The midnight bell tolled in a distant corner of the city, sounding dull and long, as if a curtain was falling on some untold story. In Lin Wan's apartment, the only light came from the cold glow of her laptop screen, illuminating her tired face. She had just typed the last period on her in-depth report and was rubbing her sore temples, her body feeling drained of all energy. While the stray cats and dogs in her report could at least get some attention on camera, all she wanted at that moment was to sink into a dreamless sleep and escape the noise of reality.
Just then, her phone screen lit up abruptly, breaking the silence in the room. The light was like a cold tombstone in the darkness. A voice message popped up from her younger sister, Lin Xiao. Lin Wan's tense lips curved into a warm smile. Xiao Xiao was a night owl, so she probably found some interesting gossip or encountered a weird person at work and couldn't wait to share it. The sisters had always been this way; Lin Wan was the steady listener, and her sister was the chattering storyteller.
With a hint of a smile, she pressed the play button, ready to hear her sister's familiar and lively voice. However, what came through the earpiece was not a clear laugh, but a fragmented, shockingly urgent gasp, torn apart by static. The sound was as if someone had their mouth and nose covered tightly with a wet towel, and they were trying with all their might to squeeze the sound out from deep in their throat. Each syllable was soaked in the fear and despair of impending death. "Sis... don't... don't look for me...".
The static crackled like a red-hot iron sizzling in water. In the background, there was a mix of a whooshing wind and a deep, rumbling growl of a beast from deep within its throat—a sound that could not be described in words. It was not the bark of a common dog, but a more massive, primitive, and powerful threat. "Moon... they want... Lunar Corp...". The voice message ended abruptly, with a short, sharp gasp that was suddenly cut off.
Lin Wan's face went pale in three seconds. She leaped up from her chair, her heart seized by an invisible giant hand, her breathing stopped. The phone slipped from her cold fingers and fell to the floor with a "thud". She didn't bother to pick it up, immediately lunging to grab it and redialing with trembling fingers. The only thing she heard from the receiver was a cold, mechanical busy signal. "Sorry, the number you have dialed is temporarily unavailable...". This was repeated over and over again. The monotonous female voice sounded like a death sentence at that moment. Fear, like a black flood breaching a dam, surged in from all directions, instantly drowning her, leaving her limbs cold and unable to breathe.
Fifteen minutes later, Lin Wan used a spare key to open Lin Xiao's apartment door. She had practically burst in, having run two red lights on the way, her heart pounding as if it would break free from her chest. The door clicked open, and the motion-sensor light in the entryway came on, casting a warm yellow glow on the floor. The room was tidy, with a pair of slippers neatly placed, as if the owner had just gone downstairs to throw out the trash and would be right back. But Lin Wan's reporter's instinct was screaming. A faint, extremely strange smell hung in the air. It was a mix of rust, dust, and the musty, metallic scent of a wet animal's fur. It was faint, but it stubbornly burrowed into her nasal passages, making her stomach churn.
She rushed into her sister's bedroom. The quilt was neatly folded, and the computer on the desk was in standby mode. The screensaver was a bright photo of the two sisters by the sea. Everything was too normal—so normal that it was unsettling. This deliberate sense of "normalcy" was the biggest abnormality. Lin Wan forced herself to calm down. She was a reporter, not a panicked family member. Observing, analyzing, and looking for clues were instincts ingrained in her. She put on the spare gloves she carried and began to meticulously search every corner of the room as if it were a crime scene. The trash can was empty, with a fresh bag. There were no unwashed dishes in the sink. The door lock had no signs of being forced open.
Finally, deep inside the bottom drawer of the nightstand, she felt a hard object. It was a locked, hardcover notebook and a minimalist black card. The card felt cold to the touch and was of an unusual texture. The front had no company name, only a silver logo printed with a special technique—a sharp, cold-looking crescent moon. Lin Wan's heart sank. She took a paper clip from her bag and, relying on the basic skills she had learned for a past investigative report, held her breath and carefully picked the notebook's lock. "Click," a soft sound, and the lock opened.
Inside the notebook was not a diary of a young girl, but a collection of scattered, almost obsessive, records and sketches. Most of the content was related to the moon—full moons, new moons, eclipses, lunar phases. Next to them were complex dates, longitudes, latitudes, and some physics formulas she couldn't understand, all annotated with different colored pens. The pages were filled with various sketches of the moon, some realistic, some abstract. One drawing showed a wolf howling at the sky, facing a shattered moon. On one page, two large words were scrawled in a shocking red pen: "The Return-to-Moon Project". The last page of the notebook had only one line, the handwriting pressed so hard it was indented on the page behind it: Lunar Corp. This was the name.
Lin Wan immediately went back to her computer, took a deep breath, and typed "Lunar Corp" into the search engine. The search results were few and suspiciously clean. It was a biotechnology company registered overseas with vague business details and very little public information, like a ghost lurking in the deep currents of the internet. Its official website was designed to be extremely minimalist, with only a few dynamic concept images showing gene sequences and the vast starry sky, giving off an inhuman, cold, technological feel. Under the "Management Team" section, she saw a group photo. Most of the faces in the picture were blurry, as if they were just background. Only the man in the very center seemed to be the sole reason for the camera's focus, the lighting, and even the entire composition of the shot. His name was Qi Yuan, the company's CEO. The man was wearing a well-tailored black suit, his posture as straight as a pine tree, and his demeanor was as cold as an ancient, unmelting block of Arctic ice. His features were deep and distinct, like a sculpture from ancient Greece. But what was most captivating was his pair of eyes. They were silver-gray pupils that, in the photo's light, had a faint, inhuman, metallic sheen. They were like two miniature, cold moons, devoid of any human emotion. Across the small screen, those eyes seemed to pierce through the barriers of time and space, penetrating all her disguises, staring straight at her. At that moment, Lin Wan felt a chill run up her spine—a primal shiver, like that of a prey facing a top predator.
Just then, a massive gray shadow flashed past the window, so fast it seemed like an illusion. Lin Wan's heart leaped into her throat as she whirled around. Outside, the night was dark, with only the city lights twinkling on the distant horizon. She rushed to the window, yanked open the curtains, and looked down. The alley below was empty, with only a single dim streetlamp casting a lonely light on the wet ground. Was she just too tense and imagining things?. She took a deep breath, trying to calm her pounding heart, and looked back at Qi Yuan's face on the screen, and his inhuman, silver-glowing eyes. Her sister's dying plea, the mysterious Lunar Corp, the strange notes about the moon in the notebook, and the shadow outside the window that looked like a giant wolf—all the clues were wildly intertwined and colliding in her mind, finally connecting into a dangerous line pointing to an endless abyss.
Should she call the police? What would she say? That she heard a garbled voice message and saw some notes about the moon?. The police would just treat it as a normal missing persons case, follow the procedure, and it would disappear without a trace. She couldn't wait and couldn't take that risk. Fear still lingered in her heart like a cold hand, but a stronger emotion—a reporter's sharp intuition and a sister's determination to protect—overwhelmed everything else. That feeling burned, turning fear into cold fury and an iron will. Lin Wan clutched the cold access card in her hand, the silver moon logo digging painfully into her palm. She closed the webpage showing Qi Yuan's photo and opened a job search website, typing "Lunar Corp" one word at a time. A position popped up on the screen: Marketing Assistant. The requirements weren't high, and they seemed to be in a hurry to hire. Lin Wan's eyes became sharp and resolute, like a blade about to be unsheathed. Since they were hiding in the dark, playing with rules ordinary people couldn't understand, she would walk into the wolf's den herself, tear their rules to shreds, and find her