Sweat trickled from his temple into his collar, leaving a cold trail. Lu Chenzhou stared at the hard drive in his hand—codenamed "07," its shell a matte black under the dim emergency lights. It lay quietly in his palm, like a dud bomb waiting to detonate. Gu Zhixing's voice still echoed faintly in the air of the abandoned pump room, the phrase "choose one" hanging like an iron hook, snagging everyone's breath. Old Wu leaned against the rusted pump casing, fresh blood seeping through the bandage on his shoulder. He gritted his teeth, silent. Glasses crouched in a corner, fingers flying over a portable terminal, the screen's blue light reflecting off his tense face. "He's forcing us to choose," Glasses said without looking up. "Leave the drive, retreat the way we came—but in those pipes back there, that slime..." "Take the drive, keep moving forward," Lu Chenzhou finished, his voice flat as a frozen lake. "And walk right into the 'welcome party' he's prepared." A twitch began at the corner of his left eye. A subtle, almost invisible tremor. Only he knew it was his nerves warning him—warning that he stood at a meticulously designed crossroads, both paths leading to a cliff, the only difference being which side would leave him more shattered. "Boss," Old Wu gasped. "That slime... I've seen something similar in the service. Bio-corrosive agents, used by special forces to breach metal structures. But secreted by a living thing? Impossible." "There's something in the pipes," Glasses finally looked up, switching the screen to a thermal image—the maintenance shaft they had crawled through. On the screen, several blurred orange-red outlines moved slowly along the pipe walls, like enormous slugs. "Not human. Lower body temperature, but definitely not mechanical." Lu Chenzhou flipped the hard drive over. On the bottom was an inconspicuous indentation, the size of a fingernail. He gently probed it with his dagger tip, prying open a thin protective cover. Inside was a transparent gel-like substance encasing two slender glass tubes, liquid sloshing within. An acid-triggered self-destruct mechanism. "If we try to forcibly remove it, or attempt to connect to any unauthorized device," Glasses swallowed, "this thing will melt the core storage layer of the drive in three seconds. Data completely vaporized." "Gu Zhixing knows we have it," Lu Chenzhou said. "He knew from the very beginning." He closed his eyes. His mind felt like a high-speed machine, gears meshing, chains turning. Gu Zhixing's pause when he was "forced" to agree to Plan B in the conference room; the load-bearing wall marked as an evacuation route on the map; the fresh, biologically active slime traces in the pipes; and now, this exquisitely crafted hard drive, both bait and poison. All the fragments began to click together. Forming a picture he didn't want to admit, yet had to face. —This wasn't an investigation. This was a test. A stress test designed by Gu Zhixing, tacitly approved by Shen Moqing, possibly even with Qin Wangshu's participation... A test of how Lu Chenzhou would choose in a desperate situation, a test of his limits, a test of how much he was willing to sacrifice for the "truth," and at what point he would break. And the purpose of the test... Lu Chenzhou opened his eyes. "He doesn't want the data on this drive," he said quietly, more to himself. "What he wants is for me to 'actively' take this thing and walk into the next trap. Because only then can the data become effective—a knife thrust at someone, or a noose tightening around my own neck." Old Wu and Glasses both looked at him. Only the distant moan of ventilation ducts remained in the pump room, like the breath of some giant beast. "So we..." Glasses's voice was dry. "We take a third path," Lu Chenzhou stood up, stuffing the hard drive into the inner pocket of his tactical vest. The cold metal pressed against his chest, transmitting a faint vibration through his clothes—was it the built-in timer operating, or something else? "The path he didn't give." He walked to the other side of the pump room. The wall was covered in thick grease and dust, but near the floor, there was a metal access panel. The screws were rusted shut, the edge sealant long cracked. Lu Chenzhou crouched, using his dagger to pry open a gap. The smell of years-old dust mixed with machine oil wafted out, heavy, carrying the tang of rust. "This is..." Old Wu came closer. "Marked on the old blueprints," Lu Chenzhou said, probing The inspection panel emitted a sharp metallic screech as it collapsed inward. Behind it wasn't a solid wall, but a pitch-black, narrow space just wide enough for a single person to crawl through. A thicker wave of dust poured out, swirling in the beam of the headlamp like disturbed ghosts. "The sealing was fake," Lu Chenzhou said, the twitch in the corner of his left eye ceasing. "Someone