Chapter 221 04.0220: "Imperial officials ≠ planetary dog ​​officials"

Yin Shuyao raised her head, the corners of her mouth twitching as she tried to maintain a smile, and finally it turned into a bitter smile.

Looking at the young man approaching her step by step, she quickly organized the words to respond in her mind.

It happened so suddenly that she thought the mysterious man who came and went without a trace had already left, and she was totally unprepared.

The look on his face and his words showed that he seemed to have heard something.

[What should I do...cut off ties with my cousin?]
Her family survived in the cracks between the two nests, and finally managed to have the best of both worlds.

Yin Shuyao knew very well that she couldn't afford to offend these big shots.

They could easily pull out the seedlings growing in the cracks of the rocks, and with just a flick of their fingers, her entire family would be killed without a burial place.

She shouldn't have let her family bear such a terrible fate.

However, directly cutting ties with her cousins ​​and betraying her relatives was too painful for her, as she had been taught by her father to be kind and honest to her own people since she was a child.

Yin Shuyao was in a dilemma and could not make up her mind.

The young man's footsteps approached step by step.

She knew that her silence for so long was already a problem.

The girl took small steps back and forth.

"careful!"

The heel of her light blue leather shoes suddenly missed the mark.

Only then did she realize that she was so focused on how to explain it in her mind that she ignored the stairs behind her.

By the time her body started to feel the weightlessness, it was already too late.

Yin Shuyao felt herself lose balance, her body leaning back, and the tray and dishes in her hands fell out of her hands.

In a flash, she suddenly remembered that the decoration plan of this staircase was chosen by her personally. If she fell down the stairs at this backward angle, the crisp sound when the back of her head hit the ground or the sharp corner of the steps would be enough to announce the end of her life.

Just as she realized that her life might come to an abrupt end, a strong hand grabbed her.

With the enhancement of his skills from Zhongsi surgery and prosthetics, Horatio suddenly stepped forward the moment the girl fell backwards, caught the plate with one hand, and pulled the girl back with the other.

"How can you be in a daze on the stairs? It's very dangerous." He frowned and criticized in a serious but not so harsh tone.

"Thank you! Thank you, sir." Yin Shuyao, who was still in shock, held the railing, a layer of cold sweat on her forehead, and thanked Horatio while panting.

"Is the man in that box someone you know?" Horatio asked.

Yin Shuyao lowered her head and bit her lip.

"It's my cousin and his friends. Sir, I don't know what you heard, but they are not what you think..." The girl was timid, her eyes wet with fear, as if begging him to show mercy.

"Cousin? Well, he does look like a mixed-race." Horatio raised his eyebrows, looked at the door of the box behind him, and then returned to his serious tone:
"Listen, Xiaoyao. You have to know that, first of all, I am an imperial official. I have not colluded with those guys in the Merchant Alliance, let alone been in league with them.

I am not a lackey of the Guild Alliance, nor am I a member of the Ministry of Justice. The struggle and riots between the Citizen Army and the Guild Alliance are not within my jurisdiction, and I don’t care about the life and death of the Guild Alliance regime. In fact, from a personal perspective, I can even say that I wish they would get out of power. "

The girl raised her bright eyes with a second look of shock and looked at the handsome and heroic young man in front of her. She felt unbelievable and even confused about what he said.

[Oh my god, by the Emperor, an Imperial Navy officer would actually say something like this.]
Her refreshed worldview was still in a state of confusion. She used to be like most people in the Empire, unable to tell the difference between planetary officials and Imperial officials.

People tend to lump them together because they all work for the government.

Therefore, the girl was in awe of this mysterious gentleman, fearing that he would know that she had some relationship with the Citizen Army.

But today, from the words of the young man in front of me, it seems that these two things are probably... not the same thing.

Judging from his performance, the officials of the empire and the officials of the planetary government are clearly separated and have nothing to do with each other, as if they are not eating the same bowl of rice.

