It's Not Easy to Be a Man After Travelling to the Future (WN)

Because of Ling Yi, the five of them had stayed together in the same team they created together since the Scout Academy days called 'ZF'. They had always talked, shared great memories, shared their woes with each other.

That day, they came together to inspect the mecha hold and the mecha engineers maintaining their mechas with a serious expression, so they just stood there and quietly watched the whole process. They didn't want to disturb the engineers.

However, something happened. One of the logisticians accidentally tripped and his body fell onto a mecha engineer. The mecha engineer fumbled and accidentally pressed a button on his work station, causing the alarm of the mecha he was working on to deafen everyone's ears. It alerted everyone in the mecha hold.

The logisticians immediately rushed towards the alarm to stop it. While the logisticians were rampaging through the mecha hold to stop the alarm, Tao Xiaotao was easily knocked over due to his small size. In a flurry, he hurriedly grabbed the panel of a work station in order to prevent himself from falling. Yi Tiange and others saw his plight and quickly came to help him up. However, due to the pushing and shoving of the crowd, they touched another work station while the way to rescue Tao Xiaotao.

The six people looked at each other with confusion in their eyes. Why did Li Lanfeng show this to them? Even in the midst of the constant shoving and pushing, they were very far away from their mechas. There was no footage of them touching the mechas.

"Do you want to know why I show you that?" Li Lanfeng smiled. "Let me show you which mecha is linked to the work station."

When they heard the answer to their confusion, their expressions turned grave. They were all smart people so they definitely could guess which mecha did this work station link to. As expected, after the footage zoomed out, the linked mecha was Ling Yi's mecha.

"But the person can't hack the mecha through the work station, right? Even an imperial hacker won't be able to hack the optical supercomputer of a mecha that quickly." Yi Tiange refuted. If this fact wasn't brought up, all five of them would be suspicious.

"You have to ask Ling Yi if he had ever leaked his passcode to anyone. Anyone that has the passcode, along with the ability of an imperial hacker, will be able to get into the mecha's superoptical computer in an instant. The group of you stood there for more than a minute so there's ample time to download the video."

Ling Yi's face looked so pale as if there was no more blood in his body. He looked at his friends with an apologetic gaze. Then, his gaze landed on Tao Xiaotao and his lips started trembling. He didn't if his lips were trembling because of the shock, disappointment, or that he just wanted to cry.

Finally, he bit his lips and yelled with a hoarse voice as he spitted out the name of his worst enemy syllable by syllable , "Tao. Xiao. Tao!"

Tao Xiaotao shrunk back in fear of the monster his leader had suddenly turned into. His face was pale as he shouted back, "Brother Yi, how could you suspect me?"

Ling Yi stood up and walked over with heavy footsteps. "How could I not! Only you have asked me for my passcode!"

He didn't directly tell Tao Xiaotao his passcode. Instead, it was through Tao Xiaotao's continuous probing guesses that one day he finally found out his passcode. When he heard his passcode coming out of Tao Xiaotao's mouth, he smiled nonchalantly at Tao Xiaotao's correct guess and just loosely told him to forget about it. After all, allowing Tao Xiaotao to know about his passcode wasn't a really big deal to him back then. He always treated Tao Xiaotao as his younger brother so he wasn't concerned about Tao Xiaotao using his passcode against him. To a normal citizen, knowing a mecha's passcode would usually almost equate to nothing, but it to an imperial hacker, it would open up many new possibilities.

Tao Xiaotao furiously shook his head. "Brother Ling, it's not me. It really isn't me. I was just curious. You didn't tell me anything, right? I don't know any passcode. I don't know."

"But you constantly probed me for my passcode during our daily conversations." Ling Yi closed his eyes and opened them after a while. His gaze was firm. "Tao Xiaotao, I don't know how you became an imperial hacker but all the evidence point to you. I will not believe you again."

"Brother Yi, Brother Yi, if you think that I'm guilty, prove that I'm an imperial hacker. I have never awoken any hacking abilities. How can I be an imperial hacker? Brother Yi, you can't suspect me just like this. Brother Yi, I didn't do it." Tao Xiaotao started crying loudly. He was frightened by the sudden accusation.

Ling Yi's anger subsided a little. Tao Xiaotao already had an innate talent of the wind element. It was rare for someone to have two innate talents. The advancement of someone with two innate talents was much slower than a normal person. Based on Tao Xiaotao's age, even if he was a genius, it was impossible for him to advance to the imperial level so quickly. Did he falsely accuse Tao Xiaotao?

Ling Yi looked at Li Lanfeng instinctively. Li Lanfeng shook his head secretly in disappointment when he noticed the gaze. He had no more confidence in the intelligence of the loyalists in the Ling family. They spend so much effort grooming Ling Yi but look at him now, blankly looking at him with a dazed gaze. How much better could the other loyalists be? No wonder Ling Lan had to handle everything on his own. Li Lanfeng couldn't help but feel vex for Ling Lan's misfortune.

However, Li Lanfeng maintained his expressionless face. He raised his eyebrows at Ling Yi before turning to Tao Xiaotao. "Are you really Tao Xiaotao?"

Everyone went dazed as they creepily turned their heads to Tao Xiaotao.

Even Yang Mingzhi and the team leaders were unable to remain calm.

"Indeed, the real Tao Xiaotao doesn't have this ability but you have. Should I call you Shadow King?" Li Lanfeng smiled as he revealed a secret.

"Shadow King!" Yang Mingzhi and Gu Dongyang exclaimed in astonishment.

Luo Lang, Zhao Jun, and Ling Yi were puzzled while Xie Yi was in deep thought.

"Who is Shadow King?" Luo Lang was curious so when he noticed Xie Yi's knowing expression, he grabbed Xie Yi's arm and asked him.

Usually, Xie Yi would even spare a glance at the person asking him even if the person was on his knees begging him, but this was Luo Lang. Even if he didn't know anything, he would find an answer.

Xie Yi told Luo Lang what he heard before. "The Shadow King is an imperial hacker who had gained great fame from the virtual world around 30 years ago. His techniques had reached the imperial level too. He was recognised as the hacker with the highest chance of becoming a god-class hacker."

"However, 20 years ago, he disappeared. His name became a taboo subject in the Federation. There were no traces of him in the annals of time as if he never existed. Not many people from our generation know of him. His data is only left in the secret database of some elite families. This database can only be read by the important people from the families. However, Li Lanfeng belonged to the branch family. How did he know of this person?"

"That means that Shadow King should be around 40 years old, right? How could it be Tao Xiaotao?" Luo Lang looked at Tao Xiaotao's young face. This man was obviously only 20 years old.

Xie Yi shrugged. "We'll see what Brother Feng says."

Tao Xiaotao shuddered when he heard the Shadow King. He looked up innocently and asked Li Lanfeng, "What did you say? Who is Shadow King?"