preserved this passage. And it's been used recently." He reached inside, swiping a hand across the ground at the tunnel entrance. What coated his fingertips wasn't accumulated dust, but a viscous, translucent, jelly-like substance. Similar to the mucus in the pipes, but thinner, carrying a faint, pungent odor reminiscent of formaldehyde. Glasses immediately produced a sampling tube. "Biological tissue degradation fluid," he whispered, using a cotton swab to collect a small amount and place it into a portable analyzer. The screen flickered, a few lines of data popping up. "Contains lysozyme and protease... This was used to process a corpse, or at least large-scale biological tissue residue." Lu Chenzhou said nothing. He lay down, adjusted the headlamp to its lowest brightness, and squeezed his body into the tunnel. The space was so narrow it compressed his chest, and with every inch of progress, dust invaded his mouth and nose. But he didn't stop. The tunnel was about fifteen meters long. At the end was a movable metal partition. Lu Chenzhou braced his shoulder against it and slowly pushed it open a crack— Light leaked in. Not natural light, not emergency lighting either. It was a kind of ghostly blue, steady, cold light source, flowing out from the crack and illuminating his face. Along with it rushed in a more complex smell: the mustiness of aged paper, the burnt odor of overheated circuit boards, and... a faint, cloying fragrance of incense. He stopped. Old Wu and Glasses behind him also held their breath. Lu Chenzhou pushed the gap wide enough to see. Outside was a massive equipment room with a ceiling at least six meters high. Rows of server cabinets stood like silent tombstones amidst a sea of ghostly blue indicator lights. The floor was covered with anti-static tiles, but many had warped and lifted, revealing tangled cables beneath. The air carried a low-frequency hum—the sound of the few cooling fans still operating, like the gasps of the dying. And in the deepest part of the equipment room, a thick alloy blast door was tightly shut. Beside the door, a control panel glowed faintly, its screen scrolling with red warning text: **"Core Archive Area – Unauthorized Access Prohibited."** They had arrived. The equipment room outside the auxiliary archives. The coordinates on the blueprint were spot on. But Lu Chenzhou's gaze didn't linger on the blast door. He was staring at the row of server cabinets closest to the tunnel exit—the one in the farthest corner, an outdated IBM System/390 model, its outer paint peeling to reveal rusted metal beneath. And in the narrow gap between the cabinet's side panel and the wall, something reflected a stark, abrupt silvery-white under the ghostly blue light. That wasn't the color dust should be. Nor was it rust. Lu Chenzhou gently pushed the partition open wider, his body sliding out of the tunnel and landing without a sound. Old Wu and Glasses followed closely behind. The three of them quickly dispersed, pressing their backs against the server cabinets, forming a defensive triangle. The equipment room was deathly still. Only the hum of the fans and the distant drip-drip-drip of a leaking pipe somewhere. Lu Chenzhou gave a hand signal. Old Wu and Glasses nodded, moving to the left and right respectively to check the gaps between the cabinets and the ceiling ventilation ducts. Lu Chenzhou himself walked slowly towards that IBM cabinet. The closer he got, the more distinct that cloying incense fragrance became. It wasn't the sandalwood incense used in temples; it was closer to some expensive, custom fragrance used to mask odors. He had smelled a similar scent in Shen Moqing's study—when that old man wanted to hide something, he would always light this kind of incense. The gap between the cabinet side panel and the wall was about two fingers wide. Lu Chenzhou crouched down, retrieving an extendable inspection mirror from his tactical vest. The small light at the tip of the lens lit up. He slowly inserted the probe into the gap. The view was first of accumulated dust, thick like gray snow. But after going in another three centimeters, the dust layer suddenly thinned—someone had cleaned here. Pushing the mirror further, the light illuminated a smooth surface. Not metal. It was waterproof tape. Transparent, high-quality stuff, firmly stuck to the inner steel plate of the cabinet. And beneath the tape, fixed in place, was a silver metal object about five “Scan this area.” He lowered his voice. “Biological traces, static residue, don’t miss anything.” Glasses nodded, pulling a multi-spectrum scanner from his backpack. An indigo light swept over the server cabinet and the wall, data streams beginning to jump on the screen. Lu Chenzhou drew a dagger from his leg pouch, its edge thin as a cicada’s wing. He took a deep breath and guided the tip of the dagger