- Deep Data Dive
03:27. Anchor Point Project Main Command Center, Donghai City.
The devil's hour when the human CPU most wants to shut down.
Lu Baoyi stood rooted before three screens, his eyes reflecting three frantic data streams. His right index finger twitched on the touchpad, while his left spun a long-dry laser pointer like a helicopter about to take off.
At the center of the screens, a 3D model of Bianjing rotated slowly. Nine bright crimson dots blinked, their distribution seemingly random yet radiating an edgy aura of 'I'm totally an array, bro.'
"Lu Gong, the third iteration of the Nine Palaces Array simulation is complete." Lin Wan's voice was hoarse from sleep deprivation but tinged with excitement.
Lu Baoyi didn't turn, his gaze locked on the newly generated, multi-colored energy mesh. Lines exploded from the nine red dots, weaving into a pattern dense enough to trigger trypophobia, their converging energy nexus pointing with pinpoint accuracy towards—
The northwest side of the Zichen Hall, within the Imperial Palace grounds. An error margin of less than five meters from the location of the Secret Archives noted in the old Astrological Bureau files.
"Energy source confirmed. Match rate 93.7%." Lin Wan added, "The model predicts that if the ninth point activates, energy will converge here into a... reality-anchoring singularity."
"Singularity?" Old Chen wandered over, clutching a bowl of reheated dumplings. "We blowin' up the Forbidden City?"
Lu Baoyi snatched a dumpling and stuffed it in his mouth: "Think of it this way, Old Chen. Reality is a sturdy fishing net. Right now, there are nine nails trying to punch holes in it, aiming to stitch another ragged piece of cloth onto ours."
He pointed at the interference ripples on screen: "When that ninth nail goes in, the two fabrics get forcibly superimposed at the seam. The consequence is local rule-override—gravity goes haywire, time rewinds, matter evaporates. Just like the Incident at Lab Three, but scaled to the cubic power. And no refunds."
Old Chen's face darkened: "So, if they activate it over there in the past, the corresponding spot here..."
"Becomes a live stage for rule-stitching horror." Lu Baoyi confirmed. "That's the most devious part of the mirror effect—the problem is two-sided, so the solution must be too. If we just cut the threads on our side while the ancient nails remain, we risk a full-blown spacetime tear."
"So we have to partner up with that guy from a thousand years ago? Just via heart-thump telegraph?"
"Currently the only lousy signal channel we have. Unstable. Costly." Lu Baoyi felt a pang in his chest, remembering the danger and warning Qian Yiyan had transmitted.
"Lu Gong," Lin Wan's voice held hesitation, "The analysis of the An Le Pendant... got even weirder."
She pulled up the imagery. Under ultra-high resolution, the pendant's interior wasn't jade crystal, but infinitely nested geometric fractals, like a two-dimensional slice of a higher-dimensional maze.
"The atomic arrangement is spitting on the physics textbook." Lin Wan pointed. "The key is deep within the structure. We detected a signal residue from a non-local spacetime."
"Non-local?"
"Like a piece of code that shouldn't exist in our universe, forcibly compiled into jade." Lin Wan tried to explain. "It emits information-level radiation, likely one of the energy sources attracting the Shadow Devouring. And also..."
She brought up a spectral comparison chart: "The modulation frequency of this radiation... has an 87% match with a segment of anomalous noise from your father's Project Chiyou—the one suspected to be an external communication attempt."
The command center fell silent instantly.
Lu Baoyi's throat went dry. What had his father touched before his disappearance?
"Also," Lin Wan's voice dropped lower, "Using your search criteria—simple background, socially isolated, rare medical history—I backtracked through three months of anomaly reports. Seventeen cases were flagged."
She plotted the seventeen points on a map. Initially scattered, but within a specific timeframe, nine of those individuals had visited the locations of the nine red dots. They stayed from a few minutes to several hours. Within seven to fifteen days after, they died consecutively—cardiac arrest, accidental falls, disappearances.
