The car stopped at the edge of the western city's old district. The dusk had settled into a thick gloom, and the halos of the streetlights were shattered by the crisscrossing wires strung between the old buildings. Lu Chenzhou cut the engine, and the residual warmth from the motor dissipated into the silence. He sat in the driver's seat, looking through the dust-covered window at the six-story old apartment building across the street. Its plaster was peeling away, revealing dark bricks beneath, like a series of old, festering scars. The window on the left side of the third floor was tightly shut, its curtains drawn, not a sliver of light escaping. He pushed open the car door. The evening breeze rushed in, carrying the particular smells of the old district—coal smoke, drying laundry, greasy fumes from a street-corner food stall, and a deeper, more fundamental dampness that belonged to bricks, stone, and time itself. He crossed the street, his footsteps sounding unnaturally clear in the empty road. His back was stiff as a plank, not from nervousness, but from habit—the habit of adjusting his body into the posture best suited to handle sudden events before stepping into unknown territory. Several rusted bicycles were piled at the entrance to the stairwell. The walls were plastered with layer upon layer of small advertisements, the papers of the bottommost ones already yellowed and curling at the edges. He walked inside. A motion-sensor light flickered on in response, casting a dim, yellowish glow that barely illuminated the concrete steps leading upward. The air smelled of dust and damp rags. He stopped in front of apartment 302. The old iron door was mottled with peeling paint. The edges of the doorframe bore fine scratches; they weren't new, but not old enough to match the age of the building either. He raised his hand and rapped his knuckles against the door three times—two light taps, one heavy. It was a signal they had used many years ago, one long since abandoned. There was no immediate response from within. A few seconds later, a soft *click* came from the lock, and the door opened a crack. Shadows filled the gap, revealing only half a face—Zhou Zhengping's face. It looked more than a decade older than Lu Chenzhou remembered. His cheeks were sunken, his eye bags heavy, and the once-sharp eyes were now clouded with a murky weariness. But when those eyes saw Lu Chenzhou, the pupils contracted slightly. Zhou Zhengping didn't speak. He just pulled the door open a little wider, stepping aside to make space, his eyes quickly scanning the hallway behind Lu Chenzhou. Lu Chenzhou slipped inside. The door closed behind him. The sound of the lock engaging was soft, yet it fell like a stone into a silent, deep pool. The light inside was even dimmer than the hallway. Only a floor lamp in the corner of the living room was on, its bulb low-wattage, casting a circle of faint, yellowish light. The air was thick with the smell of old tobacco, paper, dust, and something else… disinfectant? No, more like mothballs, but fainter, almost completely masked by the tobacco. Lu Chenzhou's gaze swept habitually over the room. Old-fashioned furniture. A wooden sofa covered with a faded blue cloth slipcover. A glass coffee table piled with stacks of case files and newspapers, their edges curled and yellowed. The desk against the wall was completely buried under files and notebooks, leaving only a small space for a teacup. It all fit perfectly with the picture of a solitary, down-and-out retired detective. But his gaze stopped by the telephone. It was an ashtray. Made of milky-white ceramic, its edges smooth, gleaming with a cold, hard glaze under the dim light. It was too new, jarringly new against all the dust-covered objects around it. The body of the tray was clean—no ash, no yellowish burn marks left by cigarette butts. It sat there abruptly beside the telephone, like a decorative piece that had just been placed there. Zhou Zhengping had already walked to the sofa and gestured for Lu Chenzhou to sit. He sat down first himself, picking up an old enameled teacup from the coffee table, his fingers unconsciously rotating the cup. It still held half a cup of dark brown tea, its surface rippling with his slight tremors. "You came," Zhou Zhengping spoke, his voice hoarse, bearing the wear of long-term smoking and drinking. "Faster… than I thought." Lu Chenzhou sat down in the single armchair, leaning forward slightly, his elbows resting on his knees. It was a posture of relaxed vigilance. "Time is short," he said, his tone even. "You should know that." Zhou