Young Lu Shiyan crouched in the corner, hurriedly wiping his face with the back of his hand.
Jiang Nuan didn’t know how long she had been standing there.
This was a restricted zone—a world formed from the materialization of consciousness. There were countless outsiders who had wandered in just like them, as well as abnormal energy deliberately introduced into what had been turned into an experimental site. The time, place, and even the course of many events might have already deviated from actual history.
The scene before her might not have been exactly the same as it had been more than a decade ago.
But there was one thing Jiang Nuan suddenly knew with absolute certainty.
From the moment he had stood in front of the chestnut stall and asked her whether the bird in the tower ought to be set free, everything had been driven by his own will.
When he was a child, young Lu Shiyan had set Number Zero free.
Number Zero’s escape had nothing to do with a mistake in the experiment, or with someone suddenly taking pity on her.
It had only happened because an eight-year-old boy had stolen his father’s access card, then stuffed her pockets with biscuits, water, and all the money from his red envelopes.
Jiang Nuan finally understood how she had escaped the laboratory.
A long while later, young Lu Shiyan finally pushed himself upright against the wall.
His lips pressed into a tight line as he lowered his head and straightened his clothes, which had been tousled by the wind. Then he took the access card from his pocket and started walking back.
Before stepping through the inner metal door, he looked back once more in the direction the girl had gone.
There was no one in sight beneath the night sky.
He turned around and walked into the darkness on the other side. The sound of his footsteps soon faded away.
Jiang Nuan pressed a hand to her chest, her heart pounding.
At that time, had Lu Shiyan known what Number Zero meant to the abnormal energy?
Probably only vaguely.
He might have overheard conversations between his father and the researchers, and known that Number Zero was important.
He also knew that if she stayed there, all that awaited her was endless painful experimentation. She might even die.
He had wanted Number Zero to live.
Jiang Nuan leaned against the wall and took a moment to steady herself.
“You were pretty good at letting people go back then,” she muttered. “How did you grow up to become someone who only knows how to keep people locked up by your side?”
No one answered.
If Lu Shiyan heard that now, he would probably only respond with a cool question.
“Let you go—and then what?”
Jiang Nuan could even guess what he would say next.
“Let you die somewhere I can’t see?”
…What happened afterward?
The abnormal energy spiraled completely out of control. Disaster swept across the entire Federation, and Lu Zhaoming died in that catastrophe.
After Lu Shiyan had truly grown up, did he think of that night again and again?
The stolen access card, and the figure disappearing into the darkness.
Did he ever think that if he hadn’t set Number Zero free, his father would not have died, and Lighthouse Base would not have been disbanded?
Did he ever believe that the decision he had made at eight had ruined the lives of countless people?
And how much of his personality now had been shaped by setting Number Zero free back then…
The music drifting from the banquet hall reminded her that she had been away for too long.
Jiang Nuan forcibly pushed those thoughts aside and retraced her path.
When she passed a pane of glass, she stopped and checked her complexion in the reflection.
Her smoky-purple gown was still neat, and her hair had not come loose, but her face was far too pale.
She took a deep breath and rubbed her cheeks.
“Now isn’t the time to think about this.”
The most important thing tonight was finding and destroying the restricted zone’s core energy source.
When Jiang Nuan pushed open the western door, several waltzes had just ended in the banquet hall.
The lights in the center of the dance floor dimmed, and the host’s smiling voice rang out from the stage.
“Next up is someone I’m sure needs no introduction.”
“Please welcome the hottest star in the Federation—Qinian!”
Even with a whole crowd of Federation officials and Investigation Department personnel seated in the hall, the announcement instantly ignited the atmosphere. Applause thundered throughout the banquet hall.
Shen Wu’s voice sounded in Jiang Nuan’s mind. 【The captain was looking for you earlier. I told him you’d gone to check the evening’s schedule with Lin Zhou.】
Jiang Nuan’s heart gave a jolt, and she looked up.
Shen Wu was standing beside the stage with a glass of champagne in hand.
Lu Shiyan stood near the main table, speaking with someone from the Investigation Department.
Perhaps sensing her gaze, he suddenly looked over.
Their eyes met for a brief moment.
Lu Shiyan said nothing. Once he had confirmed that she was fine, the frown that had creased his brow eased slightly.
Jiang Nuan looked away first. 【You actually lied for me?】
Shen Wu replied, 【Correction: I reduced the interrogation required for the mission.】
【Isn’t that still helping me hide it from him?】
【You can interpret it as something touching if you insist. Also, you’d better fix your complexion soon. Lu Shiyan has already looked at you twice.】
Jiang Nuan instinctively relaxed her stiff lips.
