Chapter 85: The Dead Teach the Living How to Breathe

The wind off the river cemetery carried the damp chill of water and bit to the bone.

Wei Chengyuan flung down his empty bottle and turned toward the sedan parked in the shadows.

The door opened soundlessly. The figure in the driver’s seat did not look back, only handed him an encrypted satellite phone.

“He’s triggered it,” came a metallic, processed voice through the line. “Song Zhao has already uploaded the files.”

Not a flicker moved across Wei Chengyuan’s face, as though he were listening to nothing more important than a weather report.

He gazed at the outline of the provincial high court building in the distance. Emergency lights blinked in the darkness like a stubborn star.

“That’s fine. Now I won’t have to find them one by one. When the kindling gathers together, it is easier to burn it all at once.” He paused, and his voice turned to ice. “Thirty years. This system should have been scrubbed clean long ago. Start the purification sequence. One-hour countdown.”

“Confirm initiation of purification? Elder Wei, this is the highest-level command. It cannot be reversed. Once it begins, the core physical layer of Jiangcheng Waterworks will be fused out. The city’s water network control will be set back thirty years, and the consequences...”

“Execute it.” Wei Chengyuan cut him off, his voice not loud, but heavy with finality.

He knew the consequences. That was exactly what he wanted.

Some secrets could not merely be buried in concrete. They had to be burned to ash, so that no one could even gather the remnants of their memory.

The call ended.

Wei Chengyuan leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes.

It seemed he could see once more that rainy night thirty years ago, when the young engineer Song had flushed with anger and demanded to know why he had tampered with the safety protocol, while Wu Zhiming, the taciturn operator, had only stood off to one side, fists clenched tight.

He had thought he had buried everything. He had never imagined that the dead would truly speak.

6:59 p.m.

Song Zhao had just finished configuring the encrypted route when Lin Shuyue’s phone began to buzz almost at the same instant.

The moment he saw the color drain from her face, a premonition of disaster seized his heart.

“Something’s happened,” Lin Shuyue said, her voice taut. “A friend in the water bureau’s internal security division just sent me a confidential message. The highest-level alarm has been triggered. A program called Purification has started. Fifty-nine minutes on the clock.”

Song Zhao’s pupils contracted. “Purification?” The word seemed familiar; he thought he had seen it in his father’s old notebook, where a skull had been drawn beside it in red ink, with the words ultimate incineration protocol written next to it.

He sprinted back to the dual-password terminal at once, his hands flying over the keyboard like a storm.

He bypassed layer after layer of disguised firewalls and forcefully breached the system’s lowest-level logs.

A line of blood-red code leapt into view, like a wound that could not heal:

Warning: the Missing-One Incineration protocol has been remotely activated.
Target: core unit of the main control valve.
Execution method: physical fusion.
Countdown: 00:58:17

“What does physical fusion mean?” Lin Shuyue pressed, a tremor in her voice.

Song Zhao’s face had gone white as paper. He forced the words through his teeth. “It means using the built-in high-temperature equipment to burn the entire control core of the main valve, together with the surrounding concrete base, into a lump of glass. When that happens, forget opening the valve—the whole Jiangcheng water system will be completely paralyzed. The flood season is about to begin. If the upstream waters come in and there’s no main valve to release them, half of Jiangcheng will be underwater.”

At last he understood.

This was Wei Chengyuan’s true contingency plan.

He did not care at all whether the files were exposed, because once he destroyed the source of everything—the valve—all traces would be buried under a catastrophe even greater.

He meant to entomb thirty years of crime beneath the safety of an entire city.

“How do we stop it?” Lin Shuyue forced herself to stay calm.

“Missing-One Incineration. The name itself is the answer.” Song Zhao pointed to a thirty-year-old record on the screen. “The system log says: Operator B, Wu Zhiming, carried out the valve-opening procedure. Operator A did not coordinate. System warning: Missing-One Incineration. That means this protocol was originally a safeguard. It required coordination between roles A and B to be解除d. Back then, Wu Zhiming operated alone, triggered the warning, but did not activate it. Now Wei Chengyuan has found a way to activate it remotely.”