into the crevice. It touched the edge of the tape. The sensation was smooth, slightly elastic, completely different from the roughness of the rusted metal. His wrist moved subtly, the blade gently slicing along the tape’s edge. The adhesive was strong, emitting a faint *sssrip* sound as it peeled away, startlingly clear in the silent equipment room. Old Wu immediately looked up, his gun muzzle pointing in the direction the sound might have traveled. No movement. Only the fan’s hum persisted. Lu Chenzhou continued. Once the tape was fully peeled, he used the dagger tip to gently pry out the silver object—it was indeed a USB drive. The metal casing was cold, with a matte sheen under the indigo light. He held it between his fingers, turning it over. A line of tiny characters was engraved on the bottom. Not a serial number, nor a brand logo. It was a simple line-drawing: a swallow, wings spread, the lines clean and sharp. Below the swallow, a cursive “Yan” was engraved. Shen Yan’s personal mark. Lu Chenzhou’s fingers froze. The twitch at the corner of his left eye started again, this time more pronounced, like a needle pulsing beneath the skin. He stared at the swallow, at that character. A silhouette in his mind, which had always been blurred, suddenly gained a sharp, clear edge from that engraving. Shen Yan. The deceased eldest son of the Shen family, the heir, the initial enigma at the heart of this case. His mark, appearing in this equipment room that no one should have known about, hidden within the layers of a decommissioned server. What did this mean? It meant Shen Yan had been here while he was alive. It meant he had sensed danger and hidden something in advance. It meant the contents of this USB drive might be more important than all the clues he had pursued so far—and possibly more lethal. “Boss.” Glasses’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “Scan complete. There’s faint static residue around the server cabinet, consistent with human contact. But more importantly…” He pointed to a flashing red dot on the screen. “The USB drive itself. It’s emitting a low-power signal. The frequency is… very unusual. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Lu Chenzhou clenched the USB drive. The cold of the metal casing seeped through his glove into his palm. “What kind of signal?” he asked. “It’s like… a heartbeat,” Glasses said, frowning. “Regular pulses, once every three seconds. Not data transmission. More like it’s telling some receiver: ‘I’m still alive, I’m still here.’” An active beacon. Lu Chenzhou closed his eyes. Gu Zhixing’s voice echoed in his ears again: “…Hard Disk 07, could be the answer, could be poison.” And this USB drive? A USB drive left by Shen Yan—was it the deceased’s final words, or another meticulously designed trap? He had to know. “Test it,” Lu Chenzhou said, handing the USB drive to Glasses, his voice dropping even lower. “But don’t connect it to any external power source. Use the isolation box, the battery-powered reader. Full electromagnetic shielding throughout.” Glasses nodded, quickly retrieving a palm-sized metal box from his backpack. The box was sealed, with rubber gaskets on the sides. He placed the USB drive into a slot inside, closed the lid. A soft *click* as the latch engaged. Then he connected the reader. The screen lit up. Against an indigo background, a simple interface appeared. In the center was an input box with sixteen empty slots. Below, a line of small text read: 「Biometric Key Verification」. And in the upper right corner of the interface, a countdown was ticking down— 300 seconds. Five minutes. “Biometric key…” Glasses looked up. “Requires Shen Yan’s DNA sample. Hair, saliva, skin flakes, anything. But we don’t have—” “I do,” Lu Chenzhou cut him off. He took out a sealed bag from an inner pocket. Inside the transparent plastic film lay a few short strands of hair, the roots still attached to tiny follicular tissue. This was what Zhou Zhengping had given him—hair that the old detective had secretly kept, shed by Shen Yan while combing his hair before his death But Lu Chenzhou did not. His gaze was fixed on the progress bar flickering on the reader screen, and on the line of almost invisible small text below it: "Decryption process will trigger secondary biometric alarm." Secondary alarm. What did that mean? He abruptly looked up, toward the alloy blast door deep within the equipment room. On the control panel beside the door, the red warning text was still scrolling. But the moment his eyes landed on it, the color of those characters… changed. From red, to crimson. Almost black. Then, the entire lighting system of the equipment room switched, without warning. The dim blue cold light instantly went out. Replacing it were blinding, blood-red rotating alarm lights that simultaneously lit up from the four corners of the ceiling. The