Chapter 212 Infiltration Moment
As Aki Sakutoku spoke, he pointed to the corner of the gallery. Following the direction Aki Sakutoku pointed, the staff soon saw the "Hell Transformation Picture" in the corner of the gallery.

"Let me confirm." The staff member turned his gaze back to Aki Sakutoku and asked in English. "You mean you want to buy a painting, right?"

"Yes." Shude Aki nodded lightly.

Feeling the other party's calm and scrutinizing gaze, Jiude Aki subconsciously stood up straight. Although the appearance of Chinese and Japanese people is more or less different, in the eyes of most Europeans and Americans, people from the three East Asian countries actually look similar. In addition, Jiude Aki adjusted her makeup style today, so she was still quite confident in her appearance.

I just don't know if it's really due to the rules, or if the other party is still wary of Shude Aki. The staff member smiled apologetically, bowed slightly, and said, "I'm sorry, all the paintings in our gallery are exhibits and are generally not for sale."

Aki Sakutoku didn't think he had revealed any flaws. The dealers engaged in the business of counterfeiting and smuggling cultural relics have sufficient anti-detection awareness. A customer who had never seen him before came to the gallery and asked to buy paintings. It would be a problem if the other party didn't suspect anything.

However, Aki Sakura's original intention was not to buy the painting, but simply to find an excuse to enter the curator's office. Seeing that the other party rejected him, Aki Sakura immediately stepped forward and said, "Is that painting also an exhibit?"

"Yes."

"Can I talk to your curator in person?" Aki Sakutoku said, pulling out a black MasterCard from her handbag. "If you're worried that I can't pay, don't worry."

This behavior of throwing money at people at every turn is very consistent with the stereotype of nouveau riche fake socialites in Europe and the United States at this time. The staff member paused, glanced at Jiude Aki again, and said, "I need to call the curator to confirm."

"Okay." Shude Aki nodded.

The staff member bowed to Aki Jiude, then walked around the corner and left. Aki Jiude waited for a while, and about two or three minutes later, the other party came back, nodded to Aki Jiude, and said, "I just contacted the curator, and the curator asked me to take you to the office to sit for a while, and he will be here soon."

Things went more smoothly than Aki had imagined. She had already thought of several excuses. If the other party refused again, she would respond with this. Or she could simply give up the idea of ​​pretending to be a buyer to enter the director's office and sneak in directly by force. Anyway, she used a fake identity when registering to enter the museum, and she could not be traced afterward.

However, she immediately rejected the idea of ​​breaking in by force, because the door of the director's office used a composite lock that combined an electronic password and a mechanical lock, not a traditional single password lock and a mechanical lock.

This kind of lock must be directly connected to the alarm system of the entire venue. Violent damage will directly trigger the alarm of the entire venue. Because there is a mechanical structure, Norma cannot directly unlock it by hacking into the system. No wonder Norma didn't let her sneak in violently.

"Sorry, according to regulations, we ask you to step aside first." The staff member turned around and said.

"I understand." Aki Sakutoku smiled, "By the way, where is the bathroom here? I might as well go to the toilet so you can rest assured."

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

"Ok."

Aki Sakutoku nodded and followed the other party's instructions to walk towards the bathroom. After walking for a distance, Aki Sakutoku gave instructions in a voice as thin as a mosquito: "Norma, I am Aki Sakutoku."

"Hello, this is Norma, student number A05004, Aki Sakude. I have detected that you are currently performing the last mission. What are your instructions?"

"I'm on my way from the museum director's office to the restroom. There should be nine cameras in between. Please help me copy the recordings of these nine cameras at this moment and erase the images of the strangers in the recordings. I'll need them later."

"Received. I'm already copying the footage. I'll erase the other people from the footage for you later. Do you have any other instructions?"

"temporarily unavailable."

"Okay, now entering standby mode, you can always wake me up when you need me."

Aki Sakutoku walked around the bathroom, entered a cubicle at random, and then put the Guuci leather bag he carried with him into his hand, and covered his fingerprints with wax. When he returned to the director's office, the staff was already standing at the open door to greet him.

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

"It's okay. I'll wait here."

The staff closed the door and left. Shude Aki sat on the sofa and looked around the office calmly.

One, two, three, four. There are four cameras on the surface. I wonder if there are more hidden in the dark. These counterfeiters are really cautious.

But the strange thing is that these people were cautious enough to install mechanical and electronic compound locks in the office and install a large number of surveillance cameras, but they allowed an uninvited guest like her to enter the office without even anyone else present to monitor her behavior.

Everything seemed to be going a little too smoothly.

However, Shude Aki did not have too much time to think about it. Since she had already entered the director's office, she certainly could not miss the opportunity to sneak in.

Aki Shude picked up the black tea on the coffee table in front of her and sniffed it. A faint yeasty aroma came to her face. After confirming that there was nothing added to the tea, Aki Shude took a sip and used the teacup to block the opening and closing of her lips.

"Norma."

"Roger that, this is Norma, go ahead."

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

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

Jiude Aki placed the teacup on the coffee table, then stood up slowly, walked to the door, grasped the handle and opened the door.

"Norma, turn off the surveillance."

"receive."

The signal from the other side of the ocean invaded the computer system of the venue at this moment. The images of all 124 cameras in the venue paused at this moment. No one noticed it because the pause was too short, just like a brief frame freeze when playing a game.

At the same time, Aki Sakurai, who had already closed the door, jumped up on her toes, like an arrow shot from a string, and without any props, she rushed into the nearly 4-meter-high ventilation duct entrance. After entering the ventilation duct, Aki Sakurai turned around like a graceful snake, and after adjusting her lying position, she closed the lid that she had knocked open.

