Lu Chenzhou’s fingertips pressed a white mark into the edge of the reader. The screen’s blue light stabilized, illuminating the dust piled in the corner of the archive area. The title pierced his retina like an ice pick: *'Project Swallow' Feasibility and Risk Simulation (Draft) — Lu Chenzhou*. The date was three months before he went to prison. His fingers slid, scrolling the document rapidly. Scene simulations, timeline extrapolations, psychological profiles… Every detail of Shen Yan’s murder case found its counterpart in this seven-year-old report. Not a coincidence. A blueprint. The model for a “perfect crime” he had conceived back then had been transplanted into reality, word for word, unchanged. A dull impact thudded against the outer blast door. *Thump.* Gu Zhixing’s men were using a battering ram. The vibration traveled along the alloy doorframe, causing dust to sift down, clinging to the drying blood on his temple. The air smelled of ozone and the must of old paper. He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. The wound below his ribs throbbed with a sharp pain. “You were always my most outstanding student.” The voice came from the depths of the archive area, gentle, clear, carrying a relaxed quality akin to a casual chat in a study. Above the main console, a holographic projector activated silently. Blue-white particles of light coalesced and wove in the air, outlining a figure dressed in dark loungewear. Shen Yanqing stood with his hands clasped behind his back before a virtual bookshelf, as if he had merely happened by. The edges of the image flickered slightly, emitting a high-frequency, almost inaudible hum. His holographic image turned its face, its gaze landing on the reader in Lu Chenzhou’s hand, a trace of something akin to satisfaction curving the corner of his mouth. “Your thinking provided me with the most perfect blueprint.” Lu Chenzhou didn’t move. He tightened his grip on the reader, its metal casing pressing against the wound in his palm. “This simulation…” he began, his voice raspy like sandpaper, “I submitted it to an internal seminar back then as an extreme case study for crime prevention. It should have been archived, sealed, or directly destroyed.” “And so?” Shen Yanqing tilted his head slightly, the jade thumb ring glowing with a warm green in the virtual light. “A tool itself has no good or evil. A knife can chop vegetables, or it can kill. Your simulation… it was too precise. So precise it felt like a waste not to use it.” “No.” Shen Yanqing shook his head, the image rippling subtly with the motion. “I merely… ‘referenced’ it. The ones who truly acted, the executors of those details… they, like you, were all gears driven by their own desires.” He took a step forward. The holographic image passed through an archive shelf without hindrance, “standing” three paces away from Lu Chenzhou. Virtual eyes stared into real ones. “In these seven days, you’ve traced the scene evidence, profiled the killer’s psychology, reconstructed the crime process.” Shen Yanqing’s tone was even, as if stating a long-proven theorem. “Every step of your deduction, every breakthrough, unconsciously verified the precision of this blueprint. Lu Chenzhou, tell me—” He paused, the cold light of the screen reflected in his virtual pupils. “—are you hunting a murderer, or are you completing the ‘masterpiece’ you left unfinished years ago?” The wound beneath his ribs suddenly burned. He remembered the eerie sense of familiarity standing at Shen Yan’s death scene. The optimal paths that automatically surfaced in his mind when deducing the scene’s structure. The near-intuitive “resonance” when profiling the killer. Those moments he had attributed to professional expertise were now all stained a different color. The battering ram’s impact grew heavier. The blast door groaned under the strain, a metallic sound of protest. Dust fell like snow, settling on his shoulders, sifting into the seams of the reader’s screen. He looked down, reading the concluding line of the profile he himself had written seven years ago in the document: *«The perpetrator will revel in this sense of control and will view the scene as a ‘masterpiece’ requiring meticulous completion.»* “You set me up,” Lu Chenzhou lifted his head, the twitch in his left eye spreading to half his cheek. “Starting seven years ago.” “Set you up?” Shen Yanqing smiled, the smile holding a regret that bordered on pity. “I merely… foresaw the possibility. Your talent, your obsession, your pathological pursuit of ‘perfect logic’—they were destined to lead you somewhere. I simply placed a mirror at that destination in advance.” He raised his The metal casing landed with a sharp *clack* on the dusty floor, its blue light illuminating a patch of damp mold at his feet. He leaned back against the file rack, slowly sliding down to sit, the back of his head resting against the cold metal partition. The wound struck the edge, a stabbing pain making him grunt softly. Shen Yanqing’s first attack had precisely shattered the cognitive foundation upon which he stood. He wasn’t fighting an external killer, but a ghost long buried within his own mind. The process of chasing the murderer had become a ritual for the ghost’s reappearance. The hologram watched him quietly, waiting