Chapter 32: Traces on the Paper Road

Darkness hung like a heavy curtain, wrapping the entire city in an impenetrable shroud.

Song Zhao’s car moved through the morning mist at half past six, solitary as a submarine beneath the waves. The air was thick with the damp scent of earth and the lingering breath of the night.

He stopped in front of the former site of the Municipal Construction Bureau—a Soviet-style building almost swallowed by climbing ivy, its peeling walls exposing gray bricks, standing in absurd contrast to the sparkling glass façade of the nearby Municipal Big Data Center.

This was a graveyard for archives.

The guard, a drowsy middle-aged man, showed no suspicion at Song Zhao’s request to “review historical materials for family history purposes.” Mechanically, he checked Song Zhao’s ID.

Song Zhao’s gaze slipped past the guard’s shoulder and fixed upon a yellowed calendar-style duty roster pinned to the wall of the security office. The heading, roughly printed, read: “1998 Archives Section Duty Roster.”

His heart skipped a beat.

He quickly found “Chen Dehai” among the rows of names.

Beneath that name, a nearly faded pencil annotation, worn thin by years, caught his eye like a faint distress signal: “LJ-097, transfer to Lin.”

LJ-097... Lin...

Song Zhao kept his composure. While the guard looked down to register him, Song Zhao discreetly switched his phone to camera mode, pretending to check the time. His fingertip pressed the shutter swiftly. The sound was perfectly masked by a deliberate cough.

Ten o’clock in the morning, deep in the archive storage.

Rows of metal shelving stood like a forest of steel, the air heavy with the acidic tang of decaying paper and the gritty presence of dust. Each rack was labeled with its number, cold and silent.

Song Zhao followed the index until he reached a corner cabinet marked “DK-1998-04.”

The door squealed sharply, as if waking a beast that had slept thirty years.

Amidst the dusty kraft paper envelopes, he found the “Acid-Free Paper Usage Register.”

The cover was curled at the edges, the pages a fragile yellow.

Donning white gloves, Song Zhao opened it carefully, his fingers brushing against time itself.

He flipped directly to the page for October, his eyes scanning like a laser.

He found it quickly.

Two consecutive entries, bound together like the threads of fate.

Zhou Jianguo (Development District Police), took 5 sheets, purpose: evidence packaging at fire scene.

Chen Dehai (Construction Archives Section), took 3 sheets, purpose: land registry change documentation.

Song Zhao’s breath nearly stopped.

He enlarged the photo of the duty roster on his phone, carefully comparing the annotation beside Chen Dehai’s signature with the signature in the register.

The slant, the subtle lift at the end—completely identical.

His fingertip traced the name “Chen Dehai.” A cold current raced up his spine.

Lowering his voice, he spoke into the tiny earpiece at his collar, addressing Dong Lan: “It’s not a proxy signature; it’s his own hand. The annotation on the duty roster and the signature here are from the same person.” This meant the mysterious instruction, “LJ-097, transfer to Lin,” had indeed come from Chen Dehai.

Noon, twelve o’clock, City Library.

Su Wan sat before a computer, fingers dancing over the keyboard.

Unlike Song Zhao’s physical infiltration, her battlefield was the intangible world of digits.

She remotely accessed the Construction Bureau’s digital archive system, seeking the scanned electronic version of the register for cross-verification.

But when she located the page, an icy prompt appeared: page data missing.

She immediately checked the system log. One entry leaped out: On December 17, 2023, an operator manually deleted the page’s scanned backup, citing “system upgrade and data redundancy cleanup.”

Someone had already begun erasing traces, and not long ago.

Su Wan’s heart tightened. Their adversaries moved faster and more covertly than she had imagined.

Undeterred, she began tracing the IP address that executed the deletion.

Minutes later, the result chilled her to the bone—the IP led to the “Smart City Project” dedicated server under the foundation where Shen Lanxin had worked.

The clues formed a strange, closed loop.

Su Wan took a deep breath and retrieved a file from her encrypted drive—a master access key left by Shen Lanxin.

With this, she bypassed the standard firewall and dove into the server’s deep backup zone.

Among fragmented data remnants, she managed to extract an image of the register page. Though its edges were damaged, the handwriting was clear.

Just as she prepared to send the image to Song Zhao, a detail seized her attention.

Beside the “Chen Dehai” entry, on the right edge of the paper, there was a faint, incomplete fingerprint—likely left unintentionally during handling.

Su Wan immediately imported the image into the police database for comparison.

