I Have Infinite Skill Points

In an instant, Wang Lan identified a contradiction. Having attended a regular high school, he understood all too well the hostility students harbored toward the Antu Prose Collection. When they hated it, they wished they could chew the Antu Prose Collection to bits and swallow it. Yet, they had to buy it, read it, and learn the profound metaphysical ideas contained within the prose. So, every time a new edition of the Antu Prose Collection was released, they would basically purchase it at the first opportunity.

Today, the billboards at the school gate were all announcing the launch of the new Antu Prose Collection, indicating that this book must have only arrived on the Suzhou City market in the last couple of days. Then where did the copy on Chang Yu's desk come from?

With that thought, Wang Lan went to the bookstore.

"All sold out... The new shipment won't arrive until the day after tomorrow."

"Really! It's all gone just like that?"

"Disperse, disperse..."

The students, who were almost exclusively there for that book, left without hesitation upon hearing that it was out of stock. The kids these days are more realistic than adults. The once-crowded little bookstore emptied in the blink of an eye.

"What would you like, student?"

"Boss, I just saw students carrying the Antu Prose Collection..."

"It's out of stock. I got in three hundred copies, and they sold out in less than half an hour."

"Is this the latest edition?" Wang Lan suddenly asked. "I mean no offense, Boss, but I saw an identical one at a friend's house about ten days ago."

"That's nothing strange. The Antu Prose Collection was officially released two months ago in Nandu and the Imperial Capital. It arrived in the provincial capital last month. By the time it got to us in Suzhou City, more than two months had passed. The copy you saw might have been bought for him by someone from the Imperial Capital or Nandu."

"Is that so? Suzhou City only got it recently?"

"Certainly. We always know right away when Suzhou City gets stock. The Antu Prose Collection is so popular, we naturally wanted to get our hands on it as soon as possible."

What a load of crap! Wang Lan thought. If it weren't for the fact that murder was illegal, Antu Nas would have been long gone.

However, the prose he wrote did have quite the highbrow appeal, beloved by literary-minded ladies, with many popular quotes originating from the Antu Prose Collection.

But that was not Wang Lan's focus.

The new edition of the Antu Prose Collection had started selling three months ago, but it wasn't yet available in Suzhou City. However, half a month ago, this latest edition was on Chang Yu's desk.

Wang Lan certainly didn't think that the Demon Clan-replaced Chang Yu was a literary hipster.

Rushing back home, Wang Lan hurried to his study.

"Xiao Ai, look up the content of the latest edition of the Antu Prose Collection."

"Wang Lan, piracy is illegal."

"Can I pay for it? The physical version."

"Task searching… Search complete. Physical book layout version downloaded. One hundred and five yuan."

"Bring up the promotional SMS Qin Jiaqing sent to Chang Yu."

"It has been retrieved."

"Filter out the repetitive content... filter out the promotional content... filter out emojis. Extract the numbers and regroup them."

Following Wang Lan's continuous instructions, the message Qin Jiaqing sent to Chang Yu was stripped of nearly all content, leaving behind only a seemingly meaningless string of numbers.

However, as Wang Lan looked at these numbers, a sharp light flashed in his eyes. These numbers, how familiar they were. Scenes from his past life, watching the TV show 'The Spy' where Yu Zecheng received orders through coded radio broadcasts, surfaced in his mind.

"Match the Antu Prose Collection with these numerical codes and list the decrypted content."

The advantage of the human brain lies in sudden flashes of insight, while a computer's advantage is its rapid calculation speed. The human brain might guess the correct decryption method based on intuition, while a computer can swiftly enumerate all possible methods.

In the blink of an eye, lines of text were listed one after another.

"Stop—" Suddenly, Wang Lan told Xiao Ai to halt the decryption. Among the decoded messages, one contained a meaningful sentence.

"The potion is in the second flowerbed at the entrance. Retrieve it quickly."

"Xiao Ai, what is the decryption method for number eleven?"

"The first number denotes the page, the second the line, and the third and fourth numbers indicate the specific character position. Four sets of numerical codes, reordering successful."

"Excellent! Decrypt the remaining messages in the same way."

Indeed, this was the correct decryption method. Starting from April, the first three messages were requests to meet, with the following one stating that the Ant Hole Plan was officially in motion. The subsequent messages were all about the potion.

Potion…

Wang Lan fell into thought, his intuition telling him that this potion might be related to Magical Martial Artists. The Ant Hole Plan, unsurprisingly, must be derived from the saying, "A dike of a thousand miles is destroyed by an ant hole." Indeed, if a potion that could cause the Demonization of Star Martial Warriors was widely circulated, wouldn't that equate to countless ant holes undermining human civilization?

With that thought, Wang Lan stood up, got dressed, and left the house.

"Director Wang, the code-breaking department has successfully cracked the code."

"Oh? What is it?"

"At first, we were wrong. The real key isn't hidden within those advertising words, but in the jumbled numbers within the ads. Each piece of information contains a number, and these numbers correspond to the position of a word in a previous sentence. That's why we felt that the ad copy was often awkward to read. These texts, when strung together, form a car license plate number and a link."

"A car license plate number? What car's license plate number?"