"Norma, help me connect the previously edited video to this one."

"Received, it has been executed."

The surveillance footage started playing again, but the nine cameras from the entrance of the curator's office to the bathroom were only playing the footage captured when Aki Sakutoku entered the bathroom. At the same time, the figures of other people in the footage had been erased.

Even if the director returned to the office shortly afterwards and found it empty, he would immediately retrieve the surveillance video and put the footage in the director's office just now together with the footage in the current surveillance video. He would only see the footage of Shude Aki walking out of the director's office and going to the bathroom.

Of course, if the earlier video of Aki Shude going to the bathroom was also brought up, the crude method of synthesizing the video would be easily seen through, but generally speaking, no one would associate it in this direction for a while.

What Shude Aki had to do was to take advantage of this period of time and sneak into the basement through the ventilation duct.

Aki Sakude pulled out a small flashlight from his bag, and the beam of light illuminated the dusty ventilation duct. The structure of the ventilation duct was very old, and it was unknown how long it had not been cleaned. Just smelling the dust made Aki Sakude want to sneeze. That was fine. But from time to time, some damp plants would hang down from the top, or some small insects would crawl over.

Fortunately, professional training allowed her to resist all impulses. She crawled on the ground, relying on the map Norma gave her to barely identify the direction to go.

No wonder this place was assigned to me, Shude Aki thought to himself.

The ventilation duct was full of dust and had complicated paths, which was one difficulty. Another was that the space in the duct was really small and the diameters were of different sizes. When it came to the joints, even she could only use the bone-shrinking technique she had learned as a child to barely get in.

Needless to say, Professor Mans and Ye Sheng, even if Selma came, she probably wouldn't be able to move freely in this pipe like her.

The places where the beam of light passed were all covered with rust, and her elbows and clothes were already as black as rags. She had to be careful to avoid some protruding points, trying to avoid getting injured before sneaking in. Poor her Louis Vuitton floral dress, she only wore it a few times.

Fortunately, Norma's instructions to her in the headset were very precise. Aki Sakutoku didn't know how long she had been climbing, or whether the people in the gallery had noticed something was wrong with her. She only knew that after going around a dozen twists and turns, she finally saw light coming in from the grid in front of her.

Shude Aki quickly turned off the flashlight, lay down on the grid, and looked down with her eyes exposed. Two workers were carrying a huge paint painting and walking right below her.

Aki Shude glanced around and confirmed that he had arrived at his destination.

The overall structure of the basement was different from what she had imagined. In her imagination, this kind of professional counterfeiting factory should be like the ones in Hollywood movies, with sophisticated encryption and aging equipment and various professionals, and the space planning was meticulous and reasonable.

But the reality was very different from the scenes in the movie. Shude Aki took a quick look and found that the objects were placed in a very messy manner, and the people were also very messy. The door was opened and closed from time to time, and some of the people who were moving things around were even shirtless. It felt very similar to a small furniture workshop without a relevant license that she had visited when she was a child, except that this makeshift team was larger.

This kind of place doesn't seem to have anything to do with 'antimony'. But you can't just rely on intuition to carry out the mission.

After observing for a while, Aki Sakutoku roughly understood what kind of location this was. This was probably one of the many warehouses of this counterfeit factory, mainly stacking items such as paintings. There were Western oil paintings and Chinese calligraphy works.

After confirming that this was not the destination, Shude Aki left the grid and changed direction according to Norma's map.

In the map given by Norma, this ventilation duct is interconnected and seems to lead to many places. This is probably because the exhaust methods in the basement are limited, so the most important ventilation can only be carried out through the ventilation ducts.

However, it seemed that the goddess of luck favored Aki Jiude too much today. When she climbed to the next grid, she came to a place that looked like an office. There was a desk right below her. Two people were sitting on both sides of the office. One of the men had a face full of blue stubble, wore a pair of gentle gold-rimmed glasses, and was lighting a cigarette.

"How is the loading going?" the man sitting opposite the man with glasses asked in Portuguese. From Aki'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.

Jiude Aki held her breath. They were quite far away from each other and her Portuguese was not very good. She needed to listen carefully to keep up with the speed at which the two people spoke.

"This batch of goods is almost finished and can be shipped out soon." said the man with glasses.

"Hurry up, we don't have much time, these goods must be shipped out as soon as possible. St. Martin's Day is coming soon, and it will be even more difficult for us then."

"clear."

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

"Nothing." The man with glasses exhaled smoke. "The higher-ups called and said there was a small problem. There were rats again. They asked me how to deal with it. I've already given the order to everyone to be smart."

"Okay." The mysterious man said, "It's already this hour, don't cause any more trouble for me."

"Please rest assured." The man with glasses smiled. "I have been dealing with the police for many years, so I still have some vigilance. I will send all the goods before St. Martin's Day."

……

The following conversation was unremarkable. Aki watched the man with glasses light a cigarette for the mysterious man, and then the two said some yellow words. After sitting for a while and drinking a few cups of tea, they both left one after another.

After confirming that there was no one in the office, Shude Aki carefully moved the fence at the entrance of the ventilation duct and landed lightly in a shelter closest to the ventilation duct like an elegant cat.

Needless to say, there are most cameras installed in such offices. She discovered this relatively safe spot after observing for a while.

However, after landing, Aki Sakura didn't stay for too long. After scanning the area and quickly finding the locations of several cameras in the office, she quickly built a three-dimensional map of the office in her mind and determined several possible blind spots.

After a few light moves, she came to the desk, squatted under the desk, and inserted the USB flash drive she carried with her into the USB port of the computer host.

……

(End of this chapter)