A nation's industrial development begins with junior engineers.

Director Zheng of 701 gave Jiang Xia an awkward smile:

"I was so excited about what you brought out that I forgot about the important matter..."

As he spoke, Director Zheng pulled out a pure black object.

"This is from the U-2 we shot down a while ago. The pilot on the other side said it's the black box. We received it and would like to ask you to take a look..."

Jiang Xia took it curiously. "Do airplanes have black boxes now?"

Hehe, although in later generations, when we listen to the news, whenever a plane crashes, the reports always say that they need to find the black box.

But the contents of the black box are something I've never seen before.

"Huh? Why does this feel like just a cassette tape? Is there nothing else?"

"Yes, it's a magnetic tape. But we have absolutely no idea how to extract the information! Besides the magnetic tape, there's also a disc-shaped object, but that's damaged beyond repair." Director Zheng pointed to the object in Jiang Xia's hand and continued, "..."

“I urgently called Jinzhen back a few days ago for this matter. Jinzhen initially said that she would open the contents with a computer to take a look.”

"But after reading it for a long time, the computer simply couldn't recognize it."

"Jinzhen studied your C language outline for quite a while, and wrote a program a couple of days ago, but it still doesn't work..."

Jiang Xia scratched his head. Of course it was no use. Modern transistor computers were not like those of later generations. They didn't even have decoding software. It would be a miracle if they could read it.

"Later, when Fatty was organizing the archives, he saw the program written by Jinzhen, modified it, and it actually worked!"

Upon hearing this, Jiang Xia nearly banged his head on the table:

The old fox has been exposed!

I was wondering how I could be so lucky, getting a genius just by throwing a tantrum? With you doing this, I'm starting to think of myself as the chosen one.

Jiang Xia placed the tape on the table and stared intently at Director Zheng until the latter became uneasy and began to offer explanations.

"Hey, hey, hey, your eyes are a little scary, Comrade Jiang Xia. I swear on my Party membership, Fatty's encounter with you at the dance school was absolutely not a deliberate arrangement!"

Jiang Xia grinned. Oh well, everything's already arranged, there's no point in bringing up old grievances now. Besides, Fatty's arrival will definitely lighten my load considerably.

He waved his hand and said, "No, you said you could read it, so why did you bring it to me?"

"I can read it, but the output is completely unrecognizable. Sometimes it's characters, sometimes it's lines of varying lengths."

"Our colleagues in the bureau all believe this is a new type of encryption used by the enemy. They've been working on it for several days now, but unfortunately, they haven't made a single clue!"

Jiang Xia was speechless. "Hey, I'm not omniscient or omnipotent. There are plenty of encryption methods out there. Even if I knew them..."

"Hey, did they include that program they wrote? I'll put it on Dahuang and run it."

Director Zheng calmly took out another cassette tape.

Jiang Xia glanced at the title of the cassette tape and exclaimed, "Wow, it's called Wooden Heart! People from 701 have quite a wide network of contacts."

If the tape hadn't been overwritten with new data, Jiang Xia would have actually considered keeping it.

However, has a manufacturer for the cassette tape been secured yet? It's really getting difficult to keep using cheap, purchased audio-visual tapes as data carriers.

No, we really have to take this seriously. Otherwise, when the French buy the program and see us sending them a bunch of Elvis Presley tapes, they'll laugh their heads off.

After thinking for a moment, Jiang Xia pressed the play button on the recorder.

"Shh..." The tape recorder emitted a burst of white noise.

"Hey, Engineer Jiang, why is your device different from the ones in our institute?"

"That's definitely different, mine is a prototype!" Jiang Xia patted the recorder and player that the naval bigwig had contributed. "The external tape recorder you guys are using now has already gone through two iterations!"

"This prototype works, but while it's running, it also plays the original sound from the tape itself, meaning the data is overwritten. It can only produce white noise. You'll get used to it!"

"Oh, then why don't you just get a new one?" Director Zheng pointed to the prototype machine, which had been modified using Jiangxia Piaoyi's techniques: "There's such a thick layer of ash on it, aren't you afraid it'll catch fire..."

Jiangxia was speechless. "Do you think I don't want to change it? If I dare to change it, Dahuang will go on strike, you believe me?"

Regardless of Director Zheng's insistence on how meticulously they protected "Big Yellow's clone," Jiang Xia moved closer to the screen, eager to see what kind of program those two geniuses had devised to interpret the contents of the tape.

"Wow..."

The static on the screen started swirling again.

Jiang Xia, expressionless, began typing on the monitor casing: bang bang bang...

The sight made Director Zheng's eyelids twitch.

