Stop Them Together

Faculty housing, Huzhou University.

'Everything on Lu Yuzhu's background is here.' He Yu pulled up the relevant files and the two of them read through them together on the screen.

'There's no logic to killing her.'

He finished the last line and delivered his verdict without hesitation.

'She's theirs, through and through.'

Xie Qingcheng said: 'Then why would she need to be cleaned up?'

'Cleaned up…'

He Yu turned the phrase over in his mind and fell quiet.

As the saying goes — only one of a kind truly understands another.

Unlike Zheng Jingfeng, He Yu was a hacker. He thought in terms of information and transmission; his grasp of how the other side reasoned ran deeper. Years of feigning madness, of living a life nothing like anyone else's, had honed his mind into something warped, wire-taut, and razor-sharp.

He sat with it for a moment, watching the Broadcast Tower cut through the night like a blood-red sword, and then — turning the word 'clean up' slowly — something clicked.

He came to his feet suddenly, eyes fixed on the building behind the Broadcast Tower, a light moving through them that was almost frightening.

L.

Right… there was something in all of this that looked normal but had no business being there.

Something that kept repeating.

The Broadcast Tower.

What role had it actually played in the video killings? Think carefully — none that stood on its own. Up to this point, its only function had been to broadcast the kill feed in sync with the phone video. Its purpose was completely redundant with the phone feed.

So why had they gone to the trouble of making the Broadcast Tower stand there like a sword of judgment?

Purely for provocation? Blanketing the entire area's signal was already an act of breathtaking arrogance — why bother doing more?

He Yu's expression darkened. He was beginning to understand: taking control of the Broadcast Tower might have had nothing to do with broadcasting the kill feed. The real purpose was…

The real purpose was that somewhere near that tower — there might be signal sources they needed to control with precision.

That was why the enemy's hacker hadn't wanted interference from the tower's own signal — so they'd simply seized control of it too, dressing it up as ritual theater. What they actually needed was stable, total signal coverage of the surrounding area.

L… L…

What buildings near the Broadcast Tower were worth paying attention to?

The Second Canteen… the Fengyu Sports Ground…

And then there was the one He Yu's eyes were now locked on —

Library.

The Archives Building.

Also one of the university's libraries.

Jiang Lanpei had been locked in Chengkang Psychiatric Hospital for nearly twenty years. The Chengkang Case and the Hu Media TV Tower Murder Case were now wound tightly around each other, and the organization wanted to clean house…

Was L only pointing to the 'Lu' in Lu Yuzhu?

Was 'cleaning up' only about people?

More than a decade of darkness — there had to be a paper trail. Even ordinary people need contracts to keep each other honest; an organization like this would never have left every arrangement to word of mouth. Push the timeline back further, and electronic records would have been out of the question.

So if there were case files — documents recording what they'd done, or recording the names of people pulled into those cases — across ten, twenty years, how much paper would have piled up?

The most critical files they'd keep close. But what about the peripheral scraps, the loose ends?

Might those have been handed off, stored on a partner's territory — a kind of mutual leverage, a 'covenant' binding both sides in the dark?

Wang Jiankang, Zhang Yong — both senior figures at the university, collaborators with The Mysterious Organization, in possession of some portion of those peripheral files. Where would they have put them? The files were likely voluminous, not the sort of thing you lock in a bank safe. They wouldn't have wanted family to know. So…

Where on the entire campus would the most records be stored — and be the least likely to draw anyone's attention?

The answer was that building still half-swallowed in the Broadcast Tower's bloody glow at this very moment, silent and unremarkable: the Archives Building.

Every century-old university has a building like it — shelves packed with towering stacks of folders. Huzhou University even more so. Even now, in the age of digital records, the school held to an old tradition of archiving every graduating student's transcripts, theses, and examination papers in physical form.

The Archives Building held originals of thesis defenses written by students over a hundred years ago. The sheer volume of files inside would take ten days and ten nights to sort through.

L. Library. Lu Yuzhu.

If she wasn't the one being cleaned up, then she was…

He Yu turned back to Xie Qingcheng. 'If you trust me, come with me to the Archives Building. But I could be wrong. It's a twenty-minute walk from here, and we'd have to avoid the patrol officers without being seen — probably longer than twenty minutes. If my guess is off, you may lose your only chance to get close to someone who might know the truth about how your parents died. Think about whether you want to do this.'

Xie Qingcheng had spent his whole life giving cool, precise instructions to others, mapping out paths for other people to follow. But what stood before him now was the truth of his parents' deaths — nineteen years unresolved.

His mind was close to chaos.

So even though something nagged at him, some vague wrongness he couldn't name, Xie Qingcheng couldn't find his way through the pieces on the board in front of him.

It had never once occurred to him that the only person who could give him a direction right now would be He Yu.

This kid.

Restless and distracted, Xie Qingcheng picked up the cigarette box from the table and held He Yu's gaze for a long moment.

