Genius Club-Chapter 170 - 14 Hide and Seek

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Everything went smoothly.

Code Expert CC didn’t have to expend any effort to find the option to grant access on the computer.

After confirmation...

The checkpoint gates slowly opened, and the previously idle garbage trucks started up, forming a neat line and heading out.

"Come on up."

Following Lin Xian’s call, CC and he once again hid in the gap beneath the dumpster of the garbage truck... entering Donghai City’s urban area.

...

Along the way, the garbage trucks gradually parted ways according to the preset routes.

In the end, only two garbage trucks continued on the path towards Tem Bank.

Squeak————

About 20 minutes later, the heavy garbage truck came to a halt.

Driven by inertia, Lin Xian and CC were pressed against each other.

They cautiously peeked out... to find the garbage truck in front had stopped right at the bank’s entrance, and their truck had pulled up behind it.

Looking up, they saw the large letters of "Tem Bank" written above the door, with a string of English beneath it.

But perhaps because it had already gone out of business... those letter signs didn’t light up like the surrounding ones, instead exuding a sense of dilapidation.

"We finally reached our destination."

Lin Xian couldn’t help but reflect on the tumultuous journey.

CC blinked in confusion, looking at Lin Xian:

"Wasn’t that very smooth? I even find it unbelievably smooth."

"It’s all built on my corpses..." Lin Xian said with a wry smile.

For CC, it indeed felt almost like a single-life victory.

But from Lin Xian’s perspective, starting from the garbage dump below, he didn’t know how many times he had died to finally arrive here.

The two sat up, quietly hopped down, and peered out from behind the truck towards the bank’s entrance—

A few loading robots had already started bustling about, beginning to move the hafnium alloy safes out of the warehouse one by one, lifting them up, and loading them onto the truck.

The robots and automated equipment completed all the work while a man smoking a cigarette sat beside them with his legs crossed, watching everything, probably the supervisor on duty.

"Gunshots are too loud, I’m afraid they’ll attract patrol mechanical dogs."

CC took out an animal anesthesia gun from his pocket:

"I’ll knock him out."

"Okay, show me your performance."

Lin Xian had a lot of confidence in CC’s capabilities.

CC crouched down, silently got off the truck, and then, sticking close to the wall, approached the man from behind—

"Whoosh—!"

The man’s mouth and nose were quickly covered! Then the animal anesthesia gun was pressed against his neck!

After struggling for about twenty to thirty seconds... the man quickly lost his strength and slumped down.

But CC didn’t let go, maintaining control the whole time, waiting until the man’s eyes rolled back and he completely lost consciousness before releasing his arm and propping him up against the wall.

"As expected of an animal anesthesia gun, the drug is really strong."

Seeing it was safe, Lin Xian climbed out as well.

In hospitals, during normal anesthesia procedures, inhalational anesthesia works faster, whereas injectable anesthetics all take some time to take effect and their dosages are well controlled.

But for animal use...

It’s likely to be a miracle of high dosage.

"Let’s go."

The two quietly passed the automated equipment moving the hafnium alloy safes, heading straight to the bank’s warehouse.

Since the bank was already in a state of closure and had issued a notice a long time ago, most of the miscellaneous items had been moved out... as of today, after the announcement period ended, the safes in this storehouse also became unclaimed garbage.

As expected, the automated handling equipment had no alarm function and could automatically avoid obstacles and pedestrians, which was quite humane.

Before long, the two arrived at the warehouse stocked with hafnium alloy safes.

"Long time no see."

Lin Xian gazed at the shining safes filling the warehouse, feeling nostalgic.

In The First Dreamland, he had battled wits and bravery with these things every day, and today he was back to square one.

Originally these safes were embedded in the walls, but now they had been "dug out" and were lying haphazardly on the floor.

The two ran straight to the back.

Soon, they found a safe with Lin Xian’s name on it.

"This is the one!"

CC was thrilled to see Lin Xian’s name, squatting down and started trying to turn the combination dial.

Click.

Click.

Click.

Lin Xian listened to the crisp sound of the combination dial turning, but each time was followed by the thud of the lock not opening.

CC tried many combinations, all incorrect.

"Let me give it a try."

CC stepped aside, and Lin Xian dialed the combination to 29990203.

He took a deep breath...

Thud!

He pressed the lock latch hard!

...

It didn’t open.

"Heh!"

Lin Xian let out a laugh as he had expected.

What to say...

Although he had lain so many foundations within his own mind, he actually... didn’t have much confidence.

After all, that safe had been tried so many times without success, any confidence he had was worn away.

He tried the password for Zhao Yingjun’s office door next, which was still incorrect.

He tried every password associated with 42 he could think of... still no luck.

"Forget it, your turn."

Lin Xian stepped aside for CC again, sighed, and watched the safe.

If the code 29990203 couldn’t open the safe...

Then there were two possibilities.

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1. This safe indeed does not belong to me.

2. My future self does not seem willing to let my current self open this safe.

"The future me has deliberately set a password that I can’t open," Lin Xian thought.

If that’s the case, then there’s really no point in trying to open this safe.

The person who knows me best is myself.

If my future self truly does not want my current self to open the safe, then with all my thought processes exposed... it’s impossible to open no matter what.

Just as Zhao Yingjun said.

A password without any logic or meaning is the most difficult to crack, unless one uses brute force.

But to crack an 8-digit password using brute force... with just these few precious minutes each day after trekking over mountains and through rivers... it would probably take decades to achieve through exhaustive search.

