Four-seventeen in the morning. The phone vibrated once in his pocket. Lu Chenzhou had just settled Zhou Zhengping in that chain hotel in the southern part of the city. Fake ID, cash, a room at the end of the corridor, the window facing a dim interior courtyard. Old Zhou huddled on the edge of the bed, clutching that old enameled teacup, his fingers still trembling uncontrollably, the knuckles tapping against the cup's side with a faint, repetitive *tap-tap*. Lu Chenzhou pulled out his phone. The screen lit up. A multimedia message. "Don't turn on the lights. Don't answer the phone. Wait for me to return." He turned and went downstairs. His footsteps echoed monotonously in the empty stairwell, one, then another, like some kind of countdown. The corner of his left eye began to twitch—once, twice, as if a fine thread was pulling beneath the skin, stubbornly reminding him of the breaking point between exhaustion and tension. He raised a hand to press it, his fingertips cold. It was then that the backup encrypted phone vibrated. Not a call. A multimedia message. The screen suddenly lit up in the dim stairwell, the harsh white light making his pupils contract sharply, a burning blue afterimage seared onto his retina. The photo was blurry, as if deliberately compressed: Zhou Zhengping, eyes covered with black cloth, tied to a wooden chair against a background of rusted sheet metal and exposed concrete pillars—the interior of a typical abandoned factory. The caption was just one line: **"Come alone. The old place. You know where. Police or bring others, you collect the body."** The sender's number displayed a string of garbled characters. Lu Chenzhou immediately dialed the secure line to the safehouse—the basic phone under Old Zhou's pillow, the kind that could only receive calls, not make them. Busy signal. No answer. He dialed again. Still a busy signal. "Fuck." The engine growled low in the silent street, then roared. Tires screeched sharply against the pavement, tearing through the thin early morning fog. He slammed the accelerator to the floor. The needle on the dashboard jerked violently to the right. Streetlights outside the window merged into pale dotted lines, flying past in reverse. His left hand gripped the steering wheel, his right hand clenched the phone so tightly his knuckles turned white, the skin stretched taut, almost revealing the shape of the bones beneath. He zoomed in on the photo to the maximum, his pupils locked onto every pixel. The dark grey jacket on Zhou Zhengping—there was a fold turned inward at the cuff. Lu Chenzhou remembered: a few hours ago, when Old Zhou was shivering while holding the teacup, the left cuff was folded in exactly that awkward way, like some unconscious, shelter-seeking posture. The angle and position of the fold in the photo were identical. The sending time was displayed as 04:19. Outside the car window, the sky was still pitch black, only a tinge of deathly grey smudged the eastern horizon. Judging by the sunrise time this season, if the photo was taken in a real abandoned factory—there should be more noticeable daylight seeping in through the windows by now, and the interior shouldn't show such heavy, sharp-edged shadows dependent on a single strong light source. But in the photo, the shadow cast on the wall behind Zhou Zhengping was short and clear. Like midday light. His foot came off the accelerator. The car's speed dropped abruptly. The engine subsided to a low whimper, the body jolting slightly. His fingers tapped unconsciously on the leather steering wheel—once, twice. His fingertips felt the rough texture. A feint to divert the enemy. But he couldn't afford to gamble. What if Old Zhou really was in their hands? What if that fold was just a damn coincidence? He couldn't afford to lose. Zhou Zhengping was living evidence, one of the few people in that decade-long frame-up who could still speak, who was still willing to speak. A witness. Witness. The car continued forward on momentum, but its direction was already hesitant. The tires rolled over road seams, transmitting subtle bumps. He grabbed another phone—the encrypted one specifically for contacting Qin Wangshu. His fingertip quickly input the unlock code. The monitoring program started. A glaring little red dot began flashing in the center of the screen, marking latitude and longitude. He pressed the call button. It only rang twice before Qin Wangshu answered. "Speak." The voice was crisp, carrying a professional bluntness and the undisguised tension of being disturbed late at night. "Evidence repository remote monitoring. Check for abnormal signals in the past hour." "Now? Four in the morning—" "Now." Lu Chenzhou's voice was low, The call ended. The steering wheel jerked violently, tires