An urgent, piercing alarm abruptly shattered the workshop's tranquility.

A barrage of red Gorman error codes instantly appeared on the LCD screen; a bold warning message at the top pierced everyone's hopes like a sharp sword.

[SYSTEM OVERLOAD! SHUT DOWN IMMEDIATELY!]

The alarm was so shrill that it was going to puncture eardrums.

The indicator lights that had just illuminated went out, and the code on the screen scrolled wildly before finally settling on blood red.

The lively atmosphere that had just begun to rise in the workshop was instantly doused with ice water, freezing solid.

Bill's smile froze, becoming more like a grimace.

How could this be? It was clearly fixed, so why did it suddenly set off the alarm?

Just then, hurried footsteps came from the workshop door. "Mr. Lamar! Mr. Lamar! I've brought Mr. Henry Lewis for you!"

Bill's assistant, John, strode in with a middle-aged man in a sharp suit.

It was none other than Henry, the expert Bill had regarded as an honored guest and had overseen the repairs.

The moment Henry entered, he saw me, the warehouse manager, standing beside the machine, and his expression immediately darkened.

"You're fooling around!" he roared, his voice filled with scholarly arrogance and an unyielding anger that did not allow anyone to violate his authority.

"Mr. Lamar, didn't I tell you? This equipment is incredibly delicate. Leaving it to an untrained person could cause devastating consequences! How could you let a handyman touch my 'patient'?"

He strode to the control panel, glanced at the blood-red error code on the screen, and his face immediately showed an agonized expression.

He slapped his thigh and pointed at the screen before saying to Bill, "We're doomed! We're completely doomed! Mr. Lamar, the motherboard is completely burned out! It was originally just a problem with the driver chip; we still had a sliver of hope for repair. After he messed around with it, the high-voltage current directly damaged the main control CPU! This machine is now just a pile of scrap metal! It has absolutely no value for repair!"

Every word Henry spoke struck Bill's heart like a hammer blow.

Bill's face instantly went from ghastly pale to ashen, then as black as the bottom of a pot. He whirled around, his eyes fixed on me. His gaze was icy cold, as if he wanted to devour me alive.

"Shaun... Zigger..." His voice seemed to come from hell, filled with the fury of being deceived and betrayed.

The life-or-death contract I had signed and the massive four million dollars in compensation crashed down on me like an invisible mountain.

In the workshop, gloating, sympathetic, and contemptuous glances once again wove together into an impenetrable net, trapping me firmly in the center.

I met Bill's murderous gaze and Henry's contemptuous and smug gaze.

I spoke, word by word. "He's wrong. This isn't an overload. It's a protection protocol. Someone deliberately modified the safety parameter thresholds in the system."

As soon as I finished speaking, Henry burst into laughter, furious. He pointed at me and said to everyone, "Absurd! Absolutely absurd! Listen, a warehouse manager who can't even read a circuit diagram is discussing safety parameters with me? It's utterly absurd!"

"This is a typical chain reaction caused by hardware damage! Do you know what a security parameter is? Do you know what level of access is required to enter this machine's backend?"

He turned to Bill, continuing to fan the flames with a heartbroken expression. "Mr. Lamar, you're just too soft-hearted. That's why you were deceived by these charlatans! Now, great. Four million dollars has been completely wasted!"

Bill's fists were clenching, the veins on the back of his hand bulging. He pointed at me, his voice trembling with extreme anger. "Shaun, you'd better give me an explanation. Otherwise, that contract... Today, you won't be able to walk out this door no matter what!"

The immense pressure squeezed me from all sides, like tangible seawater.

Bill's eyes flashed with a fierce glow, as if he were about to pounce over and tear me apart.

Henry stood to the side with a smile.

The slight awe the factory workers had felt for me vanished instantly, replaced by the amusement of onlookers watching a spectacle.

However, I remained unusually calm. I pointed to a line of error code on the screen and said to Melody, "Look here."