for an answer. “Law, morality, justice… these are all fragile masks.” Shen Yanqing’s voice echoed in the archive area, each word like a precise nail. The hologram leaned forward slightly, as if trying to pierce the virtual boundary and directly scrutinize Lu Chenzhou’s soul. “I put on the mask and established an order that allows countless people to live and work in peace.” He paused, the jade thumb ring on his left hand slowly turning in the blue light. “Schools, hospitals, roads, water, electricity… every breath of air you take, every street you walk on, operates within this order.” The wound under his ribs throbbed, each inhalation feeling like a dull knife scraping. He closed his eyes, his eyelashes casting fragmented shadows on his face, dusted with grime and dried blood. In his mind, the words of that feasibility report were still burning—*‘Project Swallow’ Feasibility and Risk Assessment*. His own handwriting. His own logic. His own… blueprint. “And you,” Shen Yanqing’s voice lowered, carrying a gentleness that bordered on regret. “You want to tear off the mask. Even if the order collapses, even if this city turns back into a jungle, even if those ‘ordinary people’ you keep claiming to protect are the first to be trampled to death—is this the justice you want?” In the brief silence, Lu Chenzhou heard the sound of his own heartbeat. *Thump. Thump. Thump.* Like a beast trapped in an iron cage, futilely crashing against its ribs. The banging grew louder. The shriek of deforming metal mixed with the heavy thuds, dust sifting down from the ceiling seams. Gu Zhixing was accelerating. Time was running out. “You and I,” Shen Yanqing said, his voice carrying a clear interrogative tone for the first time. “Who is more hypocritical? Who is more cruel? Who is truly guarding something?” His fingernails dug into an old wound, the pain crawling up his nerves like a cold thread, barely holding onto his fading consciousness. He tried to think. His brain felt like gears soaked in ice water, each turn sluggish and heavy. Shen Yanqing’s logic was too perfect. Perfect… like a feasibility report he himself would write. If emotions were stripped away, only gains and losses calculated. If human lives were converted into numbers, suffering discounted as cost. If “the greatest happiness for the greatest number” could truly become a ruler to measure who should live and who should die— Then, were his seven years of wrongful imprisonment also a reasonable “cost”? Was his sister’s surgery fee also a kind of “necessary sacrifice”? “Order needs maintenance,” Shen Yanqing continued, his tone returning to that composed, lecture-like steadiness. “Just like a garden needs pruning. Weeds must be pulled, pests must be eliminated. Some trees grow too crooked, blocking the sunlight—they must be cut down too. Would you cry for a tree? Would you rage over a patch of weeds?” He saw Zhou Zhengping’s face. The old detective spinning that old enamel cup in the dim warehouse, its rim chipped with tiny marks. He said, “Jingyuan, some things, once you know them, you carry them for a lifetime.” When he said this, his eyes looked out the window, as if gazing at a distant place that didn’t exist. When the gas mask filter was shoved into his hand, those hands were rough, calloused, yet steady without a single tremor. Old Wu said nothing, just patted his shoulder and turned to walk down another fork in the road. The explosion at the end of that road never stopped echoing afterward. In the last half-second before the encrypted comms cut off, her hurried breath mixed with the static: “…Be careful.” Only two words. No explanation, no promise, not even an address. But Lu Chenzhou knew it was a key she handed over, staking her career—perhaps more. These faces. These voices. These moments so brief they were almost negligible. In Shen Yanqing’s “orderly garden,” Zhou Zhengping was probably a crooked tree that needed cutting down. Old Wu was a pest that must be eliminated. Qin Wangshu… perhaps Shen Yanqing's expression remained unchanged. But Lu Chenzhou saw that the frequency with which he rubbed his thumb ring had quickened ever so slightly. "Built upon my seven years of wrongful imprisonment," Lu Chenzhou continued, each word forced painfully from his throat, tasting of blood. "Built upon the silence and sacrifice of countless 'Zhou Zhengpings,' 'Old Wus,' and 'Qin Wangshus.' It was festering from the moment it was born. You've just covered the stench with more corpses." Shen Yanqing smiled, a smile so perfect it was chilling. "Sacrifice is the price of order. Shen Yan understood this, which is why he chose sacrifice." He paused, his virtual fingers tapping lightly on a nonexistent desk. "You don't understand, so you suffer. But suffering itself is part of order's selection process—it weeds out those components... not resilient enough." Lu Chenzhou stared at the precise curve of the hologram's lips. Too standard. As if measured with a ruler. But when he said, "Shen Yan understood," that curve had exhibited an extremely minute, almost imperceptible stiffness. His heart gave a violent lurch, like a drowning man suddenly grasping a piece of driftwood. Pain, exhaustion, and self-doubt were still tearing at him, but that driftwood had appeared. A crack. The