“Operator A... is your father?”

“Yes.” Song Zhao’s voice was hoarse. “His access code was 0719. It was revoked thirty years ago. And Operator B, Wu Zhiming, is dead.”

There was a deathly silence.

One access revoked, one body dead.

It was a perfect deadlock.

Suddenly Lin Shuyue seemed struck by lightning.

She seized Song Zhao’s arm. “No! Wu Zhiming is dead, but his body is still alive! Tang Yurou’s report! His hand, his muscle memory!”

Song Zhao froze.

In his mind flashed the image from the forensic center: that arm slowly rising, forming precise gestures.

At the same moment, a thought so insane it was nearly absurd took shape in both their minds.

“Operator A’s authority is a password, a data stream. Operator B’s authority... is not a password, it’s an action!” Song Zhao’s voice shook with excitement. “My father’s backup drive has the access key from back then. And Wu Zhiming’s key... is the final movement he made before he died! We need both of these keys at the same time to stop Purification!”

Lin Shuyue immediately pulled out her phone and dialed Tang Yurou.

“Yurou, listen to me. This is an emergency of the highest order. We need Wu Zhiming’s body, now. Immediately. We have to take him to the water bureau control room!”

On the other end, Tang Yurou fell silent for two seconds, as if digesting this impossible request.

“Shuyue, do you even hear yourself? That body is now critical evidence, sealed under special protection by the provincial high court evidence center. Without a joint authorization from the Supreme Procuratorate and the court, no one can touch it. From application to approval, the fastest it could possibly be is forty-eight hours.”

“We don’t have forty-eight hours. We have fifty-five minutes!” Lin Shuyue barked into the phone. “In fifty-five minutes, the core of Jiangcheng Waterworks will be fused out! Tang Yurou, you believe in your science, and so do I. You said his body remembers. Now we need that body to complete one last task! Didn’t you say you wanted the dead to speak the truth? This is the truth!”

Tang Yurou drew a deep breath on the other end, and through the background noise came the harsh scrape of a metal cabinet being opened.

“The evidence center seals are electronic. If we force them, the alarm will go straight to the provincial department. And after electrical stimulation, the body’s muscular activity is already fading. I can’t guarantee it can still perform the exact same movement as before.”

“I don’t care! Handle it now. I’ll deal with the legal side!” Lin Shuyue hung up and immediately dialed another number. “Su Wan, it’s me. I need a favor. Use every connection you have to breach the provincial high court security system and give me a three-minute maintenance window. Location: the third basement level of the evidence filing center. Also, check every record of Wei Chengyuan’s authority changes in the water system safety protocol overhaul project thirty years ago. I need to know how he turned a safety lock into a self-destruct button!”

The order was crisp, decisive, and not to be questioned.

Across town, at the city archives.

Su Wan answered the call and, without another word, handed her current scanning work to Xiao Lin. She sat down at a computer by herself.

Her fingers flew across the keyboard, and code cascaded down the screen like a waterfall.

“I found it.” In less than two minutes she had an answer, and sent the file straight to Lin Shuyue. “June 1987. Wei Chengyuan, as chief consultant for the project, submitted a plan for redundant system safety upgrades. He added an independent remote port and changed the trigger authority for the Missing-One Incineration protocol from a conflict between the operating logic of roles A and B to remote one-way command activation. Back then, he had already planted the seed for today’s Purification.”

Listening from the side, Xiao Lin felt a chill run through him. He looked at the materials Su Wan had sent, then at the carving on the wall that read heard it.

All at once, he understood what the message A Ying had left behind meant.

What she had heard may not have been some conspiracy at all, but the very first cry of pain from the altered safety system deep beneath the city’s water network.

Forensic center.

Tang Yurou had already changed into sterile surgical gear. She stood before the evidence sealing room, holding a portable electrical stimulation device and a cold-storage case.

Looking at the infrared beams flashing over the door and the electronic lock, she told her assistant beside her, “Prepare the liquid nitrogen sprayer. Break the electronic lock. Whether we succeed or not, we leave in three minutes.”

