Chapter 488: Tan Mo Is Luring the Culprit
Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
Pa.s.sword error.
Lin f.u.xi’s mood immediately tensed up upon seeing that.
Frowning, she drew in a deep breath and removed the first two digits of Tan Mo’s birth year. With only six numbers remaining, she pressed the enter key again.
However, the text box along with the six dots indicated that the pa.s.sword was incorrect.
At that moment, Lin f.u.xi began to feel agitated.
“Why would this be incorrect? What am I gonna do now?” Lin f.u.xi was a little panicked.
If Tan Mo were to come back later that night, she would look up the data she received from the university forum administrator.
Lin f.u.xi had to destroy that data or fiddle with it before her return.
Even if Tan Mo had seen it before, it would just be a glance at most. Not even she could remember every single digit and content precisely.
Should Lin f.u.xi make minor edits, Tan Mo would notice nothing wrong either.
In the end, she would surmise that her information was authentic, though the investigation led her to a dead end.
As a result, Lin f.u.xi would be in the clear.
No matter what, Tan Mo would not verify the authenticity of the data she received from the administrator.
After all, there was no way she could tell the data had been tampered with.
She would be convinced that the information on her laptop was correct.
Thus, this crisis had to be dealt with before nightfall, seeing that it was her only chance to get herself off the hook.
If she allowed this golden opportunity to slip past her, she would not have such good luck again.
“Birthday… Birthday…” Lin f.u.xi murmured to herself as there was no one in the room.
Suddenly, a light-bulb moment hit her as she hammered her palm with her fist. “Speaking of which, Qin Muye only said a birthday was used as the pa.s.sword but didn’t even mention whose.
“Tan Mo may not use her birthday.” Lin f.u.xi rubbed her temples while feeling proud of her quick-wittedness.
The next moment, she made a list of the closest people in Tan Mo’s life, including her parents, her three brothers, Wei Zhiqian, Qin Muye, and Ming Yeqing.
“The pa.s.sword should not be Qin Muye or Ming Yeqing’s birthday.” Lin f.u.xi walked back and forth in the room to break down her thoughts as it was her habit to contemplate.
“As close as they are, not even Tan Mo would set one of their birthdays as her pa.s.sword.” It was purely unthinkable.
“Family… It could be the combination of their birthdays or Wei Zhiqian’s birthday,” Lin f.u.xi blurted out. She took out her smartphone to search for Wei Zhiqian’s information on Baidu Baike.
Wei Zhiqian’s birthday could be seen after the page successfully loaded.
Wasting no time, Lin f.u.xi keyed in his birthday into the pa.s.sword text box.
An error message was shown instead.
Still, everything was within Lin f.u.xi’s expectations.
Next, she planned to look up the birthday of Tan Mo’s parents and her three brothers.
Tan Mo’s father was the president of Tanyue Homeware, so he had a page on the Baidu Baike to himself, including his birthday.
As the president’s spouse, Tan Mo’s mother had a page dedicated for herself as well.
Her eldest brother, Tan Jinqi, was the co-director of Legend of Wei and Jin. He had walked on the red carpet before. Also, his ident.i.ty as the eldest son of the Tan family and the disciple of Director Ho Yuehai had made him a well-known individual. So, it wasn’t hard to look for his information online.
The masters of her second brother and third brother were famous individuals as well.
The news of Liu Shengtai and He Haoyan accepting new disciples caused a stir in their respective industries.
Finding Tan Jinsheng’s and Tan Jinyi’s birthdays would be an easy task since they were both distinguished in their fields.
Right as Lin f.u.xi was about to look up the information on her smartphone, a beep sound could be heard from Tan Mo’s laptop. It was immediately followed by a black screen.
Lin f.u.xi stared at Tan Mo’s laptop screen with a panicky look and thought, ‘I only entered the wrong pa.s.swords three times. Don’t tell me that I just messed up the machine?’
Unbeknownst to her, something happened at the biggest plaza on the campus at that moment.
That vast LED screen at the plaza was turned on, the one that was used for broadcasting during the time Beijing University partic.i.p.ated in the Ancient Text Compet.i.tion as per President Mu’s request.
Lin f.u.xi’s face was displayed on the big screen when Tan Mo’s laptop screen turned black.
From the broadcast, one could tell that Lin f.u.xi was up to something.
She mumbled, “Why did the screen turn black all of a sudden?”
“Did Tan Mo configure the setting whereby the screen would turn black upon three incorrect pa.s.sword attempts?”
With that, everyone knew that Lin f.u.xi was messing around with Tan Mo’s laptop.
“What is she doing with Tan Mo’s laptop?”
“Entering the wrong pa.s.sword three times. It looks like she did this without Tan Mo’s consent. That means she’s trying to access Tan Mo’s laptop secretly. What does she want to do?” a person remarked.
The crowd started to gather at the plaza.
Meng Yuxi and Jin Yuelin could not see it since they were in cla.s.s, but someone mentioned it in their cla.s.smate chat group.
After opening the chat group, they saw a person recording a live stream of the broadcast at the plaza.
In a flash, they put on the wireless earbuds into their ears.
With earbuds on, it’d be inconvenient to talk since they might accidentally speak too loudly. After all, earbuds canceled out noises to a certain extent.
So, Meng Yuxi sent a text message to Jin Yuelin through WeChat instead.
Meng Yuxi: “It’s really Lin f.u.xi!”
Meng Yuxi: “Looks like she sneaked back to the dormitory to mess with Tan Mo’s laptop when we weren’t around.”
Jin Yuelin: “Why did she become so dumb all of a sudden? Didn’t she already know that Tan Mo set up a pa.s.sword on her laptop?”
Meng Yuxi: “Perhaps she got to know Tan Mo’s pa.s.sword from somewhere.”
Jin Yuelin: “Hold on. Do you remember when Qin Muye came to look for Tan Mo this morning? She seemed to say something about Tan Mo likes to use a birthday for her pa.s.sword before they left.”
Meng Yuxi recalled the moment at the mention of it: “Oh, yeah. That’s right. I remember that.”
Meng Yuxi: “Say, do you think Tan Mo and Qin Muye planned this in advance and deliberately said it so that Lin f.u.xi could hear it?”
Jin Yuelin: “You might be right. Why would Qin Muye be so careless as to tell Tan Mo’s pa.s.sword setting habit in the corridor where many people could hear it?”
Meng Yuxi: “But why did Lin f.u.xi appear on the big screen at the plaza?”
Jin Yuelin: “Maybe it’s Tan Mo’s doing?”
Meng Yuxi: “Are you suggesting that Tan Mo set up a trap to make her take the bait?”
Jin Yuelin: “Most probably.”
While they were chatting with each other, they wished that the lesson would end early so that they could rush to the plaza to watch the live broadcast.
Nevertheless, Lin f.u.xi was unaware that everything she was doing was streaming on the giant LED screen.
She wanted to restart the laptop, but nothing worked, no matter which b.u.t.ton she pressed.
The gathering at the plaza kept growing bigger.
Soon after, many people began to connect the dots that Lin f.u.xi was the author of that article.
“Is Lin f.u.xi the author of that article?”
“Highly likely. Otherwise, why would she tamper with Tan Mo’s laptop?”
Lin f.u.xi had no idea what to do with Tan Mo’s laptop at that time.
According to Tan Mo’s schedule in the past, she would only return after dinner.
After completing her finance lessons, she would join the research teams of Professor Gu, Professor Tang, and Professor Yue.