My childhood friend is in her mature, sophisticated form again today. - Chapter 75

Cheng Ran looked up, his eyes bloodshot, with tired dark circles around them, but his expression was tense and excited—the kind of excitement one feels after digging through the last layer of data and finally finding something at the bottom. His fingers were still gripping the pen, his knuckles slightly white from the force.

“Found it,” he said, his voice dry from staying up all night. “The internal records of the Tiangong Division show ‘Point Seven’ appeared six times. The time span is nearly two years—from three months before the deep-sea station closed until now.”

He flipped to the first page of records, pointing to a line. “The first time it appeared was on a supplies allocation order, the destination listed as ‘Point Seven—Dock.’ The recipient field was blank, only the approver’s electronic signature was visible.” He flipped through a few more pages, until the last one, the paper frayed from repeated handling. “The last time was last month, a maintenance record mentioning ‘Point Seven—Warehouse—Equipment Maintenance,’ with the note ‘Compressor operating normally, backup piping has completed its annual inspection.'”

Lin Jiqiu sat down on the sofa and reached for the few pages of records. The paper still held the warmth of the printer, the handwriting was standard Song typeface, size 12, the document format commonly used by the Heavenly Palace Division, clean to the point of being rigid. His gaze lingered for a moment on each of the words “dock” and “warehouse.” “Dock and warehouse. Land-based support. This matches what Zhao Yuanshan said.”

“Yes. And the approvers of these records all share the same code name.” Cheng Ran turned one of the pages, pointing to the signature area in the lower right corner, where a square electronic seal was printed with two Chinese characters—Kaiyang. “One of the Big Dipper constellations of the Heavenly Palace Division, responsible for assassination and elimination branches. For a branch responsible for assassination to approve the allocation of supplies indicates that this ‘Point Seven’ is very important to them. So important that they don’t want other branches to handle it.”

Lin Jiqiu didn’t reply immediately. He looked down at the satellite photo. It showed a curved coastline with a bay nestled between land and sea, surrounded on three sides by low hills covered with dense, dark green vegetation. Only the south-facing side was open, leading to a vast expanse of grey-blue sea. The bay wasn’t large; the straight-line distance from its entrance to its innermost point was estimated to be less than a kilometer. The water was lighter than the open sea, like a quiet, shallow bay enclosed by the hills. Along the shore was a row of grey buildings with flat roofs and matte paint on the walls. From a distance, they looked like abandoned warehouses, but the windows were arranged too neatly, unlike the kind of natural aging that leads to abandonment. Next to them was a small concrete pier, with old tires embedded in the edge for safety. A white boat was moored to a bollard. It wasn’t long, probably less than twenty meters, but its draft was deep. Cargo covered with tarpaulins was piled on the deck, its shape indistinct.

“Does this bay have a name on the map?” Lin Jiqiu asked.

“No. At least not on publicly available nautical charts. I compared official mapping data from three different sources, and this entire area is marked as ‘undeveloped coastline,’ with no records of port facilities or building registrations. Satellite images have been updated twelve times, each taken at a different time, and this row of buildings has always existed, but it has never been marked.”

“Undeveloped.” Lin Jiqiu put down the photo, tapping his finger on the paper. “Whose ship and warehouse are those?”

“It’s from the Heavenly Palace Division. The approval process on the material allocation order is very short, with only three steps from Kaiyang’s approval to final execution. Normally, the Heavenly Palace Division’s material circulation goes through at least five steps, which indicates that this ‘Point Seven’ has a very high level of authority, bypassing some of the routine reviews and archiving.”

Lin Jiqiu stood up and walked to the window. It wasn’t fully light outside yet; the streetlights were still on, their orange-yellow glow spreading like warm mist in the damp air. The air carried the unique coolness of the morning, seeping in through the windowpane. He stood there for a moment, looking at the breakfast stall at the end of the street, its shutters pulled low. Then he turned around, his voice a little deeper than before. “Go check out this ‘Number Seven’ stall.”

“Now?” Cheng Ran glanced at the still dim sky outside the window.

“Now. Before they realize someone has tracked this place down. A day has passed since Zhao Yuanshan sent that message. If the Heavenly Palace Division is monitoring his communications, they might already know someone smuggled information out of the deep-sea station. But we’re one step ahead of them because they don’t yet know which number we’ve tracked down.”

Ayou poked his head out of the kitchen, spatula in hand, his apron strap loosely knotted at his back, the oil sizzling in the pan. He glanced at Lin Jiqiu, then at the photos spread out on the coffee table. “Boss, are you going out again?”

