Chapter Five: Reluctant Partners

The next morning at nine o’clock, Lin Feng finally found the National Security Bureau’s Donghai branch building—not by following his now-defunct navigation app, but thanks to the two black-clad agents Xiao Ran had dispatched to “escort” him.

On the way to the top-floor office, they took a detour, first stopping at a remarkably bare-bones, almost shabby, office. Inside sat an elderly man in a faded Mao suit, drinking tea from an oversized mug.

This was Director Wang, Xiao Ran’s superior.

Director Wang looked every bit the retired official: smiling amiably, seemingly harmless. Yet the gaze he fixed on Lin Feng was sharp as an X-ray, as though he could see straight through him.

“Comrade Lin, welcome.” Director Wang poured him a cup of tea himself, its fragrance filling the air.

Lin Feng didn’t touch it.

“Just call me Lin, I don’t deserve the title ‘comrade,’” he drawled lazily.

Director Wang took no offense, his smile unwavering. “Here, everyone’s a comrade. This is a special order from the highest level. From now on, you’re a ‘Special Technical Consultant’ for the ‘Shadow Bureau’ task force.”

He pushed a folder across the table toward Lin Feng.

“But as a comrade, you’ll have to follow the rules.” He held up three fingers, his tone gentle but brooking no argument.

“First: your activity is restricted to the top-floor office and the B-3 lounge of this building. You’ll be under twenty-four-hour electronic surveillance. Want to go out? Fine, but Xiao Ran must accompany you.”

“Second: all your devices must be connected to our internal monitoring network. Every line of code you type will be backed up and recorded.”

“Third, and most important: in this case, you have the right to offer technical advice only, not to make final decisions. The final say goes to Comrade Xiao Ran. However—” he paused, his smile deepening, “if any mishap occurs due to your ‘technical advice,’ you will bear primary responsibility.”

Lin Feng listened in silence.

He knew this was no invitation; it was an ultimatum—a set of three ironclad shackles.

“No problem.” He eventually nodded, an irreverent smile playing at his lips. “But I have a condition too.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Get me a premium account for a decent food delivery app. The delivery fees around here are outrageous.”

For the first time, Director Wang’s smile froze for half a second.

…Speechless.

In the temporary office of the “Shadow Bureau” task force, Lin Feng finally grasped the full meaning of Director Wang’s words when Xiao Ran, expressionless, pointed to a crooked line of white electrical tape on the floor and announced, “Your trash is not allowed past this line.”

He, the mighty demon god “Zhulong,” was now nothing more than a strictly supervised… “paid prisoner.”

“Deal.” He flopped into his cyberpunk “kennel”—a nest of three curved monitors and a tangle of cables—propping his feet up on the desk. “But I have a condition too.”

“Go on.”

“Can you keep your disinfectant smell away from me? It ruins the… flavor of my code.”

A muscle in Xiao Ran’s cheek twitched involuntarily.

She resolved that, from now on, unless absolutely necessary, she would not say another word to this man.

...

At twelve-thirty, a high-level joint video conference chaired by the National Security Bureau—with the Securities Regulatory Commission, the Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, the Ministry of Public Security’s Economic Crime Bureau, and other agencies in attendance—began on schedule.

At the head of the conference room, Xiao Ran, in immaculate uniform and a stern expression, was delivering a report on the latest case developments.

“Based on our latest intelligence, there are signs that the abnormal funds from ‘Orion Capital’ are beginning to move into cross-border secondary markets, which could pose a potential systemic risk to our financial system…”

Her report was precise, calm, watertight. On screen, the faces of the department heads grew grave.

No one knew that behind the lenses of her glasses, her gaze was sharp as a blade. In her Bluetooth earpiece, a voice utterly out of place with this high-level meeting was speaking.

“Hey, uh… Ice Queen Xiao, quick question. Is the map you gave me outdated?”

It was Lin Feng!

Half an hour earlier, during interrogation, the “Fisherman” had finally coughed up a key piece of information: he’d hidden a “data core” containing backups of all transactions in an abandoned mailbox in the old city.

But because Xiao Ran was trapped in this infernal, unavoidable meeting, she’d had no choice but to assign this simple field task to the only idle person in the office—and the one she trusted least—Lin Feng.

Now, retribution had come.

Feigning nonchalance, Xiao Ran turned aside as if adjusting her microphone, and through clenched teeth muttered, “Where… are… you?”

