Chapter 8: Shadowed Ledgers and Superficial Facades

In the disciplinary committee's meeting room on the eleventh floor of the Jiangcheng Public Security Bureau, the cold white light spilled like frost, stretching and compacting Song Zhao's shadow against the dark gray tiles—a silent seal etched in dusk.

A chill, mingled scent of old wood and metal filing cabinets hung in the air, while the air conditioning hummed faintly, echoing the lingering wail of distant sirens.

He sat rigid on a hard-backed wooden chair, tailbone pressed against the edge, knuckles braced beneath his chin. His skin was feverish from countless sleepless nights.

His gaze swept over the eight-inch photograph on the table—a print of the rubber boot print he left at the slaughterhouse the previous night, clear against the rusted edge of the gut-sewing table. Tiny particles of rust bloomed into dark red stains on the photograph, resembling dried blood. In the lower right corner, the slaughterhouse's official stamp stood out bright red, its edges smeared as if by a damp finger.

"Comrade Song Zhao." Investigator Lao Zhou closed the dossier with a heavy thud, the leather cover striking the tabletop with a muffled smack that sent ripples through the water in the teacup.

His eyes, cold and stern behind his glasses, flashed a sharp white line of reflected light along his nose.

"You are currently suspended. Entering an unsealed crime scene without authorization and compromising evidence integrity are serious breaches of discipline."

Beneath the table, Song Zhao's fingers curled in on themselves, nails digging crescents into his palm.

He could hear the ticking of his wristwatch—tick, tick—a countdown.

He had anticipated Qian Shikang's retaliation. Before leaving the slaughterhouse last night, he had meticulously sealed every object he'd touched in evidence bags and marked even his footprints with luminol—the blue luminescence flickering in the dark like a secret vow.

Now, he drew an A4 sheet from his briefcase, sliding it steadily across the table. The edge of the paper made a faint rasp against the wood grain. "This is a compliance statement from Director Dong Lan of the Provincial Forensics Department regarding the handling of evidence."

Lao Zhou opened the document, his brow furrowing.

The rustle of paper was stark in the silence.

Inside were twenty schematic diagrams of the crime scene. Every spot touched by Song Zhao was outlined in dashed red, labeled as "Non-Core Evidence Area."

The ink was fresh, the lines precise—like a verdict hot off the printer.

At the end, Dong Lan’s electronic signature was affixed, timestamped at 3:17 a.m.—a result of her late-night audit after receiving an anonymous email. The paper was still faintly warm from the printer, a lingering heat under his fingertip.

"Public suspicion about the dismemberment case from five years ago is now justified," Song Zhao's voice was low and steady, as if delivering a field report, each word edged with a metallic chill. "If the police ignore public opinion, that is the true dereliction of duty." He tapped his phone, the bright screen glaring. Comments demanding thorough investigation scrolled endlessly, the red notification dots flaring like unextinguished sparks. "So tell me—which action better serves the department’s credibility: opening an investigation against me for 'unauthorized entry,' or reopening the dismemberment case?"

Lao Zhou’s pen stabbed a hole in his notebook, the bent tip bleeding ink that blossomed into a slow black flower.

He fixed his gaze on the bluish shadows beneath Song Zhao’s eyes, where the skin was thin as tissue, a web of veins visible beneath.

He suddenly recalled the man he’d seen three months ago in the hospital—Song Zhao, fresh from a third craniotomy, his vision blurred from cerebral edema, the ventilator’s rhythm blending with the EKG’s relentless beeping in a hush of death.

But now, those eyes blazed with the same light they had in the evidence center, hunched over fingerprints through the night—focused, unyielding, indisputable.

“No case will be opened for now.” Lao Zhou closed the dossier with a soft click, gentler now, a pardon in his tone. “But this is the last time.” As he pushed back the photograph, the edge grazed an old scar across Song Zhao’s hand—a thin line itching faintly, as if memory itself scraped by. “Remember, some people… are not to be provoked.”

When Song Zhao left the meeting room, his phone was burning against his thigh, the vibrations coming quick as a heartbeat.

The corridor lights flickered, the old circuitry sizzling softly.

He turned into the fire escape, the iron door clanging shut, its echo rebounding endlessly in the narrow stairwell.

A message from Forensic Examiner Chen flashed on his screen: "Old place, ten minutes." As the words appeared, the screen flickered low with battery.

In the evidence center’s basement, the vent droned endlessly, like a mechanical creature whispering secrets.

The air was thick—formaldehyde stinging his nose, laced with the dankness of concrete.

Chen hunched on a folding stool by the wall, the hem of his lab coat stained with yellowed formalin, edges curling like scorched leaves.

His skeletal hand pressed a kraft envelope, knuckles pale and taut, the lines of talcum from autopsy gloves still lingering beneath his nails.

"Five years ago, I signed off on Li Wenbin’s autopsy as 'multi-organ failure.'” He drew a stack of yellowed notes from the envelope, pages so brittle they threatened to crumble at a touch, ink faded and blurred, as if wept over. “But when I reassembled the body, I found a depressed fracture at the seventh vertebra—a blunt force injury.”

Song Zhao’s pupils tightened, a muffled hammer striking his eardrums.

He thought of his father’s old knife, the scabbard bearing a half-finger-long dent—left by an iron rod at a demolition site, the clang of metal on bone echoing in memory.

“The report was altered.” Chen’s Adam’s apple bobbed, his voice pressed low, seeping from the earth. “They changed ‘blunt force trauma’ to ‘sharp-force neural injury,’ then slipped in a psychiatric diagnosis.” Suddenly, he gripped Song Zhao’s wrist, nails biting deeply, the bones in his arm aching with pressure. “The night your father died, I kept vigil in the morgue. That knife was planted in his chest with surgical precision—deliberately mimicking the method from twenty years ago.”