She did not wait for any news from Lin Shuyue.

She knew that sometimes justice had to outrun procedure.

Time passed by the second. In the control room, the countdown sounded like the footsteps of death, pounding on everyone’s nerves.

00:41:03

Song Zhao inserted his father’s backup drive into Operator A’s terminal. A complex authentication interface appeared on the screen.

He took a deep breath and entered his father’s birthday, which was also his code: 0719.

Authentication passed. The screen shifted, and an icon shaped like a keyhole floated silently there, awaiting its other half.

Just then, the control room door was shoved open hard.

Tang Yurou and her assistant rushed in, pushing a mobile temperature-controlled bed covered with white cloth, with a panting Lin Shuyue behind them.

“We ran seven red lights on the way. The court summons is probably already on its way.” Lin Shuyue wiped sweat from her forehead, yet her eyes were frighteningly steady. “We only get one chance.”

Tang Yurou pulled back the white cloth, revealing Wu Zhiming’s right arm, already partly cleaned and showing clear muscle definition.

She quickly placed the electrodes of the portable electrical stimulator on the nerve nodes at his shoulder, elbow, and wrist.

“Once it leaves the low-temperature environment, the tissue’s activity will fade faster. By my calculation, we can only perform one complete, high-precision movement reconstruction at most.” Tang Yurou’s gaze was focused and calm, like a surgeon moments before the most delicate operation of her life.

She looked up at Song Zhao. “Where is the Operator B station?”

Song Zhao pointed to the dusty terminal nearby, which had only an old-fashioned palm-print scanner and a mechanical dial.

“There,” Song Zhao said. “My father’s notes mention that Operator B’s procedure is not button-pressing, but contact and rotation. You have to verify the palm print first, then turn the main dial at a specific angle and speed.”

Tang Yurou nodded, and with her assistant carefully lifted Wu Zhiming’s right arm, hovering it above the Operator B station.

00:13:49

Everyone’s heart rose into their throats.

“Begin,” Lin Shuyue said softly.

Song Zhao pressed the coordination confirmation key on Operator A’s terminal.

Tang Yurou activated the electrical stimulation program.

Current flowed in soundlessly, and the arm that had been dead for thirty years seemed to be infused with a soul.

Under everyone’s breathless gaze, it slowly descended, its pale, stiff palm fitting the scanner with perfect precision.

Beep—a soft sound, and the scanner light turned green. Identity confirmed.

Then the arm did not stop.

Guided by the faint current, its three fingers closed together, thumb turned outward, and precisely grasped the cold mechanical dial.

Then it began to turn.

Not at a uniform pace, but in a rhythm with a distinctive cadence.

Ninety degrees clockwise, pause for half a second, then thirty degrees counterclockwise, pause again... every angle, every pause, exact as a textbook diagram.

This was the movement Wu Zhiming had performed a thousand times in the final instant of his life.

His brain was dead, but his body—his most loyal muscles—had remembered it all for him.

When the dial reached the final angle, both the A and B terminals emitted a crisp click at the same time.

The blood-red countdown on the screen vanished instantly, replaced by a line of green system text:

Purification has been halted by dual-station coordination. System restored to safety monitoring mode.

It was done.

Silence fell over the control room, broken only by the low hum of equipment.

Song Zhao’s strength drained away all at once, and he nearly collapsed to the floor.

Looking at the arm that had fulfilled its mission and now hung quietly limp, he seemed to see his father and Wu Zhiming standing here thirty years ago, side by side, guarding the lifeline of this city.

They had not lost.

And yet the alarms did not stop there.

Almost the very second Purification was halted, an even sharper, more urgent alarm rang through the entire water bureau building.

Not an internal alarm, but an external intrusion alarm.

Su Wan’s voice came through Lin Shuyue’s phone, carrying a urgency unlike anything before. “Watch out! Wei Chengyuan hasn’t given up! What he just did wasn’t a single command, it was a dual command! While stopping Purification, he triggered his backup plan—he has issued an indiscriminate order to all first-level water stations in Jiangcheng to open their floodgates! He’s trying to manufacture a flood!”