Half an hour later, Fan Jian’s car arrived at the third-ring apartment where Gu Nianzhi lived.
Huo Shaoheng got out of the car. His expression was the same as ever as he walked slowly into the elevator.
When he reached Gu Nianzhi’s floor, Xiao Ye was standing guard at the door, waiting for him.
Huo Shaoheng raised his hand. “You can leave.”
“Yes, Chief,” Xiao Ye nodded hurriedly and walked quickly to the elevator.
When the elevator door closed, she saw that Huo Shaoheng had already pushed the door open and entered the room.
…
Gu Nianzhi was sitting in front of her desk, her hands typing quickly on the keyboard of her laptop.
Her fingers were beautifully slender and long. Her knuckles were round and supple, and they were as gentle as if they were boneless.
Nonetheless, she exerted a good amount of force when she was typing.
Like herself, just based on physical appearances, she seemed like a delicate little girl who needed to be pampered.
In reality, however, she was tough and tenacious; she was not weak at all.
Huo Shaoheng gently pushed open the bedroom door and saw Gu Nianzhi sitting upright in front of her computer. She was unexpectedly thin.
It had only 0been less than a week since they last parted.
How did she become so thin?
Huo Shaoheng stared at her silently and walked over to her with steady steps.
Gu Nianzhi was too focused. She was in the midst of performing some intense calculations in a bid to crack a program.
The numbers danced on her fingertips. Every step she took forward was as exciting as solving a global problem.
She was completely unaware that someone had walked in.
It wasn’t until Huo Shaoheng leaned over from behind her, put one hand on her chair and held her mouse with the other that she suddenly realized that someone had come.
She had just turned around when Huo Shaoheng kissed her on the lips.
Huo Shaoheng retracted his hand and caressed Gu Nianzhi’s head. His lips roaming back and forth on hers.
The long kiss made Gu Nianzhi feel breathless.
Her breath was filled with his exhalation. There was tenderness in his dominance. As he took control over her body and mind, he still gave her freedom.
Gu Nianzhi pulled her hand back and wrapped it around Huo Shaoheng’s neck, gently and lovingly pulling him into her world.
Huo Shaoheng’s heart was indeed as cold and hard as Song Jinning had said.
He gave Gu Nianzhi the only tenderness he had.
When their kiss ended, they pressed their foreheads together without saying a word.
Huo Shaoheng took the opportunity to sit down and put her back on his lap. He held her mouse with one hand and looked at her computer. “What are you doing?”
His deep, magnetic voice had a heart-wrenching charm.
Gu Nianzhi’s ears were burning. She tried her best to stay nonchalant and said, “… I’m coding.”
Huo Shaoheng dragged the mouse and read through the lines of code. He was deep in thought. “Are you trying to hack the security program on Luo Jialan’s phone?”
“Huh? How did you know?” Gu Nianzhi turned to look at him. She couldn’t hide the surprise in her eyes.
Huo Shaoheng curled his lips and kissed her slightly pouted lips “… Guess.”
“I’m not guessing,” Gu Nianzhi put her hand between their lips and rolled her eyes. “I remember that you were monitoring Luo Jialan’s phone. You should know that she called Ms. Song, right?”
“You guessed right. I’ll reward you with a kiss.” Huo Shaoheng pulled her hand away and kissed her again.
Gu Nianzhi, “…”
She started to act coquettishly. “I only got rewarded with a kiss when I guessed correctly. So what happens if I guessed wrongly? Are you not going to kiss me then?”
Huo Shaoheng smiled lightly, “If you guessed wrong, your penalty will be to kiss me.”
Gu Nianzhi beamed, leaned over and kissed him on the lips. “That’s more like it.”
Huo Shaoheng’s hands started to roam playfully around her body.
“Can you all investigate her phone?” Gu Nianzhi pressed Huo Shaoheng’s hand down and tried very hard to bring them back to the original issue that they were discussing. “I think there should be something on her phone.”
Why else would there be such a strict security program suddenly?
It really looked like a case of someone announcing that “There is no three hundred taels of silver here.”*
Huo Shaoheng stopped teasing her and leaned back in his chair. He said with a tinge of regret, “There was supposed to be a Trojan installed on the phone, but she deleted it.”
Gu Nianzhi pouted. “How does she have the ability to delete it? I guess she didn’t even know that her phone had become the field of battle between both sides …”
“You could say that.” Huo Shaoheng looked at the code Gu Nianzhi had written and felt an urge to modify it.
He was also a computer expert and was in fact not inferior to Zhao Liangze. However, the number of people in the world who knew did not exceed three.
“Your code is interesting,” Huo Shaoheng rested his chin on Gu Nianzhi’s shoulder and leaned forward to carefully read the code she had written. “The architecture is quite unique. I’ve never seen such a logic structure before.”
Gu Nianzhi’s heart skipped a beat.
This logic structure was based on the logic flow of He Zhichu’s app. Indeed, it was quite different from the code they usually used.
However, to deal with Luo Jialan’s security program that was essentially a mod, this unique logic structure was more suitable than the typical logic structures.
Gu Nianzhi did not say that she had gotten the idea from He Zhichu. She only smiled and said, “It’s fine as long as it works, but it doesn’t seem to be very effective. I don’t know why, but I know that I am applying my efforts in the right direction.”
There was just one obstacle that she couldn’t overcome.
It was like a bottleneck that held back all possibilities of progress.
Huo Shaoheng wrapped her in his arms and reached both his hands out. He started typing out lines of code on her keyboard and continued writing her code from where she left off.
