Chapter One: A Borrowed Life

The icon did not exist there, and screenshots showed only an ordinary home screen. “Are you feverish?” Zhou asked, touching his forehead. Lin Yan opened the Ledger's Public Evidence tab. It contained no stolen secrets—only public facts no one had assembled together: three Chenghai short-term notes settled tomorrow; the diamond served as supplementary collateral for a 1.2-billion-yuan loan; and in the new auction photograph, one facet reflected differently from its image in a three-year-old insurance file. The Ledger did not provide an answer. It merely placed scattered facts within reach. Lin Yan remembered a documentary from a university gemology elective.