A chill crawled up Song Zhao’s neck, cold sweat trickling down his spine, soaking his undershirt.

His father’s murder, two decades past, was officially labeled a ‘crime of passion,’ yet the scene lacked signs of struggle and the weapon bore only his father’s prints—strikingly similar to Li Wenbin’s psychiatric diagnosis.

“I hid these notes for five years.” Chen released his grip, thrusting the envelope into Song Zhao’s arms, its coarse edge scratching his chest. “If you dare to pursue the truth, I’ll stand with you.” As he rose, a faded silver cross fell from his pocket—the birthday gift Song Zhao had given him upon joining the team. The metal was scratched but still caught the light. “Remember—it’s not the truth they want, it’s that everyone who knows it… becomes part of it.”

In the library’s ancient book restoration room, the desk lamp shone at its brightest. Su Wan’s neck had been stiff for three hours, an iron needle of pain threading between her shoulders.

Before her lay three brittle account books from the Republican era, pages rustling like dead leaves as she turned them; seven annual reports from the Morninglight Foundation, the scent of ink and dust swirling in her nose; and a 1998 cadastral map projected under her magnifier, its edges curled.

Beneath the lens, the 2018 ‘equipment procurement’ entry for ‘Morninglight Foundation’ listed ‘Jiangcheng Machine Repair Station’ as the payee. On the map, that address—7 Zhaoyang Alley—was marked as the former site of the demolition office.

She held her breath, fingertips trembling.

A click—her pen rolled to the floor, metal cap bouncing twice into the shadows beneath the desk.

She bent to retrieve it and felt the chill of the floor, her fingers brushing a hard notebook—Song Zhao’s field log, its leather cover worn, its corners rounded, still warm from his grip.

She drew out a half-yellowed photo tucked inside: a young man in police uniform holding a tear-streaked little girl—herself at thirteen.

The photo’s edge was rough, her ears burned red as she sat up straight, heart pounding.

The red scanner light swept the repair shop’s business license—beeping softly. The ‘Zhang Jianguo’ in the legal representative’s field matched the arc and pause of Lin Haoyu’s signature perfectly—even in forgery, the old fox couldn’t lose the telltale hook at the end.

Her fingertip traced the screen, leaving a greasy smudge.

"They hide their crimes behind charity, launder money with repair bills," Su Wan murmured into the silence, her voice echoing like a sentence.

As she packed the files into an archive bag, dawn crept up the window, casting a slant of light across ‘Morninglight Foundation’—a shadow like an invisible knife, slowly descending.

Song Zhao was beneath the ginkgo tree outside the library when the anonymous email alert appeared.

The autumn wind rustled fallen leaves around his ankles.

His phone vibrated, the screen bathing his palm in blue.

His inbox held replies from three news outlets. The editor-in-chief of Jiangcheng Evening News had even called: "We’ve verified Li Wenbin’s records at the demolition office—he made frequent audit requests in the three months before his disappearance."

He pressed send, the phone confirming delivery.

At that moment, the city center’s LED screens began scrolling the Evening News headline: "Behind the Dismemberment Case: The Hollow Charity Money-Laundering Chain."

In Qian Shikang’s office, a crystal paperweight crashed against the window, cracks spiderwebbing across the glass.

His hand shook around his phone. Lin Haoyu’s confidant spoke through the receiver: “Li Wenbin’s name… only those who silenced him know it.”

“Find them!” Qian Shikang kicked over the rosewood tea table, incense rolling across the floor, bitter smoke thick in the air. “Dig as deep as you must—find the traitor!” He stared at the news, at the blurred tattoo in the photo—‘Brothers United’ inked with a flame motif identical to the one under his left rib.

At ten that night, Song Zhao’s phone buzzed on the coffee table.

A text from an unknown number made him narrow his eyes: “Want to see the full ledger? Tomorrow night, 8 p.m., old slaughterhouse boiler room.” The sender had already deleted their account, the signal traced to an abandoned relay station outside the city.

He was staring at the message when a video call from Su Wan came through.

Paper dust clung to her hair, dark circles shadowed her eyes—a look forged by sleepless nights.

“I found Li Wenbin’s daughter.” She opened a faded adoption record. “Li Xiaoyun. She was sent to Lin’s Charity Training Center in 2016. After that… all records vanished.”

Song Zhao’s thumb stroked the phone’s edge, the plastic polished smooth.

The slaughterhouse’s stench seemed to surge into his nostrils—the bloody suture, the stained USB stick, Chen’s words about ‘mimicking the method from twenty years ago’—all connecting in his mind.

“They don’t want to silence me,” he whispered, eyes on the night outside, voice barely above a breath. “They want to lure me in.”

At the alley mouth outside the library, a black sedan without plates pulled away.

The driver spoke into the radio, “Target received the text.” In the rearview mirror, Song Zhao’s silhouette stretched long beneath the streetlight, like a blade unsheathing.

Song Zhao’s phone vibrated again—Dong Lan’s message: “Say the word if you need backup.” He stared at the text, thumb pressing hard on ‘old slaughterhouse boiler room.’

Su Wan’s voice echoed through the video: “Be careful…”

But Song Zhao was already on his feet.

He sent the message screenshot to Dong Lan, his hands steady as if he’d never been summoned by the disciplinary committee: “They want me at the slaughterhouse—I’ll go.”

Wind lifted the curtains, sending the ‘Off-the-Books Account Flowchart’ fluttering on the coffee table.

The rustle of turning pages sounded like fate whispering.

At the bottom of the chart, ‘Lin Haoyu’ was circled over and over in red ink, a glaring mark in the night.