Chapter 68: Shadow of the Severed Finger Lamp

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7:40 a.m., Duty Room, City Crematorium.

The iron pot on the kerosene stove simmered, steam from the porridge creeping up the mottled wall, drifting like a thin, silent mist. Old Qin sat on a wooden stool, a yellowed leather notebook pressed beneath his knee. His knuckles, deformed from years of gripping a broom, now turned pages with remarkable steadiness, each sheet bearing rubbings of shoe prints.

For three years, every midnight, he had crouched outside Furnace 7 in Section B, using charcoal powder, tape, and a camera to record footprints that should never have appeared there.

Seven sets.

All matched the sole patterns of “Lantern Slave” members reported by city police.

More disturbing was their schedule: every third and seventeenth day of the lunar month, just before the third quarter of the hour of the Rat, two people always appeared together, walking hurriedly, left heels worn as if dragging something heavy.

They never registered their presence, nor entered through the main gate.

Old Qin’s hands shook as he fished out his phone, focusing on one of the clear rubbings, ready to upload a photo. Dong Lan had given him an encrypted channel last night: report any abnormality, send a picture at once.

But just as he pressed the shutter, the screen went black.

Signal lost.

He jerked his head up. Outside, rain fell in gray sheets beneath a sky pressed oppressively low. The iron gate to the crematorium’s back alley creaked open. A license-plate-less pickup slid in without a sound, tires gliding through puddles, stirring hardly a splash—yet a chill shot up Old Qin’s spine.

The door opened. A figure stepped out, clad in a black raincoat, hat brim pulled low, carrying a rusted metal box—the very one left behind last night.

Swiftly, Old Qin tucked his notebook into a hidden compartment by the stove, the movement practiced a thousand times. Grabbing his broom, he feigned sweeping the threshold, but his gaze clung to the shadow.

The figure didn’t enter the main building, but walked straight for the rear yard’s cold storage, steps steady, route too familiar for an outsider.

“They have an inside man,” Old Qin muttered, jaw clenched, Adam’s apple bobbing.

He dared neither follow nor shout.

He knew: he was only a night watchman. Silence and memory had kept him alive this long.

But now, memory was a blade—its edge pressed to his throat.

8:05 a.m., City Bureau Command Van.

Dong Lan stared at the flickering fragments on her tablet—a blurred shoe print, a section of serial number, half a line of handwritten script.

The last frame before the signal died: a scratch on the wall outside “Section B, Furnace 7,” shaped like a crooked fisher’s lamp.

She immediately pulled up three months of surveillance and waste removal records around the crematorium, fingers flying over the screen.

Garbage trucks, hearses, family cars—all seemed normal.

Until she noticed: every Wednesday at 2:15 a.m., a box truck marked “Jiangcheng Funeral Services” drove into the back alley, loading an oversized freezer, the manifest listing “preservation consumables.”

But the crematorium did not offer long-term body storage.

She bundled the data and sent it, encrypted, to Su Wan. In under three minutes, a reply came.

[“Jiangcheng Lantern Customs Notes,” page three, marginalia: “Lanterns sent at midnight, cold box holds souls—no burial, but passage.”]

Dong Lan’s pupils contracted.

The “lantern sending” was a ritual, “soul holding” a facade, “passage” the truth—this wasn’t corpse transport, but moving “Lantern Slaves.”

A temperature-controlled freezer could keep a child alive for hours, enough to move them from the crematorium to a secret transfer station on the city outskirts.

She dialed Song Zhao. No answer.

Location check: he’d left his post, his last signal vanishing near the edge of the old industrial district in the north.

“He’s gone there…” Dong Lan murmured, fingers drumming hard on the table. “He knows something I haven’t seen.”

9:17 a.m., Abandoned Cold Storage Perimeter.

Rainwater dripped from rusted gutters. Song Zhao crouched by the ditch, tactical gloves pressed to the ground, palm over a lighter—the only personal belonging of A Qiang not destroyed.

He had once used it to light the oil lamps at the Fisherman’s Lantern Festival, during that sacrificial ceremony.

Song Zhao closed his eyes, fingers brushing the metal casing.

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A golden pattern flickered deep within his pupils.

The “Eye of Truth” opened.

The vision cut in: a dim corridor, damp walls, exposed pipes overhead.

Two guards pushed a stretcher ahead, their steps heavy.

A corner of the sheet lifted, showing a thin, pale wrist—a five-petaled lotus burned into the inner skin, marked “Wu Three.”

Whispers sounded nearby, indistinct, with an eerie cadence, like some ancient scripture chanted out of tune.

The vision ended.

Song Zhao’s eyes snapped open, cold sweat rolling down his brow.

A hammering headache struck, but he didn’t rub his temples.

What stunned him was—the chanting hadn’t faded with the vision’s end.

It lingered.

Faint as spider silk, weaving in his ears, intermittent, yet constant.

He suddenly realized: this wasn’t mere scene residue.

This was an evolution of “emotional anchoring.”

