Chapter 903: Braille? Morse Code? |
Liu Xing nodded and said, "To be fair, countries like Cosmic Country are indeed quite rare. If I remember correctly, the people of Cosmic Country love to preach to strangers, and they are not too resistant to new churches. This easily creates a chain reaction, allowing a new church with no foundation to gain millions of followers in a short time. This is why the Deep Diving Society was able to control Cosmic Country in such a short time."
"Indeed, Cosmic Country is an oddity in many ways, so the success of the Deep Diving Society in Cosmic Country cannot be replicated in other countries. This is why the Freemasons thought of establishing two new countries from scratch. Island Nation is the best target because the current Public-Military Conflict has caused Island Nation to lose control over certain areas, especially places like Ryukyu and Hokkaido, which have been part of Island Nation for less than two hundred years," Ding Kun agreed.
Zhang Jingxu touched his chin and smiled, "In that case, let's define this incident as the Freemasons supporting Shima Takeshi on the surface to better and faster control Ryukyu. In reality, they are using Shima Takeshi to threaten Shimazu Nakano to prevent the Warrior Faction from intervening in Ryukyu. So, the key to breaking this situation lies with Shima Takeshi... Shima Takeshi must die!"
"But here's the problem. I think Shima Takeshi is no longer an ordinary person. Both Shima Takeshi and the Freemasons should be able to guess that Shimazu Nakano would definitely send people to trouble them. So, even if Shima Takeshi didn't propose it himself, the Freemasons would find ways to transform Shima Takeshi, at least to ensure that Shima Takeshi wouldn't be suddenly killed by a single shot."
Hearing Zhang Jingxu say this, Liu Xing couldn't help but recall his previous guess that the Freemasons and Blackstone Mountain Prison were in cahoots.
If this is true, the Freemasons have probably already transformed Shima Takeshi... I hope Shima Takeshi doesn't become another Watanabe Jiang because solving the Living Curse is almost impossible.
At this moment, Zhang Jingxu's mobile phone rang.
"It's a video from Shi Zixuan," Zhang Jingxu said as he opened the video and placed the mobile phone on the table.
Liu Xing quickly leaned over.
Since she is responsible for financial news in the Kagoshima area, she inevitably has to deal with the Shimazu Family. So, under the guidance of her new mentor, Shi Zixuan prepared to visit a brewery owned by the Shimazu Family for an interview.
According to the information Shi Zixuan had previously collected, the director of this brewery should be a relatively influential illegitimate child of the Shimazu Family.
However, when Shi Zixuan arrived at the brewery, she found that the illegitimate child was "on a business trip," and the deputy director, Kitano Ichiro, was in charge of managing the brewery.
After careful investigation, Shi Zixuan found Kitano Ichiro quite interesting because he used to be Shima Takeshi's language teacher and homeroom teacher. During school, he was always very kind to Shima Takeshi. After retiring from school, Kitano Ichiro was rehired by Shima Takeshi to manage the brewery. Kitano Ichiro handled the brewery's daily affairs, while the official director was just a figurehead.
This seemed quite normal. An illegitimate child of the Shimazu Family holds a nominal position in the family business, while a deputy director is appointed to handle daily management... However, after becoming the deputy director, Kitano Ichiro worked from home and never visited the brewery, so the brewery employees had never seen Kitano Ichiro.
As an excellent intelligence gatherer, Shi Zixuan found a graduation photo of Kitano Ichiro with his students when he was a homeroom teacher. The Kitano Ichiro in the graduation photo was a completely different person from the "Kitano Ichiro" in front of Shi Zixuan.
Clearly, Kitano Ichiro had been replaced.
Whether this "Kitano Ichiro" was arranged by Shima Takeshi from the beginning or was a recent replacement is unknown.
So, Shi Zixuan continued to follow this "Kitano Ichiro" because she believed he should be qualified to meet Shima Takeshi.
However, after following him for a while, Shi Zixuan discovered that this "Kitano Ichiro" had a strong anti-investigation awareness. If it weren't for her many skills, she would have been discovered by this "Kitano Ichiro." So, Shi Zixuan believed this "Kitano Ichiro" was not an ordinary person.
"In that case, this fake Kitano Ichiro is likely a Freemason because Shima Takeshi's subordinates should be ordinary people. This means Shima Takeshi has indeed become a puppet of the Freemasons, and the Shimazu Family is actually controlled by the Freemasons," Zhang Wenbing said, touching his chin. "This is not good news for us because it means we have to break through the Freemasons' defenses to have a chance to eliminate Shima Takeshi."
Yin En sighed and spread his hands, "Yes, our team is fine in other aspects, but our combat power is a bit low. So, whether we play strong attack or sneak attack, the success rate should not be high."
Liu Xing and the others sighed, feeling that this mission was quite difficult.
"Forget it, let's not talk about this for now because we don't have any information yet. We don't even know where Shima Takeshi is, so let's not think about how to end his life..." Liu Xing shook his head and changed the topic, "By the way, what was the special reward for our last mission? I was sleeping at the time, so I don't know."
Ding Kun raised his eyebrows and smiled, "Actually, the special reward for the last mission is quite interesting. It allows us to directly increase the Contribution Points we earn by ten percent and has a very low probability of doubling."
"That's indeed a good reward," Liu Xing nodded.
At this moment, KP Duanqiao suddenly stood up and said, "Your Private Room time has run out."
Liu Xing frowned, not expecting the Private Room time to run out at this moment.