He had never looked at He Yu this way before.

In the past his gaze had always come from above — even after He Yu grew taller than him, what came through those peach-blossom eyes was still the look of a man regarding a boy who owed him absolute obedience.

But now Xie Qingcheng was looking at him straight on. Level.

'…' he said to He Yu. 'I trust you.'

He Yu felt something lurch in his chest.

And then Xie Qingcheng paused — and, still looking at him, said it word by deliberate word: '…Thank you.'

It took He Yu a few seconds to come back to himself. '…It's nothing.'

He said it and pressed down whatever was trembling in him without reason.

'It's nothing.' He repeated it, grabbed his phone, and then remembered something. 'Right — gege, wait a second.'

He turned back, quickly connected his phone to the laptop, logged into a darknet site, searched for a piece of software, paid with Mastercard, and downloaded it to his phone.

'This is the Hacker Mirroring Software for the devices they're using — only the most basic mirror, but it'll do,' He Yu said. 'Better to have it than not.'

Xie Qingcheng watched him, and that vague wrongness surfaced again.

Under normal circumstances he would have pinpointed the problem immediately. But right now his mind moved like half-set glue — everything sluggish.

So when He Yu finished setting up the software, pocketed his phone, turned around, and said 'Let's go,' Xie Qingcheng hesitated for just a beat — then agreed.

He followed He Yu toward the Archives Building at a run.

Inside the Archives Building.

Lu Yuzhu was unhurried, relaxed. She walked Jiang Liping to the elevator and placed an External Hard Drive in her hands.

'Everything important that was sorted is on there. Director Duan has the password.'

Jiang Liping took it and stood there turning it over in her hands. After a moment she looked at Lu Yuzhu. 'Sister Lu, don't you want to…'

'I'm not leaving with you.' Lu Yuzhu said. 'Someone has to close this out. This whole thing was meant to be a bloody warning to every partner in the dark — proof that even under the noses of the police, anyone who crosses the boss won't survive. But those hounds, especially the one running them, will do whatever it takes to keep this case going. If they don't, they lose their positions.'

She smiled slightly. 'I know better than anyone what people will do when a rank is on the line.'

Jiang Liping said: 'You've made up your mind.'

'I've made up my decision,' Lu Yuzhu said. 'I am the domestic Zhixing — the hands-on killer for this entire case. I have to mislead the Police Force into believing Jiang Lanpei had ties to foreign powers, and that I'm an assassin those foreign powers sent to avenge her.'

'By now, everything the Police Force needs to complete the three-link chain of evidence has already been left by me. When they reach the end of the trail, the only thing the evidence will prove is a cross-border crime — and the head of the Overseas Machinery Manufacturing Company has already been brought under Superintendent Duan's control during a standoff that lasted nearly a decade, ending just a few months ago. Superintendent Duan is waiting to steer all the evidence toward them before having them killed abroad. A colossus of a corpse like that is more than enough to pin both the Chengkang Case and the Police Murder Case from nineteen years ago on them instead of our organization. The dead can't testify against anyone, after all.'

'Once they have someone to hand domestically, most of the hounds will stand down. Fugitives they won't pursue with their full strength — and what's left will be individuals, each one working alone, no match for what we have.'

She glanced down at the time and said: 'Liping, go. Wang Jiankang and Zhang Yong's business — you're not clean of that either. If they get their hands on you, you're finished. When is Director Duan's people coming to pick you up?'

Jiang Liping studied Lu Yuzhu's face, as if she wanted to say something — and ultimately didn't. She was quiet for a moment. 'His people are already here. I can leave any time.'

'Then go now. Zheng Jingfeng isn't stupid — once he pieces it together, he may come straight here.'

'Sister Lu…'

'Go.' Lu Yuzhu said, and pulled her into a brief embrace. They had both lived as hidden agents of the organization inside Huzhou University — in a sense, they'd weathered the same storm. 'Be careful. There's a police informant inside the organization. If the plan hadn't been leaked early, things would have gone much more smoothly.'

Jiang Liping said: 'I know.'

'That informant still hasn't shown themselves… working against us in the shadows all this time. When you find them, make the boss tear them to pieces…'

Lu Yuzhu ground her back teeth, and something blazed in her eyes — fierce, bright, almost feverish. 'It's the only thing I want before I die. I'll be watching from hell.'

Jiang Liping closed her eyes and, without a word, held her tight.

A few seconds later she turned, and stepped into the elevator.

The elevator doors drew slowly shut between the two women, sealing the living from the dead.

The elevator rose.

Lu Yuzhu turned and went deeper — down into the Archives Basement.

The fuses were already laid along multiple lines, the Detonator in place. Both archive workers had been killed by her. Even with an informant tipping them off, Zheng Jingfeng had still lost — he hadn't found her position before she finished laying everything out.

They were always so useless. They had been, more than ten years ago. They still were.

Always late.

Justice that arrives late is no justice at all — they had taught her that lesson with her own life.