“Going to the beach. Maybe two or three days.” Lin Jiqiu lifted his coat off the back of the chair and zipped it up to his chest.

Ayou opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it again. He turned back to the stove, turned off the heat, scooped the fried eggs out of the pan and arranged them in a lunchbox, then quickly packed a box of sliced ​​braised beef and several sesame seed cakes, wrapped them in an insulated bag, and placed it on the shoe cabinet. He patted the bag, pressed the seal with his fingers to make sure the heat wouldn’t leak out. “Eat this on the way. It’s windy by the sea, don’t catch a cold.”

A-Zuo was already standing at the door, wearing a dark gray windproof jacket, his car keys twirling on his finger before he gripped them again. He didn’t ask anything, but simply opened the door and stepped aside to let Lin Jiqiu and Cheng Ran go first.

Not long after dawn, the car drove out of the street. The road surface changed from asphalt to cement, then from cement to gravel, the city being left behind inch by inch—first buildings, then detached houses with yards, then vast stretches of trees and open fields, the horizon changing from the outlines of buildings to a continuous mountain ridge. Lin Jiqiu sat in the back seat, the window rolled down a crack, the wind carrying the scent of earth and grass, the further south they went, the more subtly salty the smell became. Cheng Ran sat in the passenger seat, his tablet screen constantly lit, alternating between satellite photos and navigation routes. His fingers swiped across the screen, zooming in and out, repeatedly comparing the winding coastline. “‘Point Seven’ is about 260 kilometers away from us, we’ll take the national highway, then the county road, the last section is a dirt road. At this speed, we should arrive around noon.”

Lin Jiqiu watched the fields and villages rushing past the window. “A-Zuo, don’t go too close when we get nearby. Find a place where you can see the bay, preferably on high ground with good vegetation cover and a good view.”

A-Zuo didn’t answer, but simply nodded slightly at the steering wheel. He spoke very little while driving, his eyes always fixed straight ahead, and his arms were as steady as a machine when turning.

Just past noon, the sun was directly overhead, illuminating everything with a blinding white light. The car turned off a relatively smooth county road and onto a narrow dirt road, flanked by dense, low bushes with drooping branches, some bearing tiny thorns that crackled and sputtered as they scraped against the car body and roof. A-Zuo drove a short distance, then turned another corner and parked in the shade behind a small hill. From that spot, one could see the entrance to the bay, but the slope and bushes completely blocked the view, making it impossible to see anything from the other side of the bay.

Lin Jiqiu got out of the car and climbed to the top of the earthen slope, his feet sinking into the soft sand. The grass at the top was knee-high. He crouched down and pulled out a folding pair of binoculars from his backpack. The lenses were coated with a dark green film, and everything in his field of vision was immediately brought closer. The bay was basically the same as what he had seen in the satellite photos—a small body of water, shimmering with fine, fragmented light under the midday sun, surrounded by hills on three sides, with the southern outlet open, where the sea’s color abruptly darkened. The gray warehouse looked older than in the photos, with water stains on the walls and a section of the roof drainpipe dangling downwards. The white boat on the dock was still there, its mooring lines taut, its stern still deep in the water, and the cargo covered by tarpaulins on the deck was still there, the tarpaulins billowing slightly in the sea breeze. A dark-colored SUV had appeared beside the dock, its windows tinted with opaque film, making it impossible to tell if anyone was inside. The warehouse door was closed, and all the windows were drawn with gray blinds, obscuring the view inside. No one was moving in the yard; a few footprints on the ground led towards the warehouse entrance and the dock. Otherwise, it was unnaturally clean. This quiet wasn’t the quiet of desolation—desolate quiet is accompanied by birdsong, the sound of wind rustling through debris, and the rustling of wild grass. The quiet here was closed off, controlled, as if someone was deliberately maintaining a state of undisturbed tranquility, preventing any unnecessary movement.

Lin Jiqiu lay there observing for over ten minutes, mentally reviewing the relative positions of every wall, window, dock, and ship in the warehouse. Then he put down his binoculars, stepped down the slope, and returned to his car. “There are people here. But not many. Probably guards. The car’s here, and there’s no sign of activity in the yard. Either they’re indoors, or the patrol intervals are longer than we expected.”

“Can we go in?” Cheng Ran asked.

“It won’t work during the day. The bay opens to the south, and the midday sun is at a low angle, so you’ll be seen from any direction. Besides, that earthen slope, while it provides some cover, is the only cover. If they’re on their routine lookout, they’ll see we’ve been up there—the grass has been trampled.” Lin Jiqiu patted the grass clippings and sand off his trousers. “Let’s try again tonight.”

