Chapter 60: Who Is Lighting the Lamp

He moved through the empty streets at dawn; the city had shed its daytime clamor, leaving only the lonely halos cast by streetlights. His destination was not the command center in the safehouse, but the city library—the place where it had all begun.

He was not waiting; he was laying a more intricate trap. Hunters never wait for prey to come to them.

At 1:47 a.m., the air in the underground archive was as still as water. The faint glow of infrared surveillance drew invisible grids in the darkness, tracking the path of every speck of dust.

A figure slipped into the restricted section, clad in a janitor's uniform, yet moving with a grace utterly at odds with his assumed identity, ghostlike and agile. His footsteps were as light as a cat’s, every movement precisely avoiding the blind spots of the cameras, as if he knew the surveillance layout by heart.

He walked straight to the shelf holding a transparent file box, his intent unmistakable. Black gloves shielded his fingerprints; his movements were swift and professional. He opened the box and extracted the damaged copy of “Regulations of the Lantern Festival.”

Yet as he turned the pages, a barely perceptible habitual gesture betrayed him—his fingertips, through the gloves, unconsciously caressed the rough paper, as if seeking a familiar texture.

He did not know that this was the moment Song Zhao had been waiting for. Embedded in the layered pages was an ultra-thin pressure-sensitive fingerprint film, finer than a cicada’s wing. It recorded not the ridges and whorls, but the unique force and habits of his touch.

The man tucked the book into his coat and turned to leave.

A click.

The library’s power was cut at once, and even the emergency lights went out. Total darkness and silence descended, as though a monstrous beast had swallowed all light and sound.

The man’s heart skipped; his body tensed instinctively.

But it was too late.

A shadow had silently slipped behind him. An iron hand seized his wrist with such force it nearly crushed his bones. At the same time, another hand pressed, cold and resolute, onto his grasping palm, pinning the barely visible scrap of paper transferred from the book’s page.

The “Eye of Truth” opened once more.

This time, there was no cellar, no children.

The scene spun wildly under harsh white light—the employee locker room at the crematorium. His own hand, frantically stuffing a thick ledger into the vent behind Furnace 7 in Section B. The perspective shifted—an old night watchman, hunched and facing away, using chalk to mark a string of blurred shoe prints on the floor beneath dim lighting.

The tide of recalled images receded.

Song Zhao’s chest heaved, breath ragged, cold sweat trickling down his temple in the darkness. He slowly opened his eyes, pupils glinting with a terrifying light in the faint moon glow.

He stared at the man before him, whose pupils had shrunk in terror, and spoke in a low voice that drilled into the other’s ears, a whisper from the abyss: “Last night, did you dream of your mother? She called you… ‘Little Zhou’.”

The man’s body seemed drained of all bone, collapsing instantly. The childhood nickname, buried deep in memory, broke the last wall of his defenses.

The book fell from his hands. He knelt, his sobs mingling with desperate muttering, echoing through the empty library: “Don’t burn me… I don’t want to die… I don’t want to pass through the Lantern Gate…”

At 4:26 a.m., the city had not yet awakened, but inside a nondescript tech support van, the lights were as bright as day.

Dong Lan’s fingers flew across the keyboard, torrents of data cascading down the screen. She pulled up ten years of records and energy usage from the crematorium.

“Found it,” she pointed at an anomalous curve on the screen. “Furnace 7, Section B—every Wednesday between two and four in the morning, there’s an unplanned power spike, enough to run large ventilation or cooling equipment. And the locker room cameras always ‘malfunction’ at precisely this time.” She switched the display; a thermal image zoomed in, revealing a clear temperature anomaly behind the wall of Furnace 7.

“There’s something behind the wall—a room kept at a constant temperature.”

Elsewhere, Su Wan was immersed in a pile of yellowed manuscripts, borrowed from a folklorist professor: “Studies of Lantern Customs in River City.” She compared a rubbing from one page to a high-res screenshot of the embroidery on Little Zhou’s sleeve, her brows tightly furrowed.

“Yes, this is the ‘Xu Clan Lantern Totem,’ recorded only in the secret branch genealogy from the late Qing. The totem doesn’t represent a lantern, but the person who carries it.” She looked up, a chill in her eyes. “Song Zhao, this isn’t some folk society or profit-driven group… it’s a hereditary chain of crime, woven from bloodlines and centuries of secrets.”

The air in the van seemed to freeze.

Just then, someone tapped gently on the window.

All three started, looking out to see Chen Mo’s impassive face pressed against the glass, a silent shadow.

He said nothing, merely slipped a folded note through the window crack, then turned away, vanishing soundlessly into the pre-dawn gloom.

Song Zhao unfolded the note. On it, a single line was etched with such force the pen nearly pierced the paper:

“Furnace 7, Section B—Don’t bring a gun. They expect you empty-handed.”

At 5:59 a.m., the first light of dawn barely breaking, mist still clung to the crematorium’s perimeter.

Song Zhao waited alone by the vent outside Section B, surrounded by deathly silence. He ignored the eerie note, refusing to charge in recklessly.

In his hand, he gripped the cold bronze pendant—the soul-guiding beacon.

He took a deep breath, avoided the main entrance, and instead gently slid the pendant through the vent’s gap.

The metal clinked softly against the duct’s inner wall, then vanished into darkness.

He retreated swiftly into the nearby shrubs, hiding every trace of his presence.

Time ticked by, second after second.

Ten minutes later, a hunched shadow slipped out the crematorium’s side door, heading straight for the vent. With practiced hands, he reached in, fumbled, and retrieved the bronze pendant.

In the morning light, Song Zhao saw his face clearly—it was Old Qin.

Old Qin did not leave immediately. He moved to a sheltered corner, took out a small, ancient oil lamp, and lit it. The pea-sized flame flickered, illuminating the intricate lines on his face.

He set the bronze pendant before the lamp, lips moving as he whispered some archaic incantation.

Song Zhao was about to approach when sudden change erupted.

Old Qin abruptly looked up, hastily blew out the lamp, grabbed the pendant, and hurried away without a backward glance, vanishing into the deep morning fog.

A gust of cold wind passed, the lamp wick’s last ember flickering uncertainly.

As the wind died, the flame danced one final time, lighting the wall where Old Qin had just stood.

There, a freshly carved symbol gleamed—a twisted, lantern-shaped door.

Identical to the “Entrance to the Lantern Gate” mark found in Xu Zhaoshan’s cellar.

Song Zhao’s fist clenched, knuckles white with strain.

A chilling realization pierced his mind: Old Qin was never his embedded informant.

He had always been the gatekeeper of the “Lantern Slaves.”

Then, perhaps Chen Mo’s note was never a warning.

It was an invitation.

He looked up at the silent crematorium, crouched in the dawn like a giant beast.

He finally understood—the enemy did not want a game of cat and mouse, but an official meeting.

They did not fear his arrival—they craved it.

Furnace 7, Section B was not the end of the trap, but the entrance to the labyrinth.

To unravel this century-old maze of blood and crime, deduction and pursuit alone would not suffice.

He needed a map.

Not a chart of relationships, but an actual blueprint—one composed of steel, concrete, and hidden passageways.