CHAPTER 841: CHAPTER 841: QUARTZ STORAGE PLATE

After lunch, Li Qiao absent-mindedly hugged a pillow and sat in the living room, dazed.

She didn’t have much appetite earlier, ate a bit, and felt waves of nausea.

Though her severe vomiting symptoms during pregnancy had noticeably alleviated after controlling her diet, she still threw up several times a day.

Of course, Shang Yu was unaware of this.

Li Qiao kept pondering the purpose of the small glass piece. If it were a storage medium, might it react only when powered?

Before long, her eyebrows drooped slightly, a hint of drowsiness crept in, and she lay sideways, soon falling asleep.

...

Perhaps because it was Monday, Shang Yu returned very late.

It was close to nine at night when he finally came home, bringing a chill with him.

Li Qiao was sitting in the living room, looking down at her phone. Upon hearing a sound outside the entrance, she turned off the screen and looked up.

The man, with one hand in his pocket and a coat draped on his arm, walked into the living room with steady steps, his gaze fixed on Li Qiao, "Have you been waiting long?"

Li Qiao shook her head, adjusted her robe, and leaned against the sofa, asking, "Was today busy?"

He had only replied to her WeChat message at four in the afternoon, with a simple sentence: "Will talk when I get home."

Shang Yu sat down heavily, his long fingers unbuttoning two collar buttons, leaning back against the sofa with a sigh of relief, "Not too busy, just something came up unexpectedly."

Li Qiao tilted her head to examine his deep yet weary eyes, as she was about to get up, his palm rested on her shoulder, "Did you go to the bank with Luoyu today?"

"Yes, there wasn’t much to do this morning, so I went over."

Shang Yu raised his eyebrows slightly, his warm fingertips gently caressing her cheek, "Is the item in the study?"

Li Qiao brushed away his hand, got up, poured a glass of water, and noticing the slight hoarseness in his voice, thoughtfully said, "Take a rest first, there’s no rush. I left it in the study drawer. I don’t know what it is, I looked up a lot of information, but found very little useful data."

Shang Yu took the water cup, sipped lightly, his gaze following the rim towards Li Qiao, then placed the cup down, a deeper smile on his lips, "Quartz storage plate."

"You know?" Li Qiao’s eyes showed slight surprise, no wonder the small glass piece wasn’t transparent enough, turned out to contain impurities of quartz.

The man held her hand and stood up, "Quartz storage technology is not mature yet, its application is very limited. If it was left to you by your mother, the invention of this storage technology might be earlier than what was publicly announced."

Li Qiao followed Shang Yu upstairs unhurriedly, frowning as she asked, "Does Yan Emperor also have this technology?"

The man looked back, his gaze softened with a smile, "No, the storage method is too unique, not easily widespread."

Li Qiao nodded in enlightenment, "When was this technology publicly announced?"

"About fifteen years ago."

During their conversation, they had already arrived at the study.

Li Qiao took out the envelope from the drawer, shook it twice, and the quartz storage plate scattered.

Shang Yu picked up a small piece and rubbed it between his fingers, then pulled out his phone and called Luoyu, "Bring a microscope over."

Li Qiao tilted her head slightly on the side, feeling curious.

"Why are you looking at me like this?" Shang Yu placed the quartz storage plate on the table and pulled her in front of him, holding her waist.

Li Qiao stood between the man’s long legs, her fingers tracing along his jawline, "Nothing, just feeling you’re so knowledgeable, a walking library."

She indeed rarely saw this scholarly side of Shang Yu.

Most of the time it was her doing, and him watching.

The man’s steady and reserved character shaped his low-key demeanor, allowing Li Qiao to discover unexpected joys each time.

She didn’t just ask Shang Yu about the quartz storage plate but also Bai Yan, Su Lao Si, and others.

Bai Yan had said, "Did you cut your window glass?"

Su Lao Si replied, "What model of cover slip is this?"

In comparison, it made Shang Yu appear even more scholarly.

Then, the man tilted his head slightly, pinched her chin lightly, and affectionately chuckled, "Can’t compare to you."

Soon, Luoyu hurriedly came in with both a large and a small microscope in his arms.

Shang Yu placed a quartz storage plate under the microscope, gestured at Li Qiao with his mouth, "Take a look."

Li Qiao bent over, holding the microscope with one hand, observing carefully, and indeed saw the dense black dots covering the quartz piece.

Shang Yu wrapped his arm around her waist, letting her sit on his leg, and from an inclined rear angle watched her cheek intently, "See it?"

Li Qiao adjusted the focus slightly, and quickly detected the nuance, "Is this a binary dot matrix?"

The man hummed in agreement, glancing over the microscope, "The earliest company to announce this technology used binary dot matrix for data storage. The microscope can read the dot matrix, but to retrieve stored data, computer programming is needed."

It really sounded like complex technology.

No wonder it couldn’t be widespread.

Shang Yu moved the quartz storage plate from under the microscope, wrapped his arms around Li Qiao’s slim waist, and whispered by her ear, "I’ll write the programming, then we’ll retrieve it together."

"Is this retrieval programming difficult?" Li Qiao knew he had been busy with work lately, but she had nothing much on, she could try it at the Mansion.

"Not difficult, but breaking the storage plate’s interference points, correcting spherical aberration, and programming based on the final extracted barcodes are needed."

Li Qiao scratched her ear, "Alright, you write then."

She really wasn’t being lazy this time; mainly because she was unfamiliar with the quartz storage plate, a hasty retrieval might extract incorrect information.

Shang Yu put the envelope back into the drawer, Li Qiao scrutinized his actions, pondered briefly, then said nothing.

In the bottom drawer, hidden away, Clonazepam lay there.

Fortunately, last night, she found the bottle he was taking behind the niche in the tea room.

She had replaced all the tablets with vitamin B2. Luckily, the two types of tablets were both light yellow and looked very similar.

...

The next day, at eight in the morning, Li Qiao and Shang Yu appeared in the South Sea Royal Private Hospital’s parking lot.

As always, it was the director Chang Rong who personally received them. The two had blood drawn on an empty stomach and went through several routine checks, spending less than an hour before heading to the director’s office to wait for the results.

Two breakfasts were laid out on the office desk, Li Qiao didn’t eat much, only had a small bowl of porridge.

During that time, Shang Yu’s phone rang, Li Qiao heard him say the meeting was postponed, and she whispered in his ear, "You go to the company first, I’ll come find you after I get the results."

The man raised his thick eyebrows while holding the phone, seemingly reluctant to leave.

Li Qiao smiled, "Luoyu is with me, don’t worry, I’ll be there soon."

"Okay."

Shang Yu patted her head gently, gave a few careful instructions, then left the hospital with Liuyun.

After he left, Li Qiao’s smile faded slightly, waiting anxiously for Chang Rong.

In less than half an hour, Chang Rong entered the room with all the reports, his kind yet authoritative face tinged with a faintly troubling shadow.

He looked around, "Miss Li, Master Yan... left?"