Gu Nianzhi took Bai Shuang’s hand and stood by the door as she looked up at the row full of tall cabinets before her with great surprise.
The cabinets rose high up from the ground and were about two to three meters tall.
The matte black texture was similar to the compartments of medicine cabinets specially used to store Chinese medicine in traditional pharmacies.
Each grid was made up of perfect, square safety deposit boxes.
Densely arranged grids sat in front of them like honeycombs. The pattern was almost enough to trigger someone’s trypophobia.
But Gu Nianzhi had a very strong psyche.
She took Bai Shuang’s hand and approached the tall cabinets. Curling her right index finger, she tapped on the cabinets curiously.
A clear and crisp sound immediately sounded throughout the basement.
“These are made of iron,” Gu Nianzhi concluded.
Looking up, she could see that there were about ten such cabinets standing side by side.
The backs of the safety deposit boxes were securely welded to the wall.
If someone wanted to remove the safe by brute force, they would probably have to cut away the entire wall with a chainsaw.
This was an impossible task.
Gu Nianzhi snickered and said, “The security here is quite well thought out. One powerful soldier can defeat ten theoretical experts, so this is stronger than any security measures or anti-virus software.”
Bai Shuang looked at Gu Nianzhi with surprise and asked, “Why aren’t you in a rush to look for the safety deposit box? You still have time to check out the bank’s security features?”
“Haha. Don’t forget that I can multitask very well.” Gu Nianzhi giggled as she held onto Bai Shuang’s hand and looked at the tall black iron cabinets.
Each safety deposit box was affixed with a number. They should be able to find it very quickly as long as they looked for it in numerical order.
However, Gu Nianzhi glanced around, and her expression suddenly darkened.
The safety deposit boxes there were not placed in numerical order at all.
For example, there were ten safes from top to bottom on the black iron cabinets they faced.
The top number was 278, but the safe number below it was 123, and the bottom was number 596 – this was not arranged numerically at all!
“What can I do? Don’t these people know how to count? The safety deposit boxes are all over the place!” Gu Nianzhi became a little anxious, stomping her feet and losing her temper.
Although Bai Shuang was also feeling nervous, she was amused by Gu Nianzhi’s reaction. She grabbed Gu Nianzhi’s hand and said, “It’s okay, there are three of us here. Let’s split up and find them separately. What number was it?”
“Number 365,” Gu Nianzhi sighed. They had no choice but to split up and look for it.
She reluctantly released Bai Shuang’s hand and looked at her to say, “You stay in the middle. I will go to the left, and Brother Ze will go to the right. Afterward, we will meet at your position.”
The position where Bai Shuang stood was directly under the overhead light in the middle of the basement.
Gu Nianzhi figured that if Bai Shuang was standing in that location, it would allow the people hiding in the shadows to monitor her movements.
Huo Shaoheng and the others should have arrived long ago. Now it was time to see if the people working behind the scenes with Bai Shuang had taken the bait and gotten reeled in…
Bai Shuang revealed a mysterious smile.
Under the white light, her red dress looked like a ball of fire that complemented her unparalleled beauty.
Gu Nianzhi glanced at her and exchanged a look with Zhao Liangze before they diverged into opposite directions to look for bank safety deposit box number 365.
Bai Shuang stood alone in the middle of the row of black iron cabinets, her eyes sweeping over the numbers affixed to the boxes.
…
Li Dexi had brought his most elite subordinates to a small room on the first floor of the basement. Sitting at the desk, full of anticipation, he watched the video in front of him.
Everything happening on the sixth floor of the basement was completely within range of their surveillance cameras.
As long as the surveillance camera could record the footage, they would be able to see everything.
“Mr. Li Dexi, why don’t we do it now?” One of his men asked impatiently, standing behind Li Dexi with his arms crossed.
They had been waiting there for a few hours already, so they were not really in the mood to wait any longer.
“Because it’s not time yet,” Li Dexi replied with a smile. “Son, don’t worry. The best part is yet to come”
Although Gu Nianzhi was his main target and intended to kill Huo Shaoheng, Li Dexi was still curious about the safety deposit box’s contents.
He had heard his predecessors talk about the wonder of the genetic data many times before, so he had been trying to track it down for most of his life.
It was time to put an end to the investigation he had devoted most of his life to pursuing.
If Gu Nianzhi couldn’t open the safety deposit today, Li Dexi knew that there was probably no one else in the world who could.
It was just a pity that he couldn’t use other methods to try to open safety deposit box number 365.
There was a self-destructing device inside.
As soon as the box was opened by brute force, the self-destructing device inside would immediately be activated.
The device contained a few pages of highly flammable and destructible paper inside. Even if it contained gold and silver treasures, it would immediately burn into a pile of ashes.
A few years ago, they finally found the whereabouts of the data from Gu Xiangwen’s manuscripts.
After repeated investigations, it was discovered that the data was likely stored in a bank safety deposit box by Gu Xiangwen 19 years ago.
