Chapter 4: Cicadas Frozen in the Throat

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At three in the morning, the underground restoration room of the library glowed with a cold, white light. Song Zhao curled up in a wicker chair, the back of his neck still tinged with the metallic tang of rust from the ventilation duct. The hard drive in his palm burned like a piece of red-hot coal, and Zhao Zhenbang’s words—“He shouldn’t have touched President Lin’s car”—still buzzed relentlessly in his ears.

On the desk, Su Wan’s modified signal-blocking terminal cast a ghostly blue glow. He fixed his gaze on the small silver square, his knuckles paling from the force of his grip—this was what he had shielded with his back as he tumbled out of the evidence center’s ventilation shaft, his prize wrested away.

“Do you need me to hook up the power?” Su Wan’s voice fell as light as a feather upon his taut nerves.

She stood by the restoration table, the cuffs of her plain cotton-linen shirt marked with glue stains, and scraps of paper clinging to the ends of her hair—remnants from sunning ancient books on the library’s top floor.

Only now did Song Zhao notice the bandage around her left ankle—she’d knocked it against a display case while helping him move old texts during the day, but he had been too absorbed in checking records to realize.

“No need.” He cleared his throat, fingers hesitating over the terminal’s port. “Keep your distance. In case there’s a tracking program…” Before he could finish, Su Wan had already pulled up a wooden stool and settled just behind him, a technical manual on ancient book restoration open across her knees, half a pencil tucked between the pages—a nervous habit of hers.

Song Zhao’s throat tightened, but he said nothing more and slid the hard drive into the port.

The system’s startup chime felt like a needle, piercing his eardrums. As soon as the partition table appeared, a red encryption box flashed center-screen, the words “Level-Three Access Authentication” making him squint.

Su Wan leaned in, tapping the pencil tip on the words “Police Forensic Evidence System.” “Didn’t Forensic Analyst Chen say he helped with the system upgrade in 2003?”

Song Zhao’s fingers went rigid.

He recalled yesterday, when Dr. Chen handed him an enamel cup at the old teahouse—a crumpled note pressed beneath the base, its edges stained with dark tea rings—a clue the old forensic specialist had left on purpose.

He fished out his encrypted phone. The number had lain dormant in his contacts for thirteen years; their last call was three years ago, when he’d helped Dr. Chen fix a microscope.

“Hello.” On the other end, the breathing was as rough as an old bellows.

“Professor Chen, it’s me.” Song Zhao’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “About the ‘98-Cold Cicada’ hard drive…”

There was a silence that stretched for half a minute; Song Zhao could almost hear the distant hum of the evidence center’s cold storage.

“The backdoor password is ‘coldcase03’.” Dr. Chen’s voice turned hoarse. “You have 120 seconds after logging in to extract the data—otherwise, a self-destruct protocol kicks in.” Before Song Zhao could ask more, the line went dead, the busy tone wrapped around a faint sigh.

Hexadecimal code raced across the screen. Sweat beaded on Song Zhao’s forehead.

Only when Su Wan handed him a tissue did he notice the crescent marks his nails had pressed into his palm.

“Found it!” he suddenly exclaimed, the cursor settling on a file labeled “Dashcam_Backup_Unarchived.”

As he hit ‘Enter,’ both of them held their breath.

The instant the video lit up, Song Zhao’s temples pounded.

The front windshield of a black SUV reflected the yellow glow of the streetlights. The passenger window rolled down slowly, revealing a profile half-hidden behind gold-rimmed glasses—not the wealthy culprit, but Lin Haoyu.

On the console’s blue-lit screen, the demolition redline map of the development zone stood out starkly, the only plot circled in red bearing the words “No. 7 Zhaoyang Alley.”

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“What is this…” Su Wan’s fingers clutched his wrist.

Song Zhao’s throat felt as if stuffed with vinegar-soaked cotton.

He remembered standing with his mother at the gate of No. 7 Zhaoyang Alley on the day of his father’s funeral, her hand gripping his, the word “Demolish” scrawled in crooked red paint on the wall; remembered, twenty years later, the moment before the crash, chasing a black SUV through three intersections, the windshield flashing with the shadow of that very map.

“Song Yuanchao.” He softly recited his father’s name to the screen. “Before you fell at the construction site, did you see this map too?”

At six in the morning, sunlight slanted through the small window of the restoration room, illuminating the steaming porridge Su Wan brought.

A pale ring of porridge clung to the porcelain bowl’s rim, like a flower not yet in bloom.

As she slid an old newspaper photocopy before him, he was still dazedly staring at the red line in the video screenshot—that line passed through the gate of No. 7 Zhaoyang Alley, skirting the corner of the Lin Charity Hospital.

“Jiangcheng Daily, 2003.” Su Wan’s fingertip brushed the photo of a middle-aged man holding a property deed. “Your father. The headline reads ‘The Last Guardian of Zhaoyang Alley’.”

Song Zhao’s finger brushed the inky newsprint, his father’s glasses glowing softly in the photo.

The article’s final paragraph read, “This plot was originally the staff housing for the city textile mill. Lin Real Estate acquired it under the pretense of ‘public welfare renovation.’ Several residents report being coerced into signing the compensation agreement.” His gaze paused at the fine print: “Coordinator: Zhou Mingyuan (then a junior official at the Bureau of Construction).”

“Zhou Mingyuan is now deputy mayor,” Su Wan said quietly. “He sits at the main table at every one of Lin Haoyu’s charity galas.”