Before, he could only see the last twenty seconds through physical evidence; now, in extreme circumstances, intense emotions could transfer through objects, leaving lasting mental imprints.

This lighter had passed through many hands—fear, obedience, fanaticism from the ritual layered upon layer, forming an invisible thread pointing to the heart of the cold storage.

Song Zhao rose slowly, staring at the long-abandoned freezing plant before him.

Vines choked the exterior, the lock rusted shut, but the grate over the ventilation shaft bore fresh pry marks.

He drew a yellowed blueprint from his pocket—an old industrial layout of Jiangcheng Su Wan had sent last night, a “maintenance tunnel” marked in red.

“They thought the lanterns were out,” Song Zhao murmured, voice swallowed by wind and rain. “But they forgot—someone can see the fire in the ashes.”

10:03 a.m., Cold Storage Mezzanine.

The air reeked of mold and metallic tang. Song Zhao crept along the wall, night vision rippling green.

The maintenance tunnel was narrow and damp. Condensation dripped onto his shoulder from overhead pipes, ticking like a countdown.

He held his breath, each step matching the space between heartbeats.

Deeper in, all light vanished.

He removed the night vision, pulled out a tactical flashlight, wrapped the lens in his sleeve to shield all but a thin gleam.

The beam swept a corner—and for an instant, he thought he saw a crypt.

Dozens of grayish boxes stacked neatly, shaped like urns but etched with dense numbers and symbols.

He crouched, touching the nearest box. “Wu Three” was etched clearly.

A perfect match for Su Wan’s decoded “Lantern Slave” system.

Strangest of all, each box contained a miniature temperature regulator, faintly warm to the touch, as if not ashes, but living breath was sealed inside.

“Live transport…” Song Zhao muttered, the taste of iron in his throat.

They used the funeral system as cover, disguising trafficked children as corpses for transfer.

Urns were shells, children the cargo, “passing on” a ruse, “peace” the sign for a slaughterhouse.

He pushed deeper. His foot caught on a loose board.

Beneath, an old tape recorder, its case dust-caked, but the battery compartment showed fresh signs of use.

He pressed play.

Static hissed, crawling into his ear like a serpent’s tongue.

Then a deep, distorted voice, altered but with that familiar icy chill:

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“The seventeenth batch, southern line sets out, cargo beneath the lantern.”

Song Zhao’s pupils contracted.

It was Xiao Zhou—the mysterious “lamp lighter” at the Fisherman’s Lantern Festival, Lin Haoyu’s shadowed executor.

For three years, police had never caught his real voice, and now this tape seemed bait, left on purpose.

He reached to pull the tape, when a metallic scraping sounded from the vent.

Very faint, yet as clear as fingernails on bone.

He killed the flashlight, pressed himself against the wall, heart sinking into his chest.

Night vision back on—at the stairwell, the iron grate slowly swung open.

Three figures descended, all in gray robes, faces masked in pallid death masks, bloated like drowned men.

Their steps matched, breaths shallow—not quite alive, more like puppets roused by some ritual.

The leader’s left hand hung at his side—little finger missing, the cut clean as if by a blade.

Song Zhao’s breath caught.

The severed finger… just as Su Wan had found in ancient texts describing the “Lantern Master’s Pact”: each master must sever one finger in sacrifice, to gain absolute control over the “Lantern Slaves.”

This was the current master.

But as the man stepped onto the final stair, Song Zhao’s “Eye of Truth” flashed open—golden patterns shimmering in the dark. Instinctively, he reached for an oil-stained rag on the floor.

The vision began.

A dim room. The fingerless man placed a bloody finger bone into a bronze lantern stand, chanting scripture.

The lamp’s flame flickered, casting on the wall a map—the entire secret funeral network beneath Jiangcheng, seven nodes marked with fisher lamps; one, glowing red.

The vision ended, pain drilling into his temple.

But he had seen it—the node: the city’s western crematorium.

At that moment, the three “Lantern Slaves” spread through the mezzanine, checking the boxes.

The master slowly turned, facing Song Zhao’s hiding spot, as if sensing his presence.

Song Zhao edged back, foot brushing a loose stone.

The faint roll thundered in the silence.

The master’s head snapped up.

No more hesitation—Song Zhao stuffed the recorder away, retreating fast along the route he came.

He knew he was marked.

But this bait, he had to swallow—for the list A Qiang burned before death, for Su Wan’s decoded shoe prints, for Old Qin’s three years of records—all pointed to a larger web.

And at its center, something was waking.

He burst from the tunnel into heavy rain.

His phone buzzed; a text from an unknown number flashed on screen:

“A Qiang burned three lists before he died. You only got one.”

He looked up sharply. In the rearview mirror, a hearse slid silently into the street.

The rooftop sign read, “Peaceful Passing,” but in the window’s reflection, the passenger’s wrist bore a five-petaled lotus.

His hand shook as he pressed the comm key, connecting to Old Qin’s encrypted channel.

“Old Qin, are you still alive?”

No answer. Only static, and the broken hum of a child’s voice—

“Fisher’s lamp at midnight, souls cross without a bridge…”