Gu Xiyu stared at the empty folder with a stunned look. The system called him several times before he heard its voice.
[What happened to you?]
Gu Xiyu’s eyelids trembled slightly: “What?”
[I just received a notification that your heart rate was suddenly abnormal. Your soul state also showed signs of fluctuation.] the system explained.
Gu Xiyu rarely received concern from his intelligent system. After calming down his heart, he briefly told the system about the disappearance of the folder.
In order to protect these documents from being exposed easily, the original owner had quietly set up a certain destruction procedure inside. As the holder of the document, he definitely knew how long he could open these documents and read them. So as long as the documents are not closed within the time limit, the person reading was unlikely to be him.
He was really smart.
“I didn’t necessarily want to give these documents to Ji Zixuan and Fu Nian. But that didn’t mean that I didn’t need them anymore.” Whether it was to deal with Ji Chen who might suddenly go astray in the future or schemers, tjise documents would have been of great help.
After listening to him, the system reminded: [I remember the original owner was just a graduate of business school.]
How can a business graduate be so good at computer technology?
The only explanation was that there was another person helping him.
The system guessed from Gu Xiyu’s silence that he understood, so it said: [If someone really helped him, there might be a backup given the original owner’s cautious nature.]
“You’re right.” Gu Xiyu praised.
He slightly forgave this cold system for being so indifferent during the past few days. He opened his mobile phone’s contact list and prepared to observe the people that were saved in his contact list.
Suddenly, there was a notification from the laptop.
[You have a new email~]
Gu Xiyu glanced at it. It was another advertising email with a very similar style to the previous one. It was just a strange website with colorful lights flashing. The advertisement was recommending an unpopular product that he hasn’t seen much of in the market. The entire page was full of numbers and words with weird sentences that were particularly dazzling.
The cursor on the screen had already moved to the “delete” option, but Gu Xiyu didn’t click it for a long time.
This email has been appearing too frequently.
He temporarily dismissed the idea of deleting the email and carefully read the advertisement several times, from beginning to end.
He looked it for a long time and finally noticed a few white characters displayed on a red background.
The order in which those characters were written was very confusing. It was written in both numbers and text, but if you combined all the white letters on the red background, it looked like an address.
Gu Xiyu was staring at the words in deep thought when there was a sudden knock on the door of the room.
He exited the mailbox, then got up and opened the door.
Ji Chen, who had already taken a shower, stood outside the door and handed him a white drink.
Gu Xiyu’s hand touched the glass and paused imperceptibly.
It was ice cold milk that had just been taken out of the refrigerator.
Ji Chen said: “I forgot to tell you that the Department of Supervision gave me the result of the company’s information leak incident.”
“Who is the culprit?”
“It was the employee who told everyone that the email was sent from your employee account. His name seems to be “He Rong?”
As expected, Gu Xiyu thought while drinking milk.
“He confessed to the Department of Supervision this morning. He gambled a lot over the years in order to make quick money, resulting in him owing a lot of debt. So he chose to accept huge rewards from rival companies to do things for them. He said that you two had grudges from middle school, so he wanted to pass all responsibility for this matter to you.”
When Gu Xiyu first met He Rong, he felt an unspeakable hostility from the other party, especially after learning about He Rong’s past grievances with the original owner. How can the hatred accumulated from being bullied disappear so easily?
Ji Chen rubbed his lips and smiled: “He is quite capable and a very cautious person. He deserves to be a talent who can pass the interview of the Technical Department.” After a pause, he continued, “But I have an even more capable and cautious technical team composed of elites hired from all over the world working under me. No matter how cautious he is, he can’t hide anything from me.”
Gu Xiyu asked after taking a sip of the milk: “Really? Since they are a team of elites, why has it taken so long to get results?”
The question was on point and Ji Chen coughed lightly: “Because the scope of this matter was relatively complicated and difficult to handle. Also, there were many twists and turns.”
Gu Xiyu responded with an “oh” and did not continue to investigate further. He only asked: “Can I go back to work?”
“Yes. We will go together tomorrow.”
After Ji Chen finished speaking, he reached out and took the cup from Gu Xiyu’s hand, then raised his hand and lightly wiped Gu Xiyu’s mouth, which had some milk stains. “Good night.”
“Good night.” Gu Xiyu’s eyes were very calm.
Ji Chen closed the door and left. He had actually gotten this incident’s results a few days earlier, but he happened to know Lan Yue’s true purpose in Country F, so he temporarily kept the news quiet and let his people investigate further.
On the surface, He Rong was a small spy sent by a company whose name he couldn’t even remember. But Ji Chen asked people to check for several days and confirmed that the small, broken company was just a cover. The plan had been operated not only by the Liyang Group but also by the LS Company.
He had never understood why it seemed that everyone was fighting against him. From birth to growing up, nothing went smoothly in his life. He didn’t know until Gu Xiyu appeared and he discovered that everything was like this because he was not the “protagonist” of this world. His existence was just a stepping stone for others to grow.
Ji Chen’s eyes darkened a bit.
He would never yield to the ridiculous constraints of this world.
How can the things he had gotten so desperately be a ladder for others to reach their peaks?
———–
After being freed of accusation, Gu Xiyu returned to work at the company. He and Ji Chen didn’t avoid being together and they rode in and out of the company in the same car every day.
