"If you want to promise me anything because of Principal Feng's passing, you don't need to."
At the First Academy Research Institute, Ruan Chen handed the USB drive containing the copied document to Nan Jing.
Nan Jing took the USB drive, but before looking at it, he said these words to Ruan Chen.
Ruan Chen looked like she wanted to say something but couldn't, and before she could speak, Nan Jing's words stuck in her throat.
Nan Jing got up, walked past Ruan Chen, and locked the USB drive in the safe.
She did mean to say that she had agreed to enroll in September, and that she was willing to learn more about the person in charge of the North District and start making preparations.
“I don’t want you to feel a vague sense of guilt every day in the future, every minute and every second you spend fulfilling this responsibility,” Nan Jing said, setting the password, standing up, patting Ruan Chen’s somewhat thin shoulder, his eyes seemingly looking into her heart. “Guilt is not enough to support you to persevere. You need to find the meaning of doing this yourself.”
Ruan Chen remained silent, but before leaving, he said, "Nan Institute, please contact me anytime if you need anything regarding this patent."
She wanted to leave, but Nan Jing called her back, "Ruan Chen, you haven't asked me how the case is going."
Ruan Chen lowered her head, her hands clenching unconsciously in her pockets.
"You deliberately didn't ask, lowering my guard because you plan to investigate alone, right? I know your relationship with the Municipal Bureau, and I know that with your skills, it wouldn't be difficult for you to access their system and see what you want, but I hope you won't interfere."
Ruan Chen asked in a muffled voice, "Why?"
"Because there's already a result." Nan Jing casually pressed the remote control, and a video appeared in front of Ruan Chen's eyes.
It's a vehicle-mounted monitoring system.
He thoughtfully moved a chair for Ruan Chen so that she could sit down and watch.
Ruan Chen stared intently at the video. In the video, Feng Yuankai was driving his old-fashioned car slowly along a tree-lined road not far from the No. 1 Middle School, looking quite tired. But he wasn't distracted, focusing intently on the road ahead.
People often walk their dogs along this road, and elderly people often get up early to exercise, so Feng Yuankai is very cautious.
When they were still more than a kilometer away from No. 1 Middle School, Feng Yuankai suddenly seemed to remember something and nervously touched the briefcase in the passenger seat next to him. He squeezed it hard, but still wasn't at ease, so he opened it and took a look.
At this moment, a corner of the white cover was faintly visible inside the bag.
They were almost at school, and Feng Yuankai wasn't in a hurry to zip up his jacket. He put his hands back on the steering wheel.
That's when the incident happened.
The surveillance footage now includes a road monitoring perspective for a clearer view.
At the intersection ahead, large vehicles are not allowed to drive on this main urban road, but just as Feng Yuankai was driving through, a large vehicle suddenly appeared at the intersection on the side of the road.
The driver slammed on the brakes, seemingly trying his best to avoid the accident, but the distance was too short and the car was too heavy; there was simply no time to react.
Ruan Chen watched with bloodshot eyes as Feng Yuankai's car crashed into the ground, tracing an arc before falling to the ground.
She suddenly stood up, her mind spinning as she watched the camera's view. She raised her hand to cover her lips, trying to suppress a scream.
Once the vehicle's surveillance camera stabilized, the scene was a mess. Ruan Chen looked at the documents in briefcase 1 again, and they were empty!
Her first instinct was to search inside the car, but the surveillance camera had a limited view and she couldn't see anything further. And the white patent application was nowhere to be found.
She got up and rushed to Nan Jing's computer desk, pulling back the camera frame by frame from the car's surveillance camera, finally settling between 13 minutes and 52.33 seconds and 13 minutes and 52.34 seconds.
In this very frame, the white-covered patent book simply vanished into thin air!
"The surveillance footage was tampered with?" Ruan Chen looked up, suppressing his anger and trying to hide the trembling in his voice as he asked.
Nan Jing closed his eyes and shook his head. "It's best to assume it was artificially modified."
Ruan Chen understood, and what was even more terrifying was that... the patent application "disappeared" in that single frame of the image.
Human technology cannot do this, at least not in Ruan Chen's understanding.
Nan Jing put his arm around her trembling shoulders; he knew she must be terrified.
But she was wrong. When Ruan Chen looked up, her eyes were filled with anger, but her voice remained restrained, soft and slow, "I will enroll in September."
The next day was the National Biochemical Operation Competition. Perhaps due to the successive blows and grief, she finally calmed down, and the competition went more smoothly than Ruan Chen had expected.
The final result was also unexpected—Ruan Chen had the highest individual score, but Feng Shuang came in second.
While it's possible that the judges gave her a high score because of her status, getting second place isn't something that can be achieved by a few judges giving high scores.
Ruan Chen didn't expect Feng Shuang to be grateful or thank her; she just hoped that Feng Yuankai could leave in peace.
On the podium, under the spotlight, Ruan Chen and Feng Shuang stood side by side. Ruan Chen said softly, "If your grandfather could see this, he would be proud of you."
Feng Shuang sneered, "Don't pretend—do you think my grandfather's death has nothing to do with you?"
Ruan Chen ignored her, dismissing it as Feng Shuang's nonsense.
Feng Shuang seemed to know about her nonchalant attitude and said, "Ruan Chen, is my grandfather planning to put your name on a patent?"
Ruan Chen's heart tightened. She smiled and adjusted her angle to cooperate with the camera, but asked in a low voice, "What patent? I don't know."
"Ha, fixed-point jump technology? You really think I don't know anything about it? It's my grandfather's life's work and treasure. Someone offered him 100 million, but he wouldn't sell it."
Leaving the venue, Ruan Chen casually shoved the medal into the hands of Fu Jianzhi, who had come to watch the excitement and was waiting for her to go home, and then dialed Xu Xiaolan's number.
"Sister Xiaolan, investigate Feng Shuang! Check her chat history, her interpersonal relationships, who she's met recently, what she's done, and the accounts under her name—find out everything! There's not much information; start from three days ago!"
Fu Jianzhi followed behind her. It was drizzling. He held the medal in one hand and held up an umbrella over Ruan Chen's head with the other.
After hanging up the phone, Fu Jianzhi silently took the backpack that Ruan Chen was carrying on one shoulder.
"If we don't leave now, we'll miss the bus," he said in a low voice. "Grandpa just asked you what time you'd arrive so he could prepare lunch for you."
Ruan Chen let out a breath, smiled, as if she had completely forgotten what had just happened, "It'll be fine. It's a weekday, so there aren't many cars on the road, making it easy to travel."
The farmhouse in the suburbs was bathed in sunshine. Ruan Chen sat in a rocking chair under the flower vines, while Ruan Wenlou looked at her with a kind smile.
"Is something troubling you lately, Miss?"
He can't seem to shake off the way he used to address people from back then.
Ruan Chen sat up, seemingly joking but also serious, and asked, "Grandpa, you said that if human civilization were to collapse in a few thousand years and everyone were to die, and I were to do something to resist it, maybe I could bring about a turning point, do you think I should do it?"
"Why not?" Ruan Wenlou looked at his small courtyard, at the flower vines, at the swing, at the rocking chair, and at Ruan Chen. "If such a beautiful civilization is destroyed in a few thousand years, how desolate our Tri-Star System will be."
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