Chapter Three: Gu Yan Is Dead

Names had been scratched into the wall. Beneath them, one fresh sentence read: DO NOT LET THEM READ THE TITLE. The dust had not settled. It was less than an hour old. The whistleblower had been here—or was watching. With three minutes left, Ye Ning set up an offline camera. Gu Yan opened three clocks: the national time service, the forum cache, and the device's local oscillator. If the thirteen-millisecond difference returned, he could confirm the mirror route. At 23:59:59.974, all four heat sources glowed red. At 23:59:59.987, Ye Ning's camera focused itself despite being in manual mode. At 00:00:00.000, the forum returned. Untitled posted four Chinese characters: GU YAN IS DEAD.