Dragon Raja: Lu Mingfei Returns from Japan

This is a painting titled "Hell Transformation Picture," derived from the Chinese mythology of the Ten Kings of Hell. It depicts the suffering of wicked people after they fall into hell, and its original intention was to persuade people to do good. However, many blood-stained Japanese gangsters in modern times tattoo these ukiyo-e prints on their bodies as a symbol of status. Aki doesn't know if this is putting the cart before the horse.

Seeing paintings in the style of her hometown here, Aki couldn't help but feel a pang of emotion. However, she wasn't in the mood to appreciate the paintings at the moment. She was simply facing the surveillance camera, calmly replying to Norma, trying her best to avoid having her lips captured on camera.

Entering the gallery itself isn't difficult... but infiltrating the counterfeit artifact production site hidden behind it requires a different approach. Their counterfeit artifact production area is cleverly concealed beneath the gallery; Norma's analysis suggests there might be a basement beneath it, though its exact size is unknown.

"You need to find a way to sneak into the office. I will then hack into their surveillance system from the back end to give you three seconds. You need to quickly crawl into the ventilation duct within those three seconds. If you are out of control for more than three seconds, you will be exposed. Do you understand?"

"clear."

"Alright, now you're free to act on your own. Try to sneak into the curator's office. Once you're ready, wake me up and give me instructions. I will then shut down the entire venue's surveillance system for you."

"Ok."

As Aki replied, Norma's cold yet melodious voice fell completely silent in her ears. Aki smoothed her hair, pondering how to sneak into the curator's office.

Of all the methods, the most basic yet effective is always seduction; there's an old Chinese saying, "Even heroes find it hard to resist the charms of a beautiful woman." However, seduction is often the least efficient method, because everyone will be extremely wary of a member of the opposite sex suddenly throwing themselves at them.

A truly effective seduction requires a significant investment of time and design to create a perfect setting where the executor can unintentionally approach the target and ultimately achieve their goal.

However, there are obviously no conditions to create such a situation now, and it would be out of place to perform seductive tricks in such a sacred place that worships art, especially since Aki herself... is not good at seduction.

In matters of the heart, she was always quite insecure and awkward. She didn't want to be like Selma, a Latina girl with a lively and passionate personality, who could approach every boy with understated enthusiasm. Therefore, she never attempted anything like that.

However, as an A-class student with extensive experience in carrying out missions, Aki immediately came up with a reasonable way to get close to the curator's office.

She turned around and surveyed the area before spotting a staff member wearing a name tag on their chest.

Aki composed herself into an exaggerated expression befitting a fake socialite from China, slung her bag over her shoulder, and strode confidently toward the staff member with an exaggerated hip-swaying gait.

"Hello?" Aki greeted the staff member in broken English, feigning politeness.

"Hello, ma'am. How can I help you?" Seeing Aki approach, the staff member clasped her hands together in front of her, nodded slightly, and greeted Aki with a smile while looking her up and down.

"I was just looking at that painting, and it's very beautiful."

"Thank you for your praise. The painting is indeed very beautiful, and many customers have praised it highly."

"So, I'd like to ask, if I wanted to buy that painting, how much would it cost approximately?" Aki asked.

……

Chapter 212 Infiltration Moment

As Shutoku Aki spoke, he pointed to the corner of the gallery. Following the direction Shutoku Aki pointed, the staff quickly spotted the "Hell Transformation" painting located in the corner of the gallery.

“Let me confirm.” The staff member turned their gaze back to Akiyuki and asked in English, “You mean you want to buy a painting, right?”

“Yes.” Shudeya nodded lightly.

Feeling the subtle, appraising gaze directed at her, Aki Shutoki instinctively straightened up. Although there are some differences in appearance between Chinese and Japanese people, in the eyes of most Europeans and Americans, people from the three East Asian countries actually look quite similar. Furthermore, Aki Shutoki had adjusted her makeup style today, so she was quite confident in her appearance.

Whether it was truly due to the rules or because the other party was still wary of Shudeya, the staff member gave an apologetic smile, bowed slightly, and said, "I'm sorry, all the paintings in our gallery are exhibits and are generally not for sale."

Jiu Deya didn't think he had given himself away; dealers in the art forgery and smuggling business are well-versed in counter-surveillance. It would be suspicious if the gallery didn't suspect a customer they'd never met before who came in wanting to buy a painting.

However, Aki Shutoku's original intention wasn't to buy the painting; she simply wanted an excuse to enter the curator's office. Seeing that he had been refused, Aki Shutoku immediately stepped forward and asked, "Is that painting also an exhibit?"

"Yes."

"Could I speak with your director in person?" said Shudeya, pulling a Mastercard black card from his briefcase. "If you're worried about my ability to pay, you can rest assured."