light swept over the server racks, over the floor, over the faces of the three of them, stretching and distorting their shadows, casting them onto the walls like a riot of demons. At the same time, a cold electronic synthetic voice, through hidden speakers, exploded within the equipment room— "Detection of unauthorized biometric key activation." "Core archive zone defense protocol: initiated." The roar of hydraulics came from the direction of the blast door. That heavy alloy door began to slowly descend. And from the ventilation vents in the ceiling, white, pungent-smelling dense fog simultaneously sprayed out. "It's a nerve agent precursor stimulant!" Old Wu roared, yanking out a gas mask. "Don't inhale it! The blast door has forty seconds until it seals completely!" Lu Chenzhou grabbed the isolation box and the reader. The decryption progress bar on the screen had only reached 3%. But there was no time left. He looked at the blast door—the gap was now less than a meter. He looked back toward the passage they had infiltrated—there, at the edge of the red alarm light, several red dots of light were steadily advancing toward them. Infrared scopes. Gu Zhixing's team had arrived. "You hold off the rear!" Lu Chenzhou shouted to Old Wu, his voice almost shredded by the alarms and hydraulic roar. "I'm going in!" He turned, stuffed the USB drive and reader into a shockproof pouch, tied it tightly to his chest. Then he lowered his body and began to sprint toward that rapidly closing gap in the blast door. The white dense fog blurred his vision. A burning pain shot through his respiratory tract. And from behind, Gu Zhixing's calm voice, amplified through a loudspeaker, cut through all the noise, clearly reaching his ears— "Mr. Lu." "Drop the evidence." "This is your final chance to choose." "Boss, this thing is trying to back-probe our equipment…" The technical support team member's voice trembled like a taut wire in the dim equipment room. "It's actively pinging." Lu Chenzhou's left eye began to twitch. He stared into the observation window of the isolation box. The LED light at the USB drive interface had changed from a steady, slow blink to a rapid alternating red and blue flash. The frequency was like the heartbeat of some dying creature, or like a countdown. The reader's fan emitted a sharp, high-frequency whine, cutting through the stuffy smell of aged dust and machine oil like a bee trapped in a metal box. "How long on the countdown." His voice was flat. "Two hundred seventy-four seconds." The team member swallowed. "The biometric key input interface is locked. It… it's now scanning our device signature codes. Boss, this thing has built-in active defense protocols. It's looking for—" Before he finished speaking, an extremely faint *click* came from deep within the equipment room. Not a metal scrape. The sound of some kind of precise lock disengaging. Lu Chenzhou sharply raised a hand, signaling everyone to be silent. His gaze swept the surroundings—walls covered in pipes, rusted server racks, cables dangling from the ceiling. Shadows writhed at the edges of their headlamp beams. Old Wu had already soundlessly pressed himself against the pipes on the entrance side, his gun muzzle aimed down the dark passage they had come from. In another direction, the alloy blast door leading to the core archive zone stood silently, its surface reflecting the sickly white light of the emergency lamps. "What is it looking for?" Lu Chenzhou asked, his eyes not leaving the blast door. The technical support team member's fingers flew across his portable terminal screen, its blue light illuminating the cold sweat on his forehead. "Signal signature… It's matching against nearby authorized terminals. The biometric key is just the first lock. It needs secondary verification—the hardware fingerprint of a specific device, or…" He paused, his face paling. "Or the real-time biometric signal of a specific individual. Heartbeat, body temperature, even… pupil characteristics." Lu Chenzhou's breath hitched. Shen Yan. This swallow was waiting for its master to return But Shen Yan was dead. He had died at a meticulously arranged scene, his corpse lying cold on He Wanqing’s dissection table. So who was this USB drive’s current “active call” signaling? Or was it… executing a preset final command: if the master failed to return by the deadline, initiate self-destruction, or— “Detonate.” Lu Chenzhou uttered two words. The technical support team member looked up sharply. “It’s not calling for authorization.” Lu Chenzhou’s speech quickened, each word like an icicle. “It’s confirming ‘master is dead.’ Then triggering the preset final protocol—could be data shredding, or it could be…” He looked toward that thick alloy gate. “Physical elimination of everyone attempting to illegally access it.” “Then what do we do now—” “Continue decryption.” Lu Chenzhou cut him off, pulling a sealed bag from his inner pocket. Inside the transparent plastic film, several black hairs lay quietly, the roots carrying tiny, semi-transparent follicle tissue. “Use Shen Yan’s biological sample to bypass the first lock. Read the data before it triggers the final protocol.” “But Chief, if it really has built-in—” “We have no choice.” Lu Chenzhou’s voice was low, but each word was like a nail. “Gu Zhixing is waiting outside for us to make a choice. Leave the hard drive behind, evacuate safely? That’s a trap. His real goal is to force us to take this thing with us, to walk into the next stage.” He tore open the sealed bag, using tweezers to pick up a single hair. “Because only if we ‘actively’ choose to take the risk can the script he designed play out.” He paused, the twitch at the corner of his left eye becoming more pronounced. “But in any script, there’s always room for actors to improvise.” The hair was placed into the biological sampling slot of the reader. A faint mechanical sound rang out, the sampling needle extended, piercing the follicle tissue. The isolation box’s screen flickered—the countdown paused. Then, a line of green text jumped out: *Primary authorization passed. Verifying secondary environmental features…* In the equipment room, everyone held their breath. Lu Chenzhou stared at the screen. His fingers began to move unconsciously, thumb and forefinger holding an imaginary grip, as if disassembling a pen that didn’t exist. Once, twice. His knuckles turned slightly white. “Environmental features…” the technical support member muttered. “What environment does it want? Temperature? Humidity? Or…” Before he finished speaking, the entire equipment room’s lighting system switched without warning. The white emergency lights instantly went out. Replacing them were blinding, blood-red rotating alarm lights. “Woo—woo—woo—” Low-frequency alarm sounds surged like the roar of a beast, emerging simultaneously from deep within the walls, from the ceiling, from beneath the floor. The rotating red light stretched, twisted, and cast everyone’s shadows onto the pipe-covered walls, like a dance of demons. Shadows leaped frantically across the metal surfaces, now elongating, now shrinking. Lu Chenzhou’s heart felt gripped by an icy hand. He saw it. The moment the rotating red light swept across the alloy gate, that thick door began to move. Not opening. Descending. The roar of the hydraulic drive drowned out the alarm, metal grinding with a sharp screech, like the gnashing of a giant beast’s teeth. From the gap where the top of the gate met the ceiling, dust and debris fell in a shower. The door body descended at a steady, unstoppable pace. “Alarm triggered!” Old Wu roared amidst the red light. “Take cover! The gate is closing!” But Lu Chenzhou didn’t move. His gaze was locked onto the bottom of the gate—there was still about one and a half meters of clearance from the floor, and it was still shrinking. And from inside the gate, the darkness of the core archive area surged out like a solid entity, carrying even colder air, and a… faint, cloying scent of chemical agents. “The ceiling!” the technical support member screamed. Lu Chenzhou looked up. The vent’s louvered cover had popped open. Thick, white gas was gushing out from the grid like an inverted waterfall, rapidly spreading through the air. That cloying scent instantly became pungent, drilling into nasal passages, burning mucous membranes. “Precursor stimulant for nerve agent!” Old Wu covered his nose and mouth, his voice breaking amid coughs. “Don’t inhale! It paralyzes the central nervous system! The gate has… forty seconds until full closure!” Forty seconds. Lu Chenzhou’s mind raced like an overloaded machine, frantically calculating. The gate’s descent speed, the gas diffusion speed, the possible A crisp *ding*. It came from Fang Mu at the entrance to the equipment room. Not an alarm. It was the sound of some metal object hitting the ground, bouncing twice, and rolling to Old Wu’s feet. Old Wu looked down. It was a fist-sized cylindrical object, its shell a matte black, now crackling with blue electrical arcs. "Stun grenade!" he rasped, raising his foot to kick it away— But it was too late. *Zzzzap—!