Chapter 5: The Blade Hidden Within the Umbrella

When the notification sound from the Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection echoed three times in the restoration room, Song Zhao was carefully cleaning the joints of an umbrella’s frame with an alcohol-soaked cotton swab.

Su Wan’s phone screen glared harshly in the dim light. Her fingertip hovered above the message box, as if she were about to touch a burning coal.

“Section Chief Dong has requested to intervene.” Her voice trembled, but the end of her sentence cut sharp through the silence, “Lu Yuan said she’s called up the backup files of cold cases from the evidence center for almost three years.”

Song Zhao’s tweezers froze mid-air.

The umbrella’s ribs were made of old bamboo, their twenty years of patina glowed amber under the lamp. He could smell the mustiness embedded in the bamboo fibers—a scent identical to the old books in his father’s office years ago.

Outside, the sycamore leaves whispered in the wind, and suddenly he remembered what Lan Dong had said to him the first time she took him to a crime scene: “A forensics officer’s eyes blink half a second more than the criminal’s.”

Forty-eight hours later, autumn rain tapped against the library’s glass.

Song Zhao bent over the microscope, and as the tip of his tweezers teased open the inner layer of the umbrella’s rib, a sliver of silvery film fell with a light “ding” into the tray.

The faint sound of the door hinge, mixed with the scent of cedar perfume, told him exactly who had arrived before he even looked up.

“Song Zhao.”

Her voice was as precise and cold as a scalpel’s blade, slicing through the room’s silence.

He straightened, feeling cold sweat trickle down his neck—the golden pattern of the “Eye of Truth” had only just faded from his temple, which still throbbed uneasily.

Lan Dong stood in the doorway, her black trench coat dusted with fine rain, epaulets glinting coldly under the hall light.

Her gaze shifted from the film beneath the microscope to the redness at the corners of his eyes. “The golden rule of evidence preservation.”

Song Zhao swallowed.

Seven years ago, at the provincial office training, this same woman, teetering on ten-centimeter heels, had tapped the projection screen with her pointer and declared: “First, time is the deadliest of all tamperers. Second, temperature and humidity consume the truth. Third—”

“The most inconspicuous places often hide the most fatal evidence.” He picked up her words softly, yet they landed in the space between them like a stone.

Lan Dong stepped inside, her fingers brushing the bottle of developing fluid on the table.

Su Wan had already donned white gloves and was placing the film into the developing box, her hair brushing against Song Zhao’s hand. “Ten minutes needed.”

As the red lamp in the darkroom flickered on, Lan Dong withdrew a stack of printed reports from her briefcase.

Song Zhao caught a glimpse of the top page: “Statistical Anomalies in Jiangcheng City’s Evidence Management System.” The codename “Cicada” had been circled three times in red ink.

“This code doesn’t appear in any records in the provincial archives.” She adjusted her gold-rimmed glasses. “Lu Yuan said the spectrographic analysis in the whistleblower’s report matches the exact method you used three years ago in the ‘Dock Body Case.’”

Song Zhao pressed his knuckles against the table.

Three years ago, on a rainy night, he’d found a half-smudged fingerprint in a flooded shipping container, using spectrographic tech to identify the model of the worker’s rubber shoes.

Back then, Zhao Zhenbang accused him of “making things unnecessarily complicated”—now those words were etched into the lines of his own palm.

“Development complete.” Su Wan’s voice came from the darkroom.

Three photos lay across the restoration table, their pixel grains scattered like spilled salt.

As Song Zhao leaned in, the golden pattern began to swirl once again in his eyes—the badge on the tail of a black SUV was blurred by rain, but the reflective sticker reading “Lin’s Umbrella Repairs” was blindingly clear; a man in a black jacket bent to lift a wooden crate, and as his cuff slid up, a tattoo on his inner arm slithered: H7.

“Lin Haoyu’s bodyguard number.” Lan Dong tapped her nail on the photograph. “I saw his personal guard at last month’s charity gala, exactly this kind of number on his left forearm.”

Su Wan’s finger paused at a page in the Republican-era Chamber of Commerce files.

The page’s edge was stained with tea, and the words “Lin’s Umbrella Shop Deregistration Statement (1998)” had been marked in red. Below, a small line of text stung the eyes: “Lin Foundation acquires ‘Lin’s’ trademark, for 0 yuan.”

