Chapter 797: Chapter 797: Li Qiao Finds the Floppy Disk

Li Qiao spoke in a muted tone, “It looks like every part of the Scripture Pavilion has been renovated.”

Shang Yu’s symmetrical fingers flicked through the blueprints, his eyes lowered to her as he said with a deep voice mixed with a smile, “Haven’t found it?”

Li Qiao propped her chin and glared at him, her smile gradually widening, “Have you looked at the blueprints yet?”

“I haven’t,” the man replied, his gaze indulgent as his fingers twirled a strand of hair near her ear, “Do I need to look?”

With a composed expression, Li Qiao pointed to a small square on one of the blueprints, “Probably not necessary, but take a look at this.”

Shang Yu followed the position where her fingertip rested, his gaze meeting hers sidelong, his eyes deep, “Electrical distribution system.”

“Mhm,” Li Qiao rolled up the blueprints again and placed them back into the tube, “Basically all the hardware in the Scripture Pavilion has been refurbished, including maintenance on the electrical system’s wiring. The only thing untouched is this branch control box.”

She hadn’t seen any conspicuous control box in the Scripture Pavilion at that time, according to the position depicted on the blueprint, it should be behind one of the bookshelves.

“Shall we go check it out tomorrow?” Shang Yu took the tube and placed it aside, glanced at the unfinished cup of milk powder, and frowned imperceptibly.

In recent times, he had observed that the young lady seemed to dislike drinking milk powder.

Often leaving it half-drunk, or sometimes only taking a few sips.

Just then, Li Qiao’s voice pulled the man’s thoughts back, “Would an electrical box be a good place to hide something?”

Shang Yu’s thin lips slightly tilted as he eyed the tube, “It’s unexpected, so perhaps.”

Li Qiao’s eyebrows slowly relaxed as she pondered for a few seconds, then raised an eyebrow, “What if we go now, can we get in?”

It wasn’t that she feared the night would bring too many dreams, but rather that there were more important matters in the next two days.

The man’s deep eyes affectionately touched her cheek, “If you wish, we can.”

“Then let’s go.”

…

Twenty minutes later, a black Bentley left Myst Town.

The Parliament Building, standing amidst the night, seemed exceptionally ancient and solid.

At half-past nine in the evening, Li Qiao once again stepped into the Scripture Pavilion on the third floor of the west hall of the Parliament Building.

It was still the same senator who had received them that day, who didn’t talk much and seemed quite reverent towards Shang Yu.

Li Qiao did not harbor much hope either, coming over at night was more about taking a shot in the dark.

Besides the control box, if the entire pavilion had been renovated, it was very likely that whatever they were looking for had already been discovered by someone else or discarded as renovation debris.

Li Qiao walked down the stairs, following her memory and thinking about the location of the electric box from the CAD drawing, quickly identifying a stepped bookcase against the wall.

The Scripture Pavilion’s bookshelves were all made of heavy rosewood; it was not realistic to think of moving them.

She approached the bookshelf, looking at the original language books in the fifth row of the same category and pulled out a book.

At that moment, Luoyu stepped forward just in time, boldly picking up the book and throwing it onto the ground.

Li Qiao’s mouth twitched at the sight of the original language book with a dark blue cover on the ground, trying not to laugh.

In less than ten seconds, Luoyu had cleared out more than twenty thick original language books from an entire row of the bookshelf.

Li Qiao, pulling Shang Yu along, used the overhead lights to notice a hollow section in the bookshelf’s panel about thirty centimeters long and wide, with the in-wall control box in plain sight.

Such a design was quite common–nice for aesthetics and better for safety.

However, the small double-door control box was locked with an old-fashioned safety lock.

Luoyu considerately took out a paperclip from her pocket…

No wonder when they were leaving, the madam had her search everywhere for paperclips.

Li Qiao was just about to reach out when Shang Yu encircled her waist and stepped her to the side, “Be quick.”

Luoyu nodded, straightened the paperclip, and hunched over to start picking the lock within the bookshelf.

Thirty seconds passed, and with a click, the lock opened.

Luoyu removed the lock, pulled open the two small iron doors, and the interior was fully revealed.

An old-fashioned button power control panel was self-evident, with nothing but dust floating in the air.

Li Qiao watched intently, not so much disappointed as she was indifferently accepting that this was to be expected.

She reached forward with both hands to push the self-closing doors aside when she unexpectedly discovered that the two small doors did not close at the same rate.

Especially the one on the right…

After several attempts to close and reopen them, Li Qiao felt that the right door was noticeably lighter than the left.

The bookshelf above blocked most of the light, so Li Qiao asked Luoyu to use the flashlight on her phone to thoroughly examine the left door.

“Found something?” Shang Yu leaned against the bookshelf, his gaze resting upon her delicately contoured profile as he asked in a rich voice.

Li Qiao bent her fingers and tapped on the left door, then the right, and turned to look at the man with raised eyebrows.

The sound was clearly different on each side.

These types of power control box doors were internationally standardized, single-layer sheet metal designs; a double layer was impossible.

Li Qiao took Luoyu’s phone and carefully shone the light around the perimeter of the left door, “There’s a compartment in here.”

“Madam, let me do it.”

Luoyu eagerly volunteered, pulling out a dagger she always carried and started tapping and fiddling with the small door.

Li Qiao thought for a moment, then reminded her in a low voice, “Check carefully inside the door for a…”

Before she could finish, Luoyu had already removed the half door on the left.

Li Qiao: “…”

That turned out to be a shortcut.

She placed the phone on the bookshelf and examined the iron door for a moment with one hand. Taking the dagger from Luoyu, she gently pried at the inner frame’s seam, and with a tearing sound, the corner of the inner sheet of metal lifted.

Obviously, someone had fitted an equally sized thin sheet of metal inside the left door of the power box.

As Li Qiao used the dagger to pry open the whole sheet of metal, an object wrapped in white flannel came into view.

She handed the dagger back to Luoyu and took some effort to remove the small package.

The item was thin, adhered to the inside of the compartment in the door with double-sided tape.

Li Qiao made sure there was nothing else inside the little door before handing it to Luoyu to be reattached.

It might have been an unexpected find, so Li Qiao was very cautious.

If it really was something left by Jing Yilan, after more than twenty years, there’s no guarantee it won’t have sustained damage.

She gently squeezed the small cloth package, feeling a somewhat unfamiliar texture.

Li Qiao slowly peeled away the exterior tape to reveal a black floppy disk, aged and almost translucent under the light.

A floppy disk was a now-obsolete external storage medium for computers.

Holding the square floppy disk, Li Qiao vaguely remembered seeing it as a child in Father Li’s study.

Later, when storage media transitioned to USB drives, this technology faded from the mainstream market.

Gripping the floppy disk, Li Qiao became lost in thought, then turned her head to look at the control box again, and she suddenly understood Jing Yilan’s intention.

The doubly encrypted notebook was given to Charles, then the most inconspicuous person, and the floppy disk was hidden away in the rarely inquired-about Scriptures Pavilion control box within Myst Town’s Parliament Building.

If she had not encountered Charles, the floppy disk might never have been discovered.

Inside the box were only two control buttons, covered in a thick layer of dust, obviously infrequently opened.

Nobody would think to look inside the control box of the Scripture Pavilion in the Parliament Building for an ancient floppy disk.