* A blinding burst of blue electrical arcs exploded, like a lightning tree growing instantaneously, fracturing and spreading across the floor. The crackling explosion mixed with the metallic, fishy smell of ozone and the cloying, irritating gas. Old Wu’s entire body was thrown backward, convulsing violently, his gun flying from his hand and clattering against a pipe. "Old Wu!" Lu Chenzhou rushed over. A second, then a third stun grenade rolled in from the darkness of the entrance, tracing arcs, landing with precision near the technical support team member and Fang Mu’s location. They seemed alive, bouncing across the dusty floor, seeking targets. Lu Chenzhou grabbed Old Wu by the collar, dragging him behind the nearest server rack. Arcs exploded at his feet, blue electricity licking at his pant leg. A paralyzing numbness, like icy needles, shot up from his ankle. Gritting his teeth, he shoved Old Wu into the crevice between the server rack and the wall. He looked up. The bottom of the gate was now less than a meter from the floor. And in the darkness of the entrance, lights appeared. Not the red alarm lights. A few steady, deep red dots, slowly advancing through the dust and haze. The calibration dots of infrared scopes, like the eyes of beasts, opening in the darkness. A figure emerged at the edge of the red light. A sharply pressed suit, meticulously styled hair, gold-rimmed glasses reflecting cold light under the spinning alarm lights. Gu Zhixing. He wasn’t wearing body armor or a mask. He simply stood calmly at the entrance, a black megaphone in his hand. The white irritant gas swirled around him, yet he was as composed as if standing in his own study. He raised the megaphone to his mouth. "Mr. Lu." His voice came through the speaker, steady, clear, even carrying a hint of perfectly measured regret, cutting through the alarm’s wail and the crackle of electricity. "Hand over the evidence," he said. "This is your last chance to choose." Lu Chenzhou leaned against the server rack, chest heaving violently. The shockproof bag was strapped to his chest, containing the still-decrypting USB drive and reader. Even through the thick padding, he could feel the hard, cold outline of the drive, like a piece of ice pressed against his heart. He looked at the gate. The gap was about seventy centimeters now. And still shrinking. He looked at the isolation box in his arms. The progress bar on the screen: eleven percent. He looked at the entrance. Behind Gu Zhixing, at least six infrared dots had already formed a crossfire lockdown. The stun grenades were just the prelude. The next volley would likely be live rounds. He looked beside him—Old Wu was curled up, semi-conscious, body still twitching involuntarily. The technical support member huddled behind another server rack, face pale, fingers pressing desperately on the isolation box as if it were the only life raft. Forty seconds. No, maybe only thirty left now. Lu Chenzhou took a deep breath. The cloying gas burned his throat, but he forced himself to swallow it. The pain sharpened his thinking. He unbuckled the shockproof bag, pulled out the entire isolation box, screen facing outward, and swiftly wrapped it around his left forearm with tape. The reader’s fan pressed against his skin, transmitting faint vibrations and heat. Then he looked at Old Wu. Old Wu’s eyes opened a slit, his murky pupils reflecting the spinning red lights. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. His finger twitched, pointing toward the direction of the gate. Lu Chenzhou nodded. He turned to the technical support member, his voice a breathy whisper: "You and Old Wu, hold them off from behind. Disrupt them, don’t fight head-on. After the gate closes, find another way out." The member’s lips trembled. "Boss, what about you—" "I’m going in," Lu Chenzhou said. He stood up. In the spinning red light, within the spreading white mist, amidst the afterimages of blue arcs. He straightened his posture, shoulders squared, assuming a fighting stance. The shockproof bag was tightened again. The screen on his left arm emitted a faint but stubborn blue glow. Progress The cloying gas flooded his nasal passages, a burning sensation spreading from his throat all the way to his lungs. His vision began to blur, tears welling up uncontrollably. But he didn't stop. His footsteps beat out a frantic rhythm on the dusty floor as he skirted around fallen cables and leapt over scattered components. From behind came Gu Zhixing's calm instruction: "Non-lethal interception." "Whoosh—!" The sound of something cutting through the air. Not an electric shock round. Something finer, faster. Lu Chenzhou didn't even have time to look back, relying on instinct to dive forward and to the side. A tranquilizer dart grazed past his shoulder and embedded itself in the edge of the blast door, its tail vibrating violently. He rolled, got up, kept running. Gap in the blast door: fifty centimeters. Progress: twenty-four percent. A second tranquilizer dart shot toward him. This time he saw it—from the shadows on the left, a crouching figure holding a compact launcher. Lu Chenzhou twisted his body mid-sprint, the dart grazing the outer shell of the shockproof bag with a light *ding*. Thirty centimeters. His breathing rasped like a broken bellows, each inhalation bringing a searing pain. His legs began to weaken, black spots appearing at the edges of his vision. But he stared at that gap—the entrance to