first crack in Shen Yanqing's flawless logic. "He didn't," Lu Chenzhou said, his voice still hoarse, but no longer trembling. The archive area fell into a brief silence. Only the hum of the hologram and the increasingly urgent pounding against the gate door remained. Dust settled slowly in the blue light. "The USB drive," Shen Yanqing finally spoke, his tone still steady, though the speed of his thumb-rubbing increased by another half-beat. "Was his final... act of willfulness." Lu Chenzhou braced himself against the archive shelf and slowly stood up. His injured leg trembled, but he forced himself upright. His back pressed against the cold metal; the chill seeped through the fabric, sobering him instead. "It's evidence," he said. "Proof that your order couldn't even earn the genuine approval of your closest successor. He'd rather hide the truth on a USB drive and give it to an 'outsider' than let it rot in your carefully maintained garden." "Shen Yan did not 'understand' your theory of sacrifice. He feared it. Detested it. So he left this—" Lu Chenzhou kicked the reader at his feet, its screen flickering blue. "—as a trace that he resisted. Even if that resistance was as faint as a sigh, it existed." Shen Yanqing's hologram displayed its first unscripted pause. A pause. Like a program suddenly encountering an unresolvable command, requiring an extra processing cycle. Though it lasted only half a second, though his expression remained perfect, Lu Chenzhou saw it—a crack had opened in that perfect shell of ice. Through that crack, he glimpsed something else. Not anger. Not mockery. Not even killing intent. A profound, bottomless exhaustion, deep enough to swallow everything. Like a person who had carried a mountain alone for so long, they had forgotten what it felt like to put it down, so long they had begun to believe the mountain was part of their own body. Shen Yanqing's philosophy. Shen Yanqing's order. The "garden" Shen Yanqing had built with countless corpses and lies—its most fatal flaw was not a logical loophole, nor moral bankruptcy. It had excised all emotional connections, including his own. It reduced the world to components and gears, so the guardian himself became a component. No warmth. No resonance. No... semblance of what a human should be. It was this cold machine finally beginning to devour its own operator. "Your order," Lu Chenzhou said, his voice soft, yet like a thin blade. "Is a castle in the air. No foundation, just an ever-growing pile of corpses. The higher you pile it, the more spectacular its collapse." For the first time, those virtual eyes lacked their condescending pity. Replacing it was a complex, almost scrutinizing focus. Outside the gate door, the pounding suddenly turned into a screech of tearing metal. A crack appeared on the alloy surface, letting in the flickering beams of flashlights from outside. Lu Chenzhou's fingernails dug into his palms. The pain was like a fine needle, piercing through the fog woven by Shen Yanqing's words. That unnatural stiffness, which had flashed across the hologram's lips when Shen Yanqing mentioned "Shen Yan understood." It wasn't a program error. It wasn't signal lag. It was something deeper, a hairline crack on the flawless mask of order. "No," Lu Chenzhou spoke, his voice raspy, yet like iron tempered in fire. "Shen "He left this." Lu Chenzhou raised the silver USB drive in his hand; the cold light from the screen slid across its metal surface. "He left the key to this place, left everything you tried to erase. Your order—even your closest heir couldn't genuinely embrace it. It is the true castle in the air." Only the "Thud! Thud!" of the external battering ram striking the gate remained, like the heartbeat of some colossal creature, growing faster and heavier. Dust sifted down from the ceiling seams, landing on Lu Chenzhou's shoulders, falling onto the mountains of archive boxes that recorded countless lives swallowed by "order." The musty smell grew stronger. The odor of decaying, aged paper mixed with the metallic tang of cooled metal, and a faint, almost imperceptible scent of dust from the outside world seeped in through the ventilation ducts. The jade thumb ring on Shen Yanqing's left thumb stopped its rubbing, resting motionless at the base of his finger. The eyes gazing at Lu Chenzhou through the projection remained calm, but something deep within was reassessing. Recalculating. "Interesting." Shen Yanqing finally spoke, his tone restored to that gentle, almost casual ease, but his pace was half a beat slower. "You seized that moment. Very good. This shows you are truly 'understanding,' not simply 'resisting.'" He took a step forward—a simulated motion of the hologram, making his figure seem to pass through a corner of the archive shelves, blue light casting flickering, illusory shadows on the metal surfaces. "But you are still wrong." Shen Yanqing continued. "Shen Yan left that USB drive not because he opposed order. On the contrary, it was because he desperately wanted to become a qualified heir to that order. He saw the 'imperfections' within the order, saw those branches that needed 'pruning.' He believed he had the ability, after inheriting it, to make this machine run more... elegantly, with fewer of what you call 'festering