Four Split Personalities

So, the tragedy just happened...

You see, Double Leaf knew Hei Fan as a "median-level hacker," and earlier on even used this to turn the tables on Double Leaf once. Since then, the girl, utterly oblivious to the severe bug in The Realm of Innocence, was led further and further astray, making the likelihood of her catching Mo Tan in real life infinitely close to zero.

In Double Leaf’s mind, she had become aware that BLACK had noticed her investigation of "Mo Tan," and had even been misled by them. To further sow confusion, in The Realm of Innocence, they even deliberately chose a nickname very similar to "Mo Tan," "Tan Mo," clearly trying to pass the buck and play tricks. Unforeseen by him, however, was that the very character "Hei Fan" belonging to Mo Tan had already befriended Double Leaf before he could pretend to be Mo Tan and trick her. This completely foiled BLACK’s despicable plan, a cause for celebration indeed, a cause for celebration indeed.

From Mo Tan’s perspective, this was also a cause for celebration, for reasons everyone understands...

All in all, "Mo Tan" outside of the game was completely cleared of suspicion, and the name "Tan Mo" was predictably rationalized away by Double Leaf. The scales in the game were gradually tipping in Mo Tan’s favor.

But this doesn’t mean Double Leaf wouldn’t cause trouble for Mo Tan. For example, today, the hikikomori girl with the recently regulated living habits suddenly discovered that "Hei Fan," the dime-a-dozen hacker’s computer had become unguarded, instantly piquing her interest.

In the realm of technology, Double Leaf and Mo Tan had completely different styles. The latter preferred to rely on top-tier hardware and maddeningly high adaptability to deal with any situation, while Double Leaf, lacking the social network of the Reyes brothers, mainly relied on pure skill and her independently developed Artificial Intelligence, NAVI.

Even though the conclusion was that both had their strengths, Double Leaf’s expertise in this field was actually a whole level higher than Mo Tan’s. After all, the world is fair. As a genius touching many fields, Mo Tan could not surpass Double Leaf in the domain of information technology, who was far more specialized.

Even though Mo Tan had developed a cheating intelligence-gathering system like "Hunting Angle," it was still taking advantage of the hardware. Double Leaf could have created the same thing, and in just half the time, but the problem was that it would be useless for her. The devices she assembled herself simply couldn’t support such software. Without hardware to match the software, such programs could only end up frying a bunch of equipment upon startup, having a completely negative practical value.

So Double Leaf didn’t even consider this path and instead came up with an AI named NAVI. It had its own independent thinking and could even write patches and perform optimizations on itself. It didn’t get tired, slack off, or make mistakes, and its information processing capabilities far exceeded the human brain. In the rivalry between Double Leaf and Mo Tan, it had contributed significantly, serving as Double Leaf’s first friend and right-hand man.

NAVI’s functions were very comprehensive. For instance, it could act as Double Leaf’s avatar, always keeping the master in a relatively safe place; it could lurk online around the clock, keeping watch over BLACK’s movements; or it could monitor a certain hacker friend of Double Leaf...

Hence, Mo Tan, who had deliberately lowered his computer’s security to the minimum, successfully caught NAVI’s attention.

NAVI then very dutifully notified Double Leaf...

And today, Double Leaf was extremely bored, so she casually hacked in and happened to witness the latter half of Mo Tan and Yu Chen’s video call, as well as the chat content of the group, immediately becoming interested.

So after the group video started, Double Leaf, after casually observing for a while, promptly created a new account. Then, controlling Mo Tan’s account, she added herself as a friend, pulled herself into the group chat, and finally joined the group video, successfully giving everyone a shock.

...

[Phew, I’ve done all that I could...]

After a ferocious round of operations, Yi Dong secretly breathed a sigh of relief.

[This girl’s head must be full of holes...]

Mo Tan covertly rolled his eyes, then pretended to be completely harmless and looked at the camera dumbly: "Huh?"

The third person to react was Ji Xiaodao, but she just flashed a look and said nothing.

