The air in the top-floor lab of the Li Corporation tower was thick and stagnant, sealed like a pressure hull at ten thousand fathoms. The low hum of servers was the only background noise. The flicker of cold white fluorescent tubes resembled the dying twitches of a nervous system. On the massive central screen, the data stream representing "Firefly Flicker" surged violently against an abyssal blue backdrop, like tides torn by an invisible storm. And the repeatedly flashing, blood-red marker – "WhaleSong-7" – hung like a soul-branded curse, pressing down on every chest, making each breath taste like rusted iron.
Su Xiaolan huddled in a corner of the main console, icy fingers clenched around the washed, flattened, edge-worn chip bag. The rough texture of the foil was her only anchor to reality, a desperate attempt to suppress the dark shards of "WhaleSong" memories flooding her mind: blinding red lab alarms, a cold, threatening female voice over encrypted radio, and... a figure falling blurred in flames. She squeezed her eyes shut.
"Wait!" Her voice cut through the dead silence, startlingly clear.
Wang Jing and Chen Yan looked up simultaneously.
"This error code sequence—" Her fingers flew across the keyboard, isolating and magnifying a dense cluster of code. "The repetition frequency is too precise. It doesn't feel like random failure." Her gaze locked onto the screen, seeming to pierce the cold characters. "It... resembles a pattern."
"A pattern?" Chen Yan frowned, leaning closer. "What kind of pattern?"
Su Xiaolan didn't answer immediately. Her mind flashed unexpectedly to a lazy afternoon in the university library. Sunlight slanted through the windows as she lounged on a sofa, absently munching chips, her fingers unconsciously crumpling the bag: Crunch... crunch... crunch... Short, rapid, with an almost stubborn rhythm.
Her fingers trembled slightly at the association, tracing an invisible path on the cold screen. "Doesn't it sound like... someone is using error codes to mimic the crunch of a chip bag?"
An eerie silence fell over the lab. The idea was absurd, yet carried a chilling logic.
"You mean this isn't a system error, but... a signal?" Wang Jing was the first to react, his voice heavy with disbelief.
"More than a signal." Su Xiaolan's eyes, after the initial shock, sharpened like blades, boring into the cold code. "It's targeted at me. Because—" She drew a shaky breath, her voice tinged with bitter self-mockery, "—only I would instantly associate that damn noise with a chip bag." It was a childish habit, uniquely "Su Xiaolan". The attacker not only knew she was "F.LK", but intimately understood her mundane details. The implications were terrifying.
An icy dread snaked up her spine. This wasn't just a technical attack. It was provocation. A malicious, personal summons hidden in the data depths, addressed squarely to Su Xiaolan!
Li Chenyuan's imposing figure materialized like a deep-sea bulkhead behind her. He didn't speak, simply resting a steady hand on the back of her trembling chair. The warmth and solidity radiating from his palm anchored her panic like the strongest chain. His icy gaze swept over the error codes before settling on her pale profile.
"Who?" His voice was pitched low, a leviathan's infrasonic rumble meant only for her, penetrating the pressure.
Su Xiaolan shook her head, her heart pounding violently against her ribs. The answer hovered on the edge of terror. The list of people who could so precisely target both her identities was terrifyingly short.
4:00 AM. The hallway outside the lab was a cold steel tunnel, echoing only with the whine of central air. Su Xiaolan, ordered by Li Chenyuan to take a break, stood by the glass wall of the small kitchenette. Her reflection showed exhaustion and tension.
"Xiaolan."
The gentle voice from behind made her spine stiffen instantly.
She turned. Lu Xingze leaned against the doorframe, droplets of night mist still clinging to the shoulders of his dark coat. His eyes held the familiar warmth of memory, but beneath it now swirled complex currents, as discernible as deep-sea undercurrents.
"Senior?" Su Xiaolan's voice held a subtle strain. "You... didn't leave?"