After being busy for a few days, Gu Xiyu finally got a break over the weekend. Ji Chen happened to go on a business trip, so Gu Xiyu immediately booked a ticket and took the high-speed train for most of the day to the address he had read from the spam advertisement.
That address was for a hardware store on an old street.
Standing outside the hardware store was a man with a big belly. He was about 50 or 60 years old and looked quite honest. He was chatting with the bike repairman next door.
The man with the big belly noticed Gu Xiyu. He put his hands in the pockets of the warm padded jacket, walked up to him, and asked vigorously: “Young man, what can I do for you?”
The man saw the surprise on Gu Xiyu’s face and said cheerfully: “This place is small. Only a few people pass by every day so I can tell at a glance that you are from a different place. Are you lost? Do you need any help?”
Gu Xiyu asked tentatively: “I want to find someone. Are you the only one in your shop?”
“Ah, there’s another guy who helps me at work.” He glanced back at the store and shouted in the direction of a certain corner, “Haozi, what are you doing? Are you playing games again?! Come out, someone is looking for you!”
Gu Xiyu wanted to speak but stopped.
He wasn’t sure if the person he was looking for was in this place.
The person inside seemed to be cursing and Gu Xiyu could vaguely hear him shouting: “I told you, if someone asks about me, don’t tell them I’m present. What if they want to kill me?!”
A boy in his twenties with his hair trimmed and dyed to give him a non-mainstream appearance came out of the shop. He was wearing a black and white jacket, shivering in the cold wind. When the other party’s eyes fell on him, his impatient expression suddenly became one of surprise.
Regardless of the fact that the shop owner was still nearby, the boy named Haozi grabbed his arm and pulled him into the store: “You… you are finally here!”
“Your previous number isn’t active anymore. If I hadn’t accidentally learned from my cousin that you had joined the same company that he works for, I wouldn’t have known how to contact you!”
Gu Xiyu was slightly taken aback: “Your cousin?”
“His name is Chen Han. He should be a staff member of your company’s Human Resources Department. I don’t know if you have any impression of him.”
Of course, Gu Xiyu had an impression, the other party was particularly enthusiastic and talkative.
Haozi’s full name was Chen Zihao. He was a technical professional and could be regarded as a professional hacker. He takes some related jobs in private, so he has many enemies even though he doesn’t intend to provoke them, hence the need to live a low-key life.
The relationship between Haozi and the original owner seemed pretty good and Gu Xiyu was almost certain that he was the one who helped the original owner set up the high-end programs. But he was not sure whether the other party had data backups. Gu Xiyu was considering how to speak so that no flaws would be revealed.
“My data…”
He paused for a while to observe Haozi’s expression, but he didn’t expect the other party to look upset: “Hey, you should have looked for me sooner.”
Haozi scratched his head and said: “You told me that if I didn’t take the initiative to contact you before last week, it meant that something happened to you. You even left instructions that I send the hard drive to the address you had given me before. ”
Gu Xiyu was silent for a long time before asking, “Do you still have that address? I just want to confirm it.”
“I have, I have.” Haozi walked to his messy computer desk and flipped through it for a while before finding a crumpled piece of paper with dried light brown water stains on the corners.
The address was local, in F city. It seemed to be the place where the original owner had lived before going to university.
The hardware store owner came in, turned on the retro TV set in the store and tuned to a business-related news station. Haozi laughed and complained when he saw it: “Hey, you don’t even have the money to be a big boss, why do you still watch interviews of other big companies every day.”
The boss said angrily: “We poor people can also learn their business methods. Maybe I will be able to open chain stores across the country someday, brat!”
There were several magazines on the table in front of him and one of them had the words ‘Fengming’ and ‘Tianhai’ on one of them. So he grabbed it and read it. It was mentioned that Tianhai and Fengming used to have a cooperative relationship, and because the former has been having its black material spread of recent, including illegal operations, unqualified products, and even improper matters involving underground transactions, Fengming was interviewed.
The interviewee was Ji Chen’s secretary, Jin Ke. He clearly explained the relationship between Fengming and Tianhai, and told everyone that Fengming wasn’t involved in its illegal activities nor did they know anything about them.
Gu Xiyu remembered that on the first day he reported to the company, he had also met a certain senior of Tianhai Group by chance.
Was the collapse of the cooperation between Ji Chen and Tianhai Group a coincidence?
Gu Xiyu bid farewell to Haozi and hurried back to City Z, staring at the address in his hand in deep thought.
If the original owner knew that he might die, he would definitely find a way to have the original copy sent to the person who is most important to him or who he wanted to give it to in the first place.
…..Fu Nian?
Gu Xiyu had just returned to City Z, and before he had time to confirm the matter, Ji Chen, who had just returned from a business trip, suddenly called him and took him directly back to the Ji mansion.
It was obviously a normal day, but the hall of the main house was very lively. When he and Ji Chen went in, they heard those close relatives arguing noisily. The expressions on their faces were not good at all and they all looked like nagging customers in a vegetable market.
Ji Zixuan stood beside Lin Fangru with his head lowered. His expression looked a bit heavy, and his brows were furrowed as if he were holding something back.
“How long has the company been handed over to Zixuan before such a thing happened! Sooner or later, the Ji Group will be destroyed by him!”
Gu Xiyu paused at these words and subconsciously turned to look at Ji Chen beside him.
This was part of the original plot.
