6. Bloodline of the Banished

Dr. Wen left at five o'clock, leaving behind a folder of genetic charts and a warning that echoed in Li Wei's mind long after the door closed. The cold heart was real. It was measurable. It was heritable. And there were people who wanted to protect it.

Yan sat on the sofa, the photograph of Zhang Lihua in her lap, staring at the wall with unfocused eyes. "All those years," she said quietly. "We had all those years when we could have done something. When intervention might have worked."

"We didn't know."

"We didn't want to know." She looked at him, and her eyes were wet. "There's a difference, Li Wei. We felt something was wrong, and we chose not to investigate. We chose to believe she was just different, just gifted, just going through phases. We chose comfort over truth."

Li Wei couldn't argue. He had replayed those moments a thousand times in the past week—the bird, the neighbor's dog, the classmate's sudden transfer, Chen Fang's drowned body. Each time, he had looked away. Each time, he had told himself a story that made the fear manageable.

"The geneticist said the window closes after puberty," Yan continued. "Mei is sixteen. The window closed years ago. What are we supposed to do now?"

Before Li Wei could answer, his phone rang. The caller ID showed a number he didn't recognize—a Beijing landline.

"Professor Li? This is Detective Liu, Beijing Public Security Bureau. I'm calling about your daughter, Mei."

Li Wei's blood stopped. "What about her?"

"We need you to come to the station. There's been an incident at her school. She's not injured," the detective added quickly, "but there are questions we need to ask."

"What kind of incident?"

A pause. "It's better if we discuss this in person. Xicheng District Station. Can you come now?"

Li Wei said yes and hung up. Yan was already on her feet, grabbing her coat.

"Don't say anything to them," Li Wei said. "Not about the cold heart, not about the Liu family, not about anything. Until we know what happened."

"What could have happened? What did she do?"

The question hung in the air, unanswered and unanswerable.

The Xicheng District police station was a gray concrete building from the 1980s, its lobby harsh with fluorescent light and the smell of old cigarettes. Detective Liu met them at the front desk—a stocky man in his forties with a face that had seen too much and a voice that was carefully neutral.

"Thank you for coming quickly," he said, leading them to a small interview room. "Your daughter is in another room. She's calm. She's been very cooperative."

"What happened?" Li Wei asked.

Detective Liu sat down across from them and opened a tablet. "At approximately two-thirty this afternoon, a student at your daughter's school was found unconscious in the chemistry laboratory. She had been exposed to a significant quantity of hydrogen sulfide gas. The lab's ventilation system had been tampered with."

Yan's hand found Li Wei's under the table. "Is she—is the student—"

"She's at Peking Union Medical College Hospital. She's in critical condition, but she's alive."

"Who is she?"

"A girl named Wang Shu. She's in Mei's class." Detective Liu paused. "According to several witnesses, Wang Shu and Mei had a disagreement last week. Something about a student council election."

Li Wei remembered now. Mei had mentioned the election in passing at dinner, her tone indifferent. She had been running for the position of academic representative, a role she had held for two years. Wang Shu had challenged her.

"Mei didn't seem upset about it," he said. "She said Wang Shu was a strong candidate."

Detective Liu made a note. "Did she? That's interesting. Because the witnesses say Wang Shu accused Mei of cheating—stuffing the ballot box with votes from students who owed her favors. She was going to report it to the school administration this afternoon."

The room felt suddenly colder. Li Wei thought of the violin string in Mei's box. The photograph of Chen Fang with her face circled in red.

"You think Mei did this?"

"At this point, we're just asking questions. But the chemistry teacher says Mei had access to the lab during her free period. She was working on an independent project. And the ventilation system was disabled in a way that suggests deliberate action, not accident."

"Does Mei have an explanation?"

"She says she was in the library during the time in question. But the librarian went home early with a migraine, so there's no one to confirm her alibi." Detective Liu leaned back in his chair. "Professor Li, I'm going to be honest with you. Your daughter's name has come up before in connection with another case. Chen Fang. The girl who drowned in the canal last year."

Li Wei forced himself to remain still. "I remember. The police interviewed us. They said it was an accident."

"They did. But recently, Chen Fang's parents filed a formal request to reopen the investigation. They found a text message on their daughter's old phone—something they'd missed before. A message from a blocked number, sent the day she died."

"What did it say?"

"It said: 'Meet me at the canal. I know what you told Wang Shu. We need to talk.'" Detective Liu's eyes were steady on Li Wei's face. "We traced the blocked number. It was purchased with cash three days before Chen Fang died, and the only outgoing messages were to her phone. The signal pings from the phone place it within two kilometers of your apartment complex."

Li Wei felt the floor tilt beneath him. Beside him, Yan had gone completely rigid.

"We're not accusing anyone of anything," Detective Liu said. "We're just following the evidence. And right now, there are two cases where your daughter's name appears in the margins. That's enough for us to ask questions."

"Does she know about the text message? About the phone?"

"She will. We're about to interview her now. Before we do, is there anything you want to tell us about your daughter? Anything that might help us understand what's happening?"

The question was an open door, an invitation to unburden himself of every secret he had been carrying. The dying bird. The locked box. The genetic charts. The twelve hundred years of Liu women and their cold hearts. Dr. Wen's warning about the people who wanted to protect the trait.

Li Wei opened his mouth. He thought about the Eternal Memory Network, and the Tian Zhi entry, and the address that had been posted online for anyone to see. He thought about Mei saying, "I'm going to finish what Liu Shi started."

And he said nothing.

"We need to speak to a lawyer," he said. "Before Mei answers any more questions."

Detective Liu studied him for a long moment. There was something in his expression—not suspicion, exactly, but a kind of weary recognition. He had seen families protect their own before. He had seen them lie.

