Yunjing City, the old district, eleven o’clock at night.
A single light was on in the top floor of an old apartment building.
The light was not bright, but it happened to illuminate the three screens on the desk.
The glow of the screens reflected onto Xiao’s face, making the faint dark circles beneath his eyes especially clear.
He leaned against the back of the chair, lightly spinning a pen in his hand. His gaze rested on the screen in the center, as though he were reading a certain data sheet that had already been gone through many times.
This apartment was completely different in style from Guichen Studio.
The old apartment building in the old district looked somewhat aged from the outside. The walls were mottled, and the stairwell was dimly lit.
But the interior of the top floor was an entirely different world.
The space was spacious, about eighty ping. The wooden floor had been polished by the passage of time into a warm, lustrous sheen.
Upon entering was a short corridor. Several black-and-white photographs hung on both sides, most of them showing the rooftops and skyline of the old district.
The study was at the end of the corridor, about twenty ping. The floor-to-ceiling windows faced Yunjing City’s skyline. In the distance, the lights of the high-rises resembled a golden river stretched out into the distance, quietly flowing at this moment.
A dark wooden desk stood beside the window. Besides the three monitors, there was also a laptop, several old booklets, and a cup of coffee that had been cold for a long time.
The surveillance wall was on the other side of the study.
It was a video wall made up of twelve screens, each displaying real-time footage from different angles inside and outside Guichen Studio.
Several screens in the center were aimed respectively at the back door of Guichen Studio, the front hall, the counter, and the entrance to Changning Alley.
The footage was stable, without interference, as though it had been repeatedly calibrated.
Xiao’s gaze occasionally swept over the surveillance wall, but most of the time it remained on the screen in the center.
The title of the document on the screen read:
“Sheng Chengxiu—Threat Assessment Update.”
He scrolled through the page, reading line by line.
Sheng Chengxiu
Threat Level: A → S
Current Status:
✓ Hostility confirmed.
✓ Confirmed knowledge of Guichen Studio.
✓ Confirmed investigation into the Su family has begun.
✓ One assassination attempt has been carried out.
✓ Operating style: Does not act personally.
✓ Acceptable casualties: High.
Recommendation:
Change from “Observation” to “Processing.”
Xiao looked at that line, his finger tapping once against the edge of the desk.
It was not hard, as though he were confirming something.
Then he casually sent it to the group chat.
After that, he continued scrolling through the information.
Sheng family director.
Overseas assets.
Private aircraft.
Islands.
Private hospitals.
Laboratories.
A date and source were attached after every piece of information, as though they had already been tracked for a very long time.
The light from the screen made those words exceptionally clear.
Xiao did not hurry to read further. He simply stopped there, as though allowing the weight of that information to settle in his heart.
Then he picked up his phone and made a call.
The phone rang twice before it was answered.
“It’s me.”
He spoke very briefly, as though he already knew the other party would answer.
“The chief programmer of the AI team on Sheng Chengxiu’s side.”
He paused, as though listening to the other party confirm, then continued.
“Give him a better offer. No need to bribe him. Just make him feel that his current job isn’t worth staying for.”
The person on the other end responded.
Xiao added another sentence.
“Keep it clean. He only needs to decide to leave on his own.”
When he hung up, he did not say goodbye, as though he were simply confirming that something had already been handed over.
Then he put down his phone, opened another document, and began writing a short message.
As his fingertips moved across the keyboard, words appeared line by line on the screen:
Begin cutting the supply chain.
Special chips.
Not banned from sale.
Just a six-month waiting list.
When he pressed send, his movements were very light, as though he were simply placing a chess piece that had already been prepared where it belonged.
Then he sent several more emails one after another.
Only after finishing all of this did he pick up the cup of coffee that had long since gone completely cold and take a sip.
When he lowered his head, he saw Qianqian’s message in the group chat:
“Has the war started?”
He casually typed:
“Mm.”
Ningning:
“Who do we hit first?”
Xiao typed some words and sent them.
Sheng Group attack order:
- Intelligence
- Cash flow
- Connections
- Overseas
- Sheng Chengxiu
Then he sent an owl sticker.
Qianqian:
“The person himself is last?”
Xiao:
“People are easy to deal with.”
He thought for a moment, then added:
“What’s truly troublesome are the things in his hands, and the things in his head.”
Ningning:
“Can I beat him up first?”
Xiao:
“Not yet.”
The lights outside the window were still shining.
Xiao leaned back against the chair, his gaze falling onto one of the surveillance screens.
The footage of the front hall of Guichen Studio was stable, with nothing unusual.
The streetlights at the entrance of Changning Alley were still lit, illuminating that stretch of stone road that was always damp.
Everything was very quiet.
But he knew that this quietness was only temporary.
