Chapter 87: You Are Not Cleaners, but the Source of Infection

At 6:40 in the morning, the western city recycling depot.

The stale reek of rust and the damp smell of mildew mingled in the cold air, stinging Su Wan’s nose.

She threaded her way past stacks of compressed newspapers and aluminum cans until, in the depot’s deepest corner, she found the “crazy old man” Little Lin had mentioned.

Old Zhang was curled up on a tattered military cot mattress, covered with several filthy cotton quilts that gave off a sour odor, like a hedgehog in hibernation.

Su Wan did not approach at once. She simply stood a few steps away in silence until the old man’s eyelids quivered in the morning light.

Only then did she go forward, crouch down, and offer him the carefully preserved yellowed photograph.

The edges of the photo were worn, but the seven youthful faces on it were still clear.

It was a group photo of the 1987 emergency response team: seven high-spirited young men, with the old archives building in the background.

At first Old Zhang’s cloudy eyes had no focus at all, but the instant he saw the photograph, his pupils contracted sharply.

His fingers, dry as branches, trembled as they reached out. He did not take the photo; instead, hovering an inch away, he gently traced each face in the air.

His lips moved, releasing broken wisps of sound, like an old radio searching for a lost frequency.

“Li Zhenbang... Wang Weiguo... Zhao Chunlai...” With each name he uttered, his fingers paused, as though touching a searing brand.

When his fingertips hovered over the smiling young man at the far right, his voice was hoarse to the extreme. “...and Song Jianguo.”

Su Wan’s heart skipped a beat. She said nothing, only waited patiently.

After he finished the last name, the old man seemed to have spent all his strength.

He slowly withdrew his hand, reached into the lining of the cotton jacket riddled with countless holes, fumbled for a long while, and took out a bundle of cigarette pack wrappers held together with a rubber band.

Not new cigarette packs, but the cardboard shells, carefully peeled open and flattened by someone’s hands.

He removed the band and spread the wrappers one by one over the dirty mattress.

On each sheet, a name had been written in rough charcoal, followed by a string of dates, and finally a hastily scrawled character meaning death.

“Li Zhenbang, year of Jia-shen, third month, twelfth day, died in a site collapse.”

“Wang Weiguo, year of Jia-shen, sixth month, ninth day, died at home from a gas leak.”

“Zhao Chunlai, year of Jia-shen, ninth month, twentieth day, died after falling into a river while drunk.”

Su Wan’s eyes swept over the records at speed, her heart sinking inch by inch.

Old Zhang raised his head. For the first time, his bloodshot eyes looked directly at her. There was no madness in them, only a fear so deep it had been boiled dry by time.

“I’m not crazy,” he said, word by word. “I just... don’t dare be awake.”

Su Wan took out her phone and photographed the cigarette wrappers one by one.

In the screen, the grain of the charcoal marks was sharp and distinct, as though one could feel the trembling in the hand that wrote them.

Six names. Six dates of death. Six fatalities recorded in official archives as “accidents.”

Yet when these dates overlapped with the timeline of the Rust Chain operation in her mind, every coincidence pointed toward a single, carefully arranged certainty.

At 10:03 in the morning, in the forensics center conference room.

On the giant display, two sets of brain scan slices stood side by side, the room’s grave faces lit by a cold blue glow.

Tang Yurou held a laser pointer, the red dot landing precisely on the left image’s temporal lobe and amygdala.

“This is Wei Chengyuan’s brain scan,” she said, her voice calm and clear. “What we’re seeing is an atypical, progressive atrophy. And on the right is the reconstructed lesion model based on biological data extracted from the remains file of Lu Chenzhou, a core member of the first generation of Rust Chain.”

The red dot moved to the right image, to nearly the same location, showing an astonishingly similar pattern of shrinkage.

“This pathology is exceedingly rare in clinical practice. It differs from Alzheimer’s disease and from frontotemporal dementia. Its hallmark is targeted atrophy of the amygdala, which governs higher emotion, empathy, and fear response, along with parts of the temporal lobe involved in memory and emotional processing. In plain terms, the patient’s emotions gradually numb; empathy falls almost to zero; meanwhile, the drive for control and paranoid behavior become abnormally amplified, and the person begins to construct a logically self-consistent ‘rationalization’ for extreme acts.”

Tang Yurou switched off the comparison image and brought up a new data model; on the screen, a tree-like map expanded rapidly.

“This is the annual physical examination record of the core members of Rust Chain’s third-generation successors. I tracked their neurological data changes. As you can see, the same neural features are spreading and inheriting at an exponential rate. This is not a random genetic mutation, nor is it a coincidence.”

She put away the laser pointer and turned to face Lin Shuyue and the others in the conference room, her gaze sharp as a blade.