screeching piercingly on the empty street, rubber grinding against asphalt, raising a scorched, anxious smell. The engine roared, the car body swung halfway around, charging toward the outskirts where city met countryside. The road stretched like a black ribbon, infinitely extending in the deepest darkness before dawn. Lu Chenzhou's fingers almost dug into the steering wheel, his other hand gripping the phone monitoring the status. The screen's blue light illuminated half his face, sharp cheekbones, sunken eye sockets. Every few seconds, his gaze swept over the data stream, as if checking a pulse. His heart hammered against his ribs, heavy and rapid. His ears filled with the amplified hum of blood flow. The car interior was saturated with the smell of his own sweat—anxious, slightly sour, mingled with leather and the lingering smoke from last night. The phone screen suddenly turned red. A glaring red warning box instantly flooded the screen. The vibration frequency graph was jumping wildly, the peak soaring to the limit. The phone vibrated in his palm—Qin Wangshu was calling. "Secondary alarm triggered." Her voice was taut like steel wire. "Threshold breached, continuous impacts. Pattern: metal cutting, prying. They're inside." "Location?" "Latitude 31.14 North, Longitude 118.22 East. Duration: seventeen seconds." Lu Chenzhou's fingers clenched the phone casing until it creaked. He had guessed right. The price was, they were already inside. "Don't go." Qin Wangshu's voice carried a cold, hard warning. "You're alone, at a disadvantage in force. The scene might have ambushers left behind, or delayed devices." "That's all my capital." "Lu Chenzhou!" Her voice suddenly rose sharply, with a metallic, grating edge. "If you die, there's nothing left!" He hung up, yanked the steering wheel hard. The car surged onto the old, poorly maintained cement road, the chassis scraping against raised sections of pavement, emitting a teeth-gritting, grinding sound, especially piercing in the silent pre-dawn. The vibration graph on the phone suddenly stopped. Changed to another pattern—brief, dense, high-frequency vibrations, like many pages being rapidly flipped through, or... being torn apart. Lu Chenzhou's breath caught for half a beat. He floored the accelerator, the engine roaring like a trapped beast. The building was hidden at the edge of the demolition zone, six stories, the white ceramic tiles on the exterior wall mostly fallen off, like mange. The building had long been empty, windows boarded up with planks. He never came during the day. The car screeched to a halt fifty meters behind the building, next to a scrap recycling station. Lu Chenzhou killed the engine, pushed the door open, moving as lightly as a cat. The pre-dawn wind carried the sour rot of garbage piles and the sulfur smell drifting from a distant chemical plant, flooding his nostrils. He moved close to the base of the wall, his shadow stretching and twisting on the uneven surface. The basement entrance was at the side of the building, a rusted iron door hidden behind construction debris. The door was ajar. The lock was broken. The area around the lock cylinder was covered in fine, parallel scratch marks, the bolt violently bent by a wedge-shaped tool, metal curled back. Lu Chenzhou crouched, his fingers brushing the edge of the door frame. Accumulated dust was scraped away, revealing fresh metal scratches beneath, glinting under the cold white beam of the tactical flashlight. Professional technique, clear purpose. He listened intently. No sound from inside. Only a deep, deathly silence. The turbid air of the basement, a mix of dust and mildew, slowly seeped from the crack of the door, like a silent proclamation. Lu Chenzhou drew the tactical flashlight from his lower back, thumb flicking the switch. The powerful beam of light stabbed into the darkness like a knife. He turned sideways, shoulder-checking the door open, the beam sweeping across— His breath hitched, stopped. File cabinets were pried open, doors hanging askew. Critical files were scattered everywhere, as if swept through by a storm. Some were soaked through with water, pages stuck together, blackened; others were torn to shreds, white fragments forming a thick layer. Traces of professional cleanup remained—no fingerprints, no obvious shoe prints, the destruction surfaces neat. But something was wrong. Lu Chenzhou forcibly suppressed the churning fury and icy panic rising in his throat, his gaze sharp as a knife, rapidly dissecting the chaos. The destruction was too superficial, too uniform. They weren't destroying aimlessly; they were using chaos to mask the real target. He strode over the mess of waste paper littering the floor, water making soft squelching sounds