"I was waiting for you." Lu Xingze stepped forward, pressing a cup of steaming coffee into her cold hands. His fingertips brushed hers with an almost imperceptible tremor, gone in an instant. "You saw it, didn't you?" His voice dropped low, his gaze probing. "That chip bag 'signal'... it's no accident. It's far too deliberate."
Su Xiaolan clutched the warm cup, the chill in her fingers unrelenting. She watched him silently.
"Do you remember? The 'Silence Pact' everyone was forced to sign after the Deep Water Forum summit seven years ago?" Lu Xingze's voice grew even lower, heavy with a sense of grim fate. "Some never accepted eternal silence. This signal..." He paused, his eyes sharpening, "...is their summons to you, issued from the deep."
"..." Su Xiaolan's throat was too dry to speak. Lu Xingze's words were a key, violently unlocking the floodgates of memory she'd fought to seal – that dark world of encrypted transmissions, lethal code, and icy warnings. The certainty in his eyes proved he knew far more than she'd imagined.
"You must be extremely careful, Xiaolan," Lu Xingze's tone became uncharacteristically grave. "This storm isn't just aimed at the Li Corporation or 'Hoffmann'. Its core target is you. 'F.LK's' return is an intolerable variable for some, and... perfect bait." He leaned in slightly, his voice dropping to a near whisper, laden with warning. "Did you know? Just moments ago, whispers started spreading in closed corners of the deep water forums – 'F.LK is back'."
Su Xiaolan's pupils contracted violently. The coffee cup almost slipped from her grasp. A bone-deep chill instantly permeated her limbs.
Stumbling back into the lab, Su Xiaolan's sense of dread peaked. The sight before her crystallized her worst fears into icy reality—
Beneath the dreaded error codes on the central screen, a line of glaring, blood-red text flashed into existence, like the mocking eye of the abyss opening:
[F.LK WELCOME BACK TO DEEP WATER.]
Time seemed to freeze. The hum of servers, the clatter of keyboards – every tiny sound was swallowed by those words. In the lab, all eyes – shocked, probing, disbelieving – converged on Su Xiaolan like cold spotlights.
The air stretched taut as a drawn bowstring, ready to snap.
"It wasn't me!" The denial tore from Su Xiaolan's lips, sharper than she intended. Under crushing pressure, she instinctively clenched the chip bag, the aluminum foil emitting a sharp, grating sound in the silence. Suspicion spread like ink in deep water, staining every mind.
"Who's mimicking my signature?" She forced calm, though her voice still trembled. She lunged for the console, fingers flying over the keys, pulling up a detailed analysis of the code. "Look here! This isn't the original F.LK signature! The command structure superficially matches, but the core verification loop has delayed modifiers..." She snapped her head up, her sharp gaze sweeping the room before landing on Li Chenyuan's fathomless eyes. "It's a forgery! Someone deliberately left my mark to frame me!"
"The technique is sophisticated, but yes... it bears the hallmarks of a crafted counterfeit," Chen Yan added grimly, studying the analysis data on screen, his brow furrowed deeply. "The intent is clear: frame-up."
As murmurs threatened to rise again—
THUD!
Li Chenyuan slammed his palm down hard on the console's unforgiving metal edge. The dull boom, like a depth charge blast, instantly silenced all noise. He turned slowly. His towering presence radiated suffocating pressure. His gaze, glacial as polar ice, swept the room. Each word fell like an ice-forged spike, driving into their consciousness:
"No one here has the standing to question her." His voice was low but carried absolute, unquestionable authority. "Whoever thinks they can frame my people with such cheap tricks," a cold, lethal smile touched his lips, "isn't remotely qualified."
His overwhelming presence crushed the burgeoning cloud of doubt. The room fell deathly silent.
