Chapter 99: The Night the Rusted Lock Opened

The first faint rays of dawn pierced through the dust, tracing mottled patterns in the air.

Song Zhao stood before the ruins of his father’s office. The scorch marks on the metal door panel looked like a frozen scar.

The lock was new—cold and unfamiliar—but he paid it no mind.

He pressed his side against the wall, his fingertips searching the charred cracks between the bricks. That familiar texture stirred memories of childhood games of hide-and-seek.

Soon, his fingers brushed against a cold, hard foreign object.

With a sharp tug, a half-rusted spring leaf popped free, resting in his rough palm.

The flames from that night fifteen years ago seemed to still burn in his hand.

His father had used the precise force of the Southern Branch Fist to shake the door hinge loose, trying to pry open a path with this most primitive tool.

Song Zhao’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he dipped the spring leaf into a small bottle of electrolytic solution he carried.

Rust quickly peeled away; the liquid bubbled murkily. A tiny, nearly invisible engraving slowly emerged on the metal surface.

He raised his portable magnifier, his pupils contracting sharply.

R08.

This was not an equipment number.

Emergency team gear numbers began with the letter “E.”

This was a personnel sequence code.

The official list of the “Renxu Emergency Team” ranged from R01 to R07—all seven had perished.

Song Zhao’s heart clenched as though gripped by an invisible hand; suffocation surged instantly.

It had never been seven. There were eight.

One ghost entirely erased from the system, denied even a place on the death roster.

At the same time, three floors below the city archives, the air was thick with the strange scent of old paper mixed with preservatives.

Lin Wan, wearing white gloves, carefully placed a tattered approval document from 1999—the founding order for the Emergency Response Center—under an infrared scanner.

The edges of the paper were chewed away like a torn map by bookworms, but the signature section remained intact.

As the infrared beam slowly passed over, the faded ink gradually sharpened on the screen, like a phantom rising from the abyss of time.

The first seven signatures were bold and firm, the handwriting of Song Zhao’s father’s generation.

Beneath the seventh, in a corner nearly devoured by holes, an eighth signature stubbornly appeared: Lu Chen.

The handwriting in the position column was more blurred, but after careful analysis, Lin Wan identified the words: “On-site Evidence Archiving Specialist.”

This was a logistical role—a minor one—like a screw unnoticed on a machine. Precisely for this reason, he had not been listed among the core action team.

Lin Wan immediately connected to the internal system, cross-referencing the missing persons database over the years.

After several minutes, a record popped up: Lu Chen’s last registered address—Dormitory No. 3 in the old mining area on the western outskirts of Yunjiang City.

When Song Zhao received the message, the midday sun blazed fiercely.

Without hesitation, he set out to investigate.

Tang Yurou had somehow caught wind of it and joined him, her reasoning airtight: “Any conclusions drawn without returning to the scene are castles in the air. My pathological narrative requires a complete chain of evidence.”

The old mining area was deathly silent in the afternoon. The wind moaned through broken window frames.

The dormitory corridor was cluttered with debris, each step raising choking dust.

Following the address, they found Lu Chen’s room.

Inside, it was empty save for an old wooden bed thick with dust.

Song Zhao rapped his knuckles on the bedboard; the sound was unusually dull in one spot.

He pried up the board to reveal a tightly sealed iron box wrapped in oilcloth nestled within the cavity.

The box was unlocked.

Inside lay a work log and a miniature tape recorder.

Song Zhao’s heartbeat spiraled out of control.

He flipped open the log. Lu Chen’s handwriting was delicate and neat at first, but grew increasingly erratic, as if the writer’s soul was caught in a tempest.

The last entry was dated the night before the fire.

“11 p.m.: Received oral orders from Deputy Director Zhou Zhengsheng to immediately seal all original operation logs of the D7 cabin’s central refrigeration system and hand them over directly to him. The order was abnormal; per protocol, such evidence transfer requires dual signatures and system entry. I copied the backup data and hid the original.”

Song Zhao’s breath caught for a moment.

He picked up the small recorder and pressed play.

After a burst of static, a voice, trembling and choked with fear, emerged.

“They said... said it was a highest-level fire drill... all passages sealed. But I saw—through the vent’s slit—I saw Shen Wei’s men moving things... bodies covered with white cloth... evidence, I can’t let this evidence go to sleep with me...”

The recording paused for several seconds. Then the voice, summoning its last strength, recited a phrase like a prophecy.

“Unbent is the inverted branch; its root lies deep in the earth.”

Song Zhao’s fingertips shook violently.

That phrase—the first maxim of the Southern Branch Fist’s core principles—had been personally passed down by his grandfather.

The ride back was oppressively silent.

Tang Yurou, wearing headphones, replayed the recording repeatedly.

After a long while, she took off the headphones and fixed Song Zhao with a grave gaze.

“There’s a very low-frequency vibration in the background—about 25 hertz, sustained and rhythmic. I cross-checked all the emergency center’s large equipment parameters. That frequency matches only the aged resonance frequency of the German-made compressor in the D7 biochemical experimental chamber.”

She paused, enunciating carefully.

“This means Lu Chen was inside—or very close to—the refrigeration room of the D7 cabin when he recorded this. He likely hid there long-term, using medical stethoscope-like devices to capture all abnormal compressor data. These data are the most critical counter-evidence that could activate the ‘Echo Project.’ They were embedded in the master tape.”

Song Zhao slammed the brakes hard; the car screeched piercingly on the empty highway.

He finally understood.

Lu Chen was not a passive victim who disappeared. He was a lone warrior who deliberately plunged into the darkness.

He used his logistical identity—the system’s most overlooked blind spot—to guard the most dangerous evidence.

He was not the eighth casualty. He was the sole witness to the entire fire, an undiscovered “silent witness.”

That night, Song Zhao handed Chen Yan a photocopy of Lu Chen’s log and a drawing he had sketched himself.

On the drawing, eight police badges formed a circle. Next to the seventh badge hung a new one, numbered “R08.”

Chen Yan stared at the drawing, silent for a suffocatingly long time.

Finally, in a near-whisper, he said, “There’s no record of him in the disciplinary system... but I’ll immediately initiate a review procedure to have the name ‘R08’ entered where it rightfully belongs.”

No sooner had Chen Yan left than Song Zhao’s phone rang—it was Shen Yan.

Her voice was urgent.

“Song Zhao, during an inventory of an old warehouse belonging to the Wei Foundation, an unregistered special protective suit was found, identical to those used by the emergency team back then. Most crucially, inside the pocket was a small cotton label with only one character sewn on—Lu.”

Song Zhao cut the call and walked to the window.

The city’s myriad lights spread before him, like an endless sea of stars.

He suddenly spoke, as if to himself, or perhaps to the night itself.

“We always thought we were chasing the truth. Now we realize the truth has been waiting for us all along—waiting for us to read every signal it left behind.”

His words had barely fallen when a night breeze slipped through the window crack, carrying a chill that lingered by his ear like a reply twenty years overdue.

At that moment, his phone vibrated again.

The screen showed Chen Yan’s number.

Song Zhao answered, hearing only a calm, unwavering voice.

“Song Zhao, you have thirty minutes to prepare. The car is waiting downstairs.”