She swept her gaze through the crowd once more.
Lin Zhou was nowhere to be seen.
Using him as an excuse had indeed been a safe choice on Shen Wu’s part.
Onstage, Qinian had already taken the microphone. “With applause this enthusiastic, if I don’t perform well, won’t I be letting everyone down?”
Someone in the audience immediately shouted his name.
Qinian laughed, his gaze drifting casually across the crowd before finally landing on Jiang Nuan. It lingered for a moment.
His voice then sounded through the team’s mental link.
【Nuannuan, look at me.】
The corner of Jiang Nuan’s mouth twitched, but she still raised her head to look at him and applauded along with everyone else.
As the music began, nearly everyone’s attention was drawn to the stage.
Qinian really did have a beautiful singing voice. Almost everyone below the stage raised their terminals to record him.
When he reached the chorus, Qinian raised an eyebrow at her from across the lights.
Several young Federation and Investigation Department staff members in that direction grew excited and began arguing over whom Qinian had been looking at.
Ye Que, Qi Sui, and Chen Ping’an took advantage of the moment to quietly leave the banquet hall.
Following the locations they had marked in advance, they would search the base for snakewood one point at a time.
The second song had a faster tempo.
The atmosphere in the banquet hall was fully alive now. Even several older Federation officials were clapping along to the beat.
Jiang Nuan scanned the hall again.
Lu Zhaoming was seated at the main table, speaking in low voices with several Federation guests.
The other members of the Lighthouse team were scattered throughout the crowd in groups of two or three. Everything appeared perfectly normal.
Only Lin Zhou had yet to show up.
Nearly twenty minutes had passed since Jiang Nuan returned to the banquet hall.
After two songs, Qinian walked off the stage amid applause.
A respected middle-aged man took his place. The moment he began speaking, he went from the original purpose behind Lighthouse’s establishment to the governance of abnormal energy. His speech was so long that it seemed to have no end.
The atmosphere in the banquet hall gradually settled.
Just as Jiang Nuan began worrying that Lin Zhou might run into Ye Que and the others, his figure finally appeared at the entrance to a passageway on the opposite side of the hall.
Lin Zhou didn’t seem unusual at all. His steps were calm and unhurried.
Jiang Nuan had just breathed a sigh of relief when she saw him walk straight toward the equipment room.
Her heart tightened again.
During yesterday’s rehearsal, she had taken a deliberate glance inside. Besides the equipment used backstage for the banquet hall, there was also a permissions terminal capable of accessing surveillance footage from the base’s public areas.
If Lin Zhou had discovered something just now and was preparing to retrieve the surveillance footage…
Jiang Nuan set down her glass and followed him, using the crowd as cover.
Deep in the corridor, the door to the equipment room had not been fully closed.
She lightened her steps and hid in the shadows outside the door.
Lin Zhou stood before the main control console, his fingers flying across the touch panel.
The screen in front of him was split into two sections.
The left side showed a live feed from inside the banquet hall, where the middle-aged man onstage continued droning on.
The right side was connected to the enormous screen behind the stage in the banquet hall. It was displaying the topic of the speech and the name of the speaker—the middle-aged man who was still going on and on.
Jiang Nuan quietly let out a breath.
It appeared that Lin Zhou was merely adjusting the banquet’s standard equipment.
Just as she was about to return to the banquet hall, Lin Zhou tapped the touch panel.
The image on the right side of the screen changed at once.
The speech topic that had been projected disappeared.
A frozen lake shrouded in the cold of night appeared on the screen.
The distant air was filled with the noise of the crowd, and the lakeshore was packed with people waiting for the New Year’s fireworks.
But the camera was focused on the arched bridge spanning the lakeshore—and on the figure standing beside it, hat brim lowered.
The man lifted his face from the shadows and glanced to either side, making sure no one was around.
On the surveillance feed to the left, the guests who had been sitting upright began whispering among themselves. Staff from the Lighthouse Base smiled as they explained that there might have been a systems error and that they were contacting someone to inspect the equipment backstage.
Then Jiang Nuan, along with every other guest at the banquet, saw the man’s face clearly.
Sun Mingrui.
A member of the Sun family who would one day become one of the five seats on the Federal Privy Council.
Why was he standing beside the arched bridge over the frozen lake? And why had Lin Zhou done this?
