Chapter 184
Chapter 184
Qiu Ziyu felt he had been working himself to death lately.
He had spent untold time and energy finding Wen Tangtang and bringing her back, finally earning his team a brief respite.
He had come to Nan Mu’s place hoping to score a free lunch. Instead, he had gotten no food and nearly fried his brain.
If Nan Mu had not been his childhood friend-and if Qiu Ziyu were not somewhat attached to him-he would have taken the Time Machine into the past and told his younger, foolish self: There are so many kids in the compound. Can’t you play with someone else? Why does it have to be Nan Mu? For the sake of your future health, don’t become his friend. It’s exhausting.
Unfortunately, hindsight could not be bought at any price.
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Qiu Ziyu raided the snack cabinet and gathered an armful of food. As he went to set it on the table, he noticed an ultrathin laptop sitting there.
“You got a new computer?” he asked curiously, tearing open a bag of snacks.
Nan Mu never used ultrathin laptops. He preferred business laptops-the large, heavy kind.
Qiu Ziyu had once mocked him for it. What businessman lugged around a laptop that bulky?
Nan Mu had said it had more memory, ran faster, and worked better.
Qiu Ziyu countered that it was terribly inconvenient to carry and that plenty of thin, light models were fast too.
Nan Mu had looked at him as if he were an idiot, then delivered the sort of heartless line only a cold-blooded capitalist could utter.
“I’m not the one carrying it. Why should I care whether it’s light or convenient?”
Ever since then, Qiu Ziyu had never forgotten Nan Mu’s taste in computers.
So when he spotted the ultrathin laptop on the table today, with its bright colors and sleek design, he could not resist teasing him. “Didn’t someone insist that thin laptops were no good? Then what, may I ask, is this?”
Nan Mu glanced at the computer and remembered the small rosewood-colored box from yesterday.
Ignoring Qiu Ziyu, he picked up the laptop and headed upstairs.
“Hey, where are you going?”
Still clutching his snacks, Qiu Ziyu followed close behind. He watched Nan Mu take a rosewood-colored object from a drawer.
“What’s that?”
“Probably a flash drive.”
Nan Mu fiddled with it while explaining where it had come from.
“A flash drive is a flash drive. Why make it so fancy?” Qiu Ziyu grumbled.
Nan Mu plugged it into the laptop, and the drive information promptly appeared on the screen.
“What’s on it?”
Qiu Ziyu leaned closer. Nan Mu clicked the drive, and two folders appeared. Qiu Ziyu read their names aloud. “Regeneration of Nerve Cells and Cloning Research of Stem Cells… Quantum Computer…”
Unable to make sense of them, he asked, “What are these? Research… projects?”
“Probably.” Nan Mu felt a faint, inexplicable disappointment. “They’re likely Wisdom Biotech Company research projects.”
The drive was probably nothing more than something a materials-team employee had accidentally left behind while clearing the office.
What had he expected? Nan Mu smiled bitterly at himself. He truly was becoming obsessed if he had pinned his hopes of finding the truth on a flash drive he had picked up by chance.
He clicked the X to close the window, planning to ask Xu Yang tomorrow to return the drive.
Just as he was about to close the laptop, something Meng Ran had said flashed through his mind.
“Wisdom Biotech Company conducts proprietary research across an enormous range of fields, and researchers are required to maintain absolute secrecy until an experiment succeeds. The project was publicly called ‘Quantum Computer,’ but that was merely the name released to the outside world. In reality, ‘Time Machine’ would be a more accurate description of what I was developing.”
Nan Mu froze midway through closing the screen, then abruptly flipped it open again.
“What is it?” Qiu Ziyu asked, bewildered by his reaction.
Nan Mu did not answer. His emotions rose and plunged like a roller coaster, suspense and anxiety tangling together. His heart pounded as furiously as a cheetah at full sprint, and his breathing turned short and tight.
Holding his breath, Nan Mu reopened the drive and entered the folder labeled Quantum Computer.
It was packed with documents, analysis reports, experimental data, and photographs taken during the experiments. Nan Mu and Qiu Ziyu understood only fragments of the specifications for the instruments, materials, tolerances, and other technical data. They scanned the files one by one until they found Quantum Computer Project Final Report.
The report contained descriptions of the experiments and their conclusions. At the very end, a project disposition appeared in large red letters: CLASSIFIED DOCUMENT-PROJECT SHELVED.
Shelved. It matched exactly what Meng Ran had told Nan Mu. The project truly had been shut down.
“Classified?” Qiu Ziyu asked. “Then why was it stored on a flash drive?”
He was right. Classified documents would never ordinarily be permitted on a portable drive-much less handled so carelessly that the drive could be abandoned in the materials team’s office.
Nan Mu recalled the middle-aged man handing it to him. There had even been flecks of sawdust stuck to it…
Wait.
Nan Mu lowered his eyes in thought. He had assumed the sawdust came from the man’s hands. But what if it had already been on the drive?
The man said the drive had fallen where Nan Mu had been sitting.
Fallen…
From where?
It could not have fallen from the surface of the desk. Nan Mu had seen nothing there while he was seated.
Then where had it dropped from?
His expression suddenly went rigid as a crucial possibility occurred to him. He quickly returned to the drive’s main screen, right-clicked, selected the relevant option, and a familiar window immediately appeared, displaying the file properties.
Created: November 3, 2022, 6:01:39 p.m.
“That was ten years ago,” Qiu Ziyu remarked.
He turned toward Nan Mu and saw his entire body drawn taut, his breath coming fast. Veins bulged on his forehead as though he were struggling with all his strength to contain some powerful emotion.
“Nan Mu…”
Before Qiu Ziyu could ask what was wrong, Nan Mu spoke in a trembling voice.
“November third was the day Wen Xin was attacked at Wisdom Biotechnology.”
Qiu Ziyu froze. His gaze shifted involuntarily to the flash drive, and he swallowed. “Then the contents of this drive… could they have belonged to Wen Xin?”