Chapter 35: Reconnecting the Broken Thread

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At 5:12 a.m., the fluorescent lights in the city library’s underground, temperature-controlled archive flickered briefly, and Su Wan’s lashes trembled in response. She took off her noise-canceling headphones and set them on the desk; her knuckles, pale from hours of typing, glimmered under the harsh blue of the screen, which etched a sharp line beneath the dark circles under her eyes.

On the terminal interface, simulated data from the 1998 police intranet dial-up logs scrolled in green characters—like a snake slithering backward into the past.

This was her seventeenth consecutive hour at work.

A conservator’s fingertips should be stained with glue and ink, but hers were now immersed in the cold hardness of digital codes—because Song Zhao had said, “There are new clues hidden within old pages.”

She recalled how, three days earlier, he had crouched behind the ancient shelves in the rare books section, golden flecks swirling in his irises as he murmured, “The key might be in the ‘Ancestral Records of Taboo Names.’” The memory stirred a sweet ache in her throat.

“Ding—”

A sudden pop-up cache log made her fingers slip on the keyboard.

“Reception confirmed: USB data uploaded in two segments. Second upload triggered 37 seconds after the vehicle shut off.” Staring at this line, she felt the hairs on her nape rise one by one.

Song Jianguo hadn’t just sent the data once; he’d set up an automatic retransmission!

“Su Wan?” The archive manager, Old Zhang, yawned from behind the next cabinet. “Not heading home yet? The rain’s getting weird—streets might be flooded.”

She didn’t answer. With shaking fingers, she dialed Song Zhao’s number.

The moment the call connected, the sound of rain and metal clashing flooded through—he was at the scrapyard again.

“Your father...” Her voice trembled. “He left a backdoor.”

Rain battered the tin roof of the abandoned police scrapyard on the city’s western outskirts.

Song Zhao sat cross-legged on a tarpaulin, knees pressed against a charred circuit board he’d gotten from Old Wu.

This was the first time since his recovery that he had taken the initiative to activate the “Eye of Truth.”

In the past, every activation brought searing pain, as if red-hot wire were being driven into his eye sockets, but now there was only a mild pressure at his temples, as if someone were gently pressing there.

“Steady,” he murmured with closed eyes, fingertips slowly resting on the circuit board.

Suddenly, a fissure split the darkness in his vision.

The rain from 1998 surged in: Song Jianguo’s police uniform was soaked in blood, his right hand gripping the radio knob so tightly that the knuckles were bone white.

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The electronic voice announcing “Replay initiated” mixed with his ragged breathing; the windshield wipers carved blurred arcs across the glass—this was a complete scene he had never witnessed before. The rain from forty years ago seemed to seep into his nostrils with a scent of rust.

“Forty seconds.” He opened his eyes, surprised at how steady his breathing was.

The golden flecks had receded to the edge of his pupils—like a ring of tamed light.

“It’s evolved,” he said, turning to look at Old Wu, who was crouched by the iron stove.

The old man was feeding coal into the fire, his pipe glinting in the flames. “Now I can control... when to see.”

Old Wu didn’t turn, just pushed an enamel cup toward him. A few old tea leaves floated in the water. “Your father always said, real evidence is never hidden just once.” The stove door creaked shut, sparks landing on an old scar atop the old man’s hand—a wound from shielding Song Jianguo from an iron rod in 1998.

The morning rain fell harder.

Outside the evidence warehouse of the traffic police team, the temporary carport leaked, soaking the back of Li Zhigang’s blue uniform with a dark stain.

When he shoved a handwritten list into Song Zhao’s hand, his fingertip brushed a callus at the base of Song Zhao’s thumb—a mark left when Song Jianguo had taught him to dismantle dashboard cameras years ago.

“This is the backup number for the original log,” Li Zhigang said, eyes fixed on his oil-stained shoes. “Hidden under ‘spare parts loss’... I didn’t wipe it clean.” The paper, crumpled and damp with cold sweat, was wrinkled at the edges.

