Chapter 17: The Echo of the Severed Finger

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As the morning light seeped through the gauze curtains, Su Wan’s right ring finger began to throb with pain once more.

The white porridge in the clay pot bubbled gently, but her hand, gripping the ladle, trembled—not from the heat, but because the wound beneath the bandage was seeping blood.

That finger, wrapped in gauze, felt like a red-hot iron rod, stabbing again and again at memories from twenty years past.

"Wanwan?"

Song Zhao’s voice came from behind her. Su Wan hurriedly bowed her head, stirring the porridge, the ladle striking the rim with a clear, crisp sound.

She heard his approaching footsteps, then felt the gentle warmth of his fingertip touch the back of her hand. "Is your hand hurting again?"

"It’s nothing," her voice was softer than the steam from the porridge, "just a small cut from a paper knife."

But Song Zhao noticed that when she poured water, her fingertips hovered above the rim of the porcelain bowl for three seconds before finally letting go.

He turned and rummaged through the cupboard for Yunnan Baiyao, but his hand paused in midair—Su Wan’s left hand was clutching the corner of her apron so tightly her knuckles were bone-white.

"Wanwan," he softened his voice, "if something’s wrong, don’t bear it alone."

The clay pot lid clattered onto the stove.

A sudden mist clouded Su Wan’s glasses, making it impossible to tell if it was from the porridge or her tears.

From her apron pocket, she drew a crumpled brown envelope, its edges stained with dark red mildew. "Yesterday morning... I found this in the book chest."

The moment Song Zhao took the envelope, he caught the musty tang of earth.

He opened it with exquisite care, as if unwrapping the linen from an ancient corpse.

When the fragment of a finger bone, wrapped in blackened skin, rolled onto the table, his pupils contracted to pinpoints—the joint bore a pale, half-ringed mark, the sign of a ring long worn.

"There’s also a note inside." Su Wan’s voice was trembling. "It says, 'Do you still remember her?'"

She turned to the drawer and took out a yellowed photograph.

In the picture, two little girls were squeezed behind iron bars—the one on the left with pigtails, the other, muddy-faced, was Su Wan at thirteen.

Between them lay a smaller girl, a half-moldy bun clutched in her pale palm.

"Her name was Xiaomei." Su Wan’s nails dug into her palm. "It was the third month we were locked in that cellar. She tried to crawl through the vent.

The trafficker dragged her back, made me... made me bite off her finger." A sudden, shaky laugh burst from her lips, her shoulders trembling. "I was only nine years old, how could I bite through? So they pinched my jaw and smashed it against her hand, bone splinters stabbing into my gums. My teeth still bleed when I brush."

The finger bone burned in Song Zhao’s palm.

His hand was steady as he withdrew an evidence bag, but when his fingertip touched the brittle bone, golden veins spread across his pupils like a spider’s web—

In the dim cellar, the musty air stung her eyes.

The young Su Wan curled up in a pile of straw, cradling a small, icy body.

The wall was scored with countless numbers in charcoal; above them, seven bold characters were deeply carved: “Warehouse No. 72.”

Xiaomei’s finger rested on Su Wan’s wrist, a stub of charcoal still wedged under her nail.

The image shattered into static.

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A blinding pain exploded in Song Zhao’s temple. He gripped the table just in time to keep from collapsing.

Su Wan had already rushed to support him, the scent of jasmine from her hair mingling with the smell of blood under his nose—she’d been biting her lip, blood trickling down her chin.

"Warehouse No. 72." He gritted his teeth, repeating, "Do you remember the grain warehouse codes in Jiangcheng during the Republic era?"

Su Wan’s pupils constricted suddenly.

She recalled a certain volume in the archives, the "Jiangcheng Storage Annals," its yellowed pages recording: "In the twentieth year of the Republic, twelve disaster relief warehouses were set up in District Seven, with 'seventy' as the area code and 'one to twelve' as the warehouse numbers."

"72 Yong’an Lane." Her voice shook. "That row of old houses just got a demolition notice last month."

Dong Lan’s call came half an hour later. The hum of lab equipment played in the background, her voice as calm and precise as a machine: "DNA comparison turned up nothing in the national anti-trafficking database, but carbon-14 dating shows the finger bone is nineteen to twenty years old." She paused. "I pulled the 2003 case files from the East Suburb traffickers’ den—the fugitive ringleader is known as Scarface, a knife scar running from his left cheek to his ear, notorious for making children hurt each other to create psychological trauma."

"He’s still in Jiangcheng." Song Zhao stared at the photo of Scarface on his phone, the scar running from brow to jaw like a split abyss. "His motive isn’t money. It’s revenge."

"Revenge on whom?" Su Wan leaned over, her finger pausing on the name "Scarface."

"On everyone who ever broke his 'perfect system.'" Song Zhao remembered that rainy night twenty years ago, when, as a rookie officer, he kicked open the cellar door. Scarface was squatting in the corner, handing out moldy biscuits to the children. "Including the savior from back then."

