Elder brother's garrison

Page 1106

"But... after all, it was me who did it..."

"Little Bai, you don't understand," Guild Master Er Gou said earnestly to Little Bai. "Little Bai, look, even if you wait here, only I will know. As for these two sleeping beauties, they will have no idea. So, Little Bai, your waiting is meaningless. Why not use this time to enjoy life and appreciate its beauty? Besides, you've just arrived in this city and you have a lot to do, right? Like finding Luo Lian some opportunities to learn about runes, or researching that deep-sea metal stall from before?"

"Uh...yes...it is."

"Then let's go, girl!" President Er Gou patted Xiao Bai on the shoulder and helped her off the bed.

"Ah..." Xiaobai stared blankly at the suddenly enthusiastic Guild Master Er Gou. She blinked and nodded. "Then... thank you, Guild Master."

"You're welcome~ It's what I should do~" President Er Gou tore off a tissue and waved it in the air at Xiao Bai.

Xiaobai and Missouri walked to the door and looked back at President Ergou's kind smile.

"President Sister." After thinking for a while, Xiaobai spoke to President Ergou.

"Little White~ What's wrong~" President Er Gou replied, twisting his body.

"...Don't do anything indecent to those two older sisters." Xiaobai extended her index finger and gently pressed it to her lips.

"..." President Er Gou froze.

The door closed.

President Er Gou stared blankly at the closed door for a long time.

Then he shuddered.

"Hmm... When did Xiaobai become so clever..." President Er Gou pondered.

-

Xiaobai breathed a sigh of relief after closing the door.

It's so nice to have a sister-in-law who's willing to help me share my worries...

And I told myself not to worry about her, and to go and deal with my own problems first...

The president is such a kind person.

Xiao Bai couldn't help but feel touched.

After calming his surging emotions by touching his chest, Xiao Bai walked with Missouri to Luo Lian's door.

Luo Lian told Xiao Bai that she would wait for him in the room, and she really would wait for him forever.

When Xiao Bai returned to Luo Lian's room, Luo Lian was still sitting quietly on the bed, flipping through the manuscript. Compared to when Xiao Bai left, her posture hadn't changed at all.

"Lianlian, I'm back!"

Luo Lian slammed the manuscript shut and sat down on it.

"Little Bai, you're back." Luo Lian smiled at Little Bai. "Did you finish what you were doing earlier?"

"Uh... sort of... right?" Xiaobai paused for a moment, thought for a while, and then nodded. "Anyway, Lianlian, are you free now?"

"Have."

"How about you come with us on a trip?"

"Are you looking for that stall?"

"Hmm. Are you going?"

"I'll go." Luo Lian nodded quickly.

"Great! Lianlian, please wait a moment." Xiaobai said, turning around and softly calling out to the empty corridor outside Luo Lian's room, "Miss Maid?"

"What is it?" The black-clad maid appeared from outside the door the instant Xiaobai finished speaking, and quietly watched the people in the room.

"Um, we're leaving here later and want to go for a walk outside, is that alright?"

“You are all completely free to do as you please.” The maid in black nodded. “However, dinner time is eight o’clock, so please do not be late.”

"Oh, I see. Thank you. Um... what's your name, Miss Maid?"

"It is inconvenient to disclose."

"Uh... that would be too much trouble to call out... Miss Maid, do you have a code name or something?"

"...Connor."

"Thank you, Miss Connor!" Xiaobai said with a smile.

For some reason, Xiaobai really likes the name Connor.

Chapter 1424 The Thief! (4500 words)

Connor stared blankly at Little White's smiling face, but ultimately said nothing.

After a while, as if he suddenly remembered something, Connor silently lowered his head and reached into his maid's clothes to take out a shiny black key.

Connor, clutching the key, slowly walked into the house and handed the black key to Little White.

"Is this... for me?" Xiaobai was taken aback.

"Mm." Connor nodded quietly.

"Oh..." Xiaobai reached out and took the key from Connor, then looked at it carefully.

The key that Connor handed to him had a rather unusual shape.

This key doesn't seem to be made of steel. It's completely black, about half the length of a palm, and there are no grooves or nails on the key to move the lock cylinder. There are only some faintly discernible raised and recessed patterns.

Judging from its appearance, this key doesn't seem to be the type of key Xiaobai has ever seen.

And as Xiaobai looked closely at the textured surface of the key, he suddenly realized that it looked somewhat familiar.

These raised and recessed textures...

If Xiaobai is not mistaken, it should be the runes on the rune parts in the ship girl's construction device.

Is this key also a part of the ship girl construction machine?

wrong.

Even a complete novice at building machines can at least remember what the parts look like; there's no way you'd find such a bizarre thing among the parts.

So, this key was a toy that Ella's family made for fun?

"Um, Miss Connor, why did you give me this key...?" Thinking of this, Xiaobai asked Connor with some confusion.

“Miss Ella wanted to give it to you,” Connor said expressionlessly.

"Huh? Ella gave it to me?" Xiaobai blinked and subconsciously tightened his grip on the key.

"Yes."

Why did Ella give me this?

“Use this key, and you can open the door and see Miss Ella and Master,” Connor said to Little White.

Xiao Bai stared blankly at the uniquely shaped key in his hand.

After a while.

Xiaobai's expression suddenly turned somewhat surprised and nervous. She quickly looked around before cautiously speaking to Connor.

"This, this key... could it be one of those keys that, perhaps with some kind of mechanism, opens a special spatial portal right in front of us with just one press, allowing us to see Ella directly?" Xiaobai asked nervously, gesturing like a little spy who had stolen some major secret.