"Like a pre-written program," Lu Baoyi's voice was icy. "Walk to the location, trigger the instruction, then get recycled. They were the... expendable human batteries for the Nine Palaces Array on this side."
Old Chen sucked in a sharp breath: "Targeting society's fringes, the ones no one will miss."
"Because their vanishing won't make waves." Lu Baoyi closed his eyes briefly.
The main comm light blinked. Encrypted internal line from the Ministry. Priority call.
Lu Baoyi connected. Deputy Minister Li Zhengxun's face filled the screen.
"Section Chief Lu Baoyi. To be brief. I've read the Nine Palaces Array report."
Lu Baoyi held his breath.
"Your efficiency is noted. However, the conclusion that deep coordination with a historical individual is necessary... the Ministry has significant reservations." Minister Li's tone brooked no argument. "Models can be refined. Modern-side defenses must be strengthened. But, any proactive intervention in history, or the establishment of super-informational collection links with historical individuals, must cease immediately. Especially regarding Qian Yiyan."
"Minister Li, without her information and actions, we can't stop—"
"Then find a way that doesn't require her!" Li cut him off. "You are handling anomalous reality, not a time-travel drama! Your father, Lu Yuan, back then, he became obsessed with two-way communication experiments. That led to the project's destabilization and ultimately... his disappearance. The Ministry does not want you repeating his mistakes!"
His father's name was an ice pick.
"Effective immediately," Minister Li ordered, "historical linkage is limited to informational analysis. Strictly prohibit any substantive signal transmission or consciousness connection. Focus on securing the risk points in Donghai City and formulating contingency plans for anomalous suture events. That is the order."
The screen went dark.
Dead silence filled the command center.
Lu Baoyi stared at the dark screen for a long moment, then exhaled, his eyes sharper than ever.
"Lin Wan, package and encrypt the Nine Palaces Array data. Use the independent algorithm to generate a clean report for the Ministry."
"What about the real data?"
"Back it up to the Dark River. Highest-level encryption." Lu Baoyi stood up. "The Ministry's order is not to actively send or connect. They didn't say anything about... receiving signals."
Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.
He turned: "Max out the listening channels. If there's another transmission from over there, I want to know instantly. Old Chen, prep for a trip to Qi County, Henan. To see the ruins of the Temple of Primordial Heaven. The Ministry said we can't make contact. They didn't say we can't go sightseeing, right?"
Old Chen grinned: "Got it. We'll write the request as 'on-site verification for model refinement.' Fully compliant."
Lu Baoyi sat back at the console, looking at the virtual marker representing Qian Yiyan.
"The Spring Revelry..." Fragments from Shen Kuo's archives flashed in his mind. It wasn't just a matchmaking event; it was a proving ground for the capital's young elites. Given her nature, she was probably right now, facing the guest list, her fingers tracing the silver needles hidden in her sleeve, overlaying each name with the intricate network of the Bureau of Inner Affairs.
"Only analyze the model, ignore the human heart?" he murmured. "Too bad. Once the line is connected, it can't be cleanly cut."
- Peach Blossoms & Thorns
The next morning, Lu Baoyi was organizing files in his office when the door knocked.
"Enter."
Tang Yun walked in. She wore a light grey suit, her hair neatly coiffed, thin-framed glasses perched on her nose. She carried a thermal cup, her expression gentle and concerned.
"Lu Gong, I heard you're going on a trip? Henan is dry. I made you some osmanthus and snow pear tea, added some fritillaria." She placed the cup softly on his desk.
Lu Baoyi looked up with a smile: "Thanks, Tang-jie. That's very kind of you."
"It's nothing." Tang Yun's gaze swept over the maps spread on his desk. "You're going for that Song Dynasty temple? Lin Wan's eyes are bloodshot from staying up. Be careful out there, mountain roads can be tricky."
"Yeah, just taking a look on-site." Lu Baoyi replied.
Another head poked in the doorway. It was Xiao Zhao, grinning. "Lu Gong! Tang-jie's here too." He waved a USB drive. "The hard intel on Qi County you wanted! Guaranteed juicier than the archives!" He lowered his voice, "From an old classmate back home. Stories from the elders—ghosts building walls at midnight, earth dragons turning over to reveal writing... might line up with the anomalies."
