Chapter Five: The Love He Repaired

Su temporarily occupied the guest room. She and Tang Li covered a wall with evidence: seven vanished locations, pass 0719, faceless surveillance footage, and Obsidian’s underground archive. Every route led to Chen Mo, a man who seemed to possess a name but no life. On the eighth evening, Su received a message from her source, He Zhe. “I found the underground access drive from July nineteenth. Chen Mo wasn’t a visitor. He installed a server with no network record. Tomorrow, ten p.m., old ferry terminal. Come alone.” She backed the recording onto magnetic tape and prepared to leave by herself. “It’s bait,” Lin said. “Reporters live on bait. The question is whether we see the hook.”