Zhengping's lips twitched He was silent for a long time. So long that Lu Chenzhou could hear the low hum of his own blood flowing through his eardrums, could feel the camphor-like smell in the room become a little clearer, mingling with the scent of tobacco, like some trace that had tried to be concealed but not completely covered up. "Fire..." Zhou Zhengping finally repeated the word, his voice even lower now, almost as if he were chewing on it, "How far have you investigated?" "Only know there's a connection." Lu Chenzhou did not reveal the details discovered in Shen Yan's study, nor did he mention the tin stationery box or the floor plan of the archives. "After the case was closed that year, a batch of key physical evidence was burned. It wasn't an accident; it was man-made. I want to know the time, the location, the people involved—any details you can still remember." Zhou Zhengping fell silent again. This time, his gaze dropped down, staring at the tea leaves swirling in his cup. The thumb of his left hand began rubbing at a tiny chip on the handle of the teacup, the movement slow but persistent. "The third day after the case was closed." He suddenly spoke, his words coming faster, as if reciting lines rehearsed countless times in his mind. "Late at night. The old yard at the west side scrapyard, the one near the railway line. That night... after my shift ended, I drove past the area. I caught a glimpse." Lu Chenzhou didn't interrupt, just watched him. "There were headlights, two or three cars, I think, parked behind the pile of scrap cars. Figures... couldn't see clearly, but definitely not our people. Not wearing uniforms, moved fast, professional." Zhou Zhengping paused, his Adam's apple bobbing. "They were burning something. Not the kind where you just light a fire in the open; they had containers, like tin drums. Not much smoke, but the smell... pungent, the stench of burning plastic, you could smell it from far away." "You didn't go closer at the time?" "No." Zhou Zhengping shook his head, the rhythm of his fingers tapping his knee speeding up. "I stopped for a moment, tried to see the license plates clearly. But the light was too dim, could only tell they were local plates, the last digit... maybe a 7, or a 1. Can't remember clearly." Lu Chenzhou's gaze fell on his fingers, which were still tapping his knee incessantly. It was an unconscious movement, but the rhythm was unnervingly steady, as if keeping time with some internal beat. "And afterward?" he asked. "Afterward?" Zhou Zhengping looked up, his eyes slightly unfocused. "Afterward, I left. Didn't report it. The case was already closed by then, better to avoid trouble. I... that's what I told myself." His narrative had developed its first crack here. The tone, initially hurried and recitative, suddenly slipped into a weary, self-justifying vagueness. Lu Chenzhou didn't press immediately, instead letting the silence stretch between them for a few seconds. He could smell the stronger scent of tobacco coming from Zhou Zhengping, mixed with a faint, elusive whiff of cheap liquor. The ticking of the old wall clock grew clear again, one tick, then another, striking in the silence. "Are you sure it was late at night on the third day?" Lu Chenzhou spoke, his voice still steady. "The scrapyard?" Zhou Zhengping was taken aback. "...Yes." "But I saw in an old patrol record," Lu Chenzhou said slowly, his gaze locked on Zhou Zhengping's eyes, "that on the early morning of the second day after the case was closed, there was a small fire in the storage room in the backyard of the sub-bureau. The duty log has a record, the cause listed as 'aging electrical wiring.' But Old Sun—Sun Jianguo, who was in charge of guarding the evidence room back then, died of liver cancer three years ago—before he retired, he mentioned once while drinking that he saw someone come out of the storage room that night carrying a black briefcase, wearing a suit and glasses." Zhou Zhengping's pupils contracted sharply. His lips moved, but no sound came out. His fingers stopped tapping and clenched the teacup handle tightly, his knuckles turning white. A few seconds later, he shook his head violently, his speech becoming faster, even somewhat scattered: "No... that's not right. Not the second day. It was the third day. Did I remember wrong? Maybe... maybe I mixed it up. Yes, it was the third day, the scrapyard. I'm sure." "You just said you couldn't see clearly if the license plate ended in 7 or 1," Lu Chenzhou continued, Even the ticking of the wall clock seemed to be swallowed by this silence. Zhou Zhengping sat