darkness, his only way out. Twenty centimeters. He could almost feel the wind stirred by the descending door, icy and biting against his face. Ten centimeters. He lunged forward. His body skimmed the ground like a fish, sliding toward that vanishing gap. The shockproof bag scraped against the bottom of the blast door, metal screeching against metal. The screen of the isolation box on his left arm slammed hard against the floor, but the blue glow didn't extinguish. Progress: thirty-three percent. And then— He tumbled inside. Behind him, the bottom of the blast door slammed down. "THUD!!!" The heavy impact made the entire floor tremble. Dust sifted down from the ceiling. Red lights, white mist, electric arcs, Gu Zhixing's figure—all were sealed out by that massive alloy door. Only the muffled alarm continued to sound faintly from behind the panel, like distant thunder. Lu Chenzhou lay on the floor, coughing violently. Each cough felt like a knife slicing his lungs. The cloying scent still lingered in his nostrils, but much less concentrated. He pushed himself up, looking around. Darkness. Pure, thick darkness. Only the weak blue glow from the isolation box screen on his left arm illuminated a small patch of the surroundings. Smooth metal flooring stretched into the distance. The walls were made of some dark composite material that absorbed all light. The air was cold, carrying the dry, dusty smell unique to aged paper and electronic equipment. This was the core archive area. He was alone. And on the screen on his arm, the progress bar was still crawling forward, slowly, stubbornly. Thirty-five percent. Thirty-six percent. Outside the door, Gu Zhixing's voice came faintly through, muffled and distant through the thick blast door: "...Deploy breaching equipment. Prepare acid cutting agents. Inform Mr. Shen, target has entered the core area, evidence is still decrypting." Lu Chenzhou leaned back against the cold metal wall, closing his eyes. His breathing gradually steadied. His heart still beat fast, but no longer felt like it would explode. He raised his right hand, feeling his chest—the shockproof bag was still there, the hard outline of the USB drive pressing against his palm through the fabric. Cold. Like a piece of ice that would never melt. He looked down at the screen. Thirty-eight percent. Decryption continued. And outside the door, Gu Zhixing was preparing to come in. Acid cutting agents, breaching equipment, more people. Not much time left. Maybe ten minutes. Maybe less. He had to read the contents of the USB drive within that time. And then— And then what? He didn't know. He only knew he had come this far. Entered the next act of Gu Zhixing's script. But perhaps the moment for the actor to improvise had only just begun. The screen's blue glow illuminated his face. The corner of his left eye still twitched slightly, uncontrollably. He raised his hand, pressing his thumb against it. The skin beneath his fingertip pulsed, as if something was trying to break through. Forty percent. The progress bar advanced another notch. In the darkness, only the faint hum of fans and his own increasingly slow, heavy breathing. Waiting. Waiting to hear what that dead swift had to tell him, at last. Electric arcs danced across the floor, bursts of blue light like snakes, slithering into shadows and back out. Lu Chenzhou's breath caught in his throat. Gu Zhixing's voice still echoed, each His breathing gradually steadied. A twitch began at the corner of his eye. Subtle. Rhythmic. "Old Wu!" he roared, his voice hoarse from the irritant gas. "Hold the rear! Don't let them near the gate!" Old Wu was coughing, his face flushed crimson, but he nodded forcefully. He grabbed a young team member beside him, and together they dragged a heavy backup server cabinet, slamming it down horizontally across the entrance to the pipe. The screech of metal scraping the floor briefly drowned out the alarm. But it wasn't enough. The blast gate was still descending. The hydraulic-driven whine was like the death rattle of a giant beast. The bottom of the gate was now less than half a meter from the floor. The gap revealed the darkness inside the core archives area, bottomless, like a mouth waiting to swallow. "Boss!" The technical support member — Glasses — was lying prone on the floor, still clutching the reader. The screen's light illuminated his face, slick with sweat and grime. "Decryption... it's still running! But the signal's cut. It's... it's running a local offline crack now. Progress... can't see the progress!" Then— Lu Chenzhou's gaze swept across the equipment room. The rotating red light stretched and twisted everyone's shadows, casting them onto walls covered in pipes and cables, a ghostly dance. The irritant gas hung like tangible fog, pressing down heavily, burning with each breath drawn into the lungs. His eyes