The safe's contents filled three evidence boxes. Wen Yanzhi and Jiang Heng spent the remainder of the night in the post office basement, cataloging what Luo Zhengqing had preserved for twenty-seven years: notebooks filled with chemical formulas, letters between Luo and military officials, photographs of the original Oblivion Aqueous test subjects, and the list of forty-seven names, each one annotated with a date and a code that corresponded to a specific crime.
But it was the final item in the safe that held Wen Yanzhi's attention: a small glass vial, identical to the ones his father had prepared, containing a liquid that shimmered with the familiar iridescence. The label was handwritten, the ink faded but still legible: "Prototype 12-B. Not for human use."
"He was still working on it," Wen Yanzhi said. "Luo was trying to replicate my father's research."
"Or suppress it," Jiang Heng said. "The notebook said forty-seven names were on the list. But your father's bacteria identified a forty-eighth. Someone who is still missing."
Qin Xiaowen spread the list across the table. The names were arranged chronologically, beginning with Wen Shouyi himself and ending with a man named Gao Shiping, who had been killed in a prison fight in 2018. Forty-seven entries. Forty-seven fates. None of them were women.
"The missing name is a woman," Min Er said. She had been studying the list over Wen Yanzhi's shoulder, her expression unreadable. "The message said 'find her before she finds you.' It is a warning."
"Who would have been involved that Luo did not record?" Jiang Heng asked.
"Luo recorded everyone he considered a threat. Everyone who knew about the Oblivion Aqueous project. Everyone who could tie him to the murder." Min Er paused, her finger tracing down the list. "But there was one person he never considered a threat. One person he believed was loyal."
"The lab technician's mother," Wen Yanzhi said. "Luo Zhaoming's mother."
"No. The lab technician was a man named Luo Zhaoming. His father was Luo Zhengqing. But his mother—"
Min Er stopped. Her face had gone pale, the color draining from her cheeks like water from a cracked cup.
"His mother," she repeated. "I never knew her name. She was not mentioned in any of the records. But I remember your father speaking of her once. He said she was the real power behind the institute. He said she was the one who secured the military contracts, who cultivated the political connections, who made sure the money kept flowing. He said Luo Zhengqing was afraid of her."
"What was her name?"
"I do not know. But there is someone who does."
She turned to Qin. "The arrest of Shi Yao. Was it completed?"
"Shi Yao was taken into custody at his residence at four this morning. He is being held at a Ministry facility on the outskirts of the city."
"I need to speak with him."
"That is irregular. He has not been processed. His lawyers have not been notified."
"His lawyers can wait. The forty-eighth name cannot."
The Ministry facility was a converted warehouse in the industrial district, its exterior deliberately nondescript, its interior a maze of reinforced doors and soundproofed interrogation rooms. Shi Yao was being held in Room 7, a concrete box with a steel table, two chairs, and a single fluorescent light that buzzed with the frequency of a trapped insect.
He looked smaller than Wen Yanzhi had expected. The chief of police, the man who had inherited Wan Wenhui's network and ruled it for nine years, was a slight figure in an ill-fitting detainee uniform. His face was unremarkable—the kind of face that could pass through a crowd without leaving any impression, the face of a bureaucrat who had learned early that visibility was dangerous.
He looked up as they entered, and his expression flickered with something that might have been recognition.
"Jiang Heng," he said. "I wondered when you would come."
"Shi Yao." Jiang Heng's voice was flat, carefully controlled. "You know why we are here."
"I know the Ministry has been building a case. I know the lighthouse was occupied during the typhoon. I know Luo Zhengqing was arrested three hours ago. What I do not know is why you are here instead of letting the interrogators do their work."
"We are here about the forty-eighth name," Wen Yanzhi said.
Shi Yao's eyes moved to him, and for the first time, something shifted in his expression. Not fear. Curiosity.
"Wen Yanzhi. You have your mother's eyes."
"You knew my mother."
"I knew of her. I was outside the shop on the night your father died. I saw her arrive. I saw her go inside. I heard her scream." He paused, and his voice dropped. "I was twenty-two years old. I had never heard a sound like that before. I have heard it in my dreams every night since."
"And yet you did nothing."
"I did what Wan told me to do. The Credulity Effect made it impossible to refuse. You understand that now, I think. You have taken the antidote."
"How do you know about the antidote?"
"Because I have been waiting for it for twenty-seven years. Wan promised me that one day, when the network was secure and the danger had passed, I would be given the antidote and my memories would be restored. He lied, of course. There was no antidote. Only your father's research, which Luo Zhengqing suppressed and Wan could never access."
"Luo had the research. It was in his safe."
"Luo had his own version. Prototype 12-B. It was never tested. He was afraid of what it might do."
Wen Yanzhi placed the vial on the steel table. The liquid shimmered under the fluorescent light. "This is what you were waiting for. The real antidote. My father's formula."
Shi Yao stared at the vial. His hands, which had been resting on the table, began to tremble. "You are offering it to me?"
"I am offering you a choice. Tell us the forty-eighth name, and the antidote is yours. You will remember everything. The good and the evil. The truth and the lie. You will finally know what you did and why you did it."
"And if I refuse?"
"Then you will live the rest of your life with fragments. With suspicions. With the knowledge that you were part of something monstrous but never truly understood it. The Credulity Effect will fade eventually—it always does—but without the antidote, the memories will never be whole. You will be trapped in the labyrinth forever."
Shi Yao looked at Jiang Heng. "Is this your idea of justice? Offering a condemned man the thing he has wanted most?"
