Tinker Not With Relics Chapter 7

"Hmm..." Erick Qi struggled for a while, covering his head with the quilt. Unable to bear it any longer, he stretched out a hand from under the quilt, fumbled on the bedside table twice, and grabbed the phone with a "snap", obviously very impatient.

He frowned tightly, his eyes squinting with misty sleepiness, and without even looking at the caller, he randomly swiped on the phone, put it to his ear and said "Hello" in a rough voice.

There was silence on the other end of the phone for about two seconds, and then there was the "beep-beep" sound as if the call was hung up.

Erick Qi: ... Damn, which psychopath is not sleeping in the middle of the night and is harassing people by pretending to be a ghost? !

He held the phone in front of him with a look of impending storm, took a look at it with a sullen face, only to find that the number at the top of the recent calls page was not a prank or a wrong number, but a name that Erick Qi had in his address book - Madam Xu.

This was how a roommate who didn't know the difference between n and l called Ryan Xu, but it was used by the whole dormitory as a nickname for Ryan Xu.

But Ryan Xu always goes to bed on time, never to be disturbed. He won't wake up until dawn, even if an atomic bomb hits his face. Why would someone suddenly call him in the middle of the night?

"Did your hand slip and touch it?" Erick Qi couldn't help but blush when he thought of the problem of Ryan Xu's phone not locking the screen.

Erick Qi, who was in a very bad mood after waking up, rolled his eyes silently and was about to throw his phone aside and continue to sleep. As a result, the broken thing vibrated twice again, making his fingers numb.

"This guy isn't done yet..." He glanced at it unhappily, only to find that it was a new message. As expected, it also came from Ryan Xu, but the content was a bit strange.

Xu Niangzi: You come...! ￥*kc1

Erick Qi looked at the string of garbled text messages, his face darkened, and he became a little worried.

How many times can your hands slide?

Even if the phone is unlocked and thrown next to the pillow when sleeping, and the finger touches it and happens to enter the address book to call Erick Qi, it can be fine if you can hang up, but after hanging up, you can exit and then enter the text message interface to send a text message?! Is this a joke?

At this time, all kinds of brutal ideas are running wild uncontrollably and cannot be stopped.

Erick Qi complained harshly about himself, "I made you watch so many crappy movies, now you're stupid, you're just scaring yourself!" He quickly clicked on the recent calls, clicked on Ryan Xu's number and dialed it.

He held his breath and waited for two seconds. When he heard the "beep" sound from the other end indicating that the call was being connected, he breathed a sigh of relief - at least the call was not directly hung up or said "The number you dialed is unavailable at the moment."

But as the waiting time got longer, his heart started to get heavier...

After waiting for a long time, there was a busy tone on the other end because no one answered the call.

... Erick Qi glanced at the phone in his hand, stunned for a moment, and then persevered in redialing, but still no one answered.

Is there really any accident?!

The last bit of sleepiness he had left was completely disturbed. He could not help but sit up and continue dialing Ryan Xu's number, thinking to himself: I'll call twice more. If it still doesn't go through, I'll just go to where he lives to check.

As he thought about this, he got out of bed holding the phone, parted the curtains and took a look.

The sun always rises very late in this season, and it is still dark and damp outside. The cold seeps in through the window glass, giving Erick Qi goose bumps on his arms. It would be difficult to get a taxi if he goes out at this time.

But things did not go as planned. After two phone calls, no one answered Ryan Xu's call.

Erick Qi didn't waste any time. After dropping the phone, he quickly changed his clothes, put his wallet in his coat pocket, and strode to the door with his scarf in hand. He put his hand on the door handle before he realized that he hadn't changed his slippers yet.

After thinking about it, he simply dialed Ryan Xu's number again, then put on his headphones, and while waiting for the call to be connected, he bent down to change his shoes.

Just as he was about to open the door and go out after putting on his scarf, the "beep-beep" sound suddenly stopped, and a rustling sound came into Erick Qi's ears. After a moment, a voice that was so familiar that it couldn't be more familiar said vaguely: "Hello..."

It sounds like he's still asleep and is having a big dream!

Erick Qi was stunned for a moment before he reacted. Then he took a deep breath and asked in a low voice: "Where are you?"

"Hmm? Orange?" Ryan Xu was completely out of his mind. He stared blankly for a long time and replied, "I'm sleeping on the bed..."

The veins on Erick Qi's forehead snapped with a "snap". He tried to hold it back, but in the end he couldn't hold it back any longer. All his lifelong irritability seemed to burst out at this moment, and he shouted angrily at the other end of the phone: "Ryan Xu, your uncle!!!"

Not getting a good night's sleep for two consecutive nights made Erick Qi's mood a little low, and his head was shrouded in dark clouds. It was not until the afternoon when the sleepiness wore off that he returned to normal.

He had just finished helping the HR girl with a form and was about to get up to get a glass of water when he saw a local news item pop up in the lower right corner. The title was obviously about yesterday's museum theft, and it said the culprit had been caught.

So fast?! Erick Qi clicked on the news with some surprise. Just as he was about to read it, he saw Team Leader Nathan walking into the office with a name tag and a stern face.

As soon as he came in, he slammed his name tag onto his desk and said with a sour face: "Can someone come and replace the pile of junk in the supervision room?! Every time I come in, I start to beep, beep, beep, beep!"

As he spoke, he tapped the phone roughly three times, dialed a number and threatened the person on the other end of the line: "I'll make one last trip tomorrow. If that broken thing keeps beeping again, I'll crush it one by one!" After saying that, he hung up the phone.