Then there was Kanglan, who quickly regained his composure and thoughtfully touched his chin: "Double Leaf? Feels like a name I’ve heard somewhere before, a namesake... perhaps?"

Yu Chen shrank his neck and timidly greeted the blurry shadow on the screen: "Um, hello, my name is Yu Chen."

Wanyang laughed: "Is that your sweetheart, Mo Tan?"

Yi Dong laughed even louder, contempt written all over his face: "That guy has been single as long as he’s been alive."

Cordova: "Hahahaha!"

Wanyang glanced at someone who was particularly arrogant and said softly: "Xiao Yu, your single life should be two months longer than Mo Tan’s, right?"

This comment was accurate; Mo Tan was born in March, and Cui Xiao Yu in January, both the same age, so indeed Cui Xiao Yu had been single two months longer than Mo Tan.

A certain second-class soldier of the FFF Group was instantly choked up there.

Ji Xiaoge: "Hahaha~~"

At the same time, the shadow on the screen faded away, replaced by a chibi cartoon girl with a baby face, short stature, orange long hair, round glasses—a spitting image of a simplified Double Leaf, and quite well-drawn at that.

"Hmm, you guys are really fun."

The cartoon Double Leaf crossed her arms and nodded, then flashed a row of tiny white teeth as she laughed: "Haha, let me introduce myself, I’m Mo Tan’s girlfriend and also play in The Realm of Innocence, nice to meet you all yo!"

As she spoke, she even winked, with two golden little stars popping out next to her glasses.

The air instantly solidified.

Cui Xiaoyu and Wanyang both glared at the camera as if they were looking at their class enemy, with every intent of crawling through the internet cables to Mo Tan’s house to set the place ablaze.

Yi Dong, who knew that Double Leaf was just talking nonsense, thought for a moment before deciding to show a shocked expression.

Ji Xiaodao let out a meaningful cold chuckle: "Heh."

Ji Xiaoge emitted a brief "Eh?"

Kanglan was rapidly typing something on the keyboard, apparently not paying attention to Double Leaf’s words.

Yu Chen, who had heard about Double Leaf from Mo Tan before, just smiled and hugged his bear, not saying a word.

[I am your father...]

Mo Tan hummed softly in his heart, then called out in slight panic: "Don’t spout nonsense! Ah, wait, why are you getting involved, I haven’t added you as a friend, have I!"

His current persona was already exemplary in acting, and since he was actually performing as himself, there were naturally no faults to be found—he was simply the embodiment of ’Hei Fan’.

"Aiyah! Don’t be shy~"

A string of hearts floated above chibi Double Leaf’s head as she blushed and coyly said: "Didn’t we agree to give everyone a surprise~"

Cui Xiaoyu and Wanyang were almost grinding their teeth to dust.

Just then, Yu Chen suddenly smiled softly: "Mo Tan has told me a lot about you, so let’s not tease him anymore~"

"Err..."

A string of ellipses floated above chibi Double Leaf’s head.

"Double Leaf, Chaotic Neutral, Magic Controller, currently ranked fourteenth on the player combat power leaderboard, main characteristics: orange hair, glasses, loli."

Kanglan’s voice suddenly sounded, as he stared at his screen and read: "Risen nine places since the leaderboard was first released a short time ago, Magic Controller suspected to be a magic combat profession, capable of freely using fire, ice, wind, earth, thunder—five basic types of elementary and middle-rank spells, also uses arcane magic and negative energy spells, occasionally seen in public competitive arenas only playing random matches, suspected undefeated, seems not to be any official member or alternate account of any studio or club, haha, nice to meet you, didn’t expect you to be a friend of Mo Tan~"

"Tch, how boring~"

Chibi Double Leaf pouted, then with a thuggish demeanor, sat on top of two stacked artillery shell casings...

"Let me reintroduce myself, my name is Double Leaf, I am a hacker that’s much cooler than Hei Fan, saw you guys chatting so lively, mind if I join?"

Chapter 482: The End