As night fell beyond the carved window of the library’s archives, Su Wan was comparing cadastral maps from 1949 under a magnifying glass.

She tapped a spot on the map: "This marks an underground chamber, used as an air-raid shelter during the war." She looked up, her eyes bright behind the lenses. "The east wall of the main house at No. 72 should have a secret passage."

Rain began as they stepped into No. 72, Yong’an Lane.

Broken walls and shattered tiles gleamed bone-white in the moonlight, weeds clung to Su Wan’s trousers, and she smelled the familiar, earthy reek—identical to the cellar.

Song Zhao’s flashlight swept across the eastern wall. In the cracks between bricks, a rusted nail was wedged.

He pressed the lowest brick; a hollow echo sounded from within the wall.

Su Wan produced a brass ruler from the archives and pried along the mortar. A grayish brick dropped with a click, revealing a man-sized opening.

A wave of mold and decaying rodent stench surged out.

Her flashlight beam swept the walls, showing layers of numbers in charcoal, but the clearest line read "Warehouse No. 72."

At the bottom was a locked wooden box. Song Zhao pried it open with a crowbar, dust billowing into their faces.

"A register for child transport." Su Wan’s voice shook.

On the yellowed pages, the fountain-pen script cut deep: "Su Wan (codename White Dove), age 9, for sale; Xiaomei (codename Gray Finch), age 7, deceased; Zhou, male child (son of Zhou Zheng, secretary of the development zone), age 5, sold."

Suddenly, the roof tiles gave a faint, brittle crack.

Song Zhao jerked his head up and saw a shadow crash down through the tiles.

He lunged, shoving Su Wan aside, the back of his head slamming into the brick wall.

Agony blacked out his vision, but he clearly heard the whoosh of the iron bar slicing past Su Wan’s ear—the exact sound, twenty years ago, of a trafficker swinging at Xiaomei.

"Run!" he roared, shoving the register into Su Wan’s arms.

The shadow swung the iron bar again. Gritting his teeth, Song Zhao activated the Eye of Truth—

First flashback: The assailant’s left ear was half missing, as if bitten off by a dog.

Second flashback: The iron bar was wrapped with rusty wire, identical to the construction fence scraps recycled at the East City junkyard.

Third flashback: As the shadow fled, three tiles shattered beneath his feet, the escape route leading straight to the East City garbage transfer station.

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The pain hammered into his skull.

Song Zhao’s world went black, his consciousness fading.

In the final instant, he saw Su Wan stumbling through the rain, the register swelling with water in her arms, the words "White Dove" blurring into a shapeless stain.

"Go to Chief Dong... don’t look back!"

That was the last thing he said.

The junkyard lights flickered on at 2 a.m.

Scarface sat on a battered wooden chair, dabbing alcohol over the remains of his left ear.

Beads of blood mingled with alcohol seeped into his scar, making him squint from the pain.

On the table lay an old mobile phone, screen aglow, displaying a message: "Mission accomplished."

"Twenty years," he muttered to the air, his voice rough as sandpaper. "That little cop from back then is a hero now."

He pulled out a photograph: Song Zhao, twenty years younger, in uniform by the cellar door, the police badge flashing blindingly in the camera’s glare.

The phone suddenly vibrated.

Scarface pressed answer. A hoarse male voice asked: "What’s his condition?"

"Unconscious," Scarface laughed, the scar splitting wider with his grin. "But it doesn’t matter. When he wakes up, I’ll make him watch with his own eyes as the girl he tried so hard to protect turns out to be... ha ha ha ha!"

The rain intensified.

On the junkyard’s tin roof, the downpour drummed louder and louder, drowning out Scarface’s mounting, deranged laughter.

Meanwhile, three kilometers away at the city hospital, the emergency room light still glowed red.

Su Wan, soaked through, sat on the corridor bench, the register dripping onto the floor, pooling in a little puddle.

She stared at the operating room doors, her nails digging into her palm—where the old scar remained from when she’d bitten off Xiaomei’s finger all those years ago.

When the nurse pushed out the gurney, Su Wan leapt to her feet.

Song Zhao’s eyes were closed, his head wrapped in bloodied gauze, both eyes shrouded in snowy bandages.

She followed the nurse into the ward, listening to the steady beeps of the heart monitor, hauntingly like Xiaomei’s weakening breath in the cellar, twenty years before.

The rain still fell outside.

Su Wan sat by the bed, gently holding Song Zhao’s hand.

On the back of his hand was a faint pink scar, left by a trafficker’s knife when he had saved her thirteen years ago.

Now, that scar was cool and damp with rain.

"You’ll be all right," she whispered, as if speaking to Song Zhao, and to that girl curled in the straw twenty years ago. "This time, let me protect you."

The ward clock pointed to three in the morning.

Song Zhao’s fingers twitched, lightly curling around Su Wan’s.

The monitor beeped faster, as though answering in silence.