“Using the signboard of the dead to feed the evil of the living.” As she closed the file, the cover snapped sharply. “1998, Uncle Song…”

She fell silent mid-sentence.

Song Zhao’s eyes were locked on her trembling lashes.

He remembered the rainy night before the accident, the scent of ink in his father’s study, the half-finished umbrella manual he was leafing through when his father said, “Some old crafts exist to hide secrets.”

Lan Dong drew a pen and marked an arrow on the back of a photo. “If we hand over the evidence now, Zhao Zhenbang could turn them into ‘forgeries’ within half an hour.” She looked up, her gaze behind the lenses as sharp as a blade. “We need to make the evidence walk on its own.”

“Reverse delivery.” Song Zhao finished, “On the day of the case review meeting, every attending official’s inbox will receive a ‘third-party audit report.’”

Su Wan already had her computer open, the provincial office’s letterhead template glowing blue on the screen. “I’ll do the layout, using aged-watermark techniques from antiquarian restoration.”

“I’ll handle document formatting.” Song Zhao’s fingers flew across the keyboard. “I’ll add AI image enhancement jargon—when they check, they’ll see the terminology matches exactly with the latest Criminal Forensics journal.”

Lan Dong produced a USB stick from her coat pocket. “Here are the past three years’ technical report templates from the provincial office. Keep the similarity at seventy-eight percent—too much alike, it’ll arouse suspicion; too little, it’ll be dismissed as junk.” She paused. “Most important is a self-destructing PDF.”

Song Zhao pulled up the coding interface, lines of code streaming across the screen. “It’ll auto-delete sixty seconds after opening, but record the IP address. If they’re eager, they’ll use personal phones and leave traces of unauthorized access.”

Su Wan suddenly laughed, her eyes crinkling into crescents. “Just like when I used to hide candy wrappers in old books as a child, always thinking no one would find them.”

Song Zhao’s fingers stilled.

He remembered himself at fourteen, squatting in a trafficker’s hideout, peering through a moldy paper window, watching a girl with braided pigtails slip a candy wrapper into a gap in “Jiangcheng Gazetteer”—and only later learning she’d left it as a deliberate marker.

On the day of the review meeting, the sunlight was especially harsh.

Zhao Zhenbang stood on the dais, his tie knotted too tightly, Adam’s apple bobbing as he declared, “The Song Zhao case was an act of individual misconduct.”

Suddenly, the Deputy Director’s phone in the front row chimed, followed by the Discipline Team Leader’s, then the Head of Public Relations…

From the surveillance room, Song Zhao watched the giant screen.

Zhao Zhenbang’s face flushed, then went pale, then green, before freezing with his mouth half-formed around the word “Continue.”

Before the meeting ended, the Discipline Inspection team entered with their credentials, camera flashes bursting like a string of firecrackers.

That night, the alleys of Zhaoyang reeked of char.

Song Zhao walked toward the end of the alley, his shoes scraping a charred plank—on its underside, knife-carved words: “The silkworm spins until it dies,” ink darkened by smoke and fire.

The moment his fingertips brushed the markings, the golden pattern flooded his vision like a tide.

Through the agony, he saw a rain-soaked night twenty years before: his father at the old desk, pen scratching paper, a boy’s silhouette flashing past the window, the hem of a blue jacket embroidered with “City Library Intern.”

His father sprang up, stuffed the letter into the umbrella’s handle, and flung it out the window.

“That umbrella…” Song Zhao staggered against a broken wall, his throat metallic, “It was sent to the library that year.”

He began to run.

Wind filled his collar, the pounding of his heart drowning out the police sirens behind him.

The outline of the library grew sharper in the darkness, the third-floor duty room’s lamp still burning, its warm yellow glow flickering through the window like a beating flame.

Su Wan’s silhouette shifted behind the curtain.

She was holding a copy of “Jiangcheng Gazetteer,” her fingertips tracing the spine, then suddenly drawing out a yellowed letter.

The handwriting on the cover was unmistakably his father’s, the pen pressing through the page: “To my future self—if you are reading this letter, it means ‘Cicada’ has finally awakened.”

Song Zhao pressed his hand to the library’s glass door, his breath clouding the pane.

He could hear his own heart pounding, mingled with the faint sound of pages turning inside—like a drumbeat, like a song of war, like a secret sealed for twenty years, finally about to tear through its last layer of silence.