When she scanned the old fingerprint from the back of Zhou Lao Qi’s copper tag, the system blared an alarm.

A high match.

Three o’clock in the afternoon, West Street.

The roar of bulldozers drew nearer, marking the end of the old street’s life.

When Song Zhao knocked again at Zhou Lao Qi’s door, the old man was packing with a battered canvas bag, the room in disarray.

“The condemned building’s coming down. They gave me some money, told me to move fast.” Zhou Lao Qi’s voice was hoarse, tinged with resignation.

Song Zhao didn’t bother with pleasantries. He handed over his phone, displaying the fingerprinted register page Su Wan had sent.

“Mr. Zhou,” his voice was steady and sharp, “Thirty years ago, why is your fingerprint on the acid-free paper register signed by Chen Dehai?”

Zhou Lao Qi stared at the screen, pupils contracting.

His wrinkled face drained of color, lips trembling, unable to utter a word.

After a long pause, as if all his strength had been drained, he sank onto a small stool and let out a long, mournful sigh.

“That night... he came running to me, shaking all over, like he’d been pulled from icy water,” Zhou Lao Qi whispered, his voice barely a breeze. “He said he needed to prepare something—something that could take lives, or save them. But his hand shook so badly, he could barely hold the pen. He managed to sign the register, but the rules required a fingerprint confirmation... He couldn’t do it. It was me. I held his finger and pressed it down for him...”

Song Zhao’s heart sank.

“When he left, he shoved the copper tag at me and said, the print on it and the one on the paper are a pair. If anything happened to him, someday someone would come with this to check the paper.” Zhou Lao Qi’s voice turned tremulous, filled with fear. “He also said... he said... ‘Shen Lanxin knows everything, but she won’t speak. She must protect the child.’”

Behind Song Zhao, Su Wan suddenly lifted her head, her blood frozen.

“Child?” Her voice was barely audible. “Did Teacher Shen... have a child?”

Six o’clock in the evening, rain fell without warning, etching twisted streaks of light across the car window.

Inside, the atmosphere was suffocating.

Song Zhao and Su Wan were reviewing all their discoveries. Dong Lan’s voice came through the car’s communication system, bringing the latest—and worst—news: “The disciplinary committee has secretly opened a case based on our leads. But they insist, all accusations must be backed by ‘original evidence.’ Our photos and digital backups are only clues, not ironclad proof.”

Original evidence—the register.

Song Zhao stared at the photo of the register on his phone, as if willing it to burn through.

Suddenly, his pupils contracted. He enlarged the image to its limit.

Beneath Chen Dehai’s trembling signature, there was a faint scratch—like ink spilled and hastily scraped away by a fingernail or some hard object.

Such marks were almost invisible under ordinary light.

He retrieved his portable ultraviolet inspection lamp from the glove compartment and shone it on the phone screen.

Under the purple light, beneath the scratch, two characters written with special reagent, now transparent, slowly emerged like ghostly shadows.

“Hand over to Wan.”

Song Zhao’s heart was gripped by an invisible fist.

He turned sharply to Su Wan, his voice hoarse with excitement: “‘Hand over to Wan’—is it ‘give to Su Wan,’ or ‘give to the younger generation’?”

Su Wan’s fingers trembled unconsciously on her knee.

The phrase was a key, prying open a sealed memory she herself could not reach.

Her mind was suddenly flooded with searing flames, acrid smoke, and distant cries.

“My memories before age five... are blank. Nothing but fire,” she whispered, a confusion and fear she herself hadn’t noticed coloring her words. “On the orphanage register, the column for the person who brought me in reads three characters... entered by Shen Lanxin.”

Raindrops hammered ever more fiercely against the window, like the unquenched fire from thirty years ago roaring in tonight’s downpour.

That register was more than evidence.

It was a testament, a token, the sole marker pointing to her origins.

All clues led to that single point, the only physical original buried deep in the city archive.

Photos could not convict; digital backups could be erased. Only the original could expose all the evil hidden in darkness to the sunlight.

Su Wan slowly lifted her head. Outside, the city blurred under the rain, neon lights dissolving into hazy patches, like distant, shattered dreams.

She gripped the cold copper tag in her pocket—it was no longer a mere piece of metal, but a blazing brand, a responsibility passed from a dying hand thirty years ago.

Some doors must be opened in special ways.

Some truths can only be found in the deepest night.

Her gaze pierced the rain, fixed on the heavily guarded building at the heart of the city, a fierce flame igniting in her eyes.