The line of icy blue text on the massive screen hung in the frozen air like a venom-tipped ice pick, emanating an ominous, ghostly light.
[F.LK, do not forget the 'Silent Treaty'. Silence, or annihilation.]
Time in the conference room seemed to have been instantly drained and frozen. The high-ranking officials who had been so aggressive moments before, demanding Su Xiaolan's quarantine and interrogation, now looked as if invisible hands were choking them, their faces a mask of horror and disbelief. Those four words—"Silent Treaty"—were like an ancient curse from the deep-sea legends, the danger they implied far exceeding anything within their understanding of business.
"The S-Silent Treaty?" an elderly board member stammered, his voice trembling. "Wasn't that seven years ago… when that forum collapsed…"
His words trailed off, unfinished, as fear spread through the room like a silent virus.
Under the screen's eerie glow, Su Xiaolan's face was deathly pale, almost translucent. She was numb to the gazes around her; her entire world had shrunk back to that moment filled with piercing alarms, the acrid smell of burning, and absolute despair. Li Chenyuan's grip on her arm was painfully tight, but the pain strangely served as an anchor, a sharp point dragging her back temporarily from the whirlpool of memory.
"Su Xiaolan!" His voice was low and urgent, like the metallic groan of a submarine at crush depth. "Look at me! What is the 'Silent Treaty'?!"
Her slender body shook violently. She closed her eyes, her long lashes damp. Her breathing was rapid and shallow, as if fighting immense water pressure.
Several seconds of dead silence passed, feeling like a century.
She opened her eyes. They were filled with shattered pain and the bleak clarity of being forced into a corner.
"It… is a contract." Her voice was hoarse and scratchy. "A pact that trades freedom and silence for… the right to survive."
The conference room was so quiet one could hear a pin drop. Only the sound of her labored narration remained.
"Seven years ago, the Deep Water forum… became a battlefield. Ideals, interests, power… it all spiraled out of control. We touched things we shouldn't have, learned secrets we weren't meant to know. It attracted… 'them'."
"Who are 'they'?" Li Chenyuan pressed.
"I don't know… can't be sure." She shook her head bitterly. "Could be an agency, a consortium of capital, or… something older. They delivered an ultimatum: sign the treaty, remain silent forever, seal away all related memories. Otherwise…"
She paused, her trembling intensifying. Li Chenyuan's grip unconsciously tightened.
"Otherwise, it wasn't just social death, but complete physical erasure." She voiced the most terrifying consequence. "The witnesses to the treaty… were several of the 'Deep Water Thirteen', and also… authorities like Dr. Leng."
"You signed." His statement was cold and definitive.
"I signed." The admission was light as a sigh, heavy enough to crush everything. "I watched the data get purged, the connections severed, swore to bury F.LK. that whale-tail watermark… it's a brand. Signed my name, and have lived in 'their' shadow ever since, never to see the light of day again."
She raised her tear-filled eyes to him. There was fear in them, but also a strange sense of relief.
"I thought I had escaped… hid so well, just wanted to be a loser… But, 'Deep Water' has a memory… 'They' won't let me go…"
Before her words faded, the icy blue text on the giant screen flickered violently. Garbled code scrolled wildly before, with a burst of piercing static, it plunged completely into darkness.
As if it had all been an illusion. But the oppressive atmosphere and the tear tracks on Su Xiaolan's face were unbearably real.
Silence. A long, dead silence.
Right then, Wang Jing's encrypted communicator vibrated. He checked it quickly, his face changing dramatically. He hurried over to Li Chenyuan, reporting in a low voice, yet loud enough for those nearby to hear:
"Mr. Li, we just intercepted a multi-encrypted message source… Preliminary tracing indicates one of the signal's physical hop locations… points near the residence of Ms. Zhang Jingxian, that is, Granny Zhang, Ms. Su's neighbor."
"What?!" Su Xiaolan's head snapped up, the blood draining from her face, her shock even greater than before. "Impossible! Granny Zhang, she… she's just…"
Just a sweet, gentle, lonely old lady who liked to knit sweaters and leave soup for her? The person whose smile under the warm glow of her little yellow lamp felt as comforting as a real grandmother's?
