46: Chapter 46 Witnesses

Zhou Jishen's mother lived in an old state-owned enterprise residential compound in the west of the city.

Lin Yuan stood at the entrance of the residential complex, looking at the dying pothos plant on the windowsill of the security booth. In the early evening of early September, twilight pressed down through the gaps between the concrete buildings, dyeing every window a dark orange. Several elderly people were sitting at the entrance of a unit picking vegetables; the water from washing green onions in an aluminum basin was splashed onto the ground, creating a dark patch.

He had not called in advance.

All Dr. Li had given him was an address—Unit 202, Building 4, Compound 7, Jianshe Road. There was no contact information, no update on her recent situation, only a single sentence: "She is still here."

Lin Yuan walked through the courtyard where bedsheets and children's clothes were hanging to dry and came to a stop at the door of 202.

The security door was an old-fashioned one, most of its green paint peeled off, revealing the rusted iron underneath. A faded "Fu" character was pasted on the door frame, its edges curled. The doorbell button was broken in half, exposing the copper wires inside.

He knocked on the door.

After he knocked three times, there was movement inside.

The door opened a crack, held by the security chain. A face in its seventies appeared in the gap, with gray hair, puffy eyelids, and thin cataracts clouding the pupils. She was wearing a faded, misshapen floral housecoat, and on her feet were non-slip slippers issued by a hospital.

"Who are you looking for?" Her voice was hoarse; it wasn't a question, but a cautious, defensive statement.

"Zhou Jishen," Lin Yuan said.

The old woman's hand paused on the door frame.

"He is not here."

The door began to close.

"I'm not here to arrest him," Lin Yuan said.

The movement stopped.

"I'm here to tell him not to work himself to death."

The old woman didn't close the door immediately. That hand, covered in age spots, still rested on the door frame, the knuckles slightly white from the force.

She looked at Lin Yuan for a long time.

Long enough that the elderly people picking vegetables downstairs began to look up this way.

Then she unlatched the security chain.

The apartment was very small.

It was an old two-bedroom layout, with the living room mostly taken up by a folding dining table and an old-fashioned refrigerator. A crocheted doily was spread over the sofa, and medicine boxes were arranged on the coffee table, with blister packs of capsules sorted by morning, noon, and evening. A photo frame hung above the TV cabinet, but the glass was reflecting light, making it impossible to see the person in the photo.

The old woman did not ask him to sit.

She stood by the dining table, her hand resting on the edge, with her back to the window.

"Are you from the government?"

"No."

"Police?"

"No."

"From Lingxiao Capital?"

Lin Yuan paused.

"Sort of," he said, "but not entirely."

The old woman's shoulders slumped slightly. She pulled out a plastic stool and sat down first. She had no intention of asking him to sit.

"He hasn't lived here for twenty-one years," she said, looking at the medicine strip on the coffee table with two slots broken off. "Why do you still come to ask?"

"He came back recently."

The old woman's fingers froze on the medicine strip.

Lin Yuan did not press the issue. He stood by the folding dining table and waited.

The sky outside had grown a bit darker. Residents in the building opposite began to turn on their lights, and the orange glow filtered through the dusty glass, landing in a small patch on the floor.

"He came back the night before last," the old woman said, her voice very low. "It was past three in the morning. I thought a burglar had broken in. He was rummaging through things in his old bedroom, and as soon as he finished, he wanted to leave."

"I told him to eat something before leaving."

"He didn't eat."

She paused.

"But I could see he had lost weight."

Lin Yuan didn't speak.

The old woman raised those cataract-clouded eyes and looked at him.

"What kind of testimony do you want him to give, exactly?"

It wasn't a question.

Lin Yuan sat down on the plastic stool opposite her.

"He participated in the refining of an evil artifact," he said. "The ten thousand infant banner. Twenty-one years."

The old woman's hand did not tremble.

"I know."

"That evil artifact is about to lose control. When it does, it will drain the last bit of vitality from the Luoxia Mountain ley line in one go. There is a seventy-year-old Earth Spirit pressed under that mountain range; it will die."