underfoot. The light beam fixed on the iron shelf against the far wall. Third The file cabinet's doors gaped wide, like the ribs of a gutted carcass. Thousands upon thousands of sheets of paper blanketed the concrete floor, ankle-deep. The flashlight beam swept across, stirring up dust that danced like fine snow. Waterlogged paper pulp lay in sodden lumps, emitting a heavy, musty odor; shredded paper, pieces the size of fingernails, scattered everywhere; the surfaces of trodden-upon papers bore clear shoe prints—the forefoot bearing most of the weight, the right foot driving the step. Lu Chenzhou switched off the flashlight. Darkness swallowed everything. He leaned against the doorframe, holding his breath. Ten seconds. Twenty seconds. In the distance, a stray dog barked. In his ears, only the roar of his own blood flow. No one here. He turned the light back on, switching to a low-brightness flood mode. A dim, yellowish glow barely held back the darkness of this less-than-twenty-square-meter basement. The air was a mix of mildew, dust, and an extremely faint trace of bleach—someone had cleaned up evidence, but hadn't had time to do a thorough job. He didn't touch the piles of paper first, instead examining the floor. Two sets of footprints extended from the doorway to the file cabinet, then veered toward the old desk. The one with the long stride and steady gait was the lead; the one with the quick steps and shorter stride was responsible for the rummaging. The lead's footprints lingered longest in front of the file cabinet; the tread pattern of their sole had ground scattered pencil lead into dust. Lu Chenzhou followed the footprints to the file cabinet. The lock had been violently forced open with a hydraulic spreader, deformed and twisted. Where the paint had flaked off, rusted sheet metal was exposed, its sharp edges gleaming coldly. Over a dozen archive boxes inside the cabinet were gone, their empty husks crushed underfoot. His gaze fixed on the innermost position at the very bottom of the cabinet. The small black device taped to the cabinet wall—a vibration-sensing alarm—had been removed and discarded to the side. The solder joints had been carefully melted open, the circuitry intact. They had found it. And they knew what it was. An icy shard churned in his gut. He turned and walked to the old desk. The drawers had been pulled out and overturned; spare batteries and encrypted USB drives were scattered among the paper piles. But the loose board on the side of the desk was still there. His fingers pressed against its edge, giving a gentle push. The board slid aside. Inside the narrow hidden compartment lay three waterproof sealed bags. He touched each in turn: the outline of a hard-shell USB drive, the sharp corner of a laminated old photograph, a palm-sized notebook bound in kraft paper. The core evidence was still there. The tension in his shoulders eased by a hair. But a deeper chill instantly flooded in. The intruders had ransacked everything in plain sight, yet had left this hidden compartment untouched. Had they not found it? Or—were they not after these things at all? Lu Chenzhou crouched back down by the paper piles, his fingers rapidly sifting through the wreckage. His fingertips touched damp, heavy, sodden paper pulp, a slimy, cold sensation, sickening. What had been shredded were handwritten investigation notes and timelines; what was waterlogged were case file summaries and newspaper clippings. Destroyed thoroughly, with a deliberate, performative cruelty—not only to obliterate information, but to humiliate the collector. He flipped over a soaked stack of paper; beneath it lay a trampled group photo, Shen Yanqing's smile blurred by water stains. His finger suddenly struck something hard. He pushed aside the shredded paper and picked up a flattened metal tag holder. The remaining half of the label paper was blurred by water, its edges curled, but still barely legible: 「97-Pris-4……Meeting……Record……」 Lu Chenzhou's breath hitched. "97-Pris-4." He repeated it unconsciously, his voice sounding as if chiseled from ice. Ninety-seven. Prison. The fourth key document. That unofficial lawyer meeting, the person who had snuck in disguised as an assistant, the promises and the trap. The archive bag had been transferred a week ago. The intruders had torn up so much, flooded so much, looking for it. They knew the number. They knew what it pointed to. They knew it had been stored separately. Lu Chenzhou slowly stood up. The deformed tag holder was embedded in his palm; its metal edge pierced the skin, a bead of blood welling up, coagulating into a dark red dot in the dim yellow light. The covert line went unanswered, the MMS details exposed, the alarm professionally dismantled, the archive number