Wang Jing's words were like the coldest dagger, piercing through her last protective shell. Lu Xingze's warning, Li Chenyuan's suspicion, that confidential report… all the clues exploded, weaving together into a vast, terrifying web.
The safe harbor she thought she had found—was it an observation post from the very beginning? Was that little yellow lamp a guardian light, or a never-closing eye of surveillance?
A massive sense of betrayal and fear seized her. She couldn't breathe.
Li Chenyuan's eyes instantly turned deep and icy. He released her arm, slowly straightening up. He was like a deep-sea leviathan adjusting its course for battle, shedding all gentleness and hesitation, leaving only absolute calm and control.
His gaze swept over the room, finally landing on the swaying Su Xiaolan.
"Meeting adjourned." His voice carried an unquestionable authority. "Everything today is classified as the corporation's highest secret. Anyone who leaks a word will bear the consequences."
He issued commands directly:
"Wang Jing, take an absolutely reliable team immediately. Escort Ms. Su back to the penthouse safe room. No one is to approach her without my permission."
"Tech team, full pursuit of the signal source. I want the exact origin and path, not 'nearby'!"
"Everyone else, return to your posts. Control the narrative, stabilize internally. Regarding Assistant Su's position, it remains unchanged. My decision stands."
Finally, he looked at Su Xiaolan, his expression complex but firm. "Go back and rest for now. Don't think about anything. I will handle this."
In a daze of utter blankness, Su Xiaolan was escorted away. Her mind echoed with the icy blue words, Li Chenyuan's gaze, Granny Zhang's kindly face… The abyss had never let her go. It might have, from the very beginning, been enveloping her.
Inside the safe room, Su Xiaolan curled up in a corner, her fingertips icy. Every warm detail of her past interactions with Granny Zhang turned into a sharp knife, cutting away trust. Her worldview had completely collapsed. Mechanically, she crumpled the old crisp bag in her hand, the unconscious "crinkle, crinkle" sound filling the void.
Elsewhere, the tech team reported to Li Chenyuan: the frequency pattern of the error codes left by the intrusion was peculiar, unlike a conventional attack. It was undecipherable.
Li Chenyuan had Wang Jing show the pattern to Su Xiaolan.
Staring vacantly at the jumping error sequence on the screen, the unconscious "crinkle, crinkle" sound of her own hand squeezing the crisp bag echoed in her ears.
Suddenly, she jolted violently!
The frequencies of the two… were eerily similar!
"Someone is using error codes… to simulate the sound of a crisp bag…" she murmured, her heart pounding wildly. "This is… a signal for me. A code only I would understand."
She quickly decoded, translating the error codes that mimicked the "crinkling sounds," eventually piecing together a chilling short phrase:
[Deep Water never sleeps.]
This was not just a provocation; it was proof that the other party was intimately familiar with her daily habits, her identity as "Su Xiaolan"!
The horror of it sank in slowly but deeply.
Just then, her private device (supposedly under strict shielding) actually received a message from Lu Xingze. His tone was gentle, yet felt like a final, twisting knife: "Xiaolan, don't be used. The Deep Water forum is already buzzing—'F.LK is back'."
Almost simultaneously, an untraceable encrypted channel forcibly hacked into the safe room's auxiliary display. Gu Yu's message popped up coldly:
[Choose, F.LK. Return, or be swallowed by the Deep Water.]
Betrayal from within (Granny Zhang), pressure from three sides without (Li's protection and suspicion, Lu's warning, Gu's provocation)—all tore at her simultaneously.
Suddenly, the main screen was forcibly activated again!
A blood-red countdown dominated the entire display.
[71:59:59]
[71:59:58]
The numbers ticked down mercilessly.
Below it was a simpler, yet more suffocating, final ultimatum:
[Silence Deadline.]
Su Xiaolan's fingertips trembled, clutching the crisp bag desperately. The sound of its "crinkle" echoed in the deathly silence, like her final anchor.
Fear remained, but a cold resolve—a mixture of pain, rage, and the desperation of being cornered—slowly rose in her eyes.
Deep Water never sleeps.
And perhaps, her silence had finally reached its end.