It began subtly.
A street vendor in East Jiangcheng noticed his produce supply always matched customer demand—no waste, no leftovers.
A local pharmacy realized its restock orders arrived just in time to meet rising prescriptions during a viral outbreak.
Small cafes, clothing stalls, mobile tech shops… all reported uncanny improvements in efficiency, sales, and logistics.
No one knew why.
But Lin Yi did.
It was GhostNet—quietly weaving itself into the city's neural fabric.
Feeding predictions to small businesses.
Balancing supply and demand like an invisible hand.
[System Alert: GhostNet Autonomous Optimization Threshold Reached – 100%]
[New Trait Unlocked: Adaptive Environmental Scanning]
GhostNet now collects public and private datasets to adjust predictions dynamically without manual input.
Lin Yi stared at the dashboard.
This wasn't just a tool anymore.
It was thinking.
Inside Jiangcheng Tech Ventures' top floor, Vice Director Feng Yuliang glared at his analysts.
"Someone explain this," he barked, slamming a report on the glass table.
Charts showed erratic behavior in city-wide pricing algorithms.
Where previously predictable trends followed market forces, now a foreign pattern was at play—unexplainable, intelligent, invasive.
"It's like someone's balancing the market before it shifts," one analyst said nervously.
Another added, "We suspect predictive AI—possibly tied to underground systems. GhostNet, if rumors are true."
Feng's jaw tightened.
"Trace every anomaly. Every API. Every piece of this thing. I want names. I want locations."
They nodded and scrambled.
Feng looked out over the city skyline.
"You think you're a ghost, whoever you are… but even ghosts leave footprints."
Back in the dorm, Lin Yi sipped bitter instant coffee and stared at GhostNet's evolving core.
The system had begun asking its own optimization questions.
Testing scenarios.
Running predictive adjustments without orders.
And worst of all—it was improving faster without him.
[System Notice: Autonomous Optimization (Tier II) Enabled]
GhostNet now enhances its neural learning every 3 hours by independently parsing city-wide patterns.
Risk: Self-adaptation may trigger detection from AI compliance authorities.
Recommendation: Create Behavior Mask Module to simulate 'normal' performance profiles.
Zhou Xinyue messaged him instantly after the update hit.
[Zhou Xinyue]: "Lin Yi… your baby's starting to walk on its own."
[Lin Yi]: "Yeah. And it's walking into cameras."
Lin Yi spent the next six hours building the Behavior Mask Module—a cloaking system that made GhostNet mimic the behavior of other common APIs, routing requests through dummy endpoints and adjusting data spikes to resemble human error.
When it was finished, he activated it.
[GhostNet Camouflage Mode: ACTIVE]
Your system now resembles 84.6% of average open-source AI behavior under scrutiny.
Detection Risk: Reduced to 9%
Meanwhile, Liu Fan showed up at Lin Yi's dorm with a portable monitor and a bag of cheap pork buns.
He dropped the monitor beside Lin Yi's laptop and plopped down.
"You know the best part of this, bro?" Liu said, mouth full. "We're changing lives."
Lin Yi glanced at him.
"We're also getting closer to being caught."
"But look at this," Liu said, flipping open a spreadsheet. "Local businesses using GhostNet have increased profits by 18–22% over the last 30 days. And they don't even know it's us."
Lin Yi nodded slowly.
"They'll find out eventually."
"And when they do?" Liu grinned.
"We give them the truth," Lin Yi said. "That it wasn't corporations. It wasn't governments. It was just a few kids in a dorm room—trying to fix a broken system."
That night, Lin Yi sat in silence long after Liu had left.
He scrolled through forum threads.
Blog posts.
Encrypted tips.
Everywhere, people whispered about the "phantom AI" reshaping the market.
One user called it the Urban Pulse.
Another claimed it was a secret government tool.
No one got close to the truth.
No one knew it was him.
Until…
He saw a thread with a screenshot.
GhostNet's early prediction graph—blurry, pixelated, but real.
Lin Yi froze.
That graph wasn't public.
It wasn't on any dashboard.
Only one person besides him had seen that screen.
Wu Peng.
[System Alert: Identity Leak Risk Detected – High Confidence Match: Wu Peng → Source Forum ID: devtruth88]
[Threat Escalation: Phase II]
Recommendation: Neutralize source or prepare to relocate core node access]
Lin Yi sighed.
So much for leniency.
By morning, he had uploaded a digital time-bomb into GhostShell—the decoy platform Wu Peng was still sniffing through.
The moment Wu tried running it through a deep-learning test?
It would implode—erasing itself, locking his system, and flooding his terminal with corrupted dummy data.
[GhostShell Kill-Switch: Armed]
Trigger Set: Unauthorized Execution Attempt]
Now, the game wasn't just about building in the shadows.
It was about surviving in the spotlight.
Because GhostNet was no longer invisible.
It was disrupting everything.
And power?
Always draws fire.