Song Zhao abruptly stood. The wooden chair screeched across the cement floor.

He snatched up the steel pen and wrote three names beside “Cold Cicada” in his notebook: Zhou Mingyuan, Lin Haoyu, Zhao Zhenbang. He connected them with a red pen, the ink spreading like clotted blood.

“My father didn’t die in a burglary.” His voice trembled. “He discovered the demolition agreement was a fraud. They were afraid he’d expose the evidence… So, twenty years later, someone drove President Lin’s car to run me down, just to keep ‘Cold Cicada’ silent forever.”

That afternoon, the city archive’s underground vault was as cold as an ice cellar.

Song Zhao, dressed in Su Wan’s library uniform with a badge reading “Ancient Book Restoration Intern,” followed the archivist into Vault 3, goosebumps crawling up his neck.

The Zhaoyang Alley demolition files he requested were on shelf B17. As the metal file box was retrieved, he noticed fresh scratches inside the lid—someone had tampered with it recently.

The texture of the original signature page felt wrong.

Holding the copy, Song Zhao’s fingers paused. He recalled the evidence center’s paper analyzer: the special “Jiangcheng Supply Paper” discontinued in 2002 had fine bamboo fibers, but this page felt slick, the kind of wood pulp paper that only became common in 2005.

He pretended to tidy the files, gently scraping the back of the copy with a nail—sure enough, faint indentations showed through beneath the surface fibers.

“May I use the copier?” he asked the archivist with a smile. “I need to check a few dates.”

When the restoration room’s microspectrometer lit up, Su Wan was on tiptoe adjusting the halogen lamp.

Under blue light, the indentations gradually revealed themselves: a half-completed protest petition, the ninth name “Song Yuanchao,” a blurred fingerprint beneath the seventh signature.

As Song Zhao uploaded the image to the police database, veins throbbed on the back of his hand—Lu Yuan’s temporary interface would only last half an hour. This was the last resource he could access after his suspension.

When the match result popped up, he nearly knocked over the inkwell.

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The man in the ID photo on-screen wore a crisp suit, his badge reading “Deputy Director, Development Zone Management Committee”—the very officer Zhao Zhenbang had shielded three years ago in the “Forced Demolition Conflict Case.”

“He was the one in charge of collecting residents’ property deeds.” Song Zhao stared at the man’s faintly scarred lip, matching exactly the complaint letter’s description of “excessive force” from years back.

That night, the television news poured over them like a basin of ice water.

Zhao Zhenbang sat in the detective squad’s conference room, a banner reading “Uphold Police Discipline” behind him. As the camera swept past, the scent of cedar cologne seemed to pierce the screen: “Recently, certain suspended personnel have illegally accessed evidence, suspected of leaking classified information. The squad has set up a special investigation team.”

Su Wan’s hand shook around the remote, her phone’s comment section flooded with the words “mole” and “traitor.”

She was about to exit when an anonymous comment suddenly popped up: “Not everyone from Zhaoyang Alley is dead—someone’s still painting umbrellas.”

“Lin Xiaoman!” they both shouted at once.

Rain drifted down at the alley entrance where the umbrella repair stall once stood. Song Zhao’s shoes crunched over splintered bamboo ribs; the stand had been cleared away, leaving only half a blue cloth curtain hanging from a pole, a faded peony on its surface—the umbrella cover Lin Xiaoman had given him last year, saying, “Uncle’s eyes are the color of a peony’s heart.”

A rustling came from behind the power box at the end of the alley.

Lin Xiaoman was curled up in a ball, her pale face pressed to the metal box. The moment she saw them, she began signing rapidly: “Last night at ten, a black car stopped at the alley entrance. Two men carried a box, blue fabric showing at the corner…” She seized a charcoal pencil, scrawling the license plate ending “773” on the cement wall, then pointed to the streetlamp overhead—the same lamp that had been out the night of Song Zhao’s accident.

Back in the restoration room, the wall was plastered with clues.

Song Zhao stood at the center, his gaze sweeping over the accident timeline, demolition redline map, fingerprint match, Lin Xiaoman’s charcoal drawings… Finally, his eyes settled on Zhao Zhenbang’s photo—in the image, the ring finger of his left hand twitched ever so slightly, exactly as it had three years ago when he gave false testimony at the internal hearing.

The golden markings of the “Eye of Truth” shimmered in his pupils.

He reached out and touched the photo, pain exploding in his temples—the reconstructed scene showed Zhao Zhenbang hesitating over a report labeled “Evidence in Doubt,” his pen slashing those words out, replacing them with “Procedurally Compliant.”

Those twenty seconds carved blood-red lines into Song Zhao’s mind.

“Does it hurt?” Su Wan’s hand pressed gently to his icy neck.

He forced a smile and began dragging the hard drive image, spectrographic report, and Lin Xiaoman’s charcoal sketch into an encrypted archive.

“Cold Cicada isn’t mute.” As he clicked upload, dawn crept through the little window of the restoration room. “It just needs the right moment to let its voice be heard by those who must listen.”

When the anonymous tip platform of the provincial disciplinary committee chimed to confirm receipt, Su Wan’s phone vibrated.

She glanced at the message, then looked up at Song Zhao. “A secret note from Lu Yuan—Section Chief Dong has applied to re-examine the technology. Your time starts now.”

Song Zhao gazed at the brightening sky outside. The cold cicada lodged in his throat finally unfurled its blood-stained wings.