Li Tingyan extended his five well-defined fingers, pressing them against his hair, tapping with varying lengths and weights, a total of five times.

Yunrou was puzzled,

"What kind of secret sign is this—just scratching your head?"

Nianyang chuckled, "Of course it’s not scratching your head; it’s Morse code."

Morse code is a signal code that alternates between continuous and interrupted signals, using different sequences to represent English letters, numbers, and punctuation marks.

The method of operation involves using the length and weight of taps to express different codes, eventually combining each tap to form English words.

It’s crucial to note the pauses between dots and dashes, short pauses between each character, medium pauses between words, and long pauses between sentences—it’s indeed brain-twisting.

Li Tingyan grasped it instantly, quickly deducing, "It’s BECGH!"

Old Master Chu was somewhat confused, "These are English letters, how do they connect to the headquarters?"

Nianyang thought for a moment, "Anshan has many cities and routes, along with numerous hills. Shouldn’t there be specific codes beside the roads leading to each hilltop?"

Chu Zhan slapped his forehead, "Yes, yes, yes; there are! I went on a business trip there before; I know the codes."

Nianyang smiled, "Then this makes it easier."

Old Master Chu asked, "But isn’t this English? The code should be numbers—how do we determine it?"

Li Tingyan glanced at Nianyang and laughed along, "There’s a type of cipher, which utilizes the Hill cipher model for encoding. It’s a substitution encryption technique, treating each letter as a base-26 numeral:

A=0, B=1, C=2...

That means the numeral equivalent of the letter arrangement is 13467—this is the correct code!"

Nianyang gave Li Tingyan a rewarding glance, worthy of being her man, smart indeed.

With just one hint earlier, he could infer and deduce.

Chu Zhan said, "13467—I know where it is; it’s in a Hai City on the southeastern side of Anshan—which turns out to be their headquarters."

Old Master Chu laughed heartily, "Wonderful, finally found it! It’s been eighteen years; this time we must capture their headquarters in one fell swoop."

Nianyang’s eyes brimmed with resentment; the humiliation Phoenix caused her last time is something she could never forget.

She always avenges grudges; this time, Phoenix won’t escape.

Li Tingyan, learning from past failures, became increasingly cautious, "Grandpa, I think we need to strategize and not act impulsively. They’re so cunning, always finding scapegoats—it shows their company is doing well; there might be many branches too, and they must be engaging in shady deals, otherwise why hide?

I believe we need to disguise ourselves as their company’s people to understand their internal operations, figure out their shady activities over the years, whom they’ve partnered with, where their influence lies—grasping these details will allow us to overthrow them in one go."

Nianyang added, "Right, that Phoenix is skilled in medicine and cautious. If he senses anything, he’ll flee faster than a rabbit. If they detect something amiss, they might withdraw, and we’ll lose the hard-earned clues again."

★