Melody instinctively leaned closer.

My voice was not loud, but everyone heard me. "Error B-4711. In DMG's fault code database, all hardware fault codes start with A. Codes starting with B indicate software or parameter anomalies. The official definition of B-4711 is: Unauthorized external parameter writing causing system protective lock."

"Henry." I turned to look at him. "You're an expert in this; you should understand this code better than I do, right?"

Henry's smile froze. A flicker of panic crossed his eyes, but he immediately denied it. "Nonsense! I've studied DMG's systems for over a decade, and I've never seen a B-4711 code! You're making things up to stall for time!"

"Is that so?" I sneered.

I ignored him and turned to Melody, who seemed somewhat dazed from our conversation. My tone was gentle. "Melody, could you do me a favor?"

Melody hesitated for a moment before nodding instinctively.

"Get your laptop from your car and connect it to the machine tool's maintenance port with a data cable."

"What do you want to do?" Melody was somewhat wary.

"Enter engineering mode and check the background logs."

Henry immediately shrieked, "Impossible! Engineering mode requires the highest-level password, and only engineers at the Gorman headquarters have it! How could a warehouse manager like you have it?"

His reaction was excessive.

Even Bill sensed something was off. His gloomy gaze swept back and forth between Henry and me.

Melody hesitated, looking at the hysterical Henry and then at my calm face. Finally, she gritted her teeth and chose to believe me. "Okay!"

She turned around and ran out, quickly returning with a pink laptop. Following my instructions, she connected the data cable.

"Open HyperTerminal, set the baud rate to 115200, 8 data bits, 1 stop bit, no parity," I recited a series of parameters.

Melody typed rapidly on the keyboard, and a black command window popped up.

"Now, enter the password."

I took a deep breath and recited a complex password consisting of 19 characters, including both uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. "D... M... G... h... a... n... o... v... e... r... 1... 9... 9... 8... k... l... a... u... s...!"

When I uttered the last character, Melody's finger stopped on the Enter key. She looked up in shock at me.

The first half of this password was DMG and Honover. The second half... was the name of her Gorman mentor! 1998 was the year her mentor joined DMG!

This was something her mentor had told her privately. It was a God password that theoretically existed but was never allowed to be used!

She no longer hesitated and slammed down the Enter key forcefully.

On the screen, the black window was instantly filled with a line of green 'ACCESS GRANTED'.

A hidden interface, filled with various data, popped up.

Henry turned deathly pale instantly.

"Open the log file 'system_log.txt'," I commanded.

Melody found the file and double-clicked to open it.

The densely packed system records were presented to everyone.

I pointed to the last few lines. "Look here. Just yesterday afternoon at 3.15 PM. A device with the IP address '202.118.XXX.XXX' logged into the backend system through the remote maintenance port. Login permission: Administrator. Operation log: Modified the core security parameter 'Voltage_Threshold', increasing it from the default 1.2 to 1.8."

"This IP address..." Melody's fingers searched on the keyboard. She then suddenly looked up, her eyes shooting toward Henry. "It's the dedicated education network of Westham University Town."

Henry was a visiting professor at Westham University!

All eyes instantly focused on Henry.

Bill's eyes were no longer filled with anger, but with a murderous chill.

Cold sweat poured down Henry's forehead, instantly soaking his shirt collar.

I delivered the final blow. "Raising the voltage threshold from 1.2 to 1.8 will not cause any hardware damage when the machine is off. But as soon as power is applied and the servo motor starts working, the instantaneous voltage detected by the system will immediately exceed the 1.8 threshold, triggering the highest level overload alarm and forcibly locking the system. It'll create the illusion that the motherboard has been damaged and burned by high voltage.

"This way, the machine, which originally only had a minor mechanical problem, will truly have a motherboard failure. Then, he could make Mr. Lamar spend 1.2 million dollars to buy a brand new motherboard from that so-called Gorman original factory channel... that Henry specified, right?"