Chapter 1: A Figure at 2:17 A.M.

Late at night, Shanghai always wore a thin layer of mist over its riverside streets, blurring the lights of its towers like fragments of memories that had never been explained.

At exactly 2:17 a.m., the security cameras of a commercial complex captured a woman in a light-colored coat standing in front of the entrance to Building 17.

The strangest part was that the cameras recorded her for exactly thirteen seconds.

After those thirteen seconds, the footage returned to normal, and the woman seemed never to have walked down that corridor at all.

Fu Jingze got the call from Captain Mu Jingshen while it was still dark.

“Get to the Nanjiang complex now. There’s a piece of camera footage here that doesn’t add up.”

Fu Jingze was known on the investigation team for noticing the details everyone else missed.

When he arrived, he didn’t look at the scene first. He asked the security guard to pull all the camera footage from 1:50 to 2:40 a.m.

Ning Chulan showed up not long after. She handled image and data analysis for the special investigation unit.

The two of them stood in front of the big screen, watching every frame in slow motion.

“Stop here.”

Ning Chulan pointed at the screen at the exact moment the woman appeared.

Fu Jingze enlarged the image and immediately noticed a tiny detail just behind the woman’s shoulder.

On the opposite wall hung a digital clock that read 2:17.

“The camera didn’t lose signal.”

Ning Chulan quickly checked the technical data and came to a conclusion that silenced the room.

“Someone altered the timestamp sequence of this recording.”

Fu Jingze didn’t answer right away. He kept studying the frames.

Directly behind the woman, a black car was parked in the basement garage.

Something was blocking nearly half the license plate, but Fu Jingze still recognized the model. It belonged to a well-known businessman.

Ji Chengyuan.

Ji Chengyuan was found in that very car near dawn. What complicated everything was that his entire schedule that night left no window of time in which he could have been at the complex.

Mu Jingshen immediately ordered a check of his phone and vehicle records.

All the data said Ji Chengyuan had been at a hotel nearly ten kilometers away.

Fu Jingze watched the footage one more time.

“Someone wants us to believe Ji Chengyuan was never here.”

Ning Chulan looked at him and asked quietly,

“Then why did the woman on camera appear at the exact moment the data was altered?”

No one could answer that.

Not until Fu Jingze found an audio file hidden inside the storage system.

Its name was only two characters long.

23.

Inside was a recording less than a minute long.

A man’s voice spoke very softly, as if deliberately trying to keep the microphone from picking it up.

“You promised you wouldn’t tell.”

Right after that line, the audio ended.

Ning Chulan checked when the file had been created. It had existed for eight years.

Fu Jingze immediately requested access to the old case archives.

After nearly an hour of searching, a case file numbered 23 appeared on the screen.

It had been closed for lack of key evidence.

The lead investigator at the time was Fu Tingchuan, Fu Jingze’s father.

Fu Jingze stared at the familiar name for a long time.

His father had once said File 23 was the most complicated case of his entire career.

But he had never said it was still connected to the present.

At that moment, Fu Jingze’s phone vibrated.

A message from an unknown sender. Just one sentence.

“If you open File 23, the next person to appear on camera will be the one you trust most.”

Fu Jingze looked up at Ning Chulan.

In that instant, they both understood: the case had only just begun.