They later discovered that the safety deposit box was located at Societe Generale de Bank in Cape Town.
After Li Dexi received the news, he was overjoyed at the discovery and personally led a team to Cape Town in an attempt to open the safety deposit box.
They bribed the bank’s internal executive to obtain official information about the safety deposit box, including the time and time limit of its lease. They were able to see the contract signed by Gu Xiangwen as well.
It was a pity that he couldn’t open the safe even if he employed the most skilled craftsman they could find.
After consulting the records dated from over ten years ago, the bank executive told him that the safe’s lock had been modified by the person who was renting the safe at that time.
He secured the safe with a lock he made himself and said that only his special key could open it.
However, he also said that if no one could open the safe after a hundred years, then the safety deposit box’s lock would be automatically opened, and the contents inside would be destroyed.
Li Dexi was currently desperate.
A hundred years? He had to wait a hundred years before the safety deposit box would automatically open? Then the contents would be destroyed?!
What if Gu Xiangwen’s descendants found the key to open the safe within that hundred years and took the contents for themselves?!
Li Dexi didn’t want to, was unwilling to, and couldn’t wait.
Just when he was at a loss, news of Gu Nianzhi, who had been missing for seven years, was found by one of his Japanese informants. This information was sent to his desk.
The appearance of Gu Nianzhi temporarily distracted Li Dexi from this data.
But after going around in circles many times, Li Dexi discovered that the final clues were still held in the safe.
Li Dexi was incredibly excited.
Perhaps God had seen that Li Dexi was extremely pious, so he delivered this heaven-sent opportunity right into Li Dexi’s lap.
…
Gu Nianzhi started from the left end of the long row of black iron cabinets and walked toward the right, her eyes quickly scanning over the labeled numbers.
“198, 256, 757, 496… 903, 845, 309, 539, 420, 566…”
When she looked at the numbers one by one, her eyes almost crossed, bright starbursts obscuring her vision.
Suddenly, a safety deposit box with a certain three-digit label flashed before her eyes. The color of the identification plate was a little lighter than the others, but it was also white text on a black background. The positioning of the numbers on this one was lower than that of the other safety deposit boxes.
“365!” Gu Nianzhi covered her mouth and cried out in surprise, “I found it!”
Bai Shuang and Zhao Liangze looked over at the same time.
“Did you find it?” Bai Shuang lifted up her skirt and ran over.
Inside the 32-degree Fahrenheit basement, Bai Shuang’s face turned pale from the cold. She was also wearing a bright red dress and looked a bit eerie.
Gu Nianzhi looked back at her and asked with concern, “Sister Bai, are you cold?”
“I’m not cold.” Bai Shuang didn’t care and poked her head over to look at the safe that Gu Nianzhi had found.
Zhao Liangze saw this and pursed his lips. He brought over the tuxedo jacket he had taken off and put it over Bai Shuang’s shoulders.
He didn’t speak to or look at Bai Shuang as he draped his tuxedo jacket over her. He then walked straight to Gu Nianzhi.
“What is it? You found it?” he asked.
His eyes scanned over the boxes, and he also noticed the safety deposit box nearby labeled number 365. It happened to be about the height of Zhao Liangze’s chest, not far in front of him, and roughly one and a half meters away from the ground.
This safety deposit box was set apart from other boxes in that the position of the lock was different.
The locks on the other safes were located in the middle of the left side, and the position of the keyholes was flush with the safety deposit box’s surface.
However, the lock of the safe labeled 365 was in the middle of the safe, and the small protruding disk had a long, narrow keyhole in the middle.
Gu Nianzhi looked at Zhao Liangze and asked, “Brother Ze, do you have a way to open this safety deposit box?”
They had no credentials and no keys, so they were only there to try their luck.
Zhao Liangze shook his head and said, “I’m not good at breaking into locks. Maybe we should ask Huo Shao to try?”
But they didn’t know where Huo Shaoheng was at the moment.
Zhao Liangze also didn’t want to contact him now.
The person working behind the scenes with Bai Shuang had not yet appeared, so this was not the time for Huo Shaoheng to appear.
Gu Nianzhi shook her head and said, “Forget it. A distant hose cannot rescue a close fire. Let’s try it by ourselves.”
She bent her knees and squatted down to squint at the keyhole, muttering, “…This is such a flat keyhole. What kind of key could be so flat? It’s the thickness of a piece of paper…”
Zhao Liangze tilted his head to study it for a while, then took out a slender and strong piece of metal wire from his pocket. “Let me try this…”
Special Operations Forces personnel carried all kinds of necessary equipment whenever they worked in the field – from guns and ammunition to ropes that could be tied with fishermen knots and all sorts of drugs and wires.
Zhao Liangze slowly inserted the metal wire into the elongated keyhole to feel out the shape and depth of the keyhole inside. He suddenly said, “…There is no lock cylinder in this keyhole…”
Gu Nianzhi, “…”
Was a lock without a cylinder still considered a lock?!
