Chapter 80: There Are Bones in the Pen’s Tip

The air in the restoration room seemed frozen at precisely six twenty-three in the morning.

The resonance platform worked in silence, transforming the last desperate traces left on the fragile carbon paper into sharp waveforms that danced across the screen.

Su Wan’s fingertips were cold as she imported the audio into the analysis software, slowly magnifying it until each peak soared before her eyes like mountains.

Old Jian adjusted the hearing aid perched on his nose. Murky eyes reflected the green glow of the screen. He closed them, immersing his entire mind in the rhythm long buried under dust.

Again, and again.

The sound was so faint it seemed the sigh of a century away, yet it persisted stubbornly, like pebbles tapping on a gravestone.

“This isn’t random tremor,” Old Jian’s eyes snapped open, his deeply wrinkled brow twisted into a knot.

He pointed at the screen, at the set of three short and one slightly longer waveforms, his voice rough with excitement, “This is deliberate repetition—three short shakes, one long. The interval between each is exactly point three seconds. He scraped the paper with his nails, imitating the rhythm of old telegraph—SOS.” His desiccated finger nearly touched the screen. “From the beginning, he knew someone would hear.”

The words dropped into Su Wan’s heart like a stone into a deep pool, sending ripples she could not quell.

She knew her father believed it too.

The clock read eight oh five.

Alone in the restoration room, Su Wan carefully turned over the decisive carbon paper.

She activated the ultraviolet source. The spectral blue glow descended, thin as frost.

At that moment, a miracle occurred.

On the seemingly blank reverse, faint white scratches emerged like ghosts.

They were not traces of ink, but something more desperate—a person’s fingernails, pressed deep into the fibers of the paper again and again, under terror and oppression, leaving the marks behind.

Su Wan held her breath and immediately began three-dimensional modeling.

On the computer screen, the scattered marks, uneven in depth, were captured, connected, and reconstructed by the software.

As the model spun, shifting light made the contours ever more distinct.

At last, they formed two characters, clear in Su Wan’s widened eyes.

Save me.

What chilled her further, the trajectory analysis showed the direction of these marks was entirely opposite to the writing on the front.

It meant, when the plea was inscribed, the paper was placed facedown.

In her mind’s eye, Su Wan saw it: a prisoner, in a fleeting moment of inattentive watch, reaching beneath the desk or to the side, guided only by touch and will, scraping the back of the paper with their nails, leaving this silent cry.

At ten forty, Lin Shuyue’s heels rang brisk and resolute down the corridor.

As soon as she entered, Su Wan led her to the screen, demonstrating in person the comparison of pressure traces.

Two signatures appeared side by side: one from Wei Chengyuan’s publicly filed documents, the pen pressure even and the strokes bold, brimming with confidence; the other from the critical document of the “Renxu Incident.”

“Look here,” Su Wan’s finger hovered over the magnified image. “Normal signatures flow in one stroke. But on this document, three spots show unnatural hesitation, matching perfectly with the forensic characteristics of coerced writing.” She wasted no time, calling up the resonance platform’s recreated signature video.

The virtual pen moved across the screen, perfectly replaying the force variation as the name was signed.

At those three points of hesitation, the tip seemed pressed down by an invisible hand, almost piercing the paper.

“This isn’t forgery,” Su Wan’s voice was chillingly calm. “It’s coercion. Someone held the pen, made him sign his name. He signed, but through the pressure of the tip, he told us with all his strength—he didn’t want to sign.”

Lin Shuyue’s gaze sharpened like a blade.

She stared at the recreated video, as if she could see through the screen to the sealed room of years ago, witnessing how Wei Chengyuan, in despair, branded his unyielding will onto the document that would decide his fate.

At two eighteen in the afternoon, sunlight spilled freely, but could not penetrate the dust-laden residence of Wei Chengyuan.

Lin Shuyue, holding a freshly issued search warrant, led two colleagues directly to the second-floor study.

The room was elegantly arranged, but oppressive, suffused with the scent of old books and time.

Trusting in Wei Chengyuan’s meticulous nature, Lin Shuyue missed nothing.

At last, her fingertips found a tiny protrusion behind a row of hefty legal tomes.

The secret compartment opened at her touch. No gold bars or files—only a logbook, its cover unmarked.

Lin Shuyue donned gloves, carefully leafing through it.

The entries were concise and lethal.

Her eyes locked on one page: July 19, 1992, eight thirteen in the evening, Wei Chengyuan spoke with Chen Yanting for forty-seven minutes.

At the margin, a scrawled pencil annotation, messy as if written in haste or distress: “Let 0719 enter alone, leave no witnesses.”

0719—the action code for Su Wan’s father.

“Photograph for evidence,” Lin Shuyue’s voice was low, but brooked no argument. She murmured to her colleague, “Now we have proof of the ‘order.’”

At six oh seven in the evening, the city was bathed in sunset orange.

In a stall in the archives restroom, Xiao Lin took a crumpled note from his pocket, about to rip and flush it, but his motion stalled.

He stared at his trembling hands, unable to control them.

Last night’s nightmare surged anew: he dreamed he stood before a raging fire, flames scorching his face, his hand clutching a cold lighter.

He was not the murderer, yet he had passed the flame.

A wave of nausea made him bend over.

After a moment, he straightened, refolded the note, and buried it deep in his pocket.

He opened his phone’s memo app, tapping a line onto the cold screen: I am not a tool.

Having done this, he stepped out, lifting his gaze as it brushed the hemispheric surveillance camera at the corridor’s end.

His stare lingered for half a second, in which something subtle changed—like a decision made, or a silent message sent to an unseen watcher.

At that same moment in the restoration room, Su Wan printed out the reconstructed “Save me” from the 3D model.

She walked to the wall and carefully affixed it beside her father’s yellowed black-and-white photograph.

The man in the photo wore a uniform, his smile gentle yet resolute.

Su Wan reached out, touching the frame, then the two words, whispering so only she could hear:

“We heard you.”

As night deepened, Lin Shuyue sat in her office, every piece of evidence spread before her: the analysis of the ashes, the plea hidden on the back of the carbon paper, the coerced signature, and the logbook that bore the fatal order.

The clues flowed like streams, converging to a single source—the man codenamed 0719.

All evidence stemmed from the traces he left, yet those traces led to the core question.

The order was found—but what of its execution?

Her fingers tapped the desk, eyes fixed on the words “leave no witnesses.”

Witnesses could be destroyed. But what of the principal evidence?

The man ordered to “enter alone”—he himself was the most crucial evidence.

Lin Shuyue’s tapping ceased.

She picked up the phone and dialed a number.

The moment the call connected, she spoke without hesitation, voice cold and clear.

“Prepare,” she said, “we need… a final witness.”