Chapter 13: Rumors
Huang Ji first replied to the post on the forum, asking a few questions about aliens.
However, after waiting for a long ti, there was no response.
Scratching his head, Huang Ji decided to dig deeper into the user's online activity.
"A QQ account? Userna ‘TigerHunterTonight’? What’s this?"
By probing the information associated with the forum account, Huang Ji discovered that the user had once sent their QQ account to another forum mber via private ssage.
Even though that ssage had been deleted, Huang Ji could still retrieve it.
Since this was informational data rather than a physical object, Huang Ji couldn’t glean details like the personal information linked to the QQ account just yet.
No matter. Huang Ji searched online and quickly learned what QQ was.
"Oh, so it’s this software!"
He imdiately opened the pre-installed QQ app on his computer and followed a tutorial to create an account.
Using the search function, he located the “TigerHunterTonight” account. This ti, having a tangible object to observe, Huang Ji's Information Sense flooded him with details about the account.
He could see everything, including the user’s password and their chat history with all their contacts.
Naturally, it was far too much information to process at once. Feeling overwheld by the noise, Huang Ji filtered out most of it and simply sent a friend request, hoping to talk to the user directly.
"Verification question? ‘What’s my favorite ga?’"
Huang Ji blinked and slowly typed three letters with his two fingers: "WOW."
Done. That was the answer.
“Hm…” Huang Ji sipped so water and took a bathroom break.
After waiting a long ti with no response to his friend request, Huang Ji glanced at the ti. Realizing he needed to return to the bookstore, he decided to take a different approach.
He logged directly into the user’s QQ account using their credentials, manually added himself as a friend, and then logged out, waiting for the user to log back in.
Soon, Huang Ji sent a ssage:
"Hello. I’m very interested in aliens, but I have a few questions about your statents."
The reply ca instantly, in a furious torrent of ssages:
"Go to hell, you account thief!"
"What, dogs can use the internet now? Look at you, adding
as a friend—calling you trash would be a complint!"
"What's your problem? Why don’t you go obsess over bubble tea or sothing?"
"I swear, I’ve never seen such an idiot! Stealing an account and then earnestly asking questions? What’s next, flying to the moon with a broomstick?"
"What’s wrong? Can’t type? Cat got your tongue? Did soone in your family ascend to nirvana?"
A deluge of text ca pouring in, a relentless stream of insults, each more colorful than the last.
Huang Ji was stunned.
"???" He sat there, dumbfounded, as the barrage of ssages continued. His mind spun with questions, but his lack of typing speed left him unable to retort. ??à????Ｂ????
"So this is what the internet is like…" Huang Ji thought, watching the relentless flow of text. The user’s unending tirade didn’t include a single repeated insult.
Huang Ji tried to organize his thoughts and type a reply, but the mont he managed two words, the other person had already sent three more lines, forcing him to delete and start over.
Feeling a bit helpless, Huang Ji finally decided to respond calmly.
“Dong An, can you shut up?”
"…"
The user froze for a mont before bombarding Huang Ji with a new series of ssages, demanding to know how he knew their na.
They speculated wildly: was Huang Ji an old childhood friend? A staff mber at the internet cafe?
Ignoring the frantic questioning, Huang Ji leisurely typed:
"I’ll ask, you answer. Can you stop performing a one-man show?"
Unwilling to back down, Dong An launched another barrage of texts, surprisingly free of curse words but no less intense.
Huang Ji sighed, feeling a headache coming on. He calmly sent a string of letters and numbers—Dong An’s World of Warcraft account and password.
The user fell silent.
Smirking, Huang Ji followed up with more: Dong An’s main account, alternate accounts, and storage accounts. He laid it all bare.
"Uncle, I was wrong! I’m young and foolish; please don’t take it to heart!"
Seeing all his carefully maintained gaming accounts and passwords exposed, Dong An imdiately caved.
Huang Ji rolled his eyes. He had already concluded that Dong An probably didn’t know anything truly useful, but he decided to confirm this just in case.