sores.'" He paused, his gaze falling on the USB drive in Lu Chenzhou's hand. "He merely overestimated his own ability and underestimated the backlash of the 'pruning' process itself. What he left behind was not a declaration of rebellion, Lu Chenzhou, but an... unfinished handover report. A letter of allegiance attempting to prove to me that he had the capability to handle the 'historical leftover problems.'" Lu Chenzhou's breath caught for an instant. Not because of Shen Yanqing's words, but because of the logical chain implied within them—if Shen Yan had truly been investigating as an "heir," then who was he investigating? What were the "historical leftover problems" he was trying to "prune"? The date on the deduction report inside the USB drive was three months before his imprisonment. A terrible thought, like ice water, crept up his spine. "You used him." Lu Chenzhou said, his voice dry. "You used his desire for 'perfect order,' guided him to investigate those... 'problems' even you couldn't conveniently touch personally. You gave him my deduction report as a 'reference template.' You made him believe he was cleaning house for the family, paving the way for the future transfer of power." He paused, took a deep breath; the dust and mustiness in the air made his throat itch. "But in reality, you were using his hand to finish what you didn't complete back then. To test the feasibility of that 'blueprint.' To... create a perfect, usable 'sample' for framing." Shen Yanqing smiled. Not that cold, formulaic smile, but a genuinely appreciative one, almost pleased. "See," he said, his voice even carrying a trace of imperceptible warmth. "This is why I say you are my most outstanding student. Your mind always pierces through the surface, directly reaching the core." He raised his hand, his virtual finger lightly tapping in the air, as if flipping through an invisible book. "But you still missed one point, Jing Yuan." Shen Yanqing used his courtesy name, his tone almost intimate. "I did not 'guide' Shen Yan. I merely... gave him an opportunity, a choice. And he actively chose that path. Just like you back then, actively chose to sign that confession in exchange for your sister's surgery opportunity." "We are all making choices, Lu Chenzhou. Within limited, even meticulously designed options, making the choices we believe are most correct, or carry the smallest cost." "The difference is," his voice suddenly turned cold, like frost abruptly descending on a winter night. "I acknowledge the nature of these options. I acknowledge that this world is a giant chessboard, and most people, including you, including Shen Yan, are merely pieces on that board. Pieces have their value, their moves, but pieces can never determine the rules of the game." "And you," Shen Yanqing's gaze locked onto Lu Chenzhou. "You refuse to admit you are a piece. You rage, you struggle, you want to overturn the board. You think this is pursuing justice?" He shook his head, the hologram rippling slightly with the motion. "No. You are merely proving the existence of this board, proving the power of its rules, in another way. Every one of your 'acts of resistance,' every one of your 'investigations,' invisibly retraces the paths pre-set by the game. The more you rage, the harder you struggle, the deeper you sink into the... behavioral pattern I have prepared for people like you." The shadows deep within the archive shelves seemed to writhe slowly with his words. Lu Chenzhou felt a wave of vertigo. Not from blood loss, nor from oxygen deprivation. It was from the airtight, almost-truth-like logical pressure in Shen Yanqing's words. If even resistance itself was a calculated response... Then what was the "self"? What was "choice"? He instinctively reached for the pen in his pocket, but found nothing. His fingers clutched uselessly at the air, then clenched into a fist. The corner of his left eye began to twitch uncontrollably, once, then again. "So," Lu Chenzhou forced himself to speak, each word seeming squeezed from between his teeth. "According to your logic, my best choice right now is to accept your deal. Become the operator of your 'clean-up' tool. Because this is also one of the 'options' you have pre-set, the move that maximizes the 'value' of my piece in this game?" Shen Yanqing did not answer immediately. He turned—the hologram smoothly simulating the motion—facing the area deep within the archives, swallowed by shadow, where the most core confidential files were stored. His back looked somewhat lonely, even carrying a trace of... weariness? "The deal is a path to life for you, Jingyuan," Shen Yanqing's voice came from ahead, sounding somewhat ethereal. "A path that allows you to continue existing as a 'person,' not as a 'problem.' But there has never been only one path to life." He tilted his head slightly, the blue light outlining the profile of half his face. "You can also choose to die here. Use your corpse to become yet another unsolvable riddle in this pile of archives. Or..." He paused, as if weighing his words. "...you can try to understand, to truly 'understand' how this machine operates. Not as a victim run over by it, nor as a vandal wielding a wrench trying to smash it." "But as... a potential maintainer. Someone who can see all its