Song Zhao didn’t reply, just traced the crooked script on the list—it was left-handed, just like the signature of Li Zhigang’s late brother “Scarface Li” on his arson confession years ago.

“The day your father came, he wore an old police trench coat,” Li Zhigang said suddenly, his eyes red-rimmed. “There was a patch on the left cuff, blue cloth, stitches so crooked it looked like a dog chewed it... No one remembers, but I do.”

Song Zhao’s Adam’s apple bobbed.

He fished out a police badge from his pocket, its brass surface polished bright—a relic from his father’s belongings.

“The last time he polished this was the night of November 6, 1998.” He placed the badge gently in Li Zhigang’s palm. “He said, those who wear the uniform must guard the light for those who cannot.”

Li Zhigang’s fingers curled, pressing the badge into his palm lines.

The warehouse manager’s shout carried through the rain. Li Zhigang wiped his face, turned, and slipped away into the downpour, his stooped silhouette bent like trampled grass.

At 3:17 p.m., the iron gate at the former provincial data center was thick with rust.

Dong Lan’s black sedan idled outside. When she rolled down the window, a chill wind swept in.

The encrypted USB she handed over was still warm. “Physical address of the old server confirmed. Access requires 1998 magnetic card plus password.” Her words came as if reciting a dossier. “I checked the building archives; the ventilation duct leads to the B2 backup room, but the window is only fifteen minutes—at 3:26, the inspection system switches power supply.”

Song Zhao took the USB, rubbing his thumb over the serial “GN-1998-07”—matching the “critical backup repository” mentioned in his father’s email.

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Looking at the gray building swallowed by vines, he suddenly asked, “If my father hadn’t died back then, what would things be like now?”

Dong Lan’s fingers paused on the steering wheel.

The wind ruffled her short hair, revealing a faint scar behind her ear—a wound from twenty years ago, when someone slashed her while she was trying to seize Song Jianguo’s evidence.

“Then you and I wouldn’t be sitting here,” she replied, starting the engine. The wipers drew two white arcs across the windshield. “Some situations can only be broken with one’s life.”

At 6:59 p.m., the streetlights at the intersection of Riverside Road and Wutong Street flickered.

Song Zhao stood on the crosswalk where his father’s accident had occurred, his phone screen lit up—the information traced from the telecom company’s internal line made his pupils contract: an anonymous call ending with “097,” registered to “Chen Mo,” with the address listed as “Old Night Duty Room, Yong’an Orphanage.”

The call was made at 3:15 a.m. on November 7, 1998—a minute earlier than his father’s data upload.

“So you were in the game all along.” He whispered to the air, a metallic tang rising in his throat.

His phone vibrated in his palm, and an unsigned text appeared: “There are three copies of the USB. The second one is at the bottom of your mother’s keepsake box.”

His fingers clenched, nails digging into his palm.

Memories surged: in the early hours of November 7, 1998, he stood beneath a wutong tree, rain glimmering in the light of his phone screen—it hadn’t been a random call, but someone had calculated his location, his schedule, even his dependence on his father, turning him into a “living witness.”

The wind rose, spinning wutong leaves to his feet.

He turned slowly; the streetlight cast a latticework of shadows through the leaves onto the wall behind him, like a pair of hands closing together.

The rain kept falling.

At 2:08 a.m., Song Zhao stood in the attic of his mother’s old home.

A dust-laden camphorwood chest glimmered yellow in the moonlight, the verdigris on the lock polished bright—he’d scraped it clean just now with the tip of his father’s badge.

As the lid lifted, the scent of mildew mingled with jasmine.

His fingertips found a wooden slat at the bottom; his nail flicked it gently—a black USB slid into his palm, engraved with tiny “SLX-2,” glinting coldly in the moonlight.

The rain outside suddenly intensified, drumming on the eaves as if someone were tapping out Morse code.