If this happened in Bureau 701, and anyone dared to treat "Big Yellow's Doppelganger" so roughly, he'd tear that person apart...

"Hmm? What's this program? It looks familiar."

As the program was copied in, Jiang Xia discovered that after the initial bootloader finished, there was actually a "library" at the end.

This "warehouse" is not like your family's cellar or garage.

To put it simply, it's a set of pre-written code. But the more Jiang Xia looked at this code, the more familiar it seemed.

Where did we meet here?

Staring at the screen, Jiang Xia regained his rationality and began to search through his memories.

Oh, I remember now, the libavformat library! The program identifier code in front of me really looks a lot like that famous FFmpeg open-source multimedia framework!

Haha, older folks have probably all encountered FFmpeg. Don't tell me you don't know it; surely you remember that blue arrow icon within the red circle?

Later, that big shot published part of his core database, and there was a program's signature code in it that looked very similar to this thing in front of me.

Well, back then, after this big shot was besieged by many parties and angrily released part of the source code, Jiang Xia still studied it for a while, all for the sake of the word "free".

As the core library, libavformat also required a lot of thought and effort from him...

Thinking of this, Jiang Xia was a little shocked: "No way, those two geniuses can build something like this now?"

Take a closer look at the contents of the "library". Good heavens, the decoder looks quite professional, and it already has the prototype of a container format parser!

Add to that the encoding format and enhance the parsing structure, are you two geniuses trying to release a certain note ahead of time?!

"Was this program developed by the two of you together?" Jiang Xia asked, her voice trembling with excitement as she stroked her chin.

"No, according to Jinzhen, Pangdun basically overturned what he originally wrote and added a lot of things that he couldn't see."

"Director Zheng, you must take good care of Fatty. There can't be the slightest mistake, understand?"

Director Zheng sensed a completely different aura emanating from Jiangxia. "Wow, he's just like the old leader!"

"Yes! Promise to complete the mission!"

"Hmm, it seems a bit inappropriate for Fatty to live in a courtyard house. Could you arrange for him to stay in the bureau's dormitory? The security there should be better..."

Director Zheng gave a bitter smile:

"No... To Sixth Brother and the others, my place is just a detention center. Otherwise, Fatty wouldn't be trying to escape whenever he gets the chance..."

"I've done my best to get 'Sixth Brother' a temporary cleaning job, and to let Fatty and the others do odd jobs so they can have something to eat..."

Jiang Xia turned around: "Haven't you realized how important he is? In the field of computer programming, he's someone who can change the world..."

"I really don't know. Perhaps, in this world, only you would evaluate him that way. To others, what he wrote was nothing more than the delusions of a fool..."

Director Zheng peeked at the flashing characters on the screen and groaned, "Pshaw, I can't understand them."

"Ha, alright. I'll handle it. Foolish people, I wonder what you'll think once you've used this fool's work!"

Jiang Xia stood with his hands behind his back, gazing wistfully at the rooftop. For a long time, there was no movement…

Director Zheng, standing behind Jiang Xia, kept exclaiming in admiration: "So alike! It's uncanny! That's how domineering our old leader is!"

……

The once domineering Jiang Xia is now in an awkward position.

"Waaaaah, what kind of 'rationalization' is this? That kind of melodramatic stuff... Is this what I say when I'm 'rationalizing'? So embarrassing!"

"Luckily, no one else heard it, or it would have been incredibly embarrassing!"

"From now on, I will be more rational and absolutely must not speak!"

Jiang Xia recalled how he had taken on so much responsibility for Fatty, and felt like banging his head against a wall.

Good heavens, if you take on everything for Fatty, isn't that the same as taking on everything for "Sixth Brother"?

Luckily, I know a lot of people. I think it might be feasible to go up to the elderly person and act cute to improve the efficiency of the review team...

Exonerating him directly wouldn't work; Jiang Xia was certain that the moment he said that, he'd be hung up and dealt with.

They've interfered with the course of events!

Just as the two people inside the room were each lost in their own thoughts,

rustling...

The recorder, which had been running continuously, suddenly started making noise.

"Base, base, radar detection, requesting return to base..."

"Go back my ass! If you can't reach their base, don't come back!"

This is……

Is this a recording of a conversation between a U-2 pilot and their base?

Good heavens, after all this trouble, this thing is just a cassette tape?

Little Dai Mao and Director Zheng looked at each other in bewilderment.

"Director Zheng, didn't you say you tried every method and still couldn't find that it was just a tape, and an unencrypted one at that?"

"Damn it, a black box, high-tech, and that's it?"

Listening to the tone of the person in charge on the other end of the phone giving orders to the driver in the recorded call, Director Zheng slammed his head on the table.

"This is outrageous!"