But it makes sense. Recently, they had been using Private Room time frequently, so it was normal for the previously saved time to be used up.
Meanwhile, Liu Xing was sure that KP Duanqiao belonged to the absolute Order Faction and didn't want to say a word more.
In the Cthulhu Role-Playing Game Hall, KPs like Duanqiao were unpopular because they were very strict... although the Cthulhu Role-Playing Game Hall was inherently a strict place.
With the Private Room time over and lacking relevant information, Liu Xing and the others returned to their rooms to rest, as there was nothing else to do.
Although this hidden spot was underground, the signal was quite good, at least good enough to play online games without lag.
Time flies in the mountains and underground.
If it weren't for his hunger, Liu Xing wouldn't have known it was already midnight.
Liu Xing yawned and decided to get something to eat from the "supermarket" before going to sleep.
As Shima Mitsuhiro had said, the "supermarket" in the hidden spot was well-stocked, with all common items available, even new game cartridges released a few days ago.
Of course, except for surströmming.
On a huge shelf, there are hundreds of different styles of canned food. Liu Xing didn't know what kind of mentality he had, but the first thing he thought of was to look for herring cans.
It turns out that in this relatively closed underground hiding spot, it is impossible to have herring cans, which are biochemical weapons of mass destruction.
However, because he had been eating canned food for several days in a row, Liu Xing had no interest in these dazzling cans, so he planned to make some instant noodles to get through the night.
But just as Liu Xing was about to leave, he suddenly found that there seemed to be a problem with the cans in front of him—there was a row of canned yellow peaches produced by the same manufacturer, which might have different batches, so there were two kinds of packaging, red and yellow. However, these cans were not placed separately according to the color of the packaging, but were "randomly" placed together.
If it was just like this, Liu Xing wouldn't care too much, but these canned yellow peaches were stacked in threes, and three stacks were grouped together.
This suddenly reminded Liu Xing of Braille.
During his university years, Liu Xing once participated in a class activity to visit a special school to show love, and Liu Xing was assigned to a class of blind children.
It was also during this event that Liu Xing first came into contact with Braille.
Because the characters of each country are different, the Braille standards of different countries are also different. For example, the standard Braille used in China is three-spelling Braille, which simply means that 12 points are used to distinguish different characters.
At this time, these canned yellow peaches looked like some kind of 3×3 Braille.
Liu Xing frowned, thinking that this matter might not be simple.
Because if this is really some kind of Braille, then what message is the person who placed these cans trying to convey?
But the problem is, this is the most important hiding spot of the Shimazu family. It is said that there are not many people coming in all year round. Even if someone comes in, it is to maintain the various facilities of this hiding spot and replace the expired items in this "supermarket".
Of course, if analyzed from a conspiracy theory perspective, Liu Xing could imagine a few million-word novels, such as the workers who built this hiding spot enjoyed the treatment of the First Emperor Qin. After the hiding spot was built, they were locked in the hiding spot. Finally, one of the workers used various means to fight wits and courage with the Shimazu family's lackeys and survived until now, so he wanted to use this Braille to tell future generations something.
But the problem is, those who can access this information are all from the Shimazu family. Instead of writing Braille with so much effort, it would be better to write a big-character poster directly...
Liu Xing shook his head, thinking that he might be overthinking.
So, Liu Xing still followed his previous idea to make instant noodles.
While eating instant noodles, Yin En also came to the "supermarket."
"Yo, Liu Xing, you're here too." Yin En greeted.
Liu Xing nodded and pointed to the direction of the canned Braille and said, "It seems that someone is using cans to arrange Braille to convey messages in the canned area over there, but this Braille is different from the Braille we use in China, so I can't figure it out. Of course, it might just be me overthinking."
"Maybe the staff who came in to replace the goods were bored, so they deliberately arranged a section of Braille to play with. I once had a college classmate who, in order to be the coolest guy on April Fool's Day, deliberately created the illusion of being kidnapped, and then left various clues along the way. Finally, he wrote a line in the abandoned laboratory building of the school—'You have all been fooled by me.'" Yin En said with a smile, "Of course, in the end, this guy was first beaten by us, then called to the office for criticism and education, and got a demerit."
Liu Xing nodded, thinking that there might be such a possibility as Yin En said, after all, being idle is also being idle.
After chatting with Liu Xing for a few words, Yin En went to choose his own supper.
After a while, Zhang Jingxu and others also came out to find something to eat, after all, they only ate some grilled fish on the boat when they came here.
And Zhang Jingxu and others also noticed that section of Braille.
However, Zhang Wenbing suddenly put forward another opinion, "This doesn't seem to be Braille, but Morse code, right?"
Zhang Wenbing said while eating bread, "Generally speaking, only people who are in close contact with the blind will learn Braille, so it might be hard to find one person who knows Braille out of a hundred; but Morse code is different. Its audience is relatively wide, especially the staff responsible for this hiding spot. They should have systematically learned Morse code to ensure that they can use Morse code to convey messages to the Shimazu family's headquarters in case of any problems with this hiding spot."
"I just looked at those cans and found that they actually conform to the rules of Morse code, because Morse code can be simply divided into dots and dashes, and the maximum length of a dash is three dots, so it can be read horizontally or vertically. This way, the confidentiality of this message will be higher; and most importantly, compared to Braille, if these cans are Morse code, they can convey more information."
"So the question is, do any of us know Morse code?" Ding Kun asked.
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