very deep, much deeper than most people thought.

Public sites like portals, official websites, and search engines were just the visible top layer.

Most hacker battles happened in the dark web.

Even with Bai Ge’s computer skills from “hard study,” he could only rule the surface web. In the dark web, he could barely break into a tiny bit.

For most hackers, just hacking that little part was a big win. That might be their best forever.

But Bai Ge was different. He had an amazing speed for learning.

The dark web was full of resources—like an ocean of knowledge. He felt sure he could beat it all!

The method was simple: “fight to grow.”

No one could be like Bai Ge, hacking while learning and improving at the same time.

Whenever he gained the right amount of knowledge and skills, he could perform at the top level.

In the dark web, he fought more and got stronger.

“Yep,” he thought, “there’s technical stuff the surface web can’t get at all… plus crime stuff.”

For now, Bai Ge could only break into some illegal websites, like crime video sites or illegal deal sites.

These sites were all paid. So Bai Ge found ways to access them by looking at their servers or VPNs.

Servers sat on the surface web. They could be a boring forum or a web game no one played.

Illegal money-making sites on the dark web used servers on the surface web to charge.

To pay for watching a video on a dark web crime site, you could directly buy fake items in what looked like a web game shop.

It was like paying normally to unlock the secret entry.

Sure, this was a simple kind of dark web. The videos or secret data were useless to Bai Ge.

More subscription sites worked by sending money through banks to secret accounts. When the money arrived, they gave you access.

There was even a full team of brokers running it.

This hidden network wasn’t part of the open internet. It was way more secret.

This was the kind Bai Ge had to hack into.

“No leads, tough to find,” he thought. “Most people use these sites by word-of-mouth or through private chat apps.”

Right now, Bai Ge was madly using the computer. The screen showed nothing familiar because normal browsers couldn’t reach the dark web.

Many dark webs needed real-world keys or log-in tools spread offline.

Each one was super secret.

For a full five hours, Bai Ge broke into dark web after dark web. He got tons of data he normally couldn’t see.

He could’ve bought it. Many illegal sites sold high tech, but they were pricey. Bai Ge didn’t want to spend cash.

Instead, he forced in and took the data.

The site’s security spotted him, but that was fine. Bai Ge’s System was made by Ling Dang.

For now, Bai Ge was a top hacker—only a step from the very best.

And Ling Dang’s System and hacking tools were as good as what an advanced hacker would make after years of work.

Even if other hackers found him, they couldn’t crack his shields fast.

Bai Ge downloaded fast. After stealing data, he learned right away, getting better every minute.

Over those five hours, he found a dark web about every ten minutes; updated his hacking tools every half hour; and built a brand-new operating System every hour.

In a company or government agency, making a top System like that took years. Ling Dang just needed one second.

Sure, that kind of System wasn’t worth much to sell. It had to feel user-friendly and look good—and Bai Ge didn’t have the ideas to beat Microsoft.

But this pace of change beat any network tech guy or internet company.

His skills got stronger all the time, and his “gear” did too.

The security guys in the dark webs he broke couldn’t keep up.

“That jerk! This is stealing!”

In one illegal trade network, a bunch of hackers had built a dark web to sell secrets, valuable clues, and private data for profit.

But today, they got hit by a hidden hacker. All their data got read, and the stuff they worked hard for was taken for nothing.

“Jin, why not shut down the servers quick?”

“It was too late! The enemy blasted our coding open in four seconds. There must be a spy in here!”

“Four seconds? Impossible! With the size of our encryption, even the best hacker would need half an hour!”

These hackers didn’t know someone broke their lock in one second.

The other three seconds were just to read the coding with his eyes.

For Bai Ge, he just had to skim the super fast and pass it to Ling Dang.

He got way better at this since his first days with a hard drive.

The decoding job went to Ling Dang. What took others a day, Ling Dang did in a second.

“This dark web pile is selling net secrets,” he thought. “Scored big… so many hidden dark web log-ins…”

Bai Ge grabbed heaps of dark web access methods—all meant for sale by the hackers, but he stole them all.

That made it super easy for Bai Ge. With these, he skipped a lot of work.

