The reinforced door of the safe room slammed shut with a heavy boom, the metallic echo reverberating in the confined space, sealing out the chaos and danger beyond its cold, hard walls.
The soundproof insulation was seamless, swallowing all extraneous noise, leaving only the low hum of servers. Su Xiaolan huddled in a corner, the old crisp bag in her hand being unconsciously crumpled over and over, emitting a repetitive, grating crinkle, crinkle.
A holographic screen hovered mid-air, blood-red numbers ticking down relentlessly:
[71:59:22]
[71:59:21]
[71:59:20]
Each passing second felt like a heavy anchor dragging her deeper into the abyssal depths of the 'Silent Treaty'. Her fingertips were icy, knuckles white, her heartbeat as chaotic as a school of fish scattered by the slap of a whale's tail. Images flashed through her mind—Granny Zhang's warm smile, the repaired desk lamp, the steaming bowls of soup. The very scenes that had once offered comfort now turned into cold, sharp blades, shredding her trust to pieces.
"Xiaolan." A low voice shattered the dead silence. Li Chenyuan sat opposite her, his posture as steady as a steel keel, his gaze pinning her like a deep-sea searchlight. "Wang Jing will handle the external fallout. Right now, you need to tell me—are there any loopholes in this treaty?"
His tone was purely operational, a state of war, carrying an undeniable pressure that sought strategic advantage, not emotional comfort.
Su Xiaolan's lips curved into a bitter smile. Loopholes? Seven years ago, she had personally signed her name on that treaty stamped with the whale-tail watermark. Its terror lay not in its technology, but in its 'Witnesses'—those ruthless individuals capable of utterly erasing anyone who broke it.
"No," she said, her voice scratchy, the denial instinctive.
Li Chenyuan's eyes darkened. The air solidified instantly, compressed as if by ten-thousand-meter water pressure. "Xiaolan," each word resonated like the deep groan of a submarine's metal hull, "nothing in this world is without a loophole."
Her throat constricted violently, breath catching. At that very moment, the auxiliary comms screen flickered abruptly. An encrypted signal, forcibly breaching the firewall, intruded rudely, leaving behind a line of icy text:
[F.LK. Choose. Return, or be swallowed by the Deep Water.]
Her pupils contracted sharply. This wasn't a provocation; it was a public 'summons'. Right now, in the dark corners of the dark web, this message was undoubtedly spreading like wildfire. Only one person would push her onto this judgment seat in such a manner.
"Gu Yu…" she murmured under her breath.
Far away, in the underground command center of the Li Corporation, bathed in cold light, Li Chenyuan stood before the tactical table, his silhouette like a waking leviathan, his oppressive aura intimidating the entire room.
"Target: Zhang Jingxian's residence." His voice was calm, yet it sent chills down the spine. "Smart meters, community network, old signal tower logs—I want traces of any anomalous data outflow, even a nanosecond of delay. Abort active tracking; they're misleading us. Switch to broad-spectrum passive listening mode."
Wang Jing acknowledged the order in a low voice, swiftly deploying personnel. Through another, utterly discreet private channel, Li Chenyuan utilized his most covert resources: "I need Zhang Jingxian's complete dossier for the past thirty years, highest clearance level. Simultaneously, set up a physical surveillance post. I need to know every movement inside her window." Cold, stern commands were issued layer by layer, like whale song spreading through the deep sea, making everyone feel the absolute authority emanating from their leader.
Back in the safe room, the feeling of betrayal wrapped around Su Xiaolan like octopus tentacles, suffocating her. Granny Zhang—her guardian, or her watcher? The whalebone embroidery on the end of that scarf felt piercingly cold in retrospect.
Just as her emotions teetered on the brink of collapse, a new private message popped up on her personal terminal—the one she only used for tracking comics and snack reviews, her "loser alt account." The sender was "Little Fatty Tang."
The message appeared to be just a funny meme, but Su Xiaolan's hacker instincts instantly detected something off. It was image steganography—a string of coordinates and a fragmentary key, embedded within the pixel matrix. The message had bypassed all常规监控, like a faint whale song piercing through the heavy layers of water.
In that moment, the chaos in her mind was forcibly ripped open. Fear and despair were pushed back, replaced by familiar focus and calculation. She was brutally yanked out of the emotional mire, like a long-dormant machine rebooting.
Not long after, Li Chenyuan received the feed from the forward physical surveillance post and shared it with her. On the screen, Granny Zhang's home still looked cozy, the small yellow lamp glowing. But she wasn't watching TV or knitting. She sat at an old desk, wearing reading glasses, intently studying a thick, yellowed-paged engineering notebook, occasionally making calculations with a pencil. On the desk, conspicuously out of place, sat a retro wireless radio receiver module, its indicator light blinking rhythmically with a faint green glow.
The last shred of illusion shattered completely. Su Xiaolan's heart sank heavily, yet within the icy coldness, a strange calm was born. The pure feeling of betrayal was replaced by a more concrete question: What was that? What was recorded in that notebook? Whose signals was the radio receiving? The anchor was gone, but the clues had become tangible.
After the surveillance feed vanished, a long silence fell in the safe room. Su Xiaolan looked down at the crumpled crisp bag in her hand. This time, she didn't knead it unconsciously. Instead, slowly but firmly, she crushed it completely. The sharp, short crinkle echoed in the space, like a battle horn.
She raised her head. The numbness and panic in her eyes had been refined away, replaced by an icy calm. She actively opened the internal comms channel. Her voice was hoarse but clear and firm, no longer a request, but a declaration:
"Tell Mr. Li I need top-level data access clearance, an unregistered hardware set, and… all the ambient network traffic records from the area around Zhang Jingxian's residence for the past three months."
The facade of the loser was torn away by her own hand.
F.LK, under the pressure of the deep water, was officially awakening.
The countdown on the giant screen continued its冷酷 march:
[65:59:19]
[65:59:18]
[65:59:17]
But now, the deep sea was no longer silent.
The whale had opened its eyes. The crinkle of the crisp bag was about to be transformed into the first echo to shatter the Silent Treaty.