Gu Nianzhi had never worked with anyone to write code, so she found it very interesting. The two of them were in high spirits. They supported and communicated with each other as they lost themselves in the sea of coding language.
They communicated in a language that only the two of them in this world understood.
It was like falling in love in another language.
Because it was unique, there was no substitute for it.
The two of them worked together surprisingly efficiently, and they both performed exceptionally well.
When they encountered some very difficult areas, the two of them needed to discuss for just a few minutes before they were able to solve them swiftly.
From noon to six a.m. the next day, apart from drinking some water, the two of them worked for a total of eighteen hours without eating or sleeping.
Fan Jian and Xiao Ye sat in the car and also waited for 18 hours.
This was nothing to them.
When they were out in the field, it was common to lie in ambush for days on end.
Moreover, the two of them each had two meals. Listening to music, chatting and sleeping in the car was much more comfortable than being out in the field.
Since they were sitting in the underground parking lot, they could not see the sunrise. However, from the cars that drove out beside them, they knew that it was morning and people were already waking up.
Xiao Ye asked Fan Jian hesitantly, “… Should we call Chief and make sure they’re safe?”
Fan Jian crossed his arms and leaned back into the driver’s seat with his eyes closed. He said calmly, “No need. Young Master Huo is working. He’ll call us when he’s done.”
…
Huo Shaoheng ran through the code they had written again. After confirming that there were no bugs left, he sent it to Luo Jialan’s phone.
Gu Nianzhi also stared nervously at the computer screen, watching the program crack the security system on Luo Jialan’s phone.
They had never tried to deal with such a complicated and advanced security program.
It could be said that without He Zhichu’s little app, Gu Nianzhi would never had thought that computer codes could be written like this…
Five minutes later, a soft ring came from the earpiece. It was the signal that the program had been cracked successfully.
Huo Shaoheng’s furrowed brows relaxed as he pressed the last button with a slight smile.
They had copied all the contents on Luo Jialan’s phone and sent it to the special operations forces’ work email address.
These email addresses were specially encrypted and were very well hidden.
Gu Nianzhi’s big eyes curved as she smiled and said, “Leave this app in Luo Jialan’s phone. I believe the experts on the other side won’t be able to recognize and delete our little app.”
This was because their app wasn’t a Trojan horse with the characteristics of a malware. It was an actual application.
It was just like cancer cells that were disguised as normal cells. Targeted drugs that specifically killed cancer cells were unable to recognize and kill these “normal” cancer cells.
After a night of hard work, they finally had some results.
Huo Shaoheng carried Gu Nianzhi to the bed in the bedroom and put her down. “Go sleep. You haven’t slept all night. Look, you can’t even open your eyes.”
Gu Nianzhi was really sleepy. It was not just that night that she had not slept; she had not slept for several nights.
However, she didn’t want Huo Shaoheng to leave, so she held on to his hand reluctantly.
Huo Shaoheng patted her head. “Go to sleep. Be Good. I’ll go deal with the contents of her phone.”
Gu Nianzhi had no choice but to slowly let go and look at Huo Shaoheng quietly.
Huo Shaoheng thought a little and said, “… I’ll look into it carefully. If she really knows where your father is…”
Gu Nianzhi’s sleepy eyes suddenly lit up and sparkled.
It looked like she really wanted to know where her father was.
Huo Shaoheng pursed his lips and enunciated each word. “If she really knows where your father is, I’ll make her talk even if we don’t negotiate with her.”
Huo Shaoheng said that so casually, but Gu Nianzhi still couldn’t help but shudder when she heard it.
She didn’t dare imagine how Huo Shaoheng would make Luo Jialan “talk”…
“Go to sleep. I’ll get Xiao Ye to prepare lunch for you.” Huo Shaoheng didn’t say anything else and got up to leave.
…
Back in the central control room of the special operations forces’ headquarters, Huo Shaoheng sat in front of the mainframe computer with the most functionality and began analyzing all the data on Luo Jialan’s phone.
The staff did not know that Huo Shaoheng and Gu Nianzhi had worked together and already cracked the security program on Luo Jialan’s phone.
Therefore, when Huo Shaoheng sat in front of the most powerful mainframe and started working, they thought he had also started working with them on cracking the security program, so they couldn’t help but work even harder.
Huo Shaoheng’s expression was the same as usual as he searched for key words in the entire contents on Luo Jialan’s phone.
With this search, he actually discovered some things he did not know about that had already been settled by Gu Nianzhi.
For example, the dress that was stained with semen…
At that moment, he clenched the mouse so strongly that it was deformed. He had no choice but to switch to another mouse to continue working.
Huo Shaoheng remained calm as he erased all this content. He permanently deleted it physically and rewrote the hard drive repetitively to conceal the data.
Although this was definitely against the rules, he really did not want to keep this part of the contents in case in future his political opponents used it to cause great discomfort to Gu Nianzhi.
Although it had nothing to do with him, he felt nauseated seeing what Luo Jialan had said.
* “There is no three hundred taels of silver here” is derived from a rather famous quote from a Chinese anecdote. In this anecdote, a certain person is said to possess three hundred taels of silver. After some deliberation over where to keep it, he decided to bury it on his land. To deter other people from possibly discovering the silver on his land, he foolishly put up a sign where he hid the silver that stated, “There is no three hundred taels of silver here.” His neighbour, seeing the sign, stole the silver that was hidden and let behind another sign that said, “The neighbour did not steal these.” The quote thus describes a scenario where someone, in a bid to conceal something in a particular place, mistakenly makes it very obvious that he is hiding something in that particular spot.