“On a street called ‘East Fuxing Road,’” Lin Feng replied, full of confidence. “But there’s no abandoned mailbox here. There is a fake ‘Great Qing Post Office’ with a green iron thing out front and a bunch of tourists taking photos. Is that it?”

Xiao Ran’s vision went black.

There were two “East Fuxing Roads” in Shanghai—one in the old city under renovation, the other a tourist trap dressed up as an antique street. The two were… fifteen kilometers apart.

This idiot! Hopeless directionless fool! Utter imbecile!

Suppressing the urge to draw her gun on the spot, she continued her report while stealthily pulling out her phone under the table to text Lin Feng.

“Turn on the live location I sent you! Now! Immediately!”

On the screen, a Securities Regulatory Commission official frowned. “Team Leader Xiao, what contingency plans do you have for this risk?”

“We do!” Xiao Ran snapped back to her professional tone. “Our plan is—”

At that moment, Lin Feng’s grumbling voice broke in through her earpiece: “Oh, that? I turned it off. I consider that an insult to a top hacker like me. Why not just give me directions?”

Xiao Ran felt her blood pressure spike exponentially.

She had to juggle both the report and another, far more exasperating, conversation.

“…Our contingency is to build a multi-agency information firewall—” (in a low voice, into the mic) “Left! I said turn left! That’s a dead end ahead!”

“…The firewall’s core function is millisecond-level tracking of abnormal funds and—” (through gritted teeth) “Do you see that old man selling candied hawthorn? Not that one! The one in red! Go through the alley next to him!”

Everyone in the room was giving her strange looks.

Director Zhang from the Economic Crime Bureau asked, “Team Leader Xiao, do you have a cold?”

“Yes… yes, Director Zhang, my throat… isn’t great.” Xiao Ran managed a smile uglier than a grimace.

But the real disaster was just beginning.

As she was about to finish her report, Lin Feng’s shrill, blood-curdling scream exploded in her earpiece.

“Holy—! Dog! There’s a dog! Get it off my ass! Ah—!”

Before she could react, her laptop screen flashed blue.

Then, somehow, Lin Feng had triggered a hidden backdoor she’d left in the tracking program. The feed from his phone camera—along with his frantic, high-decibel screaming—was broadcast via Xiao Ran’s terminal to the main screen of the nation’s highest-level financial security conference.

Time froze.

Utter silence.

Every bigwig in the room—Director Zhang from the Ministry of Public Security, Chairman Liu from the Securities Regulatory Commission—stared, dumbfounded, at the main screen, where a scene of pure magical realism unfolded:

A young man in a gray hoodie, being chased down the street by a ferocious local dog—shot in dizzying first-person perspective, with all the visceral chaos of being on the run.

His desperate, piercing screams echoed through the room.

For five of the longest, darkest seconds of her career, Xiao Ran endured the stares of shock, confusion, bewilderment, and even faint sympathy from all the assembled dignitaries.

Then, expressionless, she picked up her expensive German tactical pen.

Under the horrified gaze of the room, she slowly, deliberately, snapped it in two.

…

When Lin Feng finally, gasping for breath, retrieved a hollowed-out old battery from the correct mailbox compartment, he felt half his life had been spent.

He unscrewed the battery cap and shook out a tiny, rolled-up SD card.

This was the “data core” left by the Fisherman.

He slotted the card into his heavily modified phone and began an initial crack. Transaction logs, fund flows—everything matched what the Fisherman had confessed.

He was about to report his findings to Xiao Ran.

But then he paused.

His brow furrowed tightly.

Something was off.

The SD card’s encryption had two layers. The outer one—standard commercial encryption used in the financial sector—was easy for him to break.

But underneath, he sensed another barrier—a layer he knew all too well, and that sent a chill down his spine.

It was a hybrid of military-grade algorithms and some unknown code—an encryption scheme that barely existed in this world.

He had seen it only once before.

Five years ago. In Old Lu’s server room.

In that final, mutually destructive battle, this was the encryption the enemy used.

He immediately connected with Xiao Ran.

“Hey.”

On the other end, Xiao Ran’s voice sounded as if she had just returned from hell, utterly exhausted. “Report.”

“It seems…” Lin Feng stared at the screen, at the “forbidden zone” he could not yet crack, and spoke slowly, his voice deep and steady.

“…the fish we’ve caught is much bigger than you imagined.”

“What he hid away—he might not even know himself… what it truly is.”