Lu Baoyi took it: "Thanks. I'll buy you lunch later."
"Lunch sounds great!" Xiao Zhao chuckled, his eyes darting between the two. "Lu Gong, with you gone, the project team loses its eye candy and its anchor. Lin Gong's been spacing out, and Tang-jie loses her favorite target for warmth delivery, sigh..."
Tang Yun's cheeks flushed slightly, chiding him: "You and your big mouth! Lu Gong is going for work."
Lu Baoyi waved a hand: "Enough kidding around. Go help Old Chen check the gear list."
"Aye aye!" Xiao Zhao gave a sloppy salute and bounced out.
Tang Yun also prepared to leave: "Well, I won't keep you. Remember to drink the tea." She glanced back once more before turning, her eyes soft.
The door closed. Lu Baoyi shook his head. Tang Yun's thermal cup... it was a discontinued model from a military-supply brand he'd mentioned casually years ago. He picked up the cup, his thumb rubbing over the familiar anti-slip texture.
She remembered. And went out of her way to find it.
He set the cup down, his fingers unconsciously tracing its side. A complex emotion passed through him—warmth, underpinned by a faint, professionally honed thread of wariness. At a juncture like this, any detail that seemed too perfect deserved a second look.
He put the cup aside and continued organizing. Most of his mind was already occupied by the millenia-old puzzle and that ethereal, clear presence that existed only in data and hallucinations.
This was dangerous. Minister Li's warning, his father's precedent. But he couldn't stop.
Afternoon. The Lab.
Lin Wan was debugging a new algorithm, dark circles under her eyes, but her gaze was burning bright.
"Lu Gong, look at this." She beckoned. "Processing the pendant data with the information entropy–spacetime curvature correlation model, I found its signal has a significant negative correlation with cold spots in the cosmic microwave background radiation."
She pulled up two superimposed star charts. Where the pendant's signal was strong, the CMBR was slightly colder.
"It's like... this pendant is a nail, driven into the fabric of reality, causing a wrinkle in spacetime?" Lin Wan was excited. "If all nine points of the Nine Palaces Array are nails, activated simultaneously, the wrinkles could superimpose and resonate, potentially tearing a door open!"
Lu Baoyi stared at the images. The pendant's faint blue luminescence meshed perfectly with the dark red cold spots emitted by the universe.
Shao Yong wasn't a god... he might be more troublesome than a god. Gods need faith. He just needed coordinates and an algorithm.
"So you're saying," Lu Baoyi's voice was low, "Shao Yong might not have changed the world. He might have inserted a bug into the world's source code. Our universe has been stably displaying anomalies around this bug ever since."
Lin Wan jolted, then nodded vigorously.
"Keep deepening the model. Don't write this data into the regular reports." Lu Baoyi instructed.
Lin Wan nodded, her eyes flickering. "Lu Gong... the pressure from the Ministry is heavy, isn't it? About contacting the other side?"
Lu Baoyi looked at her. "Focus on the research. Protect the findings. I'll handle the rest."
Lin Wan bit her lip. "Do you believe her? Qian Yiyan."
Lu Baoyi paused. Believe? They'd never met. But—
"I believe the data. And I believe..." he hesitated, "...someone willing to transmit danger across a thousand years, nose bleeding, is at least not an enemy."
Lin Wan's expression grew complex, and she looked down. "I'll hold the fort here. You... be careful."
"I will." Lu Baoyi turned to leave.
"Lu Gong!" Lin Wan called out again, her face slightly red. "The tea from Tang-jie... remember to drink it. And also... come back soon." She buried her head in her work, the tips of her ears turning red.
Lu Baoyi was momentarily speechless. "Mm," he acknowledged, and left.
- Undercurrents & Noise
The night before departure, Lu Baoyi stayed alone in the command center.
Servers hummed softly, screens scrolled. He pulled up the Dark River monitor—a physically isolated, specially encrypted backend system.