Now she intended to return the lesson, paid back in full, with her own.

Lu Yuzhu walked to the center of the basement and ran through everything one last time, careful and thorough. This was the most advanced setup the organization had given her. She didn't know explosives, but she understood enough of the procedure. As long as she assembled it to their specifications and pressed the Detonator, their people could detonate everything remotely — all charges simultaneously, within five minutes.

Lu Yuzhu stood still in the web of wiring and looked around with calm eyes. Once it went off, the entire Archives Building — not just the last twenty years but a hundred years of records — would be reduced to ash. And the person who had once pulled her out of a life she never chose would be clean.

Lu Yuzhu walked into the center of the spiderweb of wiring and stood still. She looked around her with steady eyes, knowing that once this went off, the entire Archives Building — not just the past twenty years but a century of documents — would burn to nothing. And the person who had once lifted her out of the life she'd been living would come out clean.

'Duan-ge.' She murmured the name she had only ever dared to breathe in her own heart — bold, presumptuous, tender. 'I've come to clean house for you.'

She let out a quiet laugh and pressed the Detonator down.

.

'Director Duan.'

Inside a Hotel Suite somewhere in Huzhou, a technician with a cigar clamped between his teeth stared at the laptop screen in front of him, his expression grim.

'The remote detonation system has just been intercepted by someone.'

The man standing at the floor-to-ceiling window, looking out over the Hu University TV Tower, asked coolly: 'The Police Force intercepted it? I paid a great deal to bring you on, and you can't keep ahead of the police. Comfortable collecting that money, are you?'

'It's not the Police Force.' The technician wiped the sweat from his forehead, his eyes bulging behind his thick bottle-cap lenses like a frog's. 'The access port doesn't match any we recognize.'

'…' A flicker of interest crossed the man's face. 'Then?'

'I can't identify it yet. But the technique — I think… I think it's…'

'Is?'

The technician swallowed. 'Edward.'

After the name fell, a silence of several seconds — and then a woman's voice came from somewhere in the room.

She hadn't spoken this entire time. She'd been reclining in a lounger scrolling through Weibo, reading the discussion threads about the Hu University TV Tower. The posts kept getting taken down almost as fast as they appeared, but they kept resurfacing — there was enough to read if you refreshed often enough.

But when she heard the name Edward, her hand stopped.

She asked the technician: 'Are you certain?'

'I — I can't be certain, but to intercept my system in that short a time, using that method — among every hacker I know of, I can't think of anyone else right now except him, I…'

Director Duan smiled faintly. 'If it is him, that actually makes things easier. Let's confirm first.'

He told the secretary beside him: 'Call He Yu.'

'Ring… ring… ring…'

'Director Duan, he isn't picking up.'

The man turned one deep, unhurried eye toward the woman, a sidelong glance. 'Allow me to congratulate you, Director Lü. What a fine son you have.'

The woman rose from her chair. Her custom silk dress wrapped around her full figure as she crossed to the floor-to-ceiling window. The city's night lit her face from outside.

That face — all kind eyes and gentle brows, every surface polished smooth.

This woman was none other than —

Lü Zhishu!

Lü Zhishu drained her glass. Her expression was faintly uncomfortable.

But she managed a few laughs all the same, and said to the man: 'Director Duan, I should congratulate you too — if it weren't for him, tonight would have been very difficult to wrap up, wouldn't it? If it is him, that's actually manageable. Because knowing my son's temperament, he would never in a million years get himself tangled up in something like this on his own initiative. Someone must be with him.'

She said it and looked down at her phone.

In the family group chat, He Yu's last message still sat there: 'Dr. Xie and I are heading back to the dorm.'

Lü Zhishu's expression was complicated. She held the phone out to the man. 'Try not to hurt him. Find a way to get him to drop this quickly.'

The man glanced at the screen.

'Your son is with Xie Qingcheng again.'

'Probably fairly close, too.' Lü Zhishu wanted nothing more than to distance her family from all of this, and so she heaped it squarely onto Xie Qingcheng. 'I know my son. He doesn't actually like Xie Qingcheng's personality. But mentally, he's always treated him as a benchmark — someone to measure himself against and push past. My guess is Xie Qingcheng is the one who wanted to investigate, and he just threw himself at it to be useful. Wanted to perform for his idol.'

'Idol?' The man scrolled through the chat history, then after a moment turned to the technician: 'Then pull up some old footage. It's time to shatter the boy's… what do you call it. Oh — idol filter.'

Director Duan moved to the computer and continued: 'Publicly available and internal — both. I'll tell you exactly which videos to look for.'

The man smiled — cold, certain, unhurried. If He Yu had done this for Xie Qingcheng's sake, that was all he needed to know.

Getting He Yu to stand down would be easy enough.

All it would take was letting him see Xie Qingcheng's past.

Lü Zhishu's son — once he saw it — would never reach out a hand to help his Dr. Xie again.