The old woman was silent for a long time.

"He told me about the ley line issue," she said. "Twenty-one years ago, when he first started working at that place, he came back very happy. He said a Mr. Mo had hired him to repair the ley lines, that it was for the benefit of the common people, and that they were paying him eight thousand a month."

Lin Yuan did not correct her.

"And then?"

"Later, he stopped talking about it," the old woman said, putting the medicine strip back on the coffee table. "I asked him what he was busy with, and he said the project was classified and he couldn't talk about it. I asked him what that Mr. Mo was like, and he said he was very good and thought highly of him."

"And after that?"

The old woman's fingers interlaced on her knees.

"Then, about seven or eight years ago, he came back in the middle of the night and sat in the spot where you're sitting now until dawn. I asked him what he was thinking about, and he said, 'Mom, I've signed twenty-one years of falsified data reports. I drew the efficiency curve of the vein-locking nail thirty-seven points lower.'"

She raised her eyes.

"I asked him who told him to draw it that way. He said no one told him to; he drew it himself."

"I asked him why. He said if he didn't, the previous twenty years of reports wouldn't match up."

The living room was quiet for a long time.

Lin Yuan heard the low-frequency hum of the refrigerator compressor, and the sound of a television drifted in from the building opposite—it was the ending theme of the news broadcast.

"In these last seven or eight years," the old woman said, "he has aged very quickly."

"He is only thirty-four this year," Lin Yuan said.

"Thirty-four is also old," the old woman said, looking at the medicine strip on the coffee table. "He has two deep lines under his eyes, and even with his hair cut short, you can see the gray roots. He used to not drink coffee, but now, when he can't sleep at night, he brews a pot and drinks it until dawn."

"Did he tell you that?"

"He doesn't talk," the old woman said in a low voice. "I can see it myself."

Lin Yuan was silent.

The last of the twilight outside the window sank away. The living room lights were off, and only the light reflecting from the building opposite cut their silhouettes into dark gray shapes.

"Where is he today?" Lin Yuan asked.

The old woman did not answer.

"What was he looking for when he came back the night before last?"

The old woman still did not answer.

Lin Yuan stood up from the plastic stool.

"I am not here to arrest him," he said. "And I am not sent by Lingxiao Capital to fish for information from him."

"I came to find him because every single degree of those thirty-seven thousand standard faith units of ley line vitality flowed into the ten thousand infant banner from his monitoring screen. He knows those numbers, he knows the 17.3 imbalance rate, and he knows that twenty-five is the critical value."

"He has signed twenty-one years of data reports, and every single one was telling Mo Feigong: 'You can still drain it, it hasn't reached the critical point yet, draining a little more is no problem.'"

Lin Yuan looked at the medicine strip on the coffee table.

"When he drew those thirty-seven points lower, did he ever think about what would happen once the critical value was reached?"

The old woman's hands clenched on her knees.

"He didn't think about it," Lin Yuan said. "He didn't dare to."

He turned and walked toward the door.

As his hand touched the doorknob, the old woman's voice came from behind him.

"He left this morning."

Lin Yuan stopped.

"He said he was going to a place to put some things back," the old woman's voice was very soft, as if afraid of waking something. "He said after he put them back, someone might come looking for him. If the person looking for him asks you, you should say: 'I went to the old place.'"

"Where is the 'old place'?"

The old woman did not answer.

She looked at the reflective photo frame above the TV cabinet.

Lin Yuan walked over, lifted the frame slightly, and held it up to the light from the window.

In the photo was a woman in her thirties holding a four- or five-year-old boy. The woman was wearing an old-fashioned floral dress, and the boy had a bowl-cut hairstyle, clutching a popsicle in his hand that had already started to melt, dripping onto his white bib.

In the background was an archway with a plaque hanging above it.

Lin Yuan recognized the plaque.

Summer Palace · Paiyun Hall.

7:20 PM.

