Chapter 39: The Light Within the Patch

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At 4:11 a.m., in the attic of his mother’s old house, the scent of mold mingled with camphor, swirling in his nostrils.

Song Zhao knelt on the dusty floor, his knees scraping against the loose boards, which creaked softly under his weight.

Before him lay an open camphor chest. Under the dim beam of the desk lamp, a cotton jacket with a deep blue ground—the uniform of a policeman’s family—was spread out. The patch on the left cuff looked like a dark brown scar—its stitches were rough, the cotton thread pilled and worn, clearly mended and taken apart many times.

His Adam’s apple bobbed as his fingertips hovered two centimeters above the patch, the latex of his gloves trembling ever so slightly.

This was his third time going through his mother’s old belongings; the previous two times he had found only half a faded photo album and a silver lock engraved with “Peace.”

But the anonymous message he had received last night—“There’s something else in the camphor chest’s hidden layer in the old attic”—had pierced his neck like a fine needle.

“Dad, if there really is something…” he murmured, his thumbnail gently teasing at the edge of the patch.

The brittle snap of the coarse cotton thread breaking sounded particularly loud in the silent night. When he finally picked out the last strand, he suddenly held his breath—beneath the fabric, a slightly darker section was visible, as if sealed by a transparent film.

He put on a second pair of latex gloves, pressed his palm against the patch, and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath.

When the “Eye of Truth” activated, a stabbing pain flared in his temples, and then the darkness before his eyes was ripped open.

The winter night of 1998 rushed in: the warm air from the coal stove mingled with the acrid smell of a kerosene lamp. A young Song Jianguo sat at an octagonal table, his police uniform draped over the back of a chair, the epaulets glinting with the dull luster of old brass.

He held a needle in his hand, the end of the thread still looped in an unfinished knot. Across from him sat a woman in a blue cotton shirt—Song Zhao’s mother—pushing a ball of yarn into his hand.

“Old Song, your hands are even nimbler than mine,” she said, her voice slightly nasal, as if she had just been crying. “If something happens—”

“There won’t be an ‘if’,” Song Jianguo interrupted, the needle darting in and out of the patch. “But if something does go wrong, there’s a microfilm sewn into this patch. If Zhao’er ever finds this…” He looked up, firelight reflecting the fine lines at his temple. “Let him keep going.”

The vision shattered abruptly. Song Zhao’s eyes flew open, cold sweat beading at his brow.

His fingertips still rested on the patch, but it felt as if he truly touched the warmth of his father’s palm—the heat blended with the old fabric, seeping through the gloves, burning his skin and stinging his eyes.

“Dad,” he called in a hoarse whisper, his trembling fingers gently tearing open the patch along the seam.

A small piece of cellulose nitrate film, no bigger than a fingernail, dropped into his palm with a soft click, glowing amber under the desk lamp.

At 8:55 a.m., in the technical quarantine area of the city library’s rare books department, the air conditioning was set low.

Su Wan’s white lab coat was dusted at the cuffs with powder from the micro-projection device. Wearing anti-static finger cots, she handled the film with tweezers as delicately as if she were lulling a child to sleep.

“This is cellulose nitrate—old tech from around 1998.” She glanced at the surveillance screen. Dong Lan’s face appeared, connecting remotely. “An old expert at the provincial bureau said this kind of film develops under heat, but if preserved well…”

“Feed it straight into the grating scanner,” Dong Lan’s voice buzzed with static, the red warning lights of the provincial tech division flashing behind her. “Will your library’s equipment handle it?”

Su Wan didn’t answer, her fingers dancing rapidly over the controls.

As the projector’s blue light came on, Song Zhao leaned in. On the white screen, two minuscule lines of text slowly appeared: “[email protected] / Trigger code: ZL-1998-11-07.”

“The central bureau’s internal mailbox from 1998?” Dong Lan inhaled sharply. “That system should’ve been decommissioned in 2003…” Her fingers flew over the keyboard. “Let me try a simulated dial-up login.”

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The screen flickered with snowy static, then a green DOS interface emerged.

The moment “ZL-1998-11-07” was entered, a blood-red line of text suddenly flashed: “You have activated the delayed email queue. The final message will be sent to the preset recipient at 23:59 today.”

“This isn’t evidence,” Dong Lan’s voice quavered. “It’s a timed beacon.” She zoomed in on the email queue’s timestamps—the last was set for “2023-10-20 23:59:00”—tonight.

Goosebumps prickled along Song Zhao’s neck.

He remembered three days before his father’s accident, his mother saying on the phone, “Your dad keeps mending old clothes lately.” He remembered the night before his own crash, his father’s old police badge suddenly surfacing in the bottom of a drawer. None of it was coincidence.

“He knew all along he wouldn’t survive that night,” he said quietly, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “He didn’t want me to avenge him. He wanted me to press ‘continue.’”

Su Wan gently placed her cool hand atop his.