had long been wet, the edges of his vision blurred. He saw them. Near the pipe entrance they had infiltrated, those red dots weren't rushing forward. They glowed steadily at the edge of the alarm's red light, occasionally shifting slightly, adjusting angles. Infrared scopes. Gu Zhixing's people were waiting. Waiting for the blast gate to seal completely, waiting for them to be utterly trapped in this iron coffin about to become a gas chamber. Or, waiting for him to make a "choice." "Mr. Lu." Gu Zhixing's voice came again, closer this time, probably through some portable speaker. "Time is running out. Once the gate fully seals, the core area's independent oxygen system will activate, evacuating the external atmosphere. And here..." He paused, as if choosing his words. "...the air composition here will reach incapacitating concentration in three hundred seconds. Your injured comrade there, I'm afraid he won't last that long." The bandage on Old Wu's shoulder was already soaked through with a dark stain. Lu Chenzhou clenched his fist. His nails dug into his palm, the sharp pain suppressing the damnable twitch in his left eye. In the darkness, there was only the faint hum of the fan and his own breathing, growing slower and heavier. He waited. He waited to hear what the dead swift had to tell him, at the very end. —To have Lu Chenzhou die with a certain "piece of evidence," in a "perfectly reasonable" dead end. "Boss!" Glasses suddenly shouted, his voice changing pitch. "The reader! It... it just flashed! The progress bar... it jumped! Three... percent!" Three percent. Lu Chenzhou's heart clenched violently. Decryption was advancing. Slow, perhaps never reaching one hundred percent, but it was moving. The lock Shen Yan left behind was being pried open, inch by inch, by Shen Yan's own hair. The bottom of the blast gate was now only thirty centimeters from the floor. The darkness within the gap was thick, like ink that wouldn't dissolve. The infrared dots behind them advanced half a step forward. Old Wu leaned against the server cabinet, panting heavily, raising That time, he had chosen. What about this time? The shockproof bag thumped against his chest, the hard corner of the USB drive digging into his ribs. It was cold, yet deep within, there seemed to be an extremely faint, almost imperceptible warmth belonging to the operation of electronic components. That warmth felt like a seed about to break through the soil. Or perhaps, a detonator about to explode. "Old Wu." Lu Chenzhou spoke, his voice abnormally calm, even overriding the alarms and the roar of the blast door. Old Wu turned his head to look at him. "Hold this position. Buy time. Don't fight to the death." Lu Chenzhou spoke slowly, enunciating each word clearly. "If I don't come out... Qin Wangshu knows what to do with the thing." He didn't specify what the "thing" was. Old Wu didn't ask. The muscles on that dust-covered face twitched once, and in the end, he just gave a heavy nod, so forceful that the veins on his neck bulged. Then he pulled the last full magazine from his own waist and threw it over, across several meters. Lu Chenzhou caught it. The magazine was heavy, damp with the sweat from Old Wu's palm. He didn't say thank you. The blast door was twenty centimeters off the ground. The gap now required crawling to pass through. Lu Chenzhou stuffed the magazine into his leg pouch, wrapped the strap of the shockproof bag a few more times around his body, and tightened it. He took a deep breath—the searing air rushed into his lungs, bringing on a violent fit of coughing and dizziness—then abruptly lowered his body, hands and feet working together, charging towards that gradually disappearing borderline between light and darkness. His movement was as fast as a leopard pouncing on its prey, yet as desperate and pathetic as a dog fighting for its life. "Stop him!" Gu Zhixing's voice lost its steadiness for the first time, carrying a sharp edge. Almost simultaneously, the gun at the pipe entrance where Fang Mu was positioned fired. Not live ammunition. It was the distinctive, muffled blast of an electroshock round. Several blue-white arcs of electricity tore through the turbid air, shooting towards Lu Chenzhou's retreating back. One of them grazed the outside of his calf. His combat pants instantly turned charred black, his skin screaming with intense numbness and searing pain. Lu Chenzhou grunted, his forward momentum faltering, nearly causing him to fall. He braced himself with one hand on the ground. The rough concrete surface tore through his glove and palm, a fiery pain. His other hand fiercely protected the shockproof bag against his chest. The blast door, fifteen centimeters. His ears were filled with his own ragged gasps, the deafening alarms, and the increasingly close, distinctive charging hum of electroshock rounds from behind.