The Summer Palace had stopped selling tickets. There were still a few scattered tourists taking photos on the square outside the East Palace Gate, and security guards were using loudspeakers to urge the remaining crowds to leave. Twilight dyed Kunming Lake a leaden gray, and the silhouette of Wan Shou Mountain sank into the last halo of light on the horizon.

Lin Yuan did not enter through the main gate.

He went around to the west side of Kunming Lake, to the same stretch of wall he had snuck over that night.

On his phone screen, the surveillance access sent by Boss Qian forty minutes ago was now activated. Physical surveillance cameras within a three-kilometer radius of the Summer Palace—Lingxiao Capital had kept its promise.

He pulled up the real-time footage of the area around Paiyun Hall and fast-forwarded at 3x speed.

2:11 PM.

A man in a dark gray hoodie appeared on the west corridor of Paiyun Hall. His hood was pulled low, hiding his face. He stood at the entrance of Paiyun Hall for about thirty seconds, then turned back the way he came.

In the footage, his left hand was tucked into his hoodie pocket the entire time.

Lin Yuan froze the frame.

He zoomed in.

That hand was holding something, revealing a white edge.

— — A folder.

He dragged the timeline back.

1:40 PM. The same man entered from the North Palace Gate of the Summer Palace, walking at a steady pace without stopping. He passed through Suzhou Street and walked along the path behind the mountain toward Paiyun Hall. Throughout the whole time, his left hand was in his pocket, and his right hand swung naturally.

Lin Yuan turned off his phone.

He climbed over the wall, landing silently.

The early autumn night breeze blew from the lake, carrying the scent of water and the decay of withered lotus flowers. He avoided the main roads and followed the path he had taken that night, creeping toward the back of Wan Shou Mountain.

The abandoned hall where the vein-locking nail was located was in another direction.

Paiyun Hall was on the front of the mountain; it was a tourist spot that was bustling with people during the day.

His choice of this place was not accidental.

Paiyun Hall, with its back to the mountain and facing the lake, was one of the important nodes of the Summer Palace's ley lines. When Mo Feigong chose the location for the vein-locking nail twenty-one years ago, the Doctor must have conducted countless surveys, markings, and data recordings here.

"The old place."

It wasn't his office, and it wasn't his home.

It was the place from twenty-one years ago, before he started signing those falsified data reports, when he thought he was truly repairing the ley lines.

Lin Yuan found him in the veranda on the west side of Paiyun Hall.

He was sitting on the stone steps at the end of the veranda, facing Kunming Lake. The hood of his hoodie was still pulled up over his head, revealing a pale stretch of skin on the back of his neck. Beside him lay a faded canvas bag, its opening agape, revealing a stack of white-covered documents.

He did not turn around.

"My mother sent you, didn't she?"

Lin Yuan stood three meters behind him.

"She sent me," Lin Yuan said.

The doctor — Zhou Jishen — did not respond.

He watched the lake. There was no moon tonight, and the lake water was a thick, viscous black, with only the contour lights of the Seventeen-Arch Bridge on the opposite bank drawing fragmented, trembling ribbons of light in the water.

"I graduated from grad school at twenty-three, and my first job was the Summer Palace Earth Spirit restoration project," he began, his voice younger than Lin Yuan had imagined. "Mr. Mo came to the school to give a lecture on urban Earth Spirit depletion and the response to spiritual energy crises. I was late for that lecture and sat in the last row. When he finished, he asked if any students were willing to come for an internship, and I was the only one in the entire hall to raise my hand."

Lin Yuan sat down on the stone steps beside him.

Zhou Jishen did not look at him.

"My mother wasn't doing well at the time, and the hospital had issued two critical condition notices. The internship subsidy for the Earth Spirit restoration project was eight thousand a month, and fifteen thousand after becoming a full-time employee. I told her, 'Mom, hold on a little longer. Once I earn enough money, I'll take you to the best hospital in Beijing.'"

He paused.

"That money is still sitting in the bank to this day."

Lin Yuan did not speak.