Her fingertips were cold as the rare book room’s window glass, but her palm burned with startling warmth. “So now, what you have to do is finish the road for him.”

At 11:23 a.m., the attic door sounded with three knocks.

Song Zhao had just opened it when Old Wu squeezed in, trailing the scent of smoke, lugging a rusty toolbox.

The “S-1987” serial number on the box was rubbed nearly black, the latch misshapen as if crushed by pliers.

“Your dad shoved this in my arms before he left,” Old Wu wiped his face, wood shavings caught in the wrinkles at his eyes. “Said, ‘Old Wu, let no one touch it. Wait for Zhao’er.’ I’ve guarded the scrapyard for sixteen years—not even a mouse got near this box.”

As Song Zhao took the box, rust flakes cascaded from its metal surface.

The moment he pried up the bottom panel with a screwdriver, something glinted—a vintage brass key, “B2-7” etched on the bow, the characters worn but still legible.

“B2-7?” Dong Lan’s voice crackled from Song Zhao’s phone. “I’ve pulled up the provincial data center’s 2005 construction records… The B2 floor was the backup server room. At the time of sealing, access codes only went from B2-1 to B2-6.” Her breathing quickened. “This is a hidden door.”

Song Zhao gripped the key, its teeth biting into his fingers.

He recalled an old photo tucked in his father’s notebook: a twenty-year-old Song Jianguo standing before the provincial bureau, the B2 floor circled again and again in red on the blueprint behind him.

All those moments he’d dismissed as “old cop nostalgia” turned out to be seeds his father had sown over decades.

At 5:40 p.m., by the iron gate outside the old provincial data center, Li Zhigang’s shadow stretched long in the setting sun.

He clutched a crumpled slip of paper, the edges curled with sweat. When he saw Song Zhao, his Adam’s apple jerked. “Power shift is tonight at 3:26. Fifteen-minute window.” He stared at his shoes. “My brother burned the ledger back then. When your dad came to investigate…” He stopped abruptly, pulled a crumpled pack of Red Pagoda Mountain from his pocket, drew out a cigarette but didn’t light it. “Now it’s my turn.”

Song Zhao said nothing.

He took out his father’s police badge—the old one his mother had sewn onto the cotton jacket—and slipped it gently into Li Zhigang’s pocket.

At the crisp clink of metal, Li Zhigang looked up, eyes red-rimmed.

They held each other’s gaze for two seconds, then Li Zhigang turned and walked away, his silhouette quickly swallowed by dusk, leaving only the unlit cigarette spinning in the wind.

At 11:58 p.m., as the metal door of the B2 backup room closed behind him, Song Zhao could hear the pounding of his own heart.

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The drone of the server array was like the tide, crashing against his eardrums.

In the dark, he found the console. As he inserted the flash drive, red indicator lights blinked on one by one, like a string of firecrackers igniting.

A countdown flashed on the screen: 00:01:00… 00:00:30…

The badge pressed against his chest burned through his shirt.

He recalled Su Wan’s words that morning: “Your father wrote on the film, ‘Zhao’er’s eyes are like his mother’s—he can see the light.’” So the “Eye of Truth” was never a gift—it was a seed his father had planted in his heart, nurtured in secret over twenty years.

At midnight sharp, “Sent Successfully” popped up on the screen.

The recipient list—Disciplinary Committee, Rule of Law Daily, Interpol—was lined up like bullets waiting to be fired.

His phone vibrated then, an unsigned message arriving: “Your father’s last email wasn’t evidence. It was a choice. You caught it.”

Beyond the vent’s iron mesh, the morning light seeped through the clouds, like a patch torn in the fabric of night.

Staring at the success prompt on the screen, Song Zhao suddenly smiled—for the first time in half a year, a smile trembling on the edge of tears.

“Dad, the road isn’t over yet,” he said to the empty air, his fingers brushing the badge. “I’ll keep going.”

At the same time, in the provincial tech division’s surveillance room, Dong Lan’s mouse froze.

In the scrolling server logs, an IP address flickered at a relay node—the location was the old Yongan Orphanage site.

She zoomed in on the account name. The letters “CM-097” glimmered coldly on the screen.

She pulled out her phone, dialed Song Zhao’s number, then slowly put it down.

Dawn was breaking outside the window. She gazed at the silhouette of the city library in the distance and murmured, “He’s still alive… and he’s always been watching.”

At six in the morning, as the wind swept ginkgo leaves into the alley, Song Zhao was crouched in the surveillance blind spot on the library’s east side.

He looked up at the rare book department’s second-floor window; the lights were still on, and Su Wan’s shadow moved across the curtains as if she were arranging something.

He pulled out his phone. As the screen lit up, an unread message popped up: “There’s something else in the camphor chest’s hidden layer in the old attic.” The sender was “Unknown.”

The wind at the alley’s mouth picked up. A ginkgo leaf spun to the ground at his feet.

Its tip was stained with dark red, like a drop of congealed blood.