“3,045 dark webs,” he thought. “From top nations’ groups down to companies, plus hidden clubs… How many years did those hackers spend grabbing this stuff?”

Bai Ge guessed right. That group of top hackers did spend six years to collect it all.

“Internet Security Planning Center?”

“Princeton Central Database?”

“Munich Chemical Exchange Society.”

“DKE Brotherhood?”

Bai Ge was infiltrating one dark web after another. Some were established by professors from famous universities, some by business organizations, some by illegal associations, and some by professional scientific groups.

Do not think that government agencies had not set up dark webs; in fact, they had set up the most of them.

There were over three thousand dark webs, and for Bai Ge to infiltrate all of them required too much time.

It was late at night on the second day before he managed to plunder only over two hundred dark webs.

The vast majority of the time was spent on cleaning traces during retreat and evading tracking.

After all, if he did not clean the traces thoroughly, he would surely have been pursued by at least over a thousand hackers by now…

At this moment, Bai Ge’s knowledge reserves had leaped up significantly.

If the knowledge on the surface network and in books accounted for sixty percent of all Humankind’s knowledge, then the dark web held thirty-nine percent.

This thirty-nine percent was more important than that sixty percent.

As for the remaining one percent, it was deeply hidden in truly secret and concealed places, completely impossible to access through networks, and could only be obtained through the most primitive means.

And this one percent was more important than the ninety-nine percent outside.

“DARPA of the United States!”

“This is awesome!”

Among the login tools for those over three thousand dark webs, Bai Ge unexpectedly found the access method to the internal network database of DARPA.

DARPA was specifically responsible for researching military technology.

The technology there was at least twenty years ahead of the world; if he could read this database, Bai Ge would quickly become a top scientist.

Of course, the most truly advanced and leading technical materials could not be placed on the dark web; they were absolutely preserved by physical means.

But even so, the things in that database were surely invaluable.

“That hacker group actually managed to get this, but they probably could not invade it; they merely had an access method. Invading DARPA was no different from seeking death.”

The internal database was separated from the entire large network and required a specific login tool and dedicated VPN line.

Yet this was only the access method, meaning it allowed Bai Ge to find it.

This point, Bai Ge already had.

The rest relied on his skill. Everyone accessing this dark web needed a dynamic key to log in. Bai Ge, of course, did not have it and needed to perform cracking.

Fortunately, the relevant cracking data was also in the intelligence; clearly, that same hacker group had attempted to invade it back then but did not dare go deep and quietly left.

“Ling Dang…”

“It has been cracked. The key is…”

Using only two seconds, Bai Ge logged into the database.

This was normal access; as long as he did not disturb the encrypted special files, some publicly available materials inside the network could be browsed normally.

“High-Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System… Hypersonic Drone… Mechanical Soldier… Brainwave Sensor… Graphene Chip…”

Bai Ge browsed through them, feeling dazzled. Vastly most were just projects.

Some had not been researched successfully, some had even just started, and some were merely concepts.

About thirty percent of the project data he could browse directly; it was not encrypted.

After all, this was not some trading platform; only internal personnel were accessing it.

Therefore, these materials were practically gifted to Bai Ge; he downloaded them all to a hard drive and threw it into the Brain Hole.

As for the remaining seventy percent, they were things that seemed advanced just by looking at the project plans.

But the specific data were encrypted, using quantum encryption.

“It was actually quantum encryption. Without disturbing the quantum system, the quantum state of that system could not be measured; it was unsolvable encryption.”

Before measurement, the quantum state was Chaos; that meant Bai Ge had to personally reach the central database location and observe the quantum encryption system with physical means to obtain a password.

This had nothing to do with Mathematics or network information; it was fundamentally impossible to crack.

“Sigh, these encrypted things are the truly top-tier technologies. If I want to obtain them… I still have to go personally?”

“No, if I use the Anomalous Trait…”

For other people, quantum-encrypted things were as unsolvable as anything stored physically offline.

All required personally going and opening through Reality-based methods.

But for Bai Ge, there was a way.

“Universal Lock Pick…”

…