“This isn’t everything.”
Shen Wu interrupted them, his expression growing more grave than ever before.
“Besides these two lists, I also found a nautical chart at the bottom of his encrypted safe. It was the original chart prepared before the White Whale set sail.”
The air in the room seemed to freeze for a moment.
“That chart detailed the White Whale’s route, as well as…”
Shen Wu paused, seemingly weighing his words.
“The movement trajectory of the restricted zone.”
“Movement trajectory?” Jiang Nuan’s voice tightened. “Wasn’t this restricted zone previously undiscovered? How could its movements have been predicted?”
That was what Wen Xu’an had said when assigning the mission.
“It wasn’t a prediction.” Ye Que took over, his voice low.
He looked at Shen Wu. Their gazes met briefly in the air.
Shen Wu gave a slight nod, as though confirming Ye Que’s conclusion.
“It was measured firsthand,” Ye Que said. “Someone entered those waters in advance and marked the restricted zone’s range of activity and drifting patterns.”
“For intelligence of this level, the price would have been enormous.” Shen Wu added, “The people sent there almost certainly never came back.”
A chill ran up Jiang Nuan’s back.
Bai Siyuan stood among the rose bushes, his hands steady and gentle as he trimmed the branches.
That smile overlapped with the truth before them, like two contradictory images superimposed on each other.
Jiang Nuan felt a tightness in her chest. The greenhouse’s sweet, heavy rose fragrance had now turned into a suffocating pressure around her throat.
“He calculated everything.”
Shen Wu revealed the final layer of the truth.
“Before setting sail, Bai Siyuan had already calculated that the White Whale would collide with the restricted zone. He didn’t encounter an accident. He deliberately led the entire ship into the restricted zone.”
The room fell silent.
Everyone was trying to digest the same fact, yet no one knew what to say first.
Bai Siyuan had deliberately sailed the ship into the restricted zone.
Images from the White Whale flashed rapidly through Jiang Nuan’s mind.
The crew members whose bodies had been taken over by monsters, the blood covering the floor, the tentacles writhing in the dense fog, and the restricted-zone monster that had been determined to open the S-rank medical pod, no matter what it took.
At the time, everyone had assumed that the restricted zone was after Bai Siyuan, who was inside the medical pod.
Even Zero Squad had used that logic to deduce the puzzle theory.
But what if… what if everything had been designed by Bai Siyuan?
“It’s not that the puzzle theory doesn’t exist after all…” Jiang Nuan murmured, the clues in her mind snapping into place. “It’s that compared to acquiring the puzzle pieces to complete itself, whatever Bai Siyuan took from the restricted zone made it even more frantic. The thing it prioritized recovering was that.”
She couldn’t guess what that thing was, but…
Jiang Nuan’s breathing quickened, and a dense layer of cold sweat broke out across her back.
“If he only went to the restricted zone to take something,” Jiang Nuan said unsteadily, “then why bring an entire cargo ship loaded with classified supplies?”
Ye Que looked at her, his focused gaze tracing the lively contours of her brows and eyes as she calmly analyzed the situation. His Adam’s apple moved slightly.
“Because it was a second safeguard he had prepared for himself.”
Jiang Nuan gritted her teeth, slowly piecing together the terrifying logic behind it all.
“He knew exactly where he stood in the Bai family. The family would never dare abandon him easily. The moment they discovered he was in danger, they would surely pour all their resources into rescuing him.”
“And to make absolutely certain, he even placed an entire shipload of the Federation’s classified supplies on the line.”
Jiang Nuan clenched her fingers.
“Himself, plus that cargo.”
“With both stakes combined, the weight was simply too great.”
“So great that the Bai family would never dare leave the matter to outsiders, fearing the slightest leak or even the smallest damage to the supplies.”
Shen Wu watched her with an approving look, signaling for her to continue.
“To give the Federation an explanation, and to preserve the Bai family’s standing…” Jiang Nuan drew a deep breath, her chest feeling painfully constricted. “The Bai family would definitely handle the aftermath.”
“And whoever went would absolutely be the Bai family’s most central direct-line authority figures.”
Her fingers were trembling.
Suddenly, she remembered what Shen Wu had said to her through their mental link on her first day at the Bai residence.
“There are surprisingly few people in the Bai family’s main residence.”
“The old master, Bai Siyuan’s father, his brothers and sisters—they’re all absent. The only people we can come into contact with are the steward and the staff.”
Where had they gone?
To deal with the aftermath of the supplies aboard the ship.
They had gone somewhere… without the Bai residence’s tight defensive system protecting them.
To an isolated pier far from the city, with no help around.
Jiang Nuan felt as though the temperature in the room had dropped several degrees.
Bai Siyuan had gone to extraordinary lengths to lay out such a vast scheme.
He had even been willing to risk his own life, deliberately leading an entire ship into that deadly restricted zone.
There was no way he had done it merely to make those lofty central authorities of the Bai family stand on a pier in the sea breeze and inventory some cargo.
This was a trap that had been plotted long in advance.
A scheme aimed at the entire power core of the Bai family.
That memory-dream suddenly flashed through her mind.
The black leather notebook, its handwriting growing increasingly neat over the final few pages.
And that sentence…
[Someday…I’ll deal with everyone involved.]
At the time, she hadn’t thought deeply about it. She had assumed it was merely a bitter complaint written by a frustrated boy.
But if she connected all the clues from today—
“Everyone involved” might even include members of the Bai family itself.
She bit down hard on her lower lip.
The next moment, Ye Que calmly placed his hand over hers. His palm was dry and warm, firmly enclosing her cold fingers.
Shen Wu’s gaze lingered briefly on their clasped hands.
Then he quietly lowered his eyes and raised a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, as if bearing the weight of some invisible overload.
The pressure of his fingertips was heavier than usual.
The last ray of sunset sank beyond the window.
The room went completely dark.
Jiang Nuan stared at the window frame, gradually blurring in the dusk, while the blank pages from the notebook churned repeatedly through her mind.
One after another.
There was nothing written on any of them.
As if, for a very long time, something unbearably heavy had happened—something so heavy that there had not even been the strength to put pen to paper.
She suddenly wanted to know what those blank pages concealed.
What kind of event could have turned the gentle, restrained boy in her memories into a madman who would stop at nothing to achieve his goals?
Even more, she wanted to know…
How many people did “everyone involved” encompass?
And how far had he gotten now?
Jiang Nuan’s fingertips grew colder and colder.
A belated question—one that should have surfaced much earlier—pierced her mind.
She rapidly reviewed every day since she had come into contact with Bai Siyuan: the earrings she had suspected were problematic, the room Ye Que had inspected inch by inch, her daily meals and clothes, even the red rose he had handed her in the greenhouse…
Everything was clean.
There was nothing.
A man capable of calculating every detail of the White Whale, a man who could drive even the Bai family’s closest blood relatives into a deadly trap without the slightest hesitation—
Why, when it came to bringing her back, had he merely renovated the garden and recorded her preferences?
The last sliver of sunlight outside the window sank completely, and the room fell into darkness.
Jiang Nuan stared at the sky, now utterly dark, as a chill deeper than anything inspired by conspiracy crept up her back.
She realized she could no longer understand Bai Siyuan at all. If his treatment of everyone was the result of ruthless, meticulous calculation, then what, exactly, did this singular “lack of defenses” he showed toward her mean?