flaws, yet still believes it is necessary to exist, and has the ability to make it run... slightly less painfully." Shen Yanqing turned back, his gaze settling once more on Lu Chenzhou's face. The pounding against the gate outside had stopped. Immediately after, a new, sharper sound of metal grinding began—a cutting tool, a high-temperature plasma beam or laser, was attempting to melt through the alloy gate. The air began to carry a faint, acrid ozone smell of metal heated to an extreme temperature. Lu Chenzhou looked at Shen Yanqing. At this old man who spoke the coldest words in the gentlest tone. At this "avatar" who had constructed a vast order, yet could not even obtain the genuine heart of his own son. He suddenly understood where Shen Yanqing's momentary stiffness had come from. That was... pain. A pain belonging to a "father," masked by the logic of perfect order, yet still existing. Even though this pain was so faint, so fleeting, almost instantly swallowed by the identity of "patriarch" and the philosophy of the "avatar of order." Just as the USB drive Shen Yan had left was real. Just as the filter canister Old Wu had shoved into his hand was real. Just as Qin Wangshu's cup of overly strong, bitter tea that made him frown was real. These minute, imperfect, even painful realities were things Shen Yanqing's cold logic could never fully digest and explain. Nailed into the foundation of this magnificent edifice called "order." He unclenched the fist he had been holding tight, the blood in his palm already congealed. He slowly straightened his body, even though the wound in his left leg still throbbed, even though the vertigo had not fully subsided. "I understand your philosophy now, Shen Yanqing," his voice calmed, no longer the hoarse struggle, but a clarity that bordered on coldness. "Order above all else. Individuals can be sacrificed, emotions can be pruned, truth can be falsified. As long as this machine can still operate, can still maintain superficial stability, then any cost is worthwhile." Shen Yanqing gave a slight nod, seeming satisfied with his "understanding." “However,” Lu Chenzhou’s tone shifted abruptly, his gaze sharp as a blade. “Your order has a fatal flaw.” “It is built upon lies.” Lu Chenzhou spoke word by word. “Upon the lie that Shen Yan’s death was a ‘comprehended’ sacrifice. Upon the lie that my confession all those years ago was ‘voluntary.’ Upon the corpses of countless people and events that have been erased, tampered with, and ‘cleansed.’” He took a step forward, his foot stepping into the dust, emitting a faint rustling sound. “Lies require more lies to cover them. Every sacrificed ‘component’ leaves an invisible crack in the gears of the machine. Shen Yan’s flash drive was the first crack. My seven years were the second. Zhou Zhengping, Old Wu, Qin Wangshu… each one of them is a crack.” The sound of cutting through the gate grew increasingly shrill, the smell of burnt material in the air grew stronger. A glaring red light seeped through the crack in the door—the glow of a high-temperature cutter. “Your machine,” Lu Chenzhou said, his voice still clear amidst the cutter’s screech. “Is beginning to disintegrate from within. Not because of external attacks, Shen Yanqing. Because it has swallowed too much indigestible truth.” Shen Yanqing’s holographic image stood silently. Blue-white particles of light flowed slowly around him, like a layer of solidified ice. The expression on his face vanished, leaving only an absolute, inhuman calm. Then, he smiled. That smile held no warmth, no emotion, not even any hint of humanity. It was like an indicator light on a precision instrument displaying “all systems normal” after completing a self-check. “Very well,” Shen Yanqing said, his voice smooth as polished metal. “Then, let’s see which is harder: your ‘truth,’ or my ‘order.’” The holographic image began to flicker and fade. “The gate will be cut open in forty-seven seconds. Gu Zhixing has brought three tactical squads, equipped with non-lethal capture nets and high-voltage electric shock weapons. Their orders are to capture you alive, but if resistance is too fierce… lethal force is authorized.” The image had already grown so transparent it was almost invisible, leaving only a blurry outline and those still-clear eyes. “The choice is still in your hands, Jing Yuan. To become the next ‘crack’ to be ‘cleansed,’ or…” The voice vanished completely. The holographic projector shut off, plunging the archive area into darkness. Only the light from the reader’s screen and the cutting red light seeping through the gate crack provided the sole illumination. Dust danced wildly in the red glow. Lu Chenzhou stood in place, listening to the increasingly close sound of metal melting outside the door, smelling the increasingly pungent stench of burning in the air. He lowered his head, looking at the silver flash drive in his hand. Then, he clenched it tightly in his palm. The metal edge dug into his unhealed wound; the fresh pain jolted him completely awake. He turned and walked toward the deep recesses of the archive area—that shadow-swallowed area Shen Yanqing had just been staring at. His footsteps were steady. Behind him, the alloy gate let out one final groan of unbearable strain and crashed open.