Chapter 5: The First Sum of Money

As for why he needed to make money?

Chen Ye had thought this over carefully on the way here. Living off a rich woman wasn't a shortcut, and it came with its own prerequisites. If a man had absolutely nothing to offer, he wouldn't even qualify to be a live-in son-in-law.

More importantly, according to the memories of his past life, his always-healthy grandmother would suddenly be diagnosed with lung cancer in a few years. He had to earn enough money for emergencies while simultaneously ensuring she didn't repeat that tragic fate.

When it came to making money, his grandparents couldn't offer much help. Asking them for the meager compensation funds left behind by his deceased parents was out of the question. In their eyes, that money was strictly saved for his future marriage. If he took it out now at the age of eighteen and blew it all, what would he do then?

The older generation naturally tended to be a bit stubborn. Chen Ye knew they were only looking out for him, so he never considered trying to force them to change their mindset. As long as he achieved real success, they would naturally come around.

As for *how* to make money, aside from building something out of nothing, he figured his only options were relying on his yet-to-be-won-over sister-in-law and the wealthy young heir standing right next to him.

Building something out of nothing, however, would require his professional expertise.

At this point in time, the world's major internet companies had basically all been established and had grown to a decent scale. But because coding standards were still relatively primitive, many of their websites and systems had varying degrees of vulnerabilities. Consequently, they offered bug bounties to users worldwide. Anyone who discovered and submitted flaws in their code or systems would be rewarded with a cash prize based on the vulnerability's severity. If the submitter could also provide a solution and send over the patch code along with the report, the payout would increase significantly.

While his personal skills couldn't genuinely compare to top-tier cybersecurity experts, he had at least been a programmer skilled enough to get hired at Ali in his past life. He possessed the fundamental cybersecurity knowledge required. Back in college during his past life, his major's professor had repeatedly bragged about discovering a certain system security flaw in Giant Company. The professor was awarded a bounty of nearly ten thousand dollars from Giant Company, leaving all of them—just a bunch of fresh college kids at the time—absolutely awestruck.

Because of that exact memory, Chen Ye still remembered exactly what that security vulnerability was. He might not know how to patch it, but that didn't mean he couldn't report it.

As for leveraging capital... the most straightforward method was simply borrowing money to speculate in stocks or real estate—speculating in anything that could turn a profit. But when it came to the stock market, aside from a few massive companies guaranteed to skyrocket, he couldn't remember any anomalous meme stocks from his high school era. Expecting someone who had just been reborn to perfectly recall things from over a decade ago that they had never paid attention to in the first place was pure fantasy.

Still, if he couldn't speculate on stocks, he could speculate on other things. But all of this required initial capital. With his current status, getting a bank loan was completely unfeasible, leaving borrowing money as his only option...

Chen Ye turned his gaze to Weng Jilin, staring at him as if he were a prime piece of meat.

Weng Jilin naturally felt his gaze. When their eyes met, it scared him into a cold sweat. "Wh-what's with that look? I'm not into you!"

"That's fine. It's enough that I'm into you," Chen Ye said with a slight smile.

"Why didn't the class rep come along?" someone asked.

"No idea. She probably left with the other girls."

"I don't get it. What's so fun about hanging out with girls? None of them can even compare to my Selia!"

"Ain't that the truth."

The group of boys chatted as they walked. They soon arrived at a convenience store and asked the familiar owner's daughter if there were any open computers. Upon getting a positive response, they all hurriedly rushed up to the second floor.

Chen Ye followed them up. Using the money he had just borrowed, he casually paid for three hours and picked a seat next to Weng Jiye.

It wasn't that he hadn't been to internet cafes in his past life, but he had definitely never gone before the college entrance exams. For one, he had been entirely focused on studying. For another, money had been extremely tight. Every trip to the internet cafe meant spending the equivalent of a meal's cost. Studying and growing required proper nutrition, and having matured much earlier than most of his peers, he understood this very well. Without parents to provide financial support, all his expenses had to come from the compensation funds safeguarded by his grandparents.

Booting up the old computer, Chen Ye casually checked its specs: a Core 2 Duo E6550 processor, an 8600GT graphics card, and 1GB of DDR2 RAM.

It was an absolute fossil—the kind of ancient relic he had only heard of but rarely actually seen in his previous life.

While the others logged into Dungeon & Fighter to start grinding dungeons and PvPing, he opened a browser and typed in Intigriti's official website URL. This was the bug bounty payment provider partnered with Giant Company. If he wanted to claim the reward, he had to register an account on this site and provide his receiving banking details.

However, the money couldn't be transferred directly into his domestic bank card. He needed a third-party payment platform to act as a bridge, which would then convert the US dollars into RMB before depositing it into his account. He recalled that this specific third-party platform was called Lianlian Pay. Earning foreign exchange through methods like this was highly encouraged by the government.

Registering these accounts wasn't difficult, but due to the limited internet speed, it still took Chen Ye nearly twenty minutes from start to finish to get everything set up.

Next up was finding the exact bug his former professor had mentioned, then submitting it as comprehensively as possible through the MSRC—Giant Company's Security Response Center Researcher Portal. The more detailed the bug report he submitted, the faster the security personnel on the other end would review it, and the sooner he would get paid.

The sooner he got his hands on the cash, the sooner he could use that money to make more money.

Time waited for no one!

In just two or three months, the global financial crisis would erupt, leaving both the financial and physical markets in absolute shambles. He had to secure whatever money he could make right now before worrying about anything else.

Just as his fingers were flying across the keyboard, rapidly navigating in and out of Giant Company's official website, Weng Jilin had just finished a run of Flame Glarca. Taking a moment to relax, he turned his head to see what Chen Ye was up to.

But the unfamiliar English websites on the monitor made his head spin, and Chen Ye's blistering typing speed left him absolutely amazed. He got the feeling that if it weren't for the crappy internet cafe keyboard, Chen Ye's typing speed would be even faster.

"What is all this stuff?" Weng Jilin couldn't help but ask.

"Something to make money with!" Chen Ye replied with a smile, keeping his eyes glued to the screen.

After all, these were skills from a profession he had worked in for over a decade. Not only was he highly proficient at it, but it also instilled him with an inexplicable sense of confidence. Even if the overall coding standards hadn't seen massive leaps over the following dozen years, the mature frameworks and systematic knowledge he had mastered were more than enough for this current point in time.

"Make money? Where did you learn this? Did our school really teach this?" Weng Jiye rubbed his eyes, wearing an expression of pure disbelief.

Although he couldn't understand it, he knew what it was. His college-attending older cousin would sometimes mess around with stuff like this when he came home, calling it "code." His cousin's smug, condescending attitude always made him wish he could immediately go to college, learn this stuff himself, and slap the smug look right off his cousin's face.

But watching Chen Ye's operation now, it was obviously much more fluid and profound than his half-baked cousin's. It was like... he was a seasoned veteran who had been in the industry for over a decade?

If Chen Ye knew what he was thinking right now, he probably would have burst out laughing on the spot. The stuff taught over four years of college wasn't even as useful as what one learned in a single month on the job. Unless one studied incredibly hard, shadowed professors with a thirst for knowledge, and participated in various professional competitions, university knowledge only served as a basic foundation.

Faced with Weng Jiye's questions, Chen Ye simply laughed it off without explaining.

It wasn't until he pressed the Enter key for the final time. "Done!"