He suddenly had a quirky thought and looked at CC:

"Since this safe was left to you by the bearded man, shouldn’t you first try your birthday, or any dates related to you?"

CC let out a light chuckle:

"The first thing I tried was my birthday; I even tried every birthday I’ve had each year... making me feel like I’m wallowing in self-pity."

"Actually, it’s unlikely that it’s a date related to me, because from what that man said, he had placed the stuff inside the safe a long, long time ago, it doesn’t seem like it was specifically meant for me."

"You keep trying here, I’ll go look for some information about this bank," Lin Xian bid farewell to CC and headed directly to the second floor of Tem Bank.

The second floor was mostly offices, but most of their contents had already been moved out, leaving behind only garbage covered in dust.

Lin Xian felt that trying each password one by one here was probably not going to open it, the odds were too small, akin to finding a needle in a haystack; it was better to look for clues elsewhere.

He rummaged through the miscellaneous items in the second-floor offices, some were printed waste paper, some bills, some empty paper boxes...

After searching many offices, he found nothing useful.

It wasn’t until the penultimate office that he found a torn speech draft in a trash bin.

Quite amazing... I didn’t expect that 600 years later, despite such advanced audio-visual equipment, leaders still preferred reading from scripts.

It’s probably a sense of formality that has been around since ancient times.

He picked it up, and the beginning read:

Follow current novels on ƒreewebηoveℓ.com.

[Since its establishment in 2023, Tem Bank has weathered 600 years of storms and waves, over these centuries...]

"2023?"

Lin Xian took notice of this familiar year!

Isn’t that the year in which I live in the real world?

He carefully read through the speech draft again... there wasn’t any other useful information, just some emotional speech likely given at a bankruptcy ceremony, nothing substantial.

But for Lin Xian, the year of establishment of Tem Bank was indeed a very important year.

"Since Tem Bank was established in 2023... then if this safe really is mine, when would I have placed something inside and set the password?"

Lin Xian was not sure if he was one of the first customers of Tem Bank, but it seemed like a possibility.

Lin Xian had previously searched online and found no information about Tem Bank.

That means...

Perhaps in the next few months, Tem Bank will be established, and certainly no later than New Year’s Day 2024.

"[This might just be the link that bridges 600 years of time!]"

Lin Xian had always wondered if there was a way to hide an item from 600 years ago somewhere and then retrieve it 600 years later.

But originally, there were no common coordinates between The First Dreamland and real life, making it impossible to find a corresponding place; even burying something would have been in vain.

The Second Dreamland, needless to say, was completely different from the real Donghai City.

But now it was different.

As long as Tem Bank was established in real life in 2023, he could use their services to get a safe deposit box and easily transport the materials from 600 years ago to 600 years later!

Although he couldn’t think of anything offhand that would still be useful after 600 years... it was better than nothing, having some kind of link was better than none at all.

"If there were a way to send things from 600 years in the future to 600 years in the past, that would be great, but unfortunately... time can’t flow backward."

Lin Xian leaned against the dusty metal cabinet, beginning to contemplate his plans for the coming period.

For the time being, it seemed that the safe wasn’t going to be opened anytime soon.

But Lin Xian wasn’t too concerned about it.

For one thing, Tem Bank would be established soon, and then the answers would reveal themselves.

For another, since his future self didn’t want his current self to open the safe, there must be some important reason for it.

Lin Xian still believed that his future self wouldn’t screw him over; there had to be a purpose, which is why an unguessable password had been deliberately set.

"So, let’s put the matter of the safe to rest for a while and just wait patiently for the establishment of Tem Bank in 2023."

"Next, the focus should remain on the ’Catch Me If You Can’ Huang Que mentioned, as well as the invitation to the Genius Club."

These two matters.

One represented a crisis that he was facing, and the other was the key to solving all the mysteries.

Both were equally important.

But at the same time, he was utterly clueless on both fronts, not knowing which step to take or where to go.

Obviously, the woman Huang Que must know all the answers; she spoke with such certainty about everything, yet she chose to be a sphinx, saying nothing at all.

Comparatively, Lin Xian was more concerned about ’Catch Me If You Can.’

Catch Me If You Can, plainly speaking, was a game of hide and seek.

If Huang Que had reminded him of this...

That meant he was about to find himself in, or was already in, a certain danger.

In fact, about this, Lin Xian also had a certain degree of self-awareness.

If, by ’cat’, they meant the murderer who killed Xu Yun...

Then they could easily trace the "interest relationship" between himself and Xu Yun.

Even though these interest connections couldn’t directly prove anything, at the very least they indicated there were some secrets unknown to others between him and Xu Yun.

These secrets might be exactly what the murderers were most concerned about.

Luckily, Xu Yun had destroyed the manuscript Lin Xian gave him a long time ago, so those murderers probably wouldn’t find any direct evidence of him helping Xu Yun with his research.

But that didn’t prevent them from considering him a suspect, a person of interest.

What purpose did they have for killing?

Unknown.

If they wanted to kill him, would they also do it at exactly 00:42?

Uncertain.

"However... there’s at least one thing I can be certain of."

Lin Xian turned his head, looked out the window at the robot tirelessly loading safes onto the garbage truck, and thought of the hide and seek games he played with his friends in the housing complex when he was little:

"Since it’s hide and seek, eventually they have to come out and find me, right? They must have some interaction with me, don’t they?"

He closed his eyes and began to recall the people who had appeared around him, whether intentionally or not, during this period...

"Who could it be?"