"On the third day after the vein-locking nail was driven in, I measured the first set of data on the loss of Earth Spirit vitality," Zhou Jishen's voice was very flat. "0.0081 standard units per second, three percentage points higher than the designed extraction rate. I took the data to Mr. Mo, and he said, 'You just graduated, the curve fitting isn't smooth enough, take it back and redo it.'"

"I redid it. I removed the outliers, and the goodness-of-fit dropped from 0.93 to 0.89. He said it was fine and to archive it."

"The second year, the extraction rate of the vein-locking nail increased, from 0.7 to 0.83. I made three versions of the curve, and the version Mr. Mo chose had the actual extraction rate hidden by eleven points."

"The third year, seventeen points."

"The fifth year, twenty-one points."

"The eighth year, the ten thousand infant banner began to backfire. Mr. Mo asked me to create an 'Energy Capacity Efficiency Curve' and required me to shift the critical value prediction interval up by ten points. I did it."

"The tenth year, the day the foundation's green bonds defaulted, I stood next to the ten thousand infant banner for three hours. It was glowing, and those infant faces were swimming around inside. I stood there watching and thought, 'There are 2.3 million in here, enough to repair seventeen Earth Spirit nodes.'"

"My mother was hospitalized again that year. I told her the project bonus had been paid out, so she should use that."

He pushed back the hood of his hoodie, revealing his whole face.

It was even more haggard than the glimpse Lin Yuan had caught at the entrance of the Summer Palace. His eye sockets were sunken, his cheekbones prominent, and his nasolabial folds were like knife cuts. But between his brows and eyes, there was still a trace of the student who had raised his hand in the last row twenty-one years ago — he probably didn't know it himself.

"What are you here to release tonight?" Lin Yuan asked.

Zhou Jishen pulled the canvas bag beside him closer.

He took a stack of white-covered documents out of the bag.

The first one had the red emblem of the Summer Palace Management Office printed on the cover, dated July, twenty-one years ago.

"Data Benchmark Determination Report for Earth Spirit Node ZK-07 Restoration Project"

Chief Technician Signature Line: Zhou Jishen.

The second one had the logo of that shell company of Mo Feigong's on the cover, which had long since been discontinued.

"Quarterly Analysis of Energy Conversion Efficiency of the ten thousand infant banner (Phase I)"

Report Author: Zhou Jishen.

The third, fourth, fifth...

Twenty-one annual data falsification reports.

Three proposals for Optimization of the vein-locking nail extraction rate — recommendations he had written, which Mo Feigong had adopted, causing it to extract even faster.

One attachment to a green bond prospectus from fifteen years ago — Earth Spirit maintenance technology feasibility analysis, for which he was the second author.

And one more, which Lin Yuan had never seen.

It was a handwritten letter, pressed to the very bottom of the canvas bag, the edges of the paper already yellowed.

Zhou Jishen pulled it out and unfolded it.

"I wrote this when I was twenty-four," he said. "A whistleblower letter to the Regulatory Committee. I finished writing it, but didn't dare to send it."

Lin Yuan looked at the letter.

The handwriting was neat, stroke by stroke, like a student fresh out of school diligently completing an assignment. The letter detailed the true extraction rate of the vein-locking nail, the existence of the ten thousand infant banner, and how Mo Feigong had made him modify the data curves. The last sentence read:

"I have been involved in this for three years, and every day I want to quit. But my mother is still hospitalized, and I need this salary. After I finish writing this letter, I will send it. I promise."

He never sent it.

Zhou Jishen folded the letter and placed it on the stone steps beside Lin Yuan.

"The evidence you submitted," he said, "is missing direct instructions from Mo Feigong."

Lin Yuan looked at him.

"I can provide them."

Zhou Jishen did not look up.

"In twenty-one years, he made me change the curves thirty-seven times. Every single time was a verbal instruction; there were no recordings, no emails, no evidence that could be submitted for a chain of custody certification. But I remember the date, time, and location of every single one, and I remember exactly what words he said."

"In the abandoned hall behind the Summer Palace, he said to my face: 'Make the extraction rate curve a bit smoother; I've already spoken to the committee.'"

