Chapter Five: The Dead Leave Honest Accounts

FLOWER-SELLING FRAUD FORGES DEAD MOTHER'S RECORDS, EXTORTS HEIR FOR FIFTY MILLION. Five minutes remained. "A trap," Gu Yanchen said, removing the hard drive. "They expect us to take planted files, then charge us with theft." Inside the ledger's back cover, Xu Zhi found a handwritten procurement sheet. Her mother's precise script listed every illegal neural electrode by serial number, patient ward, and project expense. The final line read: ELECTRONIC FILES CAN BE ALTERED. ACCOUNTS CANNOT. Her eyes burned. Her mother had left behind a witness that could not lie. They touched nothing on the server, documented the scene, and called both police and a notary. Still, Gu Jingheng's article appeared on schedule.