“Secondly, I believe you have also seen that something happened in Abyss Port recently, and the navy has imposed martial law everywhere.

No matter what they want to do, now is not a good time. The Imperial Navy, which has just been attacked, will crush all factors of unrest and instability with an iron fist.

Please use a tactful way to remind your cousin that this is a special period. Even for the sake of his own safety and the safety of his relatives and friends, he should not cause trouble or make a scene. I will just pretend that I didn't hear what you said just now, okay?"

The girl nodded obediently.

"Go ahead, but don't spill the food this time. I'll wait for you at the bar." The seriousness on Horatio's face disappeared, and a gentle gentleman's smile returned to his face. As he spoke, he handed the tray in his hand back to the girl.

The girl nodded and ran over quickly.

"Sorry to have kept you waiting!" She took a few deep breaths in front of the door, then knocked on the door with a smile on her face and said.

"Xiaoyao, why is your smile so stiff? Did something happen?" Enjolras keenly noticed some details and asked in a low voice with concern, with a hint of worry and concern in his smile.

"No, cousin, you are mistaken. Take your time eating, I will go and get busy first."

"Well, hard work."

"Thank you, cousin!!" the young men shouted mischievously, then looked at her cousin and joked, continuing the young people's joy.

Yin Shuyao held the empty tray, closed the door, and breathed a sigh of relief.

She did not reveal to her cousin that a gentleman from the Imperial court had just overheard their conversation.

She kept Horatio's secrets as strictly as she kept her cousins' secrets, and did not betray anyone, even though it almost cost her life.

This concept of loyalty and faithfulness is an ironclad duty engraved in the blood of their race, and is the principle of life taught by their parents.

Even during these difficult times, she adhered to this inherited family philosophy and did her best to be honest, loyal and trustworthy.

She walked slowly downstairs. Horatio was sitting on a chair in front of the bar. He had picked up the small wooden toy and was examining and playing with it.

[This is amazing, isn’t this the Luban Lock? No, it seems to be more complicated.]
"Why, are you interested in this?" After a brief heart-to-heart with Horatio, the girl relaxed a little.

"What a clever little toy. Where did you get it?" Horatio praised it with great enthusiasm.

"It is said that this is a toy left by our ancestors, but it seems that only our ethnic group has inherited it."

"What about this?" he asked, pointing to the 100×100 Sudoku table.

The characters above are not common numbers, but characters that resemble Chinese characters, such as capital letters 壹, 贰, 弎, 肆, and 伍.

"Uh... this is..." Yin Shuyao was thinking about how to explain to this gentleman. She couldn't just say that this was a communication code book designed for the citizen army.

But before she could say anything, Horatio, who had been fighting smuggling on the coast for a long time in his previous life and was familiar with various communication codes, soon discovered the clues.

"Is this... the code for the secret book with mechanical assisted encryption?" Horatio asked in a low voice, stretching his neck forward slightly.

"You... figured it out?"

"Yes, I see a pattern in these characters. If you replace the capital letters with numbers, they become a series of secret codes that can be traced.

So, this little toy is actually a mechanical assisted encryption accessory?"

When Horatio expressed his guess, he actually found it hard to believe, because the perfection of this code did not seem like something a female college student could come up with on her own.

“You are indeed the one, sir.

In fact, it also draws on the wisdom of our ancestors. These characters come from the ancient lost language of our ethnic group. After the empire popularized Gothic, only our ethnic group continued to pass it down from generation to generation, but it did not continue to develop, and it was also forgotten little by little.

It is not my original creation. I just copied it and put it together clumsily. There are still many inconsistencies. If these are not resolved, it will not be a good set of secret books. It needs to be polished later. "The girl said embarrassedly, with a very humble tone.

　Please recommend! Please vote for me! Thank you readers for your support.

　　Thanks to reader zelasノ for supporting Farida Hood’s character!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)