"In that tea room in the west of the city, he said: 'The ten thousand infant banner needs to expand capacity. Adjust the upper limit of the critical value prediction interval up by ten points. Once you finish this version, your year-end bonus will double.'"

"Fifteen years ago, on the eve of the foundation's bond issuance, in his office — that office filled with fake antique paintings — he signed the last document and said to me: 'Jishen, once this batch of bonds is raised, you won't have to worry about your mother's medical expenses anymore.'"

Zhou Jishen's voice had no inflection from beginning to end.

It was as if he were reciting a testimony he himself didn't believe anyone would listen to.

"I can testify in court," he said. "And tell the committee every word I remember, exactly as it happened."

Lin Yuan was silent for a long time.

"Do you know what will happen to you after you testify?"

Zhou Jishen did not answer immediately.

He looked at the lake. The contour lights of the Seventeen-Arch Bridge trembled in the water, like a row of candles about to go out.

"The student who raised his hand twenty-one years ago," he said, "he wanted to repair the Earth Spirit."

"The technician fifteen years ago who didn't dare to send the whistleblower letter, he thought the money raised by the bonds could really repair the Earth Spirit."

"The data supervisor who sat in my mother's living room at dawn eight years ago and drew the data thirty-seven points lower, he no longer knew what he was repairing."

He pulled up the hood of his hoodie, covering most of his face.

"Last week, the day the backfire rate of the ten thousand infant banner reached 17.3%, I sat in front of the monitoring screen for four hours. Those infant faces — they're actually just common remnants of resentful souls, they have no consciousness, they don't feel pain — but they were floating back and forth on the screen, as if they hadn't dissolved yet."

"I suddenly thought, there are 37,000 units of Earth Spirit vitality in there, every single degree of which was extracted from the Luoxia Mountain Earth Spirit."

"It has been in pain for twenty-one years."

Lin Yuan did not speak.

The lake breeze blew across the veranda, causing the corners of the handwritten letter on the stone steps to curl slightly.

Zhou Jishen stood up and put on his canvas bag.

"Tomorrow morning at nine," he said, "I will be at the Regulatory Committee witness waiting room on time."

He paused.

"Can you tell my mother that when I go this time, it's not to go to jail?"

Lin Yuan looked at him.

"When you go this time, you are going to read the letter that should have been sent twenty-one years ago to the people who need to hear it, in person."

Zhou Jishen did not speak.

He walked down the stone steps and walked along the veranda towards the East Palace Gate.

After walking a dozen steps, he stopped.

He did not turn around.

"That pot of Kirin Tail," he said, "the one on the windowsill of Dr. Li's clinic. I gave it to her the year I was an intern."

"She's still keeping it."

Lin Yuan watched his back disappear at the end of the veranda.

He sat alone on the stone steps for a long time.

His phone vibrated.

A message from Boss Qian:

"Intelligence just updated from Tianji Pavilion. Mo Feigong knows the outcome of the hearing — his lawyer saw the notice of evidence supplementation you submitted for direct instructions."

"His exact words: 'If Zhou Jishen dares to testify in court, there will be one more container in the ten thousand infant banner.'"

Lin Yuan looked at that line.

He put his phone in his pocket and picked up the whistleblower letter written twenty-four years ago, the one that had never been sent, from the stone steps.

He folded it up.

And put it in his inner chest pocket.

The next morning at nine.

Witness waiting room of the Divine Realm Financial Regulatory Commission building.

Zhou Jishen sat on a bench wearing his only suit, having tied his tie three times before it was symmetrical. There was a glass of water on the coffee table in front of him, untouched.

Nine-oh-three.

The clerk pushed open the door to the waiting room.

"Mr. Zhou Jishen, please come with me."

He stood up.

When he reached the door, he turned back to look at the green plant in the corner of the waiting room — it was a pot of Kirin Tail, its leaves glossy, clearly having been specially cared for.

He did not ask who had put it there.

He walked into the hallway with the clerk.

The door to conference room 0307 opened in front of him.