This kind of behavior of throwing money around is quite in line with the stereotypical image of nouveau riche and fake socialites in Europe and America today. The staff member paused, glanced at Jiu Deya again, and said, "I need to call the curator to confirm."

“Okay.” Shudeya nodded.

The staff member bowed slightly to Shudeya, then walked around the corner and left. Shudeya waited for a while, and about two or three minutes later the other person came back, nodded to Shudeya, and said, "I just contacted the director, and he said he would take you to his office to sit for a while, and he will be there soon."

Things were progressing more smoothly than Aki Shuto had imagined. She had already prepared several excuses. If the other party refused again, she would use these as her response. Or she could simply abandon the idea of ​​entering the curator's office by pretending to be a buyer and instead break in by force. After all, she had used a fake identity when registering to enter the museum, so there was no way to trace her afterward.

However, she immediately dismissed the idea of ​​sneaking in by force, because the door to the curator's office used a combination lock that combined electronic passwords and mechanical locks, rather than a traditional single password lock and mechanical lock.

This lock is presumably directly connected to the entire venue's alarm system. Forcibly breaking it would trigger the alarm throughout the venue, and because of the additional mechanical structure, Norma couldn't simply hack into the system to unlock it. No wonder Norma didn't let her break in by force.

"Excuse me, according to regulations, you need to step aside for a moment," the staff member said, turning around.

“I understand.” Shudeya smiled. “By the way, where is the restroom here? I’ll just go to the toilet, so you can rest assured.”

"Go straight ahead, and turn left at the second turn."

"Ok."

Shuto Aki nodded and followed the other person's instructions toward the restroom. After walking a distance, Shuto Aki gave the order in a voice barely audible: "Norma, this is Shuto Aki."

"Hello, this is Norma, student ID A05004, Shudeya. We have detected that you are currently performing the previous task. What are your instructions?"

"I'm currently on my way from the museum director's office to the museum's restrooms. There should be nine security cameras along the way. Please copy the footage from these nine cameras and remove any unauthorized persons from the footage. I'll need it later."

"Received. These videos are being copied. I will erase other people's images from the videos later. Do you have any other instructions?"

"temporarily unavailable."

"Okay, entering standby mode. You can wake me up anytime you need."

Akiyuki wandered around the restroom, randomly entered a stall, and then used wax to cover his fingerprints in his Guuci handbag. When he returned to the curator's office, staff were already waiting for him at the open door.

"Please come in, madam. The tea has been prepared for you on the table. Please wait a moment in the office; the curator will be here in a few minutes."

"It's okay, I'll wait here for a bit."

The staff member closed the door and left. Shudeya sat on the sofa and glanced around the office without making a sound.

One, two, three, four—there are four cameras visible in total. I wonder if there are a few more hidden in the shadows. These counterfeiters are indeed cautious.

Strangely, despite being so careful as to install mechanical and electronic locks and a lot of surveillance cameras in the office, these people still managed to let her, an uninvited guest, into the office, without anyone else present to monitor her behavior.

Everything seems to be going a little too smoothly.

However, she didn't have much time to think about it. Now that she was in the curator's office, she certainly couldn't let go of the opportunity to sneak in.

Saketo Aki picked up the black tea from the coffee table in front of her, brought it to her nose, and smelled it. A faint fermented aroma wafted towards her. After confirming that nothing had been added to the tea, Saketo Aki took a small sip, while using the teacup to cover her lips.

"Norma."

"Received, this is Norma, please speak."

"I have arrived at the curator's office and am preparing to sneak into the ventilation duct. Please prepare to shut down the surveillance system for me."

"Okay, I have already hacked into the other party's computer system. You can give me orders at any time."

Shudeya placed the teacup on the coffee table, then gracefully stood up, walked to the door, grasped the handle, and opened the door.

"Norma, turn off the monitoring."

"receive."

The signal from the far reaches of the ocean invaded the venue's computer system in an instant. All 124 cameras in the venue paused their feeds for a moment, but no one noticed because the pause was so brief, like a brief frame skip in a game.

At the same time, having already closed the door, Shudeya jumped up, her toes barely touching the ground, like an arrow shot from a bow, without using any props, and crashed into the nearly 4-meter-high ventilation duct entrance.

As she entered the ventilation duct, Shudeya turned upside down like a graceful snake. After adjusting her prone position, she put the lid back on, which she had knocked open.

"Norma, please attach the previously edited video to this part."

"Received, executed successfully."

The surveillance footage restarted, but the nine cameras from the director's office to the restroom were now playing footage taken when Akira Shotoku entered the restroom earlier. Meanwhile, the images of other people in the footage had been removed.