Suddenly, a minuscule, sharp fluctuation flickered at the edge of the data stream. So small it was negligible, its frequency unnaturally pointed.
The system log categorized it as random hardware noise.
But the hairs on Lu Baoyi's neck stood up. A familiar cold sensation crawled up his spine—identical to the ghostly, nail-scratching interference noise in his father's last communication before vanishing.
Not a glitch.
He leaned forward, locking onto the fluctuation's coordinates.
It was a patterned pulse signal, lightly tapping against the data stream's wall in Morse code. Decoded: three repeating binary digits—
[110]
In the Dark River's internal lexicon, 110 was covert jargon for 'Attention, anomalous access.'
Had someone been snooping around the Dark River? Using methods so sophisticated they left almost no trace?
A chill ran down Lu Baoyi's back. He immediately pulled all logs. Everything looked normal. No unauthorized access. Physical access logs showed only himself, Lin Wan, Old Chen, and a few others.
Inside? The people who knew about the Dark River could be counted on one hand.
He checked surveillance. No one had approached the server area. Switching to the underlying system logs, one entry caught his eye:
[System daemon 'sentry-07' routine memory defragmentation initiated...]
Sentry-07's scheduled cycle was six hours. Its last run was four hours ago. It shouldn't have triggered now.
Tracing the call stack, he found it had been triggered by a higher-privilege scheduled task. And within that task's configuration file, a cleverly inserted extra line of code caused it to preemptively trigger sentry-07 when it detected specific Dark River data flow activity.
Within the cache released during sentry-07's abnormal run, Lu Baoyi found traces of erased temporary files. The traces indicated that a small segment of the Dark River core database's metadata index had been briefly copied to cache.
The intruder hadn't stolen data, just performed a rapid directory scan.
What was more alarming was the style of the implanted code—streamlined, efficient, professional, bearing the distinctive coding habits of military or state-level confidential projects.
Lu Baoyi's fingers felt cold. This wasn't an ordinary hacker. This was a trained insider.
Minister Li's warning, his father's Chiyou project's failure, the Ministry's opposition to historical linkage—it all connected to this hidden mole deep within the system.
Someone was closely monitoring their interaction with history. Someone with deep infiltration capabilities.
Who had left that 110 warning? Another insider who had detected the mole?
Lu Baoyi quickly wrote a small script to overwrite the tampered configuration and set a reverse-monitoring trap.
He leaned back in his chair, taking a sip of cold coffee.
Then, a faint palpitation bloomed in his chest. Gone in an instant, like the blink of a distant star.
Not a warning. More like an unconscious brush of sensation, or a weary sigh.
Lu Baoyi instinctively pressed a hand over his heart, looking east.
Fragments of imagery forced their way in—not from active reception, but an overflow from pressure on the other side:
A candle-lit study. Slender fingers pinning a single strand of indigo-blue silk thread against the guest list, right beside the name Cao Yi. The other end of the thread connected to a minuscule, easily overlooked notation in the corner of the list: Dong.
The vision vanished.
Lu Baoyi's heart hammered.
Dong? Dong Guan? From the Bureau of Inner Affairs?
What had Qian Yiyan uncovered before the feast? The Cao family... connected to Dong Guan?
He immediately accessed the historical database, searching for connections between Cao Yi and Dong Guan. Records were scant, but one minor note stood out: Cao Yi's mother hailed from Shu (Sichuan).
Shu. Indigo-blue silk thread. Bai Ran Fang tribute brocade.
The threads suddenly connected.
"Well now..." Lu Baoyi whispered, his eyes sharpening. He had grasped a tangible lead he could actively investigate in his own time—not just passive worry, but a key association.
He quickly noted: "Spring Revelry -> Cao Yi -> Maternal lineage from Shu -> Dong Guan -> Indigo tribute brocade -> Mute servant thread."
The ancient thread was moving. The hunting ground was set.
In the lower right corner of the screen, the time jumped to 04:00.
A new day. The fight was on. And this time, he held an extra card.