Erick Qi: ... If he read correctly, Team Leader Nathan just dialed 001, which is Director Frank's internal number...

After finishing the call, Team Leader Nathan still looked angry. He said to Lisa Hong in confusion, "I just don't understand. After three days of tossing and turning, he still says that my index is high. If my index is high, how can I stand here normally? I should have ripped his head off long ago!"

Erick Qi was stunned when he heard this, and couldn't help but mutter: "What index is high?"

"Ah, it's a complicated index that's hard to explain..." Lisa Hong thought for a moment and said to Erick Qi, "To put it simply, the lower the index, the more docile it is, and it's less likely to hurt people."

Erick Qi: ...

He looked at Team Leader Nathan with a complicated expression, and suddenly he didn't know whether to complain about the adjective "docile" or his previous statement "standing here normally"...

"What are you aiming at?" Team Leader Nathan said as he exploded. He sat down on his office chair, crossed his legs, hugged his arms, and leaned back. He gave Erick Qi a cold look: "Hey! You had a big-character poster on your face this morning. Are you more energetic now?"

Erick Qi looked innocent: "What big-character poster?"

Team Leader Nathan sneered and pointed to his face: "On the left it says 'I'm not happy today', and on the right it says 'If you have any farts, get out of here'!"

Erick Qi: ...Are you really saying that I'm not describing yourself?

Of course, he definitely didn't have the guts to touch a tiger's B*tt when the tiger was about to eat a person, so he didn't bother with Team Leader Nathan about getting shot while lying down, and just turned back to read his own news in silence.

This time the news was not a headline-grabbing one, but the thief was actually caught. It was said that the police did some technical processing on the surveillance camera screenshots, and after obtaining some information, they quickly locked on several suspects, and finally determined that it was Qin, an internal staff member of the museum, who stole the gold-inlaid white jade bracelet and arrested him this morning.

When seeing the photo attached to the news, Erick Qi had a feeling of "as expected". Although his guess yesterday had no objective basis, it turned out that his intuition was still very accurate - although the thief's face was blurred in the photo, there was still some shadow of Sister Olivia.

The news reported that when Qin Jie was arrested, she was on her way to Wenchang Street in Jiayang District. She looked a little confused and kept mumbling vague words such as "find him" and "someone told me...I need to find him". Although Qin Jie was arrested, the jade bracelet she stole was nowhere to be found. The police searched Qin Jie's residence but could not find it. The specific situation needs further investigation.

Wenchang Street...isn't it the street downstairs?

Erick Qi was reading the last few sentences of the news and muttering to himself with some curiosity when he felt someone poking him twice on the back of his head with a finger.

Erick Qi: ...

The only person who could poke him in the back of the head from behind was undoubtedly that one person...

Erick Qi turned his head expressionlessly and slapped away Team Leader Nathan's finger that was still hanging there: "What's the matter?"

Team Leader Nathan handed his cup to Erick Qi: "Don't you want some water? Get me a cup, C machine No. 3 water."

Erick Qi blinked: "When do I need to drink water?"

Team Leader Nathan said confidently, "When I walked in, you were holding the handle of the cup with one hand. I just took a look and your cup was empty."

... Erick Qi was silent for two seconds, took the cup unhappily, then picked up his own cup and walked out, leaving Team Leader Nathan leaning back in his chair contentedly, continuing to cross his legs.

At 5:30 in the evening, all the employees of Guanghe Company got off work on time as usual. Erick Qi did not go back to the dormitory to cook for himself like he did last night, but instead walked out of the company gate holding his phone and an umbrella.

A small SUV was parked across the street. After Erick Qi came out, it honked its horn, then rolled down the window. Ryan Xu leaned out of the car and waved at Erick Qi: "This way!"

After he was fully awake, he probably saw the calls he had made and the ridiculous text messages he had sent, so he came to pick up Erick Qi for dinner today as an apology.

"Where did you get the car?" Erick Qi shook the snow off his umbrella, sat in the passenger seat, and asked curiously.

"Oh, I borrowed it from a colleague. The main reason is that the restaurant is a bit far away, and it's too cold to wait for a bus on a snowy day." Ryan Xu glanced at the rearview mirror, turned the steering wheel, turned the car around, and drove onto the street.

Erick Qi twitched his lips: "If it's far, just go to another one. Which one is more delicious?"

"I went there for a company dinner last time. Although the restaurant is in a remote location, it is very popular. Many people drove there specially to eat." Ryan Xu said with a smile.

Erick Qi sneered: "Have you changed your personality? You actually want to join in this kind of fun. Didn't you always say that you would rather skip a meal than walk an extra meter?"

He originally thought that what Ryan Xu meant by "a bit far" was just about half an hour's drive, but he didn't expect that they had already driven for an hour and Ryan Xu still didn't seem to want to stop.

"Why is it so far? It's already 6:45..." Erick Qi glanced at the time on his phone and complained, "Can we eat before 8 o'clock?"

Ryan Xu laughed and said, "That's about right, so I want to borrow a car."

"We're already in the suburbs. What kind of store is this, located in such a remote place? It won't be midnight before we get back to the city after eating, right?" Erick Qi took a tissue and wiped the moisture off the window glass, then looked outside.

What caught the eye were vast fields and sparse woods, all shrouded in the deepening darkness of the night. Occasionally, a few dim lights dotted the fields and woods, making the scene seem even more desolate. Somehow, Erick Qi felt a shudder in his heart when he saw this.