"Justice is not mine to offer," Jiang Heng said. "The courts will decide your fate. But the truth—that is something only you can choose."
A long silence. The fluorescent light buzzed. Somewhere in the facility, a door slammed shut, and the sound echoed down the concrete corridors like a gunshot.
"Her name is Luo Xiaolian," Shi Yao said finally. "She was the director of the pharmaceutical institute before Luo Zhengqing. She hired your father. She approved the Oblivion Aqueous research. And when your father threatened to expose the Credulity Effect, she was the one who gave the final order."
"Luo Xiaolian," Min Er repeated. "The name means 'Little Lotus.' I have heard it before. She was a legend in the pharmaceutical industry. She retired in 1996, a year before the murder."
"She did not retire. She went underground. She saw what was coming—the investigation, the scandal, the arrests—and she disappeared. She has been running the network from the shadows ever since. Wan reported to her. Shi Zhenguo reported to her. Even Luo Zhengqing reported to her. She was the architect of everything."
"And she is still alive?"
"She is alive. She is seventy-nine years old. She lives in a penthouse in the Golden Phoenix Tower, the tallest building in Nangang. She owns the building. She owns half the city. And she has been watching you, Wen Yanzhi, since the night your father died."
The words settled over the room like a chill. Wen Yanzhi felt the notebook pulse against his chest, the bacteria within responding to the name that had been hidden for so long.
"Why did she spare me?" he asked. "If she knew I was a witness, why did she let me live?"
"Because you were a child. Because she believed the Oblivion Aqueous would hold. Because she was curious to see if your father's bloodline carried his genius. She has been waiting to see what you would become."
"And now?"
"Now she knows you have recovered your memories. She knows the notebook has been activated. She knows everything. And she is waiting for you to come to her."
Min Er stepped forward. Her face was still pale, but her voice was steady. "The Golden Phoenix Tower. I know it. It was built on the site of the old opera house where the Red Lantern Troupe performed in 1997. She built her fortress on the grave of our stage."
"She built it deliberately," Shi Yao said. "She wanted to erase every trace of the people who had opposed her. The opera house. The pharmaceutical institute. The lighthouse. She has been systematically destroying the past for three decades."
"Why are you telling us this?" Jiang Heng asked. "You have been loyal to her for twenty-seven years."
Shi Yao looked at the vial on the table. "Because I am tired. Because the Credulity Effect is fading, and the fragments of memory that are returning are worse than the complete truth would be. Because I want to remember what I did, even if the memory destroys me. Because I am a coward who has finally run out of places to hide."
Wen Yanzhi pushed the vial across the table. Shi Yao took it with trembling hands, uncorked it, and drank.
The effect was immediate. His body convulsed, his eyes rolling back, his hands gripping the edge of the table with a force that whitened his knuckles. Jiang Heng stepped forward as if to intervene, but Min Er held him back.
"The memories are returning," she said. "All of them. It will pass."
It passed. Shi Yao's body relaxed, and he slumped forward, his forehead resting on the cold steel. When he raised his head, his eyes were wet.
"I remember," he said. "The sound of your mother screaming. The way your father fell. The way Wan smiled when he told me I had done well. I remember everything."
"Then you know what you need to do," Wen Yanzhi said.
"I need to testify. I need to tell the Ministry everything I know about Luo Xiaolian. Her network. Her operations. Her safe houses. Her accounts. I need to help you bring her down."
"Why? Why would you help us now?"
Shi Yao looked at him, and for the first time, his face was not the face of a bureaucrat. It was the face of a man who had been drowning for twenty-seven years and had finally, impossibly, reached the surface.
"Because I was seventeen years old when Wan drugged me. I was a child. I did not choose this. But I chose everything that came after. I chose to stay silent. I chose to rise through the ranks. I chose to protect the network. The drug made me trust Wan, but it did not make me corrupt. That was my own doing. And I have been running from that truth for my entire life."
"There is no running anymore," Jiang Heng said.
"No. There is only the long walk to the witness stand. And then, whatever comes after."
Wen Yanzhi stood. The notebook was warm against his chest, its pages rustling softly as if stirred by a wind that no one else could feel. "Luo Xiaolian is in the Golden Phoenix Tower. She is waiting for me."
"She will not run," Shi Yao said. "She has never run. She believes she is untouchable. The penthouse is a fortress. The building is filled with her people. She will not surrender without a fight."
"Then we will bring the fight to her."
He turned to leave. Min Er and Jiang Heng followed. At the door, Shi Yao's voice stopped him.
"Wen Yanzhi. Your father's last words. Do you remember them?"
"I remember everything now."
"Then you know what you need to do."
Wen Yanzhi nodded and walked out of the room. The notebook pulsed against his heart, and the forty-eighth name burned in his mind like a brand. Luo Xiaolian. Little Lotus. The woman who had ordered his father's death, who had built an empire on the suppression of the truth, who had been waiting for him to come and finish what his father had started.
Outside the warehouse, the sun was rising over Nangang. The city was waking from the storm, its streets filling with emergency vehicles and relief workers and the slow, hesitant return of ordinary life. But in the Golden Phoenix Tower, a woman was watching, and she knew that the labyrinth was about to open its final door.
Wen Yanzhi looked up at the tower, its glass facade catching the morning light like a mirror. He could see his own reflection in it, small and distorted, a figure standing at the edge of a story that had been waiting for him to write its ending.
"Let us go," he said. "It is time."
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