rigidly on the sofa, his complexion appearing ashen under the dim yellow light. His mouth hung open as if he wanted to say something, but no sound came out. His gaze began to wander, shifting away from Lu Chenzhou's face, sweeping over the desk, over the floor lamp, and finally settling once more on the tightly drawn curtains. Lu Chenzhou followed his line of sight. The curtains were made of heavy, dark green velvet, drawn shut without a single gap. But near the lower edge by the window frame, a small patch of fabric bulged slightly outward, its shape irregular, as if something was pressed against it from behind. It was very subtle, something you wouldn't notice without careful observation. "Teacher Zhou," Lu Chenzhou withdrew his gaze, lowering his voice a little, "I'm not here to pressure you. But the information you've given me is contradictory—the timeline doesn't match, the location doesn't match, even the witness's state doesn't match. There's only one explanation—either your memory has been artificially tampered with, or you are being coerced into saying things that are half-true, half-false." He paused, letting the weight of those words sink in. "And I need to know," he continued, his gaze returning to Zhou Zhengping's face, "which part is real?" Zhou Zhengping closed his eyes. His whole body seemed to have its bones pulled out as he slumped back into the sofa cushion. The enamel teacup in his hand tilted, spilling a little tea that soaked into the faded blue cloth cover, spreading a dark stain. A long time passed, so long that Lu Chenzhou thought he wouldn't answer. Then he opened his eyes. The murky exhaustion in his gaze suddenly receded somewhat, revealing beneath it a sharp, cold glint that belonged to the veteran detective. "...Neither," he rasped. "My memory isn't messed up. I'm not being coerced either—at least, not in the way you think." Lu Chenzhou waited. "The fire did happen," Zhou Zhengping's voice dropped extremely low, almost to a whisper. "The things... the physical evidence retrieved from the scene, photos, copies of interrogation records, some of the test reports that hadn't been filed yet... all gone. But it wasn't late on the third night, nor was it early morning on the second day." He looked up, meeting Lu Chenzhou's eyes directly. "It was on the very night the case was closed. It burned right there in the precinct's evidence room." Lu Chenzhou's breath hitched for a moment. "The evidence room has fire prevention systems, surveillance—the cameras back then were rudimentary, but there would still be records," he immediately pointed out the contradiction. "The fire prevention system was shut down that afternoon for 'routine maintenance,'" Zhou Zhengping twitched the corner of his mouth. This time it was a real smile, a cold, deeply sarcastic one. "The surveillance hard drive was 'accidentally damaged,' data unrecoverable. The duty log recorded it as 'spontaneous combustion caused by a short circuit,' but..." He stopped, his gaze drifting once again toward that unnatural bulge at the lower edge of the curtains. "But the fire was controlled too perfectly," he continued, his voice even softer, almost drowned out by the ticking of the wall clock. "It only burned what needed to be burned. The cabinets and shelves next to it weren't even blackened by smoke. Like a scalpel cut through, precise to a terrifying degree. Our people... couldn't pull off a job like that. Too clean, clean like professionals." Professionals. Those two words felt like an ice pick, plunging into Lu Chenzhou's chest. He felt a slight twitch begin at the corner of his left eye, a familiar, physiological warning. He suppressed the urge to press it, keeping his body leaning slightly forward, his fingers unconsciously tightening on his knees. "You saw it?" he asked. Zhou Zhengping shook his head. "I didn't see the fire with my own eyes. But I was working late that night on another case and didn't leave the office until after two in the morning. When I went downstairs... I smelled it. Not plastic, but the mixed smell of paper and chemical reagents burning, faint, drifting out from the ventilation ducts. I followed the smell to the evidence room floor. The door was closed, but there was light under the crack—not firelight, but flashlight light. It flickered once, then went out." "And then?" "And then I left," Zhou Zhengping said, his tone carrying a profound weariness. "I didn't knock, didn't call out to anyone. I turned around, went downstairs, drove home. The next morning, the precinct announced an 'accidental fire in the evidence room.' The loss