Bo Zijing stared intently at the person before her: "Have you discovered something?"
Upon hearing this, Yuan Qingli's smile faded, and her tone became serious.
"I was just wondering why the lights were fine for the first two days, but suddenly went out on the third day?"
Yuan Qingli paused briefly, waiting for Bo Zijin to process her question before continuing, "Like our mobile phones, the nine-square pattern unlock fails because the connections weren't in the correct order, or the process was temporarily interrupted. But why are these lights like this?"
The question that had never been mentioned before, and this simple thought, immediately came to Bo Zijin's attention.
"Similar to a combination lock, it must be opened in one go. If it is interrupted in the middle, it will return to the starting point and start again. For example, these lights on the wall, let's say their one-time range is one day."
"If no lights are turned on that day, then all the lights that were previously on will also be... cleared."
Yuan Qingli: "Yes, so I suspect the reason the lights went out was because they weren't in the correct order."
"It's pretty much what I thought. The order is one thing, but the key question is, what pattern does this order follow? Is it the last two digits of the phone number? I find it very strange. Even if it's only two digits, how can it just happen to find the same one as the first day?" Bo Zijin said.
Yuan didn't reply immediately, remaining silent for a while before raising his head: "There's something I've always cared about."
"Do you remember the information we saw at the library? The city walls looked like a giant cage over the city... eight intersecting lines... buildings could not exceed eight stories, and the place names here also gave me a strange feeling."
"It's like it's revealing something..."
"Eight again, eight again. What's the point of hanging up so many eights?" Bo Zijin, who was usually cold-faced, gradually became irritated.
As the two were chatting, two figures suddenly appeared around the corner; it was Lu Xingyun and Wen Yuning, who had returned to the house.
"Are you having a private tutoring session? Any new discoveries?" Lu Xingyun leaned closer to Yuan Qingli.
"I heard the CEO gossiping. What gossip is it?" Wen Yuning looked like a gossip lover. "I love gossip the most."
Yuan Qingli's eyes lit up.
The three quickly exchanged glances and returned to the hall. Lu Xingyun even patted Wen Yuning on the shoulder: "Ning, well done."
"Hey, you three, what's going on?" Wen Yuning followed up. "Hey, Mr. Lu, be gentler next time you slap..."
He used his mobile phone to call everyone to come—but actually, only Fang Zhiyou was present.
"Everyone, Yu Ning's words just now reminded us. Everything here seems to be related to gossip. Let's not talk about anything else for now and decipher the delivery order first." Yuan Qingli gestured for the president to continue.
"The phone numbers here all start with 1X8. The X only has 1 to 8, and there are no 0 or 9. We hadn't noticed this before."
And then there's the last digit of the phone number. It's impossible for the last digits of a normal phone number to be so coincidental; it's possible to encounter two orders with the same last digit within just four days.
"Furthermore, have you noticed that for the two orders where we successfully lit up the lights, the second and third digits of the phone number, when multiplied together, give the last three digits of the phone number?"
Everyone looked over, and sure enough, it was true.
The two orders that successfully lit up today are exactly like this: the first order starts with 138 and ends with 24, and the second order starts with 158 and ends with 40.
The pattern is the same as the phone numbers whose lights were turned on in the previous two days.
"So, all we need to do tomorrow is find a phone number whose product of the second and third digits matches the last three digits, right?" Wen Yuning suddenly realized, then turned around abruptly: "Xiao Fang, what are you doing?"
Everyone looked up and saw Fang Zhiyou in the back row, muttering, "Three 8s added together, 16, 17, 18, 19..." Suddenly noticing several gazes on their faces, they stammered, "How did you guys calculate that so fast?"
"But what does this have to do with gossip?" Wen Yuning was still full of doubt.
“The Bagua (Eight Trigrams) represents directions,” Yuan Qingli said, pointing to the map. “The first order is 38, which is due east of the city. The second order is 58, which is due south of the city.”
"Therefore, for tomorrow's orders, while looking for matching phone numbers, we also need to match the delivery locations. For example, 18 should be due north, and 28 should be in the northeast."
As Yuan Qingli spoke, she drew a large "米" (rice) character on the map and labeled it with numbers.
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