Li Chenyuan's gaze finally returned to Su Xiaolan. It remained deep, an abyss swallowing light, but the emotions swirling within were infinitely more complex than when he'd addressed the room. He stepped forward, his large frame enveloping her completely. His voice dropped to a near-whisper, carrying a near-cruel calmness, yet infused with undeniable force:
"But Xiaolan," he held her wide, anxious eyes, "now, you must tell me. All of this," his gaze swept the glaring "F.LK" and the hateful "WhaleSong-7" on the screen before locking onto her pale face, "what is its connection to the past you tried to bury?" He needed to know the boundaries of her battlefield to build the strongest fortress around her.
An invisible hand seemed to constrict Su Xiaolan's throat. Her breath grew ragged and labored. She saw the unyielding protection in Li Chenyuan's eyes, felt the weight of Wang Jing, Chen Yan, and others' silent stares behind her. She knew there was no retreat. The identity she'd personally sealed in a deep-sea tomb was being ruthlessly exhumed by these raging undercurrents.
She drew a deep breath, as if summoning every ounce of strength. Her gaze lifted past Li Chenyuan's broad shoulder, settling on Lu Xingze's complex expression nearby. Her voice was soft as a sigh, yet landed like a ton weight in the lab's dead air:
"Senior," her voice held a weary, resigned calmness, yet resonated with profound exhaustion, "seven years ago, backstage at the Deep Water Forum... thank you for shielding me during that search." She paused, her gaze slowly sweeping the room, finally meeting Li Chenyuan's unfathomable eyes. Each word was crystal clear:
"Yes. I am 'F.LK'."
SNAP!
The electronic stylus in Wang Jing's hand broke, pieces clattering to the floor. Chen Yan sucked in a sharp breath, eyes bulging behind his glasses, face a mask of utter disbelief. The other engineers gaped, as if hearing the most absurd fantasy. The "salted fish assistant" ridiculed by the entire internet... was the legendary, internationally feared top-tier hacker "F.LK"?!
Li Chenyuan's expression remained impassive, as if already knowing. Only his abyssal eyes darkened further, churning with an indescribable storm of emotion, threatening to engulf her slender figure. He stepped half a pace closer, closing the distance until their breaths mingled. His lowered voice held a dangerous magnetism, meant only for her ears:
"Why... only now?" It wasn't an accusation, but a probe into her inner struggle.
Su Xiaolan pressed her bloodless lips together, fingers whitening on the memory-laden chip bag. She lowered her lashes, avoiding his scorching gaze, her voice barely audible, thick with years of pent-up bitterness: "Because it was a past... I fought desperately to bury. An abyss... full of mistakes and cost." A faint tremor laced her words – fear and deep guilt. "But now..." She looked up at the still-glaring red text on the screen, a flash of hopeless understanding in her eyes, "...someone dug it up. They... won't let me go."
As if to confirm her words—
The central screen flashed violently! Beneath the blood-red "F.LK WELCOME BACK TO DEEP WATER", a processed, slightly blurry surveillance image popped up without warning.
The angle was familiar – a building hallway. The back of a plainly dressed, slightly plump elderly woman in a padded coat hurried towards the stairwell. The image looped, zoomed in, focusing on the barely visible pattern at the end of her scarf – revealed in slow motion to be no ordinary design, but a stylized whalebone embroidery, stark and powerful!
"Granny... Granny Zhang?!" Su Xiaolan gasped, her pupils dilating with shock and icy horror! That back, that scarf... horrifyingly familiar! The kind old woman who always left a little yellow light in her window, brought her osmanthus lotus root, who said "a salted fish must learn to surface"...
The abyssal blue screen light bathed every horrified face in the lab, like a sinister chuckle echoing from the deep.
Deep Water was responding to her awakening in the cruelest way possible. Phantoms lurked everywhere, and even the warmest harbor might conceal a lethal reef. Li Chenyuan's hand instinctively tightened, enveloping Su Xiaolan's icy hand completely in his searing grasp. His gaze, like the sharpest searchlight, pierced the frozen, blurry figure on the screen. The storm had only just begun to tear off its mask.