Even if the curator returned to his office shortly afterward and found it empty, and immediately retrieved the surveillance footage, and compared the footage from the curator's office earlier with the footage from the current surveillance, he would only see the scene of Shuto Aki walking out of the curator's office and going to the restroom.

Of course, if the earlier video of Aki Sakura going to the bathroom were also retrieved, this clumsy method of creating the composite video would be easily exposed. However, generally speaking, no one would make that connection in the short term.

What Jiu Deyaqi had to do was to take advantage of this gap in time and sneak into the basement through the ventilation duct.

Shudeya took a small flashlight out of her bag, the beam illuminating the dusty ventilation ducts. The ducts were old, and it was unclear how long they hadn't been cleaned; just the smell of dust made Shudeya want to sneeze. That wasn't all. But then, some damp plants would occasionally hang from the ceiling, or small insects would crawl across them.

Fortunately, her professional training helped her suppress her impulses. She crawled on the ground, barely able to discern the direction of travel by relying on the map Norma had given her.

No wonder I was assigned here. Shudeya thought to herself.

The ventilation duct was full of dust and had a complicated path, which was one difficulty. Another difficulty was that the space in the duct was really small and the diameters were not uniform. When she encountered a joint, even she could only use the bone-shrinking technique she had learned when she was a child to barely squeeze in.

Professor Mans and Ye Sheng go without saying, but even if Selma came, she probably wouldn't be able to move around in this pipe as freely as she could.

The beam of light swept across rusty areas, and her elbows and clothes were already blackened like rags. She had to carefully avoid any sharp protrusions, trying to avoid getting injured before even diving in. Poor thing, she'd barely worn her Louis Vuitton floral suit more than a few times.

Fortunately, Norma's instructions through the headset were very precise. Shudeya had no idea how long she had been climbing, or whether the gallery staff had noticed anything amiss. She only knew that after winding through a dozen or so turns, she finally saw light shining through the grid ahead.

Shudeya quickly turned off her flashlight, lay down on the fence, and looked down. Two workers were carrying a huge paint painting past her directly below.

Shudeya looked around to make sure he had arrived at his destination.

The basement's overall structure was different from what she had imagined. In her mind, such a professional counterfeit factory should be like those in Hollywood movies, with sophisticated encrypted aging equipment and all kinds of professional personnel, and the space should be meticulously and rationally planned.

But reality was quite different from the scenes in the movie. A quick observation revealed a chaotic arrangement of objects and a similarly chaotic workforce. Doors opened and closed intermittently, and some of the movers and laborers were even shirtless. It felt like a small, unlicensed furniture workshop she'd visited as a child, only this makeshift operation was much larger.

This place doesn't seem to have anything to do with 'antimony'. However, you can't rely solely on intuition to carry out a mission.

After observing for a while, Jiu Deyaji roughly figured out the location. This was probably one of the many warehouses in this counterfeit factory, mainly storing items such as paintings. There were both Western oil paintings and Chinese calligraphy works.

After confirming that this was not the destination, Shudeya left through the fence and changed direction according to Norma's map.

In the map Norma provided, the ventilation ducts were interconnected, seemingly leading to many places. This was probably because the basement had limited ventilation options, so the main air exchange had to be done through the ventilation ducts.

However, it seemed that Lady Luck was on her side too long today. When she climbed to the next grid, she came to a place that looked like an office, with a desk directly below her. Two people were sitting on either side of the office. One of the men had a full stubble beard and wore a pair of refined gold-rimmed glasses, and was lighting a cigarette.

"How's the loading going?" the man sitting opposite the bespectacled man asked in Portuguese. From Jiudeya's perspective, he couldn't see the other person's face, but he could tell from the conversation that the voice belonged to a man.

Jiudeya held her breath. The distance between them was quite far, and her Portuguese wasn't very good, so she had to listen carefully to keep up with the two people talking.

"This batch of goods is almost finished being loaded and will be ready to be shipped out soon," the bespectacled man said.

"Hurry up, we don't have much time. These goods need to be shipped out as soon as possible. St. Martin's Day is coming soon, and things will only get more difficult then."

"clear."

"By the way," the mysterious man suddenly asked, "what phone call did you answer just now?"

"It's nothing." The bespectacled man exhaled smoke. "The higher-ups called and said there was a small problem, a rat infestation again. They asked me what to do. I've already given the order to tell everyone to be on their guard."

“Alright,” the mysterious man said, “It’s already this late, so don’t cause any more trouble.”

"Please rest assured." The bespectacled man smiled. "I've been dealing with cops for years, so I'm still quite vigilant. All the goods will be shipped before St. Martin's Day."

……

The ensuing conversation was rather uneventful. Akira watched as the bespectacled man lit a cigarette for the mysterious figure, and then the two exchanged some obscene remarks. After sitting for a while and drinking a few cups of tea, they both left one after the other.