"As long as that person behind the scenes is still using hacker techniques, the EDEN debugging device will be able to block his attempt to locate me."
Confidently reassuring Renamon, Chen Ze knew her doubts came purely from unfamiliarity with hacking—what hackers did, how they thought, and the methods they used.
In Chen Ze's eyes, hackers were, by nature, people who concealed their identities while trying to obtain unauthorized access to various parts of the network—outlaws, in a sense.
For hackers, even more important than forging a perfect enough digital avatar to fool network identification was ensuring that their real address never became exposed.
Because as long as one logged into the network, one inevitably needed to use hardware—a device, a terminal.
And those devices and terminals must have a fixed network address to enable data exchange. Without that, they couldn't connect to the internet at all.
So aside from the ultra-rich "tycoon hackers" who could afford disposable anonymous terminals, the vast majority relied on "proxies" to mask their true addresses.
Botnets, zombie networks, proxy servers…
Regardless of what the outside world called them, the essence remained the same: performing hacking operations through another device that had no direct relation to oneself.
Public network regions were one thing—but hackers often attacked private networks belonging to individuals, corporations, or even governments, either to steal information or simply to demonstrate their skill.
From what Chen Ze knew, from the early 21st century up to now, the Pentagon and U.S. defense systems had essentially "grown up" under the constant fire of countless hacker attacks.
As a fellow hacker, Chen Ze neither approved nor disapproved of this. He studied hacking not to provoke things far beyond his ability to handle, but purely out of passion.
Rather than using hacking to show off or profit, he preferred studying the structure and technology itself.
Virtual reality systems, IoT blockchain, virus design, building AI frameworks, multi-layered base architectures…
In this era of explosive technology, there were far more interesting areas to explore than simple "intrusion."
Chen Ze had no intention of picking up sesame seeds while throwing away the watermelon—chasing artificial permissions at the cost of losing the chance to create new ones himself.
At the end of the day, hacking—no matter how sophisticated—was still about obtaining what already existed.
What Chen Ze wanted was to create things that didn't exist. The satisfaction of that far surpassed breaking into some pre-existing system.
This philosophy was also why he could build an EDEN debugging device in the first place.
In principle, the EDEN debugger wasn't much different from an ordinary proxy server—except it added layers of personal encryption, camouflage, and backup functionality.
If the mastermind wanted to tamper with Chen Ze's login coordinates again, the first thing they'd need to do was locate his real digital avatar. Only then could they attempt to redirect him away from the EDEN network.
But after encrypting and camouflaging his avatar, the EDEN debugger would send countless data packets to countless different addresses simultaneously—hiding Chen Ze's real avatar among them.
In theory, unless the opponent possessed quantum-computer-level processing power, it would be absolutely impossible to identify which one was Chen Ze's "true body."
"Interesting. So this kind of thing also counts as hacking?"
After listening carefully to Chen Ze's entire explanation, Renamon had to admit she really had underestimated the field.
So hackers weren't just experts at intrusion and destruction—these forms of network defense and counter-measures were at a level ordinary people couldn't even imagine.
"But I have one more question. Isn't this EDEN device basically just a transmitter?"
Encrypting, disguising, and backing up the outgoing data before sending it all toward EDEN—this was Renamon's understanding of the machine.
But that raised a new issue.
If Mirei Mikagura were the one interfering, she wouldn't need to identify the "true body" at all. She could simply redirect all the data to another location, cutting off Chen Ze's avatar from accessing EDEN outright.
From a hacker's perspective, this wasn't even a difficult move. Even Renamon—who wasn't human—could do it now.
"That's exactly why we need relay servers."
Chen Ze naturally caught the implication in her question. He already had a countermeasure prepared: private relay servers.
Those encrypted and backed-up data packets didn't go straight to EDEN.
Before reaching the public network, they were first sent to multiple private relay servers. Only then would those servers re-encrypt and forward the packets to their final destination.
This way, the mysterious hacker wouldn't be able to camp at a public network gateway and scoop up everything in one blow.
Even if they intercepted part of the data, they wouldn't be able to decode anything useful. The second layer of encryption was confusing enough to break any decryption software's interpretation.
As for where the relay servers came from?
Chen Ze had bought them with real money, of course.
As a hacker of the new era, he wasn't one of those traditionalists who believed that only captured "botnet terminals" made for good stepping-stones.
Instead of routing through compromised devices, he used paid cloud servers.
Here, Chen Ze had to admit: ordinary consumers really were the driving force behind market growth.
Renting even one cloud server was expensive. Even for someone like him, renting large quantities was unrealistic.
But just like the trade in stolen identity data—wherever there was demand, there would be supply.
Since the market needed such services, companies would purchase massive amounts of cloud servers, set up service platforms, then rent them to whoever needed them.
VPNs, VPS, accelerators, "airports," cloud services, IP-hopping tools…
No matter how the names changed, the underlying nature remained the same.
Most ordinary users didn't understand how these services actually worked. They simply downloaded whatever software the provider gave them and used it.
Because there were enough users, the cost could be spread thinly, making it affordable.
In theory, with enough connections and resources, a hacker like Chen Ze could temporarily rent an entire cluster of servers and build whatever functions he wanted on top of them.
As for distributing data and hopping across multiple addresses?
As long as latency and bandwidth stayed acceptable, that was one of the simplest things he could do.
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T/N: im back, did a poll on my patreon on the new schedule and releases for webnovel so yeah
beep boop