inventory was listed clearly and Lu Chenzhou looked at him. At this old detective who had once taught him his first lesson in crime scene investigation, now hunched in the sofa, clutching that old teacup in his hand, his knuckles white from the force. He watched as that sharp, cold light in his eyes was gradually re-covered by a turbid fear. "Who doesn't want you to remember?" Lu Chenzhou asked, his voice very soft. Zhou Zhengping did not answer. His gaze drifted toward the curtains again, lingering longer this time. Then he suddenly stood up, his movements somewhat unsteady, walked to the desk, and pulled a thin, kraft paper envelope from beneath a pile of documents. He walked back and thrust the envelope into Lu Chenzhou's hand. "Go," he said, his voice regaining its initial hoarseness and weariness. "Don't come back again. This place of mine... isn't clean." Lu Chenzhou pinched the envelope; it seemed to contain only one or two sheets of paper. He didn't open it immediately but looked up at Zhou Zhengping. "One last question. The 'professional' you mentioned just now—what kind of professional nature are you referring to? A professional cleanup team within the police force, or... from outside?" Zhou Zhengping stood at the edge of the dim yellow light, the wrinkles on his face appearing deeper in the shadows. He was silent for a few seconds, his lips moved, and finally, he uttered only a few vague syllables: "...like a mirror." "A mirror?" "They know how to look." Zhou Zhengping's voice was so low it was almost inaudible, but his eyes were fixed intently on Lu Chenzhou. "And they like to make people see wrong." Having said that, he turned and walked toward the door, gesturing for Lu Chenzhou to leave. Lu Chenzhou asked no more. He stood up, put the envelope into his jacket's inner pocket, and walked to the door. Zhou Zhengping opened the door for him. The dim, motion-activated light in the hallway automatically turned on, casting a brief illumination. Just as Lu Chenzhou stepped over the threshold, Zhou Zhengping suddenly leaned close and whispered very quickly into his ear: "Beware of 'the mirror'." The door closed gently behind him, the lock clicking. Lu Chenzhou stood alone in the dim hallway. The motion-activated light began to flicker on and off. He took a deep breath; the smell of dust and dampness flooded his nostrils. He didn't go downstairs immediately but instead listened intently—there were no footsteps inside the door, no movement, only a heavy silence. He turned and walked slowly downward. His leather shoes made hollow echoes on the concrete steps. As he reached the second-floor landing, the motion-activated light above his head suddenly went out. Darkness surged like a tide, instantly swallowing his vision. Lu Chenzhou stopped where he was, unmoving. His eyes adjusted to the darkness within a few seconds, barely able to make out the outline of the stair railing. His ears caught every faint sound—the distant, faint rumble of traffic on the street, the faint noise of a television from some household upstairs, his own steady breathing. And... another sound. Very soft, like the rustle of fabric rubbing against a wall, coming from downstairs. Not footsteps, more like someone moving slowly along the wall. He held his breath. In the darkness, time stretched. A few seconds later, the sound vanished. But another sensation emerged—his skin tightened by two sizes, as if wrapped in an invisible cold air. Not fear, but an alert, the instinctual sense of danger honed by years of criminal investigation and prison life. He slowly reached into his jacket pocket, his fingertips touching the cool metal casing of his phone. Just then, the phone vibrated. The vibration transmitted through the fabric was faint, but in the absolute silence, it was piercingly clear. Once, twice—it was a text message. Lu Chenzhou did not take it out immediately to look. He remained still, his ears continuing to pick up any movement in the dark. There was no further sound from downstairs, but that layer of cold air enveloping his skin did not dissipate. He finally slowly took out his phone. The screen lit up in the darkness, its light making him squint. A text message from an unknown number, with only four characters: 「Do Not Pursue Old Matters.」 