precisely targeted. The information gap was rapidly closing. He had gone from a hunter in The receiver held only the faint hum of static. Two seconds later, Qin Wangshu's tone shifted slightly. "There are indeed points of suspicion. But the higher-ups have ordered a cold handling. The case file will be sealed tomorrow. Now, it's my turn to ask—" "Zhou Zhengping." Lu Chenzhou cut her off, going straight to the core. "Is he still under surveillance by the Witness Protection Program people?" Qin Wangshu fell silent. This pause was more dangerous than an admission. "He's not in our hands." She lowered her voice, her words sharp as knives. "The surveillance feed cut out yesterday afternoon. Where did you hide him?" Lu Chenzhou's heart skipped a beat. He didn't answer, instead asking, "No kidnapping report filed?" "No." Qin Wangshu keenly caught something in his voice, her tone suddenly sharp and pressing. "Lu Chenzhou, you're testing me. What did you see?" "A photo." Lu Chenzhou stared at the murky, muddy water on the floor, its surface reflecting the shattered light spots of the emergency lamp. "Zhou Zhengping tied to a wooden chair in an abandoned factory, the number '97' visible in the background." "Fabricated." Qin Wangshu reacted swiftly, delivering a clean, decisive conclusion. "I privately arranged for old colleagues to set up a perimeter watch. There was nothing unusual at his usual haunts. If he was really kidnapped, there would absolutely be a ransom call. Someone wants to lure you there." She paused, then added, "Using '97' as bait." Lure him there. Lu Chenzhou closed his eyes. His heart slammed back into his chest, the impact rattling his ribs with pain. Zhou Zhengping was safe. His judgment had been correct. The cost was the exposure of this secret evidence repository, the label "97-Surv-4" being used so precisely as bait by the other side. "Thank you," he said quietly, the two words scraping out like bloody froth from his lungs. "Lu Chenzhou." Qin Wangshu called him by his full name, shedding her professional shell, her tone revealing a rare hesitation and probing. "Your side... has something happened?" His breath hitched. His chest felt as if struck by a blunt instrument. A sour, swollen sensation instantly broke through the floodgates of reason, scalding and unfamiliar. He opened his mouth, but his throat felt stuffed with a waterlogged wad of rotten paper, unable to produce any sound. The emergency light flickered. He saw his own hand resting on his knee, the knuckles white from excessive force, fingernails digging deep into his palm, leaving a sticky, clammy sensation. "Are you alright?" Qin Wangshu's voice grew even softer, almost a whisper, yet carrying an inescapable penetrating force. "I'm fine." He finally forced the words out, his voice raspy like a broken bellows. "Hanging up." His thumb pressed down hard on the end call button. The underlying current noise cut off abruptly. Dead silence refilled the basement, only his heavy, ragged breaths colliding against the four walls. He remained in his leaning, seated position, motionless for a long time, until the twitching in the corner of his left eye gradually subsided. Slowly, he unclenched his fist. Four deep red crescent marks remained on his palm, tiny beads of blood seeping from their edges. He leaned over, groping through the piles of paper, picking up the fragments not completely soaked to mush. His movements were slow, but extremely steady. His fingertip touched a hard corner. He pushed aside the shredded paper and pulled it out. It was a corner of an old photograph, palm-sized, the edges curled from the water, the image blurred. Only two young men's backs could barely be made out, arms slung over each other's shoulders, standing under a huge parasol tree. Sunlight left dappled spots on their shoulders. One of the backs was slender, the police uniform shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbows. It was himself. The other back was broad, the hair cut very short, head tilted sideways in a hearty laugh. The facial portion was already waterlogged and ruined, leaving only a blurred outline. Lu Chenzhou pinched the damp photographic paper, his fingertips feeling the fibers hardening slightly as the moisture evaporated. Summer of 1996, just before graduation from the police academy. A borrowed disposable camera. After development, only this one picture ended up in his hands. The others, including frontal shots of that person, the photo shop said they'd lost. He once thought it was just a minor regret. Now, sitting in this destroyed ruin, he suddenly realized: the attackers hadn't found the "97-Surv-4" file. But this attack itself had already acted like a rusty key, forcefully inserted into a long-sealed door