Chapter 102: The Rusted Iron Message

The train emerged from the dark womb, and the piercing plateau sunlight instantly flooded in, illuminating the drifting dust within the carriage down to the finest detail.

The abrupt shift in light made Cheng Ye squint slightly. He didn’t look at the rapidly receding gobi desert outside but swiftly took out his laptop.

The faint blue glow of the screen reflected on his focused face as his fingers darted across the touchpad. The underlying data stream from a USB drive was forcibly decrypted, revealing a clear set of coordinates coded in Morse.

He input the coordinates and simultaneously retrieved another long-forgotten file—a scanned copy of a letter left by his mother. The letter vaguely mentioned that one summer, a thunderbolt had split a beam in the backyard ancestral hall, and beneath the charred post, his grandfather had buried something.

Cheng then accessed satellite maps of Yunjiang City from different years, virtually overlaying the coordinates onto the location described in the letter.

The moment the two maps aligned, a previously overlooked detail sprang out: the magnetic declination angles matched with astonishing precision.

This was no coincidence.

His fingers paused, a chill running through his mind.

He recalled his father once mentioning that the previous generation of the Nanzhi Fist lineage had a habit of using secret markings within their martial manual, combined with geomancy, to leave cryptic signs only decipherable by their bloodline descendants—marks placed at certain “calamity” points for the family.

These coordinates were less a geographic location and more a warning encrypted by the family’s secret arts.

That abandoned transfer station on the Kashgar border was no random relic. It was a deliberately cast, extended key node in the evidence chain of the massacre that had wiped out the family fifteen years ago.

The next morning after arriving in Kashgar, just as dawn was breaking, Cheng Ye did not report to his unit as required. Instead, he took a detour, applying to the logistics department for an inconspicuous forensic investigation vehicle under the pretext of field-testing new equipment.

He disabled the official tracking system and, alone, drove according to the fateful coordinates on his laptop toward the city’s border logistics park.

The destination was a forgotten wasteland.

The iron gate of the transfer station was rusted and crudely wrapped in chains, fused immovably to the frame.

The barbed wire fence, taller than a man, had collapsed in several places, revealing gaping holes.

Cheng Ye avoided forcing entry through the front gate. Instead, he drove around to a relatively concealed north side, where a ventilation shaft lay flush with the ground.

From his tool bag, he took out a pen-shaped device—his own modified electrochemical etching pen, capable of softening metal at the molecular level using microcurrents and special solvents.

Silently, the old lock cylinder on the hatch dissolved into a muddy pulp.

He slipped inside, met by a cold gust mixed with dust and mildew.

The interior was larger than expected, thickly layered in dust that rose above his ankles when stepped on.

Yet, atop this heavy layer of “time,” two clear tire marks abruptly stretched deep into the factory. Nearby, scattered overlapping shoeprints bore unmistakable signs of dragging.

These traces were fresh, no more than a week old.

Cheng Ye crouched, nostrils flaring. A faint but strangely familiar chemical scent lingered in the air—the refrigerant R134a.

This exact model matched the mysterious D7 cryogenic chamber’s cooling agent.

His heart tightened as if gripped by an invisible hand.

Following the trail, he ventured deeper into the dark factory.

At its farthest recess, behind a half-buried old refrigeration unit encased in solidified concrete, he found a concealed maintenance hatch almost blending with the wall.

No lock barred it—only a few hex screws requiring special tools.

That posed no problem for him.

Opening the hatch, a stronger chill rushed out.

Inside was no complex piping but a finely crafted sealed lead box.

Its surface bore a nearly invisible, intricate engraving of the character for “hide” from the Nanzhi Fist manual, etched with a needle-thin tip.

Cheng Ye’s pupils contracted sharply. This pattern matched the mark on the mysterious copper token in his father’s office.

Donning forensic gloves, he carefully extracted the heavy box.

It opened without triggering any expected mechanisms.

Within lay two items quietly resting: a miniature tape, edges brittle from oxidation, labeled in handwriting “Renxu Supplement 08,” and a half-burnt household registration card, blackened by fire, with most information obliterated except for the stubborn characters “Lu Chen” and a temporary residence number tied to the Kashgar region.

His gaze lingered on the tape for several seconds, but he did not take it.

He knew that since this place was a “guide point” set by the opposing side, removing anything might alert them prematurely.

He pulled out a portable spectrometer, conducting a detailed scan of the lead box’s interior and the tape’s casing.

Minutes later, the device displayed its analysis: the trace substances included local dust, hematite particles, and a unique red soil mixture characteristic of Yunjiang.

On the way back to the city, his encrypted communicator vibrated.

The first message came from Lin Wan: “The landlord’s address you gave me has a forged migration record. I checked the underlying data. The owner died of illness three years ago, and the household was canceled. The current registration status was transferred using technical means.” She followed with a screenshot of an abnormal customs declaration from the border logistics station, showing that in the past six months, seven shipments labeled as “medical refrigeration equipment” had passed through that very abandoned transfer station. Their nominal destination was a private overseas charity project.

Almost simultaneously, Tang Yurou’s analysis report arrived, concise and clear: “The hematite detected on the tape casing matches soil samples taken from a suspicious shoeprint at the Cheng family massacre scene fifteen years ago with a 98.6% match. Cheng Ye, this isn’t just shifting evidence—it’s deliberately setting a signpost to lure someone here.”

That night, Cheng Ye locked himself in his motel room.

On his laptop screen, a network map woven from coordinates, logistics routes, and personnel information was rebuilding.

As he tried to connect all the clues, a tiny detail made him halt everything.

He recalled the background noise from “Lu Chen’s” recording—a highly regular low-frequency vibration.

He compared it with the refrigeration unit’s ambient sound secretly recorded earlier at the transfer station and found that while nearly identical, there was a periodic phase difference of 0.3 seconds.

What did this discrepancy mean?

Cold sweat trickled down his spine.

It meant that the seemingly abandoned device at the transfer station had been remotely started or stopped, causing its vibration frequency to fall slightly out of sync with the recorded sound.

He immediately hacked into the local power grid’s backend database, retrieving historical electricity load records for that area.

The data curve was like a dead wasteland—except every Wednesday at exactly 2 a.m., there was a fleeting, almost imperceptible peak in power usage.

He slowly shut the laptop, the screen’s glow fading from his face as darkness enveloped him once more.

He whispered softly, barely audible, as if speaking only to himself: “They… are still using this system.”

Outside the window, the night wind howled through the corridor like a mournful lament.

In the distance, faint tremors from the rails sounded, as if in the endless darkness, someone was silently pushing a cart laden with secrets and death, steadily approaching him.

And he knew—this murky water was one he had no choice but to wade through.

This trap, tailor-made for him, was also the only entrance.

He lifted his head, gazing into the heavy night outside, his eyes devoid of hesitation, filled only with icy resolve.

This game had been set the moment he boarded the westbound train. Now, it was time to find his place and make the first move.