“This is a pathological pattern transmitted through power structures. Long-term occupation of absolute, unsupervised power, imposing extreme mental and physical control over others—this behavior itself is like a virus that in turn corrodes the perpetrator’s brain. You thought Rust Chain was eliminating threats, but in fact you created a source of infection. You are not the cleaners. You are the new patients.”

The conference room fell into dead silence.

Lin Shuyue pressed her lips together tightly. After a moment, she suddenly stood up, her voice resolute. “I formally request that Wei Chengyuan be placed under compulsory custody immediately and undergo a full psychiatric evaluation.”

At 12:29 p.m., the interrogation room of the municipal detention center.

The cold metal table and chairs reflected the stark white light from the ceiling.

Wei Chengyuan sat opposite her, his expression as calm as ever, even carrying a hint of mockery.

“The babbling of a madman and an old photograph from thirty years ago—that’s your evidence?” He gave a cold smile at Lin Shuyue. “Thirty years have passed. Still someone believes a madman’s words?”

Lin Shuyue did not argue with him.

Silently, she took from the evidence bag the cigarette wrappers sealed in plastic, one, two, three... She lined up seven wrappers and taped them neatly to the bulletproof glass between them, directly in Wei Chengyuan’s line of sight.

Six bore death records; the last was blank.

The smile on Wei Chengyuan’s face slowly froze.

His gaze slid over the familiar names and dates, and something deep in his eyes began to churn violently.

When he saw those cigarette wrappers, his rock-solid composure finally showed a crack.

He stared fixedly at the charcoal writing, his Adam’s apple bobbing. After a long time, he forced out a nearly inaudible sentence through clenched teeth: “He... is still alive?”

Lin Shuyue caught the flash of shock that flickered across his eyes.

She replied lightly, her voice not loud, yet clear enough to pierce the glass: “Some memories can’t be sealed away by concrete.”

At 4:11 p.m., the old river lock gate.

The wind was fierce, carrying the dampness of the riverwater into the face.

Song Zhao helped the staggering Old Zhang to that enormous concrete sealed tomb.

This was where his father, Song Jianguo, had made his final sacrifice.

The old man’s knees went weak, and he dropped to the cold ground, turbid tears running down the furrows of his face.

He drew from his chest the last and only cigarette wrapper that had long remained blank. On it were written just four words, followed by two more: “Song Jianguo, seventh day of Renxu, not returned.”

With trembling hands he took out a small charcoal pencil stub and, with force, added a stroke to the wrapper, changing the character for “not” in “not returned” into “returned.”

Song Zhao did not disturb him. He only silently took out the recording pen he had always carried and pressed play.

A processed, looping voice sounded in the wind, hoarse yet unwavering: “Song reporting in.”

This had been clipped from the emergency communication channel back then—his father’s final voice.

“Song reporting in.”

Old Zhang’s body jolted hard.

Slowly he stood from the ground, like a weather-beaten stone statue. Facing the surging river, he gathered the last strength left in his life, opened his mouth, and toward the wind and rain and water, cried out hoarsely: “Present—!”

The shout pierced wind and water alike, as though crossing thirty years of time to complete a belated roll call.

In the distance, inside a box truck disguised as a municipal engineering vehicle, Little Lin silently adjusted the high-definition telephoto lens and recorded the entire scene.

At 7:55 in the evening, one of the relay nodes on the disciplinary inspection cloud server.

Su Wan’s fingertips danced across the keyboard; the data stream on the screen refreshed like a waterfall.

Suddenly, a red alarm code popped up.

Wei Chengyuan’s terminal had come back online.

“He’s still trying to connect to the detonation program!” Su Wan said grimly into the communicator to Lin Shuyue.

But she quickly noticed something was wrong. “Wait, the target has changed! It’s not the recycling depot... he’s switched the target to... the archives building’s main power hub!”

“Cut it off immediately!” Lin Shuyue’s voice came through.

“It’s too late; he’s using a backup line!” Su Wan made an instant decision. Her hands became blurs as she forcibly severed the connection at the physical layer, while at the same time implanting a tracking code she had written herself in reverse.

Three minutes later, the screen popped up with a precise IP location: Wei Chengyuan’s home, study.

Lin Shuyue personally led the team and raced into Wei Chengyuan’s house at top speed.

The door was smashed open, but the house was empty.

In the study, the computer was still on, and a cup of tea sat on the desk, still warm.

Under the teacup was a note, bearing only one line of scrawled writing:

“As long as no one mentions Renxu again, history will keep quiet.”

Almost at the same moment, at the forensics center.

Tang Yurou had just finished writing a report when she walked to the window and, as usual, looked out over the city at night.

Suddenly, her pupils contracted.

In the direction of the city center, on the rooftop of a building, the red emergency light marking the highest security level abruptly lit up, flickering in the darkness with ominous brilliance, like a bleeding eye.

It was the main command center building of the disciplinary inspection commission.

And that blinding red alarm could mean only one thing: the main control room had completely lost power.