"Yes. But my future father-in-law isn't happy with me. I still have to work hard!" Sheffield answered half-jokingly.
He had already reached the entrance of the company, but the reporters were still crowding around him, bombarding him with questions.
"Mr. Tang, we've heard rumors that Theo Group's in trouble. Care to enlighten our readers?"
Sheffield raised his eyebrows at the journalist who asked the question, and asked in reply, "Where did you hear that? I haven't heard anything like that. I would check my sources before posting anything. Libel lawsuits aren't cheap."
Tobias had been waiting at the entrance of the company for a while. When Sheffield came over, he immediately stepped forward and got between the reporters and his boss. "Everyone, let's call it a day. Mr. Tang is busy. If you have more questions, we can arrange an interview later," he said apologetically and made a bow.
The first thing Sheffield did when he got back to his office was turn on his laptop. He was not a pushover. Since they crossed the line, they needed to deal with the consequences. He would deal with the Ji family and the Ji Group first.
In the afternoon, the jewelry stores of the Ji Group were jammed with customers, because their website advertised diamonds at a dirt-cheap price—$1 per karat.
It caused ripples throughout the country, and there were lines to get inside the jewelry stores owned by the Ji Group.
The clerks weren't about to let the diamonds go at such an unbelievably low price. But that just made the customers mad, and those waiting in line were pretty vocal about their complaints. Some even threatened to riot.
Now, Langston was not in the mood to think about Sheffield. He and Calvert held a press conference together and apologized to the customers, saying that somehow the website had a glitch. Someone hacked into the website and spread news of that fake price around. Now the police were informed.
The customers didn't listen to them and got furious. They thought it was deceptive business practices on the part of the company. The customers were threatening to sue them for fraud!
At last, in order to pacify their patrons, Langston promised he'd slash diamond prices in half to make up for the mix-up.
Although the time was limited, the diamonds were sold at a 50% discount. As a result, within half an hour, all the diamond rings and naked diamonds in the stores throughout the country were sold out.
The Ji Group suffered heavy losses because of this. They were several billion in the red.
The loss of several billion had already led to capital turnover problems for the Ji Group. At this time, the Theo Group announced that they were going to purchase the Ji Group.
Langston, of course, would never agree. He would never surrender the fruits of lifelong labor to anyone else, especially when that someone else was Sheffield. He quickly set off to find Sexton.
Sexton felt the pangs of panic, particularly in his chest. He and Langston wondered if Sheffield was behind it, but they had no proof.
The Ji Group called the police, but there was still no news about the hacker that did this.
It was Sexton's idea to deal with the Theo Group. Since the Ji Group had been in such a big trouble, he couldn't just sit by and do nothing. He asked his bank to float a huge loan to the Ji Group.
But it wasn't just limited to the Ji Group. The Qi Group was also under siege.
Not only there was something wrong with the official website, but their very intranet was compromised.
Someone had launched a terrible stack-based buffer overflow behind their backs. This malicious app affected thousands of Qi Group servers worldwide. As a result, anytime someone did something as innocuous as clicking a mouse, the server would crash, and the words "Segmentation Fault" would be displayed, as well as the address of the memory space you were trying to access.
And if you called up the official website, you would see a few words show up. "Sexton Qi is a jerk!"
However, the defense system of the Qi Group had not been broken in the end.
Everyone knew it wasn't that the Qi Group's defense system was powerful enough to resist the hacker, but that the hacker quit.
Even so, the whole thing had caused the Qi Group significant losses.
These two events had caused turmoil in the financial circles of Y City. Many people were jittery.
In order to make Sexton give up his fight against the Theo Group and apologize, Sheffield launched his second wave. Although it was not as powerful as the first wave, it was enough to make Sexton lose sleep at night.
A few days later, with a pale and haggard face, Sexton came to visit Peterson.
Sexton pleaded with Peterson to make his son stop, but Peterson wasn't having it. He simply said, "My son's been working hard every day. I don't think he's behind this. He's just a kid in his twenties. He'd never do anything like this."
Only Peterson himself knew whether he believed what Sexton said or not. Maybe he believed it, and he just didn't want to stir up trouble for his son.
Sexton shook his head. "Do you know who the top ten hackers in the world are, Mr. Tang? There's Kevin Mitnick. Know what he did? He hacked into NORAD. Familiar with it? It's the North American Aerospace Defense Command. It's responsible for mobilizing for air and sea threats. He was only 15. He used cloned cellphones to hide his location from the police. And look up Julian Assange and Jonathan James. They all created no end of problems when they were around fifteen."
Peterson had gone through a lot of ups and downs in the business world, so it was no problem for him to remain calm around others no matter how shocked he was. "Can teens do stuff like that now?" he asked in surprise.
"Mr. Tang, Kevin Mitnick is about our age now," Sexton said with a sullen face.
"Well, I never knew," Peterson said calmly.
The two people in the private room were thinking about different things. After a while, Sexton said tentatively, "They all say that Sheffield is Star Anise. I think so too. And only Star Anise could have pulled something like this off."
Peterson shook his head. "No way! You might want to re-think that, Mr. Qi. I know my son very well. He's just not like that. I disowned him when he was younger."
The other man's words stunned Sexton speechless. It was not easy to deal with Peterson, and Sexton was unable to figure him out.
He wanted to know more about what Sheffield was up to, but Peterson merely said the Theo Group was a mess and Sheffield had been busy working there.
If Peterson had said a few more words about Sheffield, Sexton would be able to confirm his suspicion. Once he was sure Sheffield was Star Anise, he'd take him to court and sue him for attacking the website of the Qi Group. He would wait for the authorities to bring him to justice.
However, Peterson was an old cunning fox and in the end, Sexton wasn't happy.
After leaving the private room, Peterson rode the Theo Group elevator and reached the top floor. He got out, bullied the assistant, and managed to walk into the CEO's office.
In the office, he questioned the person who was working, "Are you Star Anise?"
"Thank you for thinking so highly of me!" Sheffield said without raising his head. He wouldn't admit that. What if Peterson betrayed him and exposed his identity? Then he would be the target of so many people.
"As for what happened to Qi Group and Ji Group, did you do that?"
"Yes, I hired the hacker." He didn't deny it.
"How did you hire the hacker?"