"An Island country movie's license plate number..." the female secretary said in a low, flushed voice.

"Island country movie's... license plate?" Wang Qianfeng lifted his head. "I understand each word you're saying, but I can't make sense of this sentence. Is there a problem with your ability to express yourself, or is there a problem with my ears?"

"This... 'license plate number' is internet slang. It actually refers to a film title that's not suitable for children..."

"I see." Wang Qianfeng's face showed no sign of embarrassment as he put away his pen. "Then what? What is the code-breaking department doing?"

"They believe the Demon Clan's contact order is hidden in these movies. The code-breaking department is downloading them using the link, but these movies require a lot of bandwidth, so they have to wait for them to download."

"Understood. Let me know once you have the results."

"Yes, sir."

Only after the secretary left did an odd expression cross Wang Qianfeng's face. Since when did the Demon Clan become so sleazy? Knowing that such adult content is banned in Jade Country, they decided to use this method? Are they underestimating us?

"Wang Lan? What brings you here?" Xu Shiyun's inquiry came from outside the office door.

"Xu, are you also here to see Director Wang?"

"Yes! Reporting on some work."

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK—

"Come in!"

The office door opened, and Wang Lan and Xu Shiyun entered Wang Qianfeng's office one after another. "Reporting—"

"Wang Lan, just got out of school, right? Why are you here at the bureau at this time? What's the matter?"

"Director Wang, I've successfully deciphered the SMS code."

"Huh? You work that efficiently? Cracked it at nearly the same time as the code-breaking team?" Wang Qianfeng was in a good mood, a quirky smile on his face. "Have you seen it?"

"I have..." Wang Lan felt somewhat guilty. He was now unsure what Wang Qianfeng meant. Was the content something he shouldn't have seen? Had he breached confidentiality by seeing it?

"Young man, it would be wise for you to avoid such things. You're still young; it's not that time yet."

"Director Wang, from your smile, I feel... could there be some misunderstanding about the code I deciphered?"

"Misunderstanding? More than a dozen... 'license plates'... 'license plate numbers.' Can you handle that?"

"Please forgive my ignorance, sir, but I fail to understand what you're implying." Saying this, he pulled an A4 sheet of paper from his pocket and presented it to Wang Qianfeng. "This is the content of the message."

Wang Qianfeng took it and scanned it briefly, his brow suddenly furrowing. "A potion! It must be this. The Demon Clan has developed a potion that can cause Star Martial Warriors to undergo Demonization. Ant Hole Plan... they wish."

"No, Wang Lan, how did you decipher it?"

"Xu, do you remember the Antu Prose Collection on Chang Yu's desk? It was the latest version. I only found out today that this collection just hit the shelves in Suzhou City. Before that, it wasn't available here. And this book has only been out for two months; by that time, Chang Yu had already been replaced by the Demon Clan. If you were a Demon, would you be interested in the Antu Prose Collection? That's why I suspected the collection must serve another purpose. Then I thought about the messages Qin Jiaqing sent to Chang Yu. I extracted numbers from those messages. I used the first number for the page, the second for the line, and the third and fourth numbers for the character position within the prose collection to find the corresponding characters and decipher the content."

"Wait, how... how did you even think of that?" Xu Shiyun looked at Wang Lan in disbelief. Such a complex and ingenious code, and you actually guessed it? That's blatant cheating! This world has no spy dramas, nor any real history to use as a reference. Wang Lan managed to think of this method, inspired by spy dramas from a past life. Without that inspiration, guessing this type of decryption approach could only be described as a stroke of genius. The Antu Prose Collection is a bestseller, so Chang Yu having a copy isn't suspicious, right? SMS messages and the Antu Prose Collection—two completely unrelated things—and you managed to link them? And you actually deciphered it?

Meanwhile, Wang Qianfeng's expression gradually became more intrigued.

"Just thought of it like that; it didn't take much time. Didn't the code-breaking team also crack it?" Wang Lan replied.

Suddenly, Wang Qianfeng picked up the phone. "Code-breaking team, stop downloading those movies. Your approach is completely wrong."

"Director Wang, we can't even download them if we wanted to... Our computers got infected with a virus. Good thing we used an isolated computer for the download; otherwise, the consequences would have been unthinkable."

"Fools! You'll write an incident report on this yourselves later."

"What happened?" Wang Lan looked confused, feeling as though... the code-breaking team had gone in the wrong direction?

"The Demon Clan is really cunning; they even hid traps. Initially, the code-breaking team's approach was correct; they focused on the numbers in the information. However, they didn't realize the key was the Antu Prose Collection. Instead, they tried to find patterns within the messages themselves. They used the numbers to extract text from the messages, which gave them a 'license plate number' and a link. The team believed intelligence was being transmitted through those movies, so they intended to download them. Little did they know, they had fallen right into the Demon Clan's trap... The link contained a virus."

After hearing Wang Qianfeng's explanation, Wang Lan broke out in a cold sweat. To think they dared to click on and download a link provided by the enemy?

Suddenly, Wang Lan's complexion changed drastically.

"Not good!" Wang Lan exclaimed. "Once this link was downloaded, the Demon Clan's spy group would have already been alerted."