Sent: ten seconds ago. Lu Chenzhou stared at those four words. The screen's light illuminated half his face, outlining a cold, hard silhouette in the darkness. His thumb hovered above the screen; he did not reply, nor did he delete it. A few seconds later, he turned off the screen and put the phone back in his pocket. Darkness descended again. He stood still for another five seconds, then began to walk downward. This time, his steps were lighter, slower, each foot placed on Zhou Zhengping’s fragmented, contradictory account, that brand-new ashtray, the unnatural bulge beneath the curtain, the faint friction sound in the darkness, this terrifyingly timely warning text message—all these fragments were piecing together a new picture in his mind. It was no longer simply Shen Yan versus the police, or Shen Yan versus him. A “mirror” had been erected. It liked to watch, and it liked to make people see wrongly. Lu Chenzhou took one last look at the tightly closed window on the third floor. The curtain was still drawn shut, no light showing. Then he turned, crossed the street, pulled open the car door, and sat in the driver’s seat. The sound of the engine starting was unusually clear in the silent street. He did not drive away immediately. Instead, he took the kraft paper envelope from his inner pocket and opened it under the dashboard’s faint light. Inside was only a single sheet of paper—a torn page from a notebook with horizontal lines, on which a line of words was scrawled in pencil, as if written in haste: *"Old Place Teahouse in the western suburbs. Every third Tuesday of the month, in the afternoon, a man in a suit and glasses goes there. The bottom right corner of the briefcase he carries has a scratch, shaped like a lightning bolt."* Below it was an even smaller line of text, almost illegible: *"Don’t believe anything he says. A mirror can reflect from both sides."* Lu Chenzhou stared at the paper for a long time. Then he folded it, put it back into the envelope, and tucked it into a hidden compartment beneath the seat. He shifted into gear, released the handbrake, and the car slowly rolled into the night. In the rearview mirror, the old apartment building gradually shrank, finally disappearing around the street corner. But Lu Chenzhou knew some things would not disappear. It had already opened its eyes and was quietly watching him from the other side of the mirror. What he had to do now was to discern the mirror’s outline before it made him “see wrongly.” The darkness in the stairwell was not absolute black; it carried a smell of old dust mixed with damp cement. After the motion-sensor light went out, this odor seeped out from the walls, from the cracks in the stair railings, and invaded the nostrils. Lu Chenzhou stopped moving, his posture unchanged, only his breathing slowed. His ears captured every faint sound in the darkness—the distant murmur of traffic, the faint static of a television from some apartment upstairs, the low hum of his own blood flowing in his ear canals. And something else. Not footsteps, not breathing. Something subtler, almost drowned out by the ambient noise… a faint friction sound. Like fabric lightly brushing against a wall, or the sole of a shoe dragging extremely slowly across a rough floor. It came from downstairs, or perhaps from the landing window outside the stairwell turn. The sound was too faint; its direction impossible to pinpoint. His left hand hung at his side, fingers unconsciously curling and relaxing—a habitual gesture when thinking. There was no pen at hand now, only air. The corner of his left eye began to twitch slightly, once, twice, as if tugged by an invisible thread. Go back, or leave? Going back meant confronting a possible watcher, and it meant dragging Zhou Zhengping completely into the vortex of danger. That brand-new ashtray, Zhou Zhengping’s occasional glances toward the window while speaking, and that final vague warning—*“Be careful of the ‘mirror’… they like to watch, and they like to make people see wrongly.”* All these fragments pieced together a clear conclusion: Zhou Zhengping’s life had already been invaded, his memories might have been tampered with, his fear was real. Leaving, on the other hand, was admitting he was already exposed, admitting this contact had come at a cost. But at least, Zhou Zhengping was temporarily safe—if the purpose of “them” was merely to warn and monitor, and not to eliminate immediately. Lu Chenzhou’s fist clenched in the darkness. His fingernails dug into his palm, bringing a sharp sting. The pain made him more alert. He chose to leave. Not a retreat, but a tactical withdrawal. His foot lifted again, landing even lighter, slower, the ball of his foot making first contact with the cement step, his weight shifting gradually to avoid any sound that might reveal his position or rhythm. One floor, two floors. The darkness became both cover and an unknown barrier. At