Tang Ren slapped Su Chen on the back, causing him to almost drop his ancestral electronic compass into the Thames.
"Young man, stop looking down at your phone! Master will teach you how to read faces—" Pulling Su Chen's collar, he forced him to look up. The shadow of Big Ben on the other side of the river was slowly creeping over the bridge pier. "This is 'White Tiger Overcoming Azure Dragon', jerk! The gang from Organization Q must be hiding here!"
Qin Feng squatted on the railing and ate a cup of Meiji. Crumbs fell into the river and startled a group of seagulls: "Second uncle, you said last month that Buckingham Palace was a good place for fortune... but it turns out to be a public toilet."
Su Silently wiped off Tang Ren's oily fingerprints on the compass screen. This "family heirloom" was nothing more than an antique shell bought from Taobao, with a modified second-hand mobile phone stuffed inside - the system was projecting a 3D scan of Big Ben onto the retina. The red light flashed along the internal structure of the clock tower, and finally stopped at the vent of a maintenance passage.
"Kan position...water level, is indeed suitable for hiding electronic equipment." 놛 gritted his teeth and translated the system prompt into Feng Shui terms.
Tang Ren's eyes lit up immediately.
Later, the group squatted behind the trash can under the Tower Bridge in London, looking at the peach wood sword that Tang Ren "borrowed" from the witch in Chinatown and feeling worried.
"I said to use a compass to locate, I didn't say to dive into the Thames!" Su Chen clutched the hem of his soaked sweatshirt. Ten minutes ago, Tang Ren swung a mahogany sword and said he wanted to "cut off the WiFi signal of the Q organization", but he missed a step and fell into the river, dragging Su Chen, who had helped him, into the water.
Qin Feng suddenly pressed Su Chen's shoulder. His fingers, stained with Meiji sauce, slid across the compass in Su Chen's palm and tapped lightly at the southeast corner.
"The metal mesh of the vent was replaced a month ago." He flipped through the Big Ben maintenance report on his phone, "but there's no camera in the photo."
Su Chen's back tensed instantly. The system popped up an alarm in his mind - there was a miniature laser sensor on the inside of the vent, and the model was exactly the same as the one left at the scene of the theft at the British Museum a few days ago.
"A trap set by the Q organization." 놛 blurted out.
Tang Ren's peach wood sword broke into two pieces with a "crack".
---
When Kiko's projection popped up on Qin Feng's watch, Su Chen was using the system to simulate Master Bai's movements.
"Q has buried an electromagnetic pulse device under the reading room." The girl's pink ponytail twisted into strange waves in the current interference. "They plan to burn all electronic evidence when the museum closes tonight - including your boyfriend's brain."
Qin Feng grabbed the watch face and asked, "You, you hacked into the museum's security system?"
"Yes." Kiko blinked. "By the way, Su Chen's compass signal appeared on the Q organization's intranet yesterday... Do you think Tang Ren knew that his good disciple was secretly uploading data?"
Su Chen's hands froze on the keyboard. The system task progress bar was stuck at 97% - he had indeed secretly transmitted the encrypted files of the Q organization back to the system database. The glass dome on the top of the reading room suddenly darkened, and heavy rain hit the 19th century cast iron frame, like countless pale hands knocking on the coffin.
In the darkness came the sound of gears turning.
When the hundreds of gas lamps were turned on, Master Bai was standing in front of the Buddha statue in the center of the reading room. The Mobius bracelet in his hand was exactly the same as the one that Sinuo gave to Qin Feng.
"Mr. Qin, do you know why Q Organization chose the British Museum?" 놛 stroked the empty eye sockets of the Buddha statue, "Because here are the tombstones of all civilizations - and we are the gravekeepers."
Tang Ren suddenly sneezed loudly.
The sneeze echoed seven times in the circular hall, and the shadow behind the Buddha suddenly twitched. Su Chen's system went on a frantic alarm call - Tang Ren's saliva drew a clear track on the thermal imaging map, and at the end was a hidden secret door.
"You...A-choo! You hid onion powder in the Buddha statue!" Tang Ren pointed at Master Bai with tears in his eyes.
Qin Feng grabbed the electronic compass from Su Chen's hand and smashed it towards the gas lamp. When the glass shattered, everyone saw the Q mark on the secret door flash in the firelight.
---
When the safe in the secret room was opened, Tang Renzheng used his ancestral dragon-hunting ruler to compete with Q organization hackers in mining Bitcoin.
"Left! I said left!" Wang stepped on the control panel anxiously, and a silver needle suddenly popped out from the copper coin on the top of the dragon-finding ruler. Qin Feng subconsciously raised his hand to block it, but the tip of the needle went straight into the lock of the safe.
The sound of ancient machinery running came from the bottom of the world. Su Chen looked at the task prompt that suddenly refreshed in the system, and finally understood what was hidden in the dragon-hunting ruler - the golden coordinates that the Chinese workers had exchanged their lives for were not numbers at all, but a nursery rhyme encrypted with the pronunciation of Tangshan dialect.
"The moonlight shines brightly in the hall..." Tang Ren was suddenly stunned as he read the yellowed note in the box, "Isn't this the song my mother used to coax me to sleep?"
Master Bai's laughter came from the surveillance speaker: "Thank you Mr. Tang for triggering the agency. Now the whole world will see that the Chinatown charlatan is a gold thief——"
놛's voice suddenly stopped. Kiko's face appeared on all the screens, and the lollipop in her mouth almost poked the camera: "Sorry, I just replaced your criminal declaration with the audio of Tang Ren sneezing. By the way, did you know that Su Chen's compass can reverse the virus?"
Su Chen found that his palms were full of cold sweat. On the system interface, the red light dot representing the Q organization data flow was being quickly swallowed up by the blue program - that was the "gift" that he secretly uploaded last night.
In the chaos, no one noticed that a paper butterfly quietly landed on Qin Feng's shoulder. When the wrinkled paper was unfolded, Su Chen saw that the system automatically translated the Morse code of the folds:
[Your father is in morgue No. 13 at St. Mary's Hospital]
When the rain stopped, the group stood under the Big Ben and watched the police take away Master Bai. Tang Ren squeezed the water off his clothes and muttered, "Can you use a more scientific method to arrest people next time?"
Qin Feng suddenly pointed at the flashing electronic compass in Su Chen's backpack: "You, your heirloom... seems to be talking?"
Su Chen froze in place. The system's mechanical voice was clearly coming out from his backpack: "New mission activated - Track the abnormal energy fluctuations of Gu Kai's "Luo Shen Fu Tu"."
Tang Ren's sharp knife scared away the whole flock of pigeons.
"Damn it! The compass has become a spirit!"
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