"Of course," he said. "You have that right. But I should tell you, Professor Li—the longer this investigation takes, the more people will start paying attention. The media already has the story. A prestigious school, a poisoned girl, a mysterious suspect. It's exactly the kind of thing that goes viral."

The word "viral" hit Li Wei like a physical blow. The Eternal Memory Network. The comments. The threats.

"What do you mean, the media has the story?"

Detective Liu turned his tablet around. On the screen was a news article from a local Beijing outlet, posted forty minutes ago. The headline read: "Student Hospitalized After Chemical Incident at Elite High School; Classmate Questioned."

The article didn't name Mei, but it didn't have to. The comments were already filling with speculation. And somewhere, Li Wei knew, the Eternal Memory Network was already connecting the dots—linking the incident to the Tian Zhi entry, to the cold heart bloodline, to the address that had been posted for the world to see.

"Let me see my daughter," he said.

Detective Liu nodded and led them down a hallway to a smaller room. Through a window, Li Wei could see Mei sitting at a table, her hands folded in front of her, her posture perfect. She wasn't crying. She wasn't anxious. She looked, if anything, slightly bored.

When she saw her parents enter, she smiled.

"Baba. Mama. I'm sorry you had to come here. It's all a misunderstanding."

The officer in the room—a young woman with a notepad—looked up. "Miss Li, we were just discussing the text message. The one sent to Chen Fang."

"I don't know anything about a text message," Mei said. Her voice was even, unhurried. "I told the detectives last year that Chen and I weren't friends. I barely knew her."

"The phone that sent the message was purchased near your apartment."

"Beijing has twenty million people. Lots of phones are purchased near lots of apartments."

"And the hydrogen sulfide in the lab? You had access. You had motive."

"I had an independent project on catalytic reactions. I was in the lab every day for two weeks. Anyone could have tampered with the ventilation system during that time." Mei tilted her head. "As for motive, I don't know what you mean. Wang Shu accused me of cheating, but the accusation was false. The school administration was going to clear me. Why would I hurt her when I had nothing to worry about?"

The logic was clean, almost airtight. Li Wei recognized the pattern now—the same careful calibration he had seen a hundred times without recognizing it for what it was. Mei never lied outright. She just arranged the truth into the shape that served her best.

"We need to talk to our daughter alone," Li Wei said.

The officer hesitated, then nodded and left the room, closing the door behind her.

The moment they were alone, Mei's expression shifted. The innocent bewilderment fell away, replaced by something colder and more focused.

"Don't worry," she said quietly. "They can't prove anything."

"Did you do it?" Yan's voice was barely a whisper. "Did you poison that girl?"

Mei met her mother's eyes. "Wang Shu was going to ruin me. She was going to report me for cheating, even though she had no proof. The school would have suspended me. The story would have gone online. The Network would have twisted it. I would have become the villain in someone else's narrative." She paused. "I just made sure that didn't happen."

"You almost killed her."

"She's not dead. I knew the concentration. I calculated the exposure time. She'll recover."

The clinical precision of the words was worse than any confession. Li Wei felt something break inside him—the last thread of denial, the final hope that his daughter was simply troubled rather than something far more dangerous.

"Mei," he said, and his voice cracked on the name. "The police are going to keep investigating. The text message, the phone—they're putting it together. I don't know how to protect you anymore."

"You don't need to protect me." Mei leaned forward, her dark eyes intense. "I'm protecting myself. I'm protecting all of us. Everything I've done—the edits on the Network, the Liu family narrative, the story I'm building—it's all designed to create a framework where people like me aren't monsters. Where the cold heart isn't a disorder but a heritage. Once that framework is in place, everything changes. The police won't be able to prosecute me without challenging the entire narrative. And nobody wants to do that."

"You're using the Network as a shield."

"I'm using the Network as a sword. The story is the only weapon that matters, Baba. You're a historian. You should understand that better than anyone."

The door opened. Detective Liu stepped back in, his face grim.

"We've received another call," he said. "From the hospital. Wang Shu has regained consciousness. She's talking to the doctors."

Mei's expression didn't change, but Li Wei saw her fingers tighten slightly where they rested on the table.

"And?" he asked.

"And she says she remembers going into the lab. She remembers someone following her. A girl in a school uniform." Detective Liu looked at Mei. "She says she remembers your face."

The room fell silent. Outside the window, the autumn wind rattled the glass, and somewhere in the city, an ambulance siren wailed.

Then Mei did something that Li Wei would never forget.

She laughed.

It was a light, musical sound, utterly incongruous with the circumstances. "She remembers my face? She was unconscious from hydrogen sulfide exposure within thirty seconds of entering the lab. The gas causes retrograde amnesia in high concentrations. She can't remember anything."

Detective Liu stared at her. "How do you know that?"

Mei's smile faded, just slightly. "It's in the textbook. Chemistry 402. Chapter seven."

The room fell into a frozen silence. Li Wei watched the detective's face shift from curiosity to suspicion to something harder. In that moment, he knew that whatever fragile balance they had maintained was about to shatter.

"Miss Li," Detective Liu said slowly, "I didn't say anything about retrograde amnesia. I didn't say anything about the concentration of the gas. How do you know exactly what Wang Shu was exposed to?"

Mei opened her mouth, and for the first time in her life, she had no answer.

Li Wei's phone buzzed in his pocket. A notification from the Eternal Memory Network. The Tian Zhi entry had been updated with a new section: "Recent Manifestations of the Cold Heart."

The first entry was a news article about Wang Shu's hospitalization. Beneath it, a comment had already been pinned.

"The daughter of the Li family strikes again. The cold heart cannot be contained. The reckoning continues."

The commenter was Daughter_of_Liu_Shi.