Connor watched silently as Xiaobai finished gesturing before speaking.

"No, it's just a regular key."

"Huh? But Miss Connor, you just said to open the door..."

"It's just an ordinary door."

“…Oh.” Xiaobai blushed and awkwardly put the key into her clothes. “I see…Tonight, when we get back, we’ll go find Ella.”

"Then take your leave."

Connor bowed slightly to the crowd, left the room, and turned to leave.

“She really is a wonderful maid, Admiral,” Wisconsin said to Shiro after Connor left.

"What's so strange about it?" Xiaobai asked Wisconsin with a smile.

"Hmm... how should I put it? I haven't seen many maids, but she seemed particularly elegant and composed, and... umm... what's so special about her..."

When asked this question by Xiaobai, Wisconsin was momentarily speechless. She squinted and pondered the source of the strange feeling in her heart with a hint of worry.

"Speaking of which, Admiral. The key that Miss Ella just had her maid bring over should be the key to the place where Miss Ella and her grandfather are, right?"

Missouri took this opportunity to ask Xiaobai a question.

"Probably." Xiaobai nodded, a hint of helplessness on his face. "However, just to throw the key at us so we can go find her is really typical of Ella."

“Miss Ella and her family are staff and relatives engaged in extremely important scientific research. Perhaps even in this ship equipment research center, finding Miss Ella will require passing through several checkpoints,” Missouri said to Xiaobai. “If Missouri dares to guess, this key is probably something Miss Ella gave you now so that you could use it back then.”

"I see." Xiaobai patted the keys in his pocket. "Then let's go outside and find that stall owner. Come back quickly after we get the information."

Since they had just arrived at Ella's hometown, Xiaobai and his group didn't have much to pack. Almost as soon as Xiaobai finished speaking, all the ship girls and Luo Lian followed Xiaobai out of the room and left Ella's ship equipment center.

The ship equipment research center is surrounded by large factory buildings that are not actually in operation, built simply to provide a quiet research space for Ella's family. There are no residential buildings here, so the road leading from the ship equipment research center to the bustling pedestrian street is quite deserted.

Xiaobai and the ship girls walked for a while and then saw the bustling pedestrian street at the end of the street again, which seemed like another world, with a constant stream of pedestrians and noise.

Enter the pedestrian street.

For a while.

The bustling noise and shouts from both sides of the road echoed incessantly in everyone's ears.

It was as if they had stumbled into the human world from a desolate place.

Xiao Bai instinctively covered her ears, feeling a strange sense of déjà vu.

It was only at this moment that Xiaobai suddenly realized.

It turns out that the ship equipment research center where Ella's hometown is located is such a quiet place.

"noob."

As the group walked, Luo Lian suddenly turned her head and spoke to Xiao Bai.

"Hmm? What's wrong, Lianlian?"

"Speaking of which, can I take a look at the key that Ella just gave you?"

"Sure, but Lianlian, why did it take you so long to look at that key?" Xiaobai asked curiously, but without the slightest hesitation, she took out the key and handed it to Luo Lian.

"This was given to you by someone else. It's not convenient to do this under someone else's nose." Luo Lian said, gently lifting the key that Xiao Bai handed her, carefully examining the texture on the key for a while, her expression serious.

"Lianlian, did you find something?" Xiaobai asked cautiously, looking at Luo Lian's serious expression.

“These patterns are runes,” Luo Lian nodded.

"Ah... I knew it."

Xiao Bai wasn't surprised.

After all, he was someone who had been taught a thing or two by Suzuran, the founder of human rune knowledge, and Xiaobai himself could see that.

“The unlocking mechanism used in this key is different from ordinary unlocking methods. The unlocking methods we usually use are to physically create a matching key paddle, and then turn it to unlock the door. But this key doesn’t have any means of physically turning the paddle. So the unlocking method of this key should not be through physical means, but through the power of runes—the concept represented by the whole circle of runes on the key should be similar to opening or decoding. As long as these runes are arranged in a reasonable way, they can actually form many different sequences for opening the door…” Luo Lian examined the key in her hand for a while, and finally handed the key back to Xiao Bai, smiling at Xiao Bai and saying, “…In other words, this is a rune key, that’s great.”

"Uh...that's great?" Xiaobai tilted her head in confusion. "Lianlian, what did you mean by 'that's great' at the end?"

"Because this key is one of the culmination of Ella's family's rune technology, proving that the maker at least possessed the cultural level to make good use of some rune knowledge." Luo Lian smiled at Xiao Bai, "It's exactly what I've been craving, so this is wonderful."

"Ah, that's it."

Xiao Bai put away the key and nodded knowingly.

"Then Lianlian, just bear with it a little longer. When we get back, we'll take you to find Ella's family and ask them if they can teach you about runes."

"I'm not in a hurry. After all, my people are already here. All that's left is for things to develop normally. Xiaobai, you've already helped me a lot. You don't need to take special care of me anymore."

Luo Lian shook her head and spoke to Xiao Bai.

Little White opened his mouth as if to say something, but before he could utter a sound, Saratoga's voice rang out behind him.

"Xiaobai, we're here!"

Saratoga's slender, jade-like arm suddenly stretched out between Xiao Bai and Luo Lian, pointing forward.

Following Saratoga's arm, Xiaobai saw the same dilapidated stall again.

Not long has passed since Xiaobai and his friends last visited this stall, so Xiaobai wasn't worried that the stall owner would close up shop in just one or two hours.