Ultimate Firepower
Chapter 86 - 76 There is a Garden

Chapter 86: Chapter 76 There is a Garden

Sean had a safe house in London. No matter what happened outside, as long as he hid there, he could ensure safety for at least twenty-four hours.

But Sean had died too quickly; he never told Gao Yi where the safe house was, or how to find it.

At the time of his death, Sean had gestured with his middle finger, indicating that perhaps there was some crucial information on this smartphone.

Gao Yi walked to a public garden, found a bench to sit on, took out Sean’s phone, and then unlocked it using the fingerprint he had scraped from Sean’s finger; the phone immediately turned on.

What was on the phone?

The first thing he saw was the screensaver, which was a cluster of roses planted in a flower bed.

Then there was the lock screen greeting, which roughly translated to: diligent cultivation will surely make the flowers bloom.

He flipped through the phone’s pages, which had very few apps.

Gao Yi didn’t know where to look first. He checked the notepad, only to find it was blank, with nothing recorded.

Then Gao Yi began to open the apps one by one. There was nothing unusual in the commonly used apps, but a Bitcoin trading platform caught his attention. He clicked into it excitedly and anxiously, but when the login screen appeared, Gao Yi was stumped.

He didn’t even know the username, let alone the password.

And Sean did not have the habit of auto-login. This meant that unless Gao Yi knew Sean’s username and password, no amount of money in the account was of any concern to him.

So, the most valuable thing in this phone was apparently not the money.

If not money, then what could it be?

Gao Yi tried each app one by one, but he found nothing. Then, as he was mindlessly flipping through the phone’s pages, he realized something.

Where were the contacts?

The phone’s contacts should be next to the dial pad, shouldn’t they? Why was there no contacts icon on this phone? Could it be that Sean deliberately deleted it?

The missing part was the most crucial; but where to find this contacts list?

Gao Yi didn’t know much about electronics, and this phone wasn’t an Apple but a Samsung Note7, which he had never used before and was totally unfamiliar with.

But wait, wasn’t this model recalled because it could spontaneously combust?

Gao Yi still couldn’t understand. After pondering for a moment, he thought about finding the phone’s safe; maybe the missing contacts were in there.

But there was no safe. The phone did not have a built-in safe feature.

Really confused, Gao Yi reminisced for a long time. He couldn’t remember Sean giving any other hints.

"If you can’t leave a word, at least give me a hint..."

Gao Yi was almost in tears. He couldn’t keep searching for clues in this garden forever. He had to hurry and leave London.

Just when Gao Yi was about to give up, he suddenly thought of something else he had overlooked.

Contacts are a built-in system feature that can’t be deleted, right? So if it wasn’t found, was it hidden rather than deleted?

Gao Yi started searching again, but it was still a long time before he found anything. Just when he thought he might need to find someone who repairs phones to help, rather than fumbling around himself, he felt he had noticed something odd.

The contacts list is used to record phone numbers, and shouldn’t it be in a conspicuous place, easy to open?

The phone’s lock screen and wallpaper were both pictures of a flower garden.

With a complex and cluttered background combined with many apps, it seemed even more chaotic. But looking closely, there seemed to be a slight difference between the lock screen image and the wallpaper patterns.

Gao Yi inspected the phone closely and suddenly noticed that on the third page, in the middle towards the left, there was a section of flowers that looked a bit different from those on the lock screen.

There was only a slight difference, but it was definitely not the same. Gao Yi pressed it, and then, the screen went white, and a contacts list popped up.

Okay, it was hidden in the most obvious place after all. The contacts icon was just slightly altered to blend in with the background, making it nearly indistinguishable unless looked at carefully.

There weren’t many phone numbers in the contacts list. The name for the first number was a star symbol, followed by a mobile number.

And the second number was Gao Yi’s own, named Busan, with a note in brackets: Heather.

Apart from the name Busan, every other number was named after a type of flower.

Tulip, rose, daffodil, violet, Lily of the Valley, irises, cornflower, pansy, sunflower.

In total, nine kinds of flowers, but each was followed by the word in brackets: withered.

Further down was a string of numbers marked only numerically, which obviously didn’t seem normal as the lengths varied.

Even if different countries have phone numbers of different lengths, there should still be a general range, right?

Could these numbers be not phone numbers but some kind of codes?

Gao Yi thought for a long time and then decided to make a phone call to try it out.

He would dial the first one; since it was marked with a star symbol, it must be important.

Gao Yi dialed the number. After several rings, the call connected.

The call connected, but no one spoke, and Gao Yi didn’t want to be the first to speak either. So after it connected, they fell into a strange silence.

Feeling that the other person wouldn’t speak first, Gao Yi couldn’t help but finally say, "Hello."

Still, no sound emerged.

Gao Yi pondered for a moment and said, "Sean... has died."

"Oh."

Just an ’oh.’ Gao Yi waited a long time but got no further response.

"I have Sean’s phone."

"Oh."

"I... Who are you?"

Silence, no response.

Gao Yi was getting annoyed and whispered, "If you can speak, do so; if not, then forget it. I just got a phone, nothing more. If you had something to do with Sean, tell me quick. If not, I’ll throw this phone away and never contact you again."

"Oh."

Gao Yi wanted to curse — a whole lot of ’ohs.’

But just as Gao Yi was about to swear and hang up, he suddenly heard from the phone, "Inside the phone is a garden, the phone itself is a garden."

Gao Yi was stunned, then he whispered back, "Yes."

"In the garden, you’ll find the contact details of the flowers."

"Yes."

"The numbers below, the first digit 1 stands for a safe house. The country code represents the nation, the area code represents the city, and the following numbers are the street code. Use asterisks as intervals, next is the house number, and what follows is the door entry code."

"Yes!"

"The first digit 2 stands for a funds or supply cache. The second number categorizes it, 1 for miscellaneous, 2 for cash, 3 for equipment, 4 for client data."

"Yes."

The person on the other end stopped talking, and so did Gao Yi. After a mutual silence, the voice suddenly said, "You’re the new Gardener. If you have any questions in the future, you can ask me. Any other questions or anything else you want to say?"

"I’m not the Gardener."

"Oh, contact me if there’s anything important. Use only this number. Also, a reminder—if the fingerprint input on the phone is wrong, it will explode instantly, once. Goodbye."

"But I said I’m not the Gardener, I am—"

The call ended, leaving nothing but a busy tone.

Gao Yi was stunned for a while, then understood why Sean hated when people just ’oh’ all the time.

He pulled out his own phone to search online. The UK’s country phone code was 0044, London’s area code was 02. Looking at it, he found that London indeed had a safe house.

The phone was a garden, and Gao Yi now had the garden.

Now Gao Yi knew where he had to go.