Chapter 3: The Person Who Isn’t in the File

Ji Chengyuan finally agreed to meet Fu Jingze.

They met in a tea room on the top floor of a hotel.

Ji Chengyuan no longer looked as composed as he did in the media.

He placed a USB drive on the table and said he had kept it for eight years.

“Your father came to see me before File 23 was closed.”

Fu Jingze waited in silence.

Ji Chengyuan explained that back then he had been a young businessman who stumbled upon a data system being used to monitor the activities of many people across the city.

The system didn’t just store camera footage. It was linked to financial records, travel histories, and communications data.

Fu Tingchuan had discovered the system and started investigating.

But before he could finish his report, the entire file was altered.

Some witnesses vanished from the data.

Some documents were mislabeled.

Even the name of the original lead investigator was changed.

“Whoever was behind it didn’t want anyone to know that system existed.”

With that, Ji Chengyuan pushed the USB drive toward Fu Jingze.

On it was a list of everyone who had ever accessed the system.

The first twenty-three had all been identified.

But there was a twenty-fourth name.

Ning Chulan.

Fu Jingze turned to look at her at once.

Ning Chulan didn’t seem surprised at all.

She only said that she had worked at the city data center before joining the investigation unit.

“Part of my record from eight years ago was erased.”

Fu Jingze asked why she hadn’t said so earlier.

Ning Chulan looked him straight in the eye.

“Because I didn’t know who I could trust either.”

At that moment, every light in the tea room went out.

When they came back on, the USB drive was gone.

Ji Chengyuan realized at once that the door had never opened.

Fu Jingze checked the corridor camera and found a figure passing by at the exact moment the system lost signal.

The figure wore a light-colored coat.

Exactly like the woman who had appeared on camera at 2:17.

Fu Jingze and Ning Chulan gave chase.

The figure led them down to the basement and vanished in front of a steel door.

On the door was the number 23.

Ning Chulan found a small device attached behind the lock.

It was transmitting a signal straight to a server somewhere else.

Fu Jingze traced it immediately.

The signal ended at a building owned by Song Huaizhou’s corporation.

Song Huaizhou ran a technology company that had helped build the city’s camera network.

He was also the man in Fu Tingchuan’s old photograph.

Fu Jingze realized that all the scattered names had finally lined up into a single thread.

But the most important question was still unanswered.

Why was Ning Chulan the twenty-fourth name on the list?