Chapter 101: The Night Before the Westward Journey

Beneath the deep waters, an unseen network silently extended its icy tendrils toward his ankle. The summons was the thread tugging at those tendrils, attempting to pull him away from the dark reef he had just glimpsed.

The office air was thick with dust and the scent of farewell.

Song Zhao unplugged the last hard drive with mechanical precision. Every detail in this room—from the faint scratches on the filing cabinet to the withering pothos on the windowsill—had once comprised his entire world.

Now, they were being packed up, sealed away, becoming a past that no longer concerned him.

As he cleared the final drawer, his fingertips brushed against a hard bottom panel. He paused, pried open the edge with his nail, and beneath it lay a thin envelope, quietly resting.

Unsealed, its edges yellowed with age.

The handwriting was unmistakably familiar—his mother’s.

Song Zhao’s heart tightened as if gripped by an invisible hand.

He had never seen his mother leave anything that needed hiding.

“Zhao Zhao,” the letter began with his mother’s usual affectionate nickname, warm as a winter hearth yet sending a chill down his spine, “when I wrote this, you were still kicking inside me. Your father said if it was a boy, he would be named Song Zhao, like the weeds in the fields—tough, unyielding, impossible to trample to death. The night you were born, a thunderbolt struck the ancestral hall’s main beam back home, scorching half the pillar. Your grandfather was keeping vigil there; he said it wasn’t a bad omen but a ‘destined calamity’—heaven itself was pouring oil on this weed so it would burn brighter than anyone else. He kept it secret and secretly burned three doses of miscarriage medicine—not to terminate you, but to ‘break the calamity.’ He said the medicine was extremely yin and could counteract the extreme yang of the evil spirits. He mixed the ashes into glutinous rice balls and, while I was unconscious, pried open my mouth to feed me the whole batch. Later, holding you as you were born, he only said, ‘This child will defy fate, but will walk steadily.’”

His fingers unconsciously traced the rough texture of the paper.

Fragments of memories about how he had been “different” since childhood, the premonitions of danger, the lingering “echoes” that seemed to emanate from another dimension—all found their origin in this moment.

It was neither a gift nor a curse, but a ritual steeped in rustic mysticism, laid down before his birth.

He had believed he was resisting a predetermined fate, only to realize that even his rebellion had been scripted.

This letter was a key that unlocked a door leading deeper into the labyrinth.

The disinfectant still hung heavily in the laboratory air.

Lin Wan set a silver-gray metal toolbox down on the bench with a dull thud.

“The equipment in the western grassroots is outdated, but the soil never lies,” her voice calm as ever, merely stating a fact.

The box opened, revealing meticulously arranged tools, each seemingly tailored for Song Zhao’s hands.

In the corner, a miniature spectrometer and a portable electrochemical analysis module emitted a faint blue glow, their casings clearly hand-modified.

“I made the modifications myself. The accuracy is twelve percent higher than the standard models,” Lin Wan explained.

The two silently calibrated the last microscopic comparator.

As Song Zhao reached out to adjust the focus, his fingertip brushed against the edge of her latex glove.

In that instant, a subtle “echo” flooded his senses.

It had no shape or sound, only a temperature.

Unlike the sharp, cold dread or despair at crime scenes, this warmth was faint and tender, tinged with reluctance and concern.

It silently spoke one phrase: unwilling for you to leave.

Song Zhao’s movement froze for half a second before he nonchalantly withdrew his hand.

He said nothing but, before leaving, quietly pressed a worn copper token belonging to his father beneath the book press Lin Wan used to restore ancient texts.

Some trust requires no words.

Night fell, and the rooftop of the forensic center became a temporary place of farewell.

The wind howled, rustling clothes.

Tang Yurou, Shen Yan, Chen Yan, Song Zhao, and Lin Wan sat around a folding table.

No sentimental toasts or speculations about the future—just shared laughter over awkward stories from their college dissection classes, as if to lighten the weight of parting.

Shen Yan brought an unlabelled bottle of white liquor, marked only by a single line in marker: “R08 Commemorative Edition.”

That was the code for the first serial murder case they had encountered the year they graduated.

He poured for everyone and raised his glass: “To those not named.”

His voice scattered by the wind.

Chen Yan lifted his glass too, eyes gleaming behind his lenses: “And to those who insist on naming.”

The fiery liquid burned as it slid down Song Zhao’s throat.

He set down his glass, his gaze sweeping over the city’s myriad lights—silent eyes in the distance.

Suddenly, he spoke softly, silencing everyone: “What if Lu Chen had reported it back then?”

The air seemed to freeze.

Tang Yurou’s hand paused mid-air, staring down at the swirling liquor. After a long moment, she whispered, “He tried. I checked with a friend at the archives. There are records. From a week before his disappearance, he called the city command center three times. Each call was cut off within thirty seconds, with no dispatch records. Only one note: transferred to Deputy Director Zhou Zhengsheng’s office.”

Zhou Zhengsheng.

The name dropped like a boulder into a still lake, not causing ripples but a suffocating silence.

Song Zhao felt his blood turn cold.

The elder who always patted his shoulder with a smile, praising his “drive,” the one who had signed the summons—his name was linked to Lu Chen’s final desperate calls.

Midnight, the river breeze biting cold.

Song Zhao stood alone atop the high platform by the riverbank.

On the memorial wall, seven police badges gleamed coldly under the moonlight.

From his pocket, he took out an object wrapped in gray velvet—a replica police badge without a number, which he had commissioned.

He gently hung the eighth badge beside the seventh.

The taut wire emitted a faint, soft chime.

The wind stirred the badges, causing them to clink together like wind chimes untouched by sorrow.

He pulled out a recorder, pressed record, and spoke quietly toward the river: “Comrade Lu Chen, Song Zhao signing in for you.” Then, without saving, he deleted the recording.

It was a ritual, a promise shared only between him and the departed.

As he turned to leave, he saw Lin Wan standing below the steps, clutching a box of worn brown paper files—old archives from the Republican era, apparently not yet handed over.

“The archive room is full; I’m taking these home to sort,” she said, her excuse almost candid. “On my way, so I’ll give you a lift.”

The car moved silently through the midnight streets, stopping at the last intersection leading out of town.

Lin Wan didn’t turn off the engine. From the passenger seat folder, she pulled out a small slip of paper and handed it to Song Zhao.

“The landlord at Lu Chen’s last registered address in Jiangcheng—I checked—is an elderly solitary man. Last year, distant relatives took him away; he relocated to Kashgar,” she paused, then added, “the same city as your new post.”

Song Zhao took the note, the warmth at his fingertips seeming to sense the invisible thread stretching thousands of kilometers between the two places.

At dawn’s first light piercing the horizon, the westbound train departed on schedule.

Leaning by the window, Song Zhao watched the familiar city silhouette shrink and blur until it became a distant skyline.

He opened his notebook; the last page bore a single sentence: “Echoes fade, but scars remain. As long as someone is willing to look down, the light endures.”

The train roared into a long tunnel, darkness instantly swallowing the light—the world plunged into pure blackness and thunderous noise.

Eyes closed, his fingers unconsciously traced the edge of the paper bearing the address in his pocket.

At that same moment, thousands of miles away, on the edge of the southern Xinjiang Gobi desert, in an abandoned railway transfer station, a massive industrial refrigeration unit buried beneath sand and concrete suddenly sprang to life.

Forgotten for too long, its rusted outer shell faithfully executed a preset program, emitting a steady, low hum.

Its frequency matched perfectly the sound of the D7 cryogenic chamber’s life support system powering on.