Because he had already moved Sheng Chengxiu from “Observation” into the range of “Processing.”
And the two orders he had just sent out were only the first step.
First pull out the teeth, then cut the blood vessels.
He was not in a hurry. He had time.
And time was the only thing he currently did not need to explain to anyone.
◇◆◇◆◇
Jiang Zechen sat before the desk, an empty memorial spread out in front of him.
It was already dark outside the window. He had been sitting there for a very long time.
The brush rested against the edge of the inkstone. The ink had already dried, yet he still had not written the first character.
Writing memorials used to be easy.
Whatever he saw, he wrote.
Linbei City lacked grain, write it.
The Northern Di raided the grain, write it.
The Prince of Su built the city walls, write it.
His brushstrokes had always been clean and decisive. Every sentence had been precisely considered, yet he never concealed anything.
He had once been proud of that precision, because it was not concealment. It was his understanding of this world.
But now it was different.
He had discovered that every character he wrote and every seal he stamped all carried the weight of human lives.
He had never thought that simply writing a few words could cause tens of thousands of people to die.
He had never noticed that weight before.
Last night, he had a dream.
In the dream, he saw many people.
Those people wore tattered clothes, their cheeks sunken.
Their eyes seemed to have been dulled by wind and snow, dim and without light.
A trace of decay mingled with the snow.
And beneath the snow were buried countless nameless corpses.
Quietly, eternally, they slept beneath the deep snow of the northern frontier, waiting for a dawn that would never come.
Then he saw a red river.
In that river were countless white hands like dead branches. Sounds constantly came from all around, accusing him.
“—You were the one who stamped the seal.”
“—You were the one who signed your name.”
Those voices lingered around his ears and would not leave.
Finally, Grand Tutor Xia appeared before him.
It was the moment when the Grand Tutor had handed him the bamboo fan.
The Grand Tutor said to him:
“Zechen, you must uphold propriety for all under Heaven.”
At the time, he had always believed that upholding propriety meant upholding rules.
So he had turned himself into the sharpest measuring stick of the laws and regulations.
Propriety was meant to restrain people.
But thinking about it now, that was not what Grand Tutor Xia had meant.
What the Grand Tutor truly wanted to say was—
—Propriety is not meant to bind the common people.
—Propriety is meant to bind those in power.
True “propriety” was never meant to make demands of the weak.
It was meant to make demands of those with power.
His teacher had not told him to guard the laws.
He had told him to preserve the original purpose for which “propriety” existed.
If propriety became a tool for oppressing the common people,
then it was no longer propriety.
Xia Lanshi had understood this long ago.
And he had only understood it now.
The Grand Tutor had given him a bamboo fan.
Not a sword, so it could not kill people.
Not a brush, so it could not determine policy.
A bamboo fan could only shield someone else from a little of the summer heat.
He should not hold that fan and point it at others in accusation.
Instead, he should use it to shield the people under Heaven from a little wind and rain.
Even if its strength was weak and insignificant.
He sat before the desk, remembering what he had seen at the granary today.
The grain from Listening Snow Pavilion had entered the granary of Linbei City.
That shipment of grain had not been entered into the accounts, had not been registered, and had not gone through verification by a single level of government office.
According to the court’s rules, that was called “privately requisitioning grain.”
In the past, he would have written those four words into his memorial without hesitation, then stamped his seal.
But now he did not.
He hesitated for a very long time.
He knew very clearly why Xia Lanshi had not entered that grain into the accounts.
Because once it was entered into the accounts, the Ministry of Revenue would know, the imperial court would know, and the Crown Prince would know.
That grain might be intercepted along the way, reassigned, or transferred under all kinds of pretexts.
He had seen it happen too many times.
The process that had already been written onto paper and the things that truly happened in the snow were always separated by a certain distance.
At last, he picked up his brush and wrote on the paper:
“Linbei City independently allocated military grain to make up the shortage.”
When he put down the brush, his fingers paused at the edge of the paper for a moment.
He had not lied. That grain really was meant to make up the shortage.
But he had not said where the grain came from, nor had he said that it had not gone through verification by a single level of government office.
That was embellishment, not a lie.
It was simply a line that was wider than before, so wide that it was enough for him to hide certain things within the shadow of that line.
He looked at the line he had written, examining it again and again.
Then a second time.
A third time.
A fourth time.
He began to become accustomed to those subtle adjustments.
Sometimes it was only changing one or two characters.
Sometimes it was omitting certain details.
Sometimes it was changing the way a sentence was phrased, making it sound less sharp.
Every time, he could find enough basis on paper to make those words still appear to be facts.
It was only that he had omitted a certain part of the facts.
The parts he would never have omitted before.
One day, he realized that he had already begun to “choose” what to write instead of being “required” to write something.
He remained silent for a very, very long time.