every turn, he paused for half a second, using his ears and skin’s intuition to probe whether someone was ahead. His phone vibrated in his trouser pocket. Not a call, a text message. The vibration came through the fabric, short and cold, like a needle pricking his thigh. He didn No punctuation, no signature. The words were as concise as a scalpel’s incision. Lu Chenzhou stared at that line of text, the cold light of the screen reflected in his pupils, unrippled. He pressed the delete key, then set his phone to silent and stuffed it back into his pocket. His movements were steady, without a tremor. But his heart was beating fast and heavy in his chest. Not fear—it was something else. A kind of confirmed chill. This text message wasn’t from Shen Yan. Shen Moqing’s warnings would be more direct, more transactional and threatening, mentioning specific chips, like Lu Chenxing, like his precarious freedom. This message was different. It exuded another kind of temperament: professional, cold, not entangled in specific grudges, merely stating a fact—you’ve overstepped, we’ve seen it, leave now. A third party. The shadow from Zhou Zhengping’s contradictory account—"the method was too clean, like a professional’s"—now rose from the ashes of memory, materializing into a real-time warning. They not only existed in the past, they were still active, still watching, and could pinpoint this old corridor, sending a message within three minutes of him leaving Zhou Zhengping’s home. The corners of Lu Chenzhou’s mouth pressed into a straight line. He continued walking down. The first-floor entrance was right ahead, opening to dim streetlight and deeper night. He stopped in the shadow inside the doorway, not stepping out immediately. His gaze swept over the narrow street outside—a row of small shops with their shutters down across the way, a tricycle leaning against the wall, a few bags of garbage piled by the roadside. No pedestrians, no suspiciously parked vehicles. But it felt wrong. The feeling of being watched hadn’t disappeared; it had grown clearer. It didn’t come from a specific window or corner, but permeated the very air of the entire street, like an invisible film wrapping this area. Lu Chenzhou’s back tightened slightly, goosebumps rising on his skin. He remembered Zhou Zhengping’s words—"They like to watch." Mirrors. They like to watch, and they like to make people see wrong. If "mirrors" referred not just to reflection, but to distortion, to tools for creating illusions… Then was this seemingly empty street, those seemingly normal shadows, itself a carefully arranged "mirror"? Making you think it was safe, letting your guard down, so that the real image would only emerge from behind the distorted reflection when you least expected it. He couldn’t stay here long. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with air tinged with dust and the coolness of night dew, then slowly exhaled. Then he walked out, his pace normal, his direction clear—toward the car parked two blocks away. He didn’t look back, didn’t glance around, just like an ordinary resident returning late. But all his senses were wide open, scanning his surroundings like radar: Was there a following footstep behind him? Was there an unnatural reflection in the glass of the shops to the side? Was there a slight movement of a curtain behind a window above? As he passed the first intersection, he used the moment of turning to quickly glance back with the corner of his eye. Still empty. But just before his gaze fully withdrew, he caught a glimpse—about a hundred meters away, on the third floor of that old-style apartment building, at Zhou Zhengping’s window, the curtain seemed to move. Very slightly, as if blown by the wind, or perhaps someone had been standing behind the curtain and had just looked away. Lu Chenzhou’s footsteps didn’t pause. He reached the car, unlocked it, opened the door, and got in. The moment the door closed, the sealed space cut off the outside air and sound. The world suddenly became quiet and oppressive. He didn’t start the engine immediately, but leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes. His mind began replaying. Zhou Zhengping’s voice, aged, carrying exhaustion and struggle: "Late on the third night after the case was closed… the suburban scrapyard." A pause, his gaze drifting. "Or maybe early morning the next day… the storage room in the backyard of the sub-bureau." His fingers unconsciously tapped his knee, rhythm erratic. The brand-new ashtray, placed next to the old telephone, its edge reflecting cold light. That final, hushed