Typing was too slow for Huang Ji's liking, so he initiated a video call.
Soon, a scrawny young man appeared on the screen. Naturally, Huang Ji hadn’t installed a webcam, so Dong An only saw a blank screen on his end.
Huang Ji put on his headphones and listened to Dong An's voice:
"Uncle, you tell
what's going on here! There's no way soone with your abilities would need to steal my account, right?"
Huang Ji carefully extended his Information Sense but felt a twinge of disappointnt.
As he suspected, video and audio communication didn’t allow him to access Dong An’s personal information.
"So that’s how it works," Huang Ji mused. "What I’m seeing is rely the electromagnetic signals translated into an image on my screen, not Dong An himself."
"The sa goes for his voice. I’m only receiving data transmitted through electromagnetic signals, not the actual information of the person speaking."
It was akin to looking at a photograph. From the photo, he could only extract data about the image itself, not the person depicted.
To truly understand soone, Huang Ji needed to either see them with his own eyes or interact with them directly.
Having confird this limitation, Huang Ji asked in a low voice, "In your discussion about aliens, what’s your basis? How do you know astronauts have seen aliens?"
Dong An replied, "That’s all part of foreign conspiracy theories. So people pieced it together from subtle details in interviews with astronauts. I also heard that hackers broke into FBI classified files and discovered that the governnt is hiding the existence of aliens..."
On the screen, the scrawny young man rambled on, claiming that spaceships had crashed, alien corpses had been dissected by Aricans, and that so aliens had survived and made deals with the U.S. to help develop advanced weapons. He ntioned Area 51’s underground bases housing UFOs.
At first, Huang Ji listened intently, but he soon realized Dong An was likely just making things up.
Finally, Dong An said, "Oh, right. I actually suspect the U.S. never landed on the moon. The broadcast back then was pre-recorded. This has already been exposed abroad—people pointed out many inconsistencies in the moon landing footage."
"The U.S. never landed on the moon. Otherwise, why has their technology regressed over the years?"
"Look, the moon doesn’t have moisture, so how could those footprints be so clear? And the shadows—they’re clearly from multiple light sources, which proves it was fild in a studio..."
He kept rattling off various theories and so-called “evidence.”
Huang Ji’s patience finally ran out.
Hearing the claim that the moon landing was a hoax, Huang Ji instantly recognized that Dong An was speaking nonsense.
Whether the moon landing was real or not, Huang Ji knew the truth.
When he looked up at the starry sky and focused on the moon, his Information Sense revealed that humans had landed there six tis.
Not only that, but the moon’s surface held 24,483 pieces of human-made debris, including spacecraft fragnts, the Arican flag, lunar rovers, laser reflectors, and more.
With such evidence on the moon, the landing could not possibly be a hoax. Yet, Dong An’s list of “inconsistencies” made it sound convincing.
"Thankfully, I can verify the truth about the moon landing. While what he says sounds plausible, it’s clearly wrong," Huang Ji thought.
"That ans his other claims about aliens, no matter how logical or well-supported they appear, are probably just wild guesses as well."
Huang Ji shook his head, realizing how foolish he had been.
He had seen soone’s comnts online and assud they might know sothing about aliens. How naive.
Reflecting on the experience, Huang Ji realized how naive he had been.
"So this is the internet... a bit disappointing."
Having never interacted with the online world before, he had approached it with only a superficial understanding and overly high expectations for the information it could provide.
"Still, the ntions of FBI classified files and the underground bases at Area 51 aren’t entirely useless."
"If I simply visit these places, I’ll know everything. As for whether astronauts have seen aliens, I just need to et one in person to find out."
Pondering this, Huang Ji ended the video call with Dong An, powered off his computer, and headed out.
This incident dispelled his illusion that randomly searching online would yield abundant, reliable information.
"Any mystery, any truth—I just need to go to the site and see it for myself. If I face the people involved, no secret can remain hidden from ."
"As for aliens, there’s no rush. I’ll set that aside for now and focus on learning."
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