He looked at the memorial before him as though he were looking at words written by someone he had never known before.
He did not tear up the memorial, nor did he rewrite it.
He simply put down his brush, as though acknowledging a fact.
—He was no longer the Jiang Zechen he had once been.
Not because he had violated any rule.
But because he had begun to “choose.”
◆◇◆◇◆
When that person arrived, Jiang Zechen was putting away the account books.
He had not announced himself or knocked on the door, as though he had merely been passing by and happened to walk in.
The man was plainly dressed and spoke gently, like an ordinary servant.
But Jiang Zechen recognized him—
Someone from the Eastern Palace.
He had seen him before, both in the capital and not long ago.
“Magistrate Jiang,” the man greeted him in a low voice. “Your recent memorials have been more concise than before.”
Jiang Zechen did not raise his head or stop putting away the account books.
“There is nothing major happening on the northern frontier.”
The man was silent for a moment before asking:
“Truly nothing?”
Jiang Zechen finally raised his head. His tone did not fluctuate.
“Nothing.”
He looked directly at the man, confirming whether he had been seen through.
But he knew that the other party would not only look at the surface.
The other party had come here because someone had already noticed.
The man did not press further. He merely smiled and said:
“That is good. His Highness the Crown Prince is concerned about the northern frontier, and also concerned about Magistrate Jiang.”
Then he turned and left.
Jiang Zechen stood where he was without moving.
He watched the man’s back disappear outside the door and heard his footsteps gradually recede down the corridor, eventually swallowed by the night.
He knew that was not concern.
It was a warning.
His memorials had already attracted attention, and just now he had chosen not to speak.
Even he could not explain whether that was because he was afraid to speak, or because he did not want to speak.
That night, he slept extremely restlessly.
He constantly felt that gaze was still somewhere he could not see, quietly moving toward where he was.
◆◇◆◇◆
His younger sister’s letter arrived three days later.
His only younger sister had been taken by the Crown Prince as a secondary consort for two years.
Jiang Zechen knew very well that his younger sister was a bargaining chip held in the Crown Prince’s hand.
The letter was folded neatly.
The handwriting was familiar to him, just as neat and clean as it had been since they were children, without any unnecessary flourishes.
The first thing Jiang Zechen saw was the sentence:
“Elder Brother, everything has been fine lately.”
Everything was just like every letter she had sent him before.
Then, when he saw the final line, he froze.
“His Highness the Crown Prince is very concerned about Elder Brother.”
His fingers stopped on that line.
He knew his younger sister would not have written this sentence.
She had never mentioned the names of anyone connected to the imperial court in her letters to him. She had been like this from childhood until now.
She would even deliberately avoid those words, as though carefully avoiding a line she was not supposed to cross.
But now, that sentence appeared at the end of the letter.
The ink was no different from the rest of the text, and the handwriting was almost impossible to distinguish.
It was as though it had been quietly slipped into an ordinary family letter, and then, in a place that seemed unrelated, a sentence she herself would never have said had been inserted.
That sentence was not a greeting.
It was a warning.
It meant that someone had seen this letter.
Someone had forced her to write that sentence.
Jiang Zechen folded the letter.
He did not look at that sentence again, because he no longer needed to.
He already understood everything.
There was no need to read it again to confirm that answer.
The next day, someone from the Eastern Palace arrived on time.
There was no announcement, no knock, just as before. He was merely passing by.
The man stood by the door, his tone gentle, as though he were explaining an ordinary matter.
“Inspector, the memorials must be written truthfully.”
Then he added:
“His Highness the Crown Prince is concerned about Guichen Medical Sect and Doctor Su.”
Jiang Zechen did not answer.
There was no accusation in those words, no threat, and no mention of his younger sister.
But Jiang Zechen knew that if he did not comply, the next letter would no longer contain that sentence.
It would be replaced with something else.
Or perhaps nothing would appear at all.
Only a blank page would remain.
The man did not wait for his answer.
He turned and left, his footsteps gradually fading down the corridor.
Jiang Zechen sat before the desk, looking at the folded letter on the table.
He remembered the abandoned village Xia Lanshi had taken him to see.
He remembered those roof beams crushed beneath the snow.
He remembered the name he himself had signed on the case files.
He remembered that flood.
He remembered the days he had waited for approval documents.
He remembered when tens of thousands of people died.
Now, he was facing the same choice.
Follow the rules, or not follow the rules?
Write, or not write?
Which side should he stand on?
The side that would be shattered, or the side that shattered others?
He did not know which side was right.
But he knew he could no longer return to where he had stood before.
He did not write that memorial, nor did he tear it up.
He simply put down the brush and closed the book.
The wind and snow outside the window grew heavier again, and the darkness of night was slowly swallowing the entire city.
He sat there without moving.