warning, his breath carrying the smell of tobacco and fear. Contradiction. But contradiction itself was also information. Two different times, two different locations, both pointing to "fire"—the destruction of physical evidence. If Zhou Zhengping’s memory had been interfered with, why would the interferer create this contradiction? To thoroughly confuse him? Or to conceal an even more crucial fact: that the real destruction This sentence surfaced from the chaotic narrative, piercingly clear. Professional. It wasn't a hasty destruction by impulsive police insiders, nor was it the crude evidence elimination by Shen Yan's men. It was professional, meaning it was planned, technical, based on a deep understanding of the nature of physical evidence and investigative procedures, capable of complete destruction without leaving traceable marks. What kind of "professional" force would intervene in the destruction of evidence for a political assassination case a decade ago? Who hired them? Shen Yan? Or... someone else? And why were they reappearing now? Was it because Lu Chenzhou's reopened investigation had touched upon the secrets of that year, or were they themselves always lurking in the shadows, monitoring all people and events related to that "fire"? Zhou Zhengping, Li Guohua, and those names lost in the cracks of time—were they all within the scope of their "mirror"? Lu Chenzhou opened his eyes. The night outside the car window was thick, the halos of streetlights spreading into small, blurred circles of warm yellow on the glass. He started the car; the low hum of the engine seemed particularly abrupt in the silent street. The blue glow from the dashboard illuminated the lower half of his face—his lips pressed tightly together, the line of his jaw rigid. He turned the steering wheel, pulling away from the curb. In the rearview mirror, the old building gradually shrank, merging into a silhouette of grayish structures. The third-floor window never lit up again. What was Zhou Zhengping doing at this moment? Sitting in that old rattan chair, staring blankly at the new ashtray? Or standing behind the curtains, watching his car leave through a gap, calculating the possible consequences of this meeting in his mind? Lu Chenzhou didn't know. All he knew was that he had just walked out of a space that might have been under comprehensive surveillance, carrying away a pile of contradictory fragments and a warning delivered in real-time. On his list of enemies, besides Shen Moqing, besides the potential obstacles within the system, there was now a shadowy "third party." Who were they? What was their purpose? Friend or foe? All question marks. But one fact was already confirmed: his investigative moves had elicited a reaction. Not the transaction-like suppression from Shen Yan, but a colder, more distant, more unequivocal warning. This meant he was approaching a certain core, a core of which even Shen Yan might be just one part. The car merged into the traffic flow of the main road. The neon lights' shadows flowed across his face through the windshield, flickering bright and dim. His hand on the steering wheel was steady, yet the knuckles were still slightly pale. The path to overturning the case had changed from a narrow, thorny trail into a minefield. Ahead lay not only known enemies but also unknown watchers. Every step could trigger a new trap; every contact could expose more weaknesses. But he had to keep going. The contradictory clues provided by Zhou Zhengping, that warning text message, and the metaphor of the "mirror"—all of these, while increasing the danger, also pointed a direction. In the ashes of that year's "fire," there were not only Shen Yan's fingerprints but also another set of more concealed, more professional footprints. Finding this set of footprints might provide the leverage point to pry open the entire conspiracy. The phone in his pocket remained silent, like a cold piece of iron. Lu Chenzhou's gaze swept over the passenger seat. It was empty, only shadows. But he could almost see, sitting in those shadows, his own self from ten years ago, pushed to the brink, and that fateful "false confession." Now, ten years later, with the residual warmth of another "fire" not yet dissipated, a new warning had arrived. Time was pressing; enemies were multiplying. And he had to find the path to truth within the distorted images of the "mirror"—even if that path was destined to be paved with more cost. Outside the car window, the city lights flew past, forming a blurred band of light. The night was deep, and the long game had only just begun.