Chapter One: The Incense Has Not Yet Cooled
Lin Qishan received the anonymous package just before the rain stopped. The envelope looked old, as if it had been plucked at the last minute from some long-unclaimed corner. Its corners were soft and buckled, stamped with the blurry words "Internal Transfer."
He did not open it immediately.
He stood smoking on the balcony of his cramped rented room. The city before him looked like a pot of soup boiled over: scum still floating on top, the smell turned sour. Outside the window stretched the roof of a building materials market. The head of a plastic lucky cat swayed in the wind, as if nodding at him—or reminding him that his useless life had only one last breath left.
He waited until the cigarette had burned down to his fingertips before tearing open the package.
Inside were only two items: a photocopy of an old case file labeled "Case File No. 0024 (Organized Crime)", and a photograph so blurred that no face could be made out. On the back of the photo, a strip of paper bore a line scrawled in crooked red pen: "They've all forgotten, but I'm still here."
He stared at that line for a few seconds, as if he were eye-to-eye with a blade that had cut him years ago. Whether it still hurt was no longer important—the pain had long since ceased to matter. All that remained was a visceral, instinctive nausea.
He shoved the papers into the bottom of a drawer, turned, and went downstairs to head out for his night shift.
The city at night was even brighter than by day, but its people were quieter.
Lin Qishan's current workplace was a company called "Clear River Data." It looked respectable enough, but in truth it was a marginal outfit that handled outsourced public-opinion cleanup. His cubicle was at the far end of a corridor, right beside a broken air conditioner vent. Whenever the system's cooling went into overdrive, it would belch a gust of hot air that reeked of rust.
His job was to scrub from the platform any sensitive phrases "prone to eliciting collective association," including but not limited to religious terms, regional labels, numeric combinations, and rhythmically repeated words.
That night, he had 23 items to clean up. Most were the usual suspects—terms like "incense offerings," "donor," "merit exchange," and even "spiritual free-range eggs." He deleted them one after another, eyes dull and movements steady, as if using a blunt knife to repeatedly slice a slab of frozen meat.
He continued in this way until he scrolled to the 17th item, when his hand suddenly stopped.
It was a link to an old audio file, labeled only with six alphanumeric characters: XGCI-0024.
He blinked, then clicked on the audio. A very soft female voice whispered out, like someone murmuring at the turn of a stairwell: "I'm still here… don't forget me…"
After that came a long stretch of white noise, like something thrown into water without causing a ripple.
He froze with his finger on the mouse, and did not proceed.
"Stuck on a keyword again?" came a voice from behind. It was He Qizhou, his partner on the night shift—a younger man, the kind of clever person who could find a way to survive any storm of public opinion.
"Just came across an old term," Lin Qishan said flatly.
"You didn't click on 0024, did you?" Qizhou's voice suddenly dropped. "That thing was locked away in the archives years ago—word was it had ties to the Xiangci case."
Lin Qishan said nothing.
"You probably don't know this, right? After the incident back then, the whole batch of related accounts and keyword libraries got moved to a special-review archive. That fire did kill people—seven women. They said it was a group psychosis from a failed spiritual retreat." Qizhou flipped through an old file at the corner of Lin's desk. "I remember you cleaned up that batch of Xiangci case files—and the one you scrubbed the hardest was 0024, wasn't it?"
Lin Qishan stared at the screen, his eyes weighted as if a dark brick long undisturbed lay at the bottom of his gaze. He suddenly asked in a low voice, "Do you believe that some things can't be completely erased?"
Qizhou was startled for a moment, then shrugged with a laugh. "I only believe in money and purge orders."
The next afternoon, Lin Qishan went to the grounds of the old Xiangci Sanctuary. It had since been renamed "Spiritual Healing Valley," and a marble archway at the entrance bore the inscription: "Offer incense for every wandering soul."
He did not go in.
Walking around to the side gate, he saw a woman sitting on a long bench outside the laundry room, wearing a blue work uniform and bent over a threadbare towel she was mending. Her skin was pallid, and a faded scar encircled her neck, as if a cord had been pulled tight around it. Whenever anyone came near, she would swiftly withdraw her hands, her gaze instinctively dropping to the ground.
He stood there for a moment. The woman seemed to sense something and lifted her head to glance at him.
That gaze was neither pleading nor afraid—only the watchfulness of an animal testing the wind.
Lin Qishan nodded to her out of courtesy. She gave no response, simply tucking the half-mended towel into a cloth bag and turning back into the laundry room. Just before the door closed, he heard her murmur, "Don't take my picture… I'm afraid God will take it away."
He felt a coldness in his stomach.
On the way back, he ducked into a narrow alley. The alley was not wide, but a crowd had gathered at the far end. He assumed someone had fainted again, until the crowd suddenly burst apart and a man was shoved out, covered in blood. The man slammed into Lin Qishan's shoulder. Lin twisted aside, his foot slipping so that he nearly fell.
"Grab him—he stole the donation box from the healing center!" someone in the crowd shouted.
When Lin Qishan looked up, he saw three young men in work uniforms already in pursuit. He had no time to think; he was about to slip away when someone behind him suddenly yanked him back by the arm.
"You with him too?" the person snarled, pulling out a baton.
Lin Qishan's eyes went cold. He gave no answer. Instead, he swiftly raised an arm to block, dropped his weight, and drove his shoulder into the man—knocking him aside. The man lurched and slammed against the wall. Seizing the moment, Lin took a step back, his gaze cutting across the scene like a chill wind over a barren field.
The commotion was quickly subdued by nearby patrol personnel. No one questioned Lin's actions, and no one asked who he was. The uniformed young men only shot him a glare, as if committing his face to memory.
That night, back at the office, he tried to open the "XGCI-0024" audio again, only to find the link had expired. The system displayed only a single line of text: "Content not authorized for review, file automatically locked."
"Deleted?" he asked Qizhou.
Qizhou gave him a look. "If you ask that again, I'm going to think you really do want to find her."
Lin Qishan did not respond. He flipped over the blurred photo on his desk. A single line of text had been affixed to the back:
"Female follower #0024, identity unknown, death record in doubt."
He stared at that line, as if hearing some old dream whispering in his ear. Qizhou suddenly walked over and, looking at the photo, said thoughtfully:
"Hey, this woman… isn't she the girl you personally erased that year?"
Lin Qishan's gaze suddenly tore open, as if ripped apart by a gust of wind. He slowly raised his head, only to realize that an expression had crept onto his face—one he hadn't worn in years: fear.