The car reversed along the same route into a grove of trees deeper in the woods. A-Zuo parked under the dense shade of an old locust tree and turned off the engine. A wisp of transparent steam rose from the engine hood and slowly dissipated. The three waited inside, the windows rolled down for ventilation. Occasionally, a gust of wind would blow through, rustling the treetops and turning the leaves a silvery-gray before flipping them back down. Cheng Ran continued recording something on his tablet. He had the signal scanning interface open, marking out the wireless frequency bands that could be detected in the direction of the bay—one band had intermittent pulse signals, likely the heartbeat packets of short-range communication in standby mode; another band occasionally showed complete conversation fragments, but they were heavily encrypted, and he couldn’t decipher the content from several packets. A-Zuo leaned back in the driver’s seat with his eyes closed, breathing evenly, his fingers loosely resting on the lower edge of the steering wheel. Lin Jiqiu also closed his eyes, but he didn’t sleep. He just leaned back in his chair and mentally re-planned the layout of “Point Seven”—the orientation of the warehouse, the position of the ship, the direction of the small door, the distance from the earthen slope to the warehouse, and the undulations of the terrain in between. He repeatedly sketched out each data point, as if walking an invisible route on a map.

The afternoon sun slanted in from the west, turning the bay’s surface from bright white to a shimmering, golden yellow. Lin Jiqiu climbed the earthen slope again, this time crouching even lower, his binoculars barely touching the tips of the grass. The warehouse door opened slightly, and a man emerged, dressed in dark blue overalls, hatless, his short hair whipped in one direction by the sea breeze. He carried a small, square metal box, its weight slung over his arm. He walked to the white boat at the dock, climbed onto the deck via the gangplank, squatted down at the stern, opened the box, examined it for a while, then reached out and touched a seam on the deck, as if checking the seal. He closed the box, stood up, walked back to shore via the gangplank, and closed the warehouse door again. Throughout the entire process, he didn’t glance towards the bay’s exit, nor did he look up at the vegetation on the hills—he clearly didn’t expect anyone to be looking from that direction.

Evening came quickly. The gold on the sea gradually faded to a warm red, then to a dark gray, until finally the entire bay seemed to be covered by a dark cloth, the water and sky merging into the same gray-blue, the boundary blurred. The outlines of everything on the hills also faded, the gray walls of the warehouse going from clearly visible brick seams to a blurry shadow. Cheng Ran glanced at the time on the tablet and said softly, “We can go now.”

Lin Jiqiu zipped his jacket all the way up, the collar turned up to cover half his face. He clipped his communicator to his belt, tuned the channel, and then stuffed a thin wire and an Allen wrench into his pocket. “A-Zuo, wait in the car. Keep the engine off, but don’t lock the doors. If we don’t return in more than two hours, don’t look for us. Just drive away, move the car to a backup location, and we’ll talk again after dawn.”

“I know.” A-Zuo’s voice was calm. He sat up straight, glanced at Lin Jiqiu, and didn’t ask any more questions.

“Cheng Ran, come inside with me.”

The two men crossed the side of the earthen slope and walked down a shallow gully. Their feet trod on soft sand and gravel, the sound muffled by the sea breeze and the rustling of the bushes. Bush branches occasionally brushed against their coats, leaving faint white marks on the fabric. They walked slowly, making sure each step was firm before shifting their weight. They stopped about ten meters from the warehouse, crouched against the wall for a moment, and only after confirming that there was no movement around them did they continue to the small door on the side. The door was iron, dark red rust forming hard patches along the lower edge of the door panel. The lock was an ordinary padlock, the shank covered with a thin layer of dust, but the dust around the keyhole had been rubbed off—someone had recently opened it.

Lin Jiqiu took out two thin wires, one long and one short, from his pocket. He bent the shorter one into a hook shape and inserted the longer one into the keyhole to hold the pin in place. He rotated it very lightly with his fingertips, his wrist barely moving. With a very slight click, the latch retracted. He removed the lock, held it in his hand, pushed open the door, and slipped inside. Cheng Ran followed closely behind him, and the two squeezed through the crack in the door, gently closing it behind them. The padlock was re-engaged, but from the outside, there was no indication that it had been opened.

The warehouse was dark. The ceiling was high, and a few emergency lights shone at a height of over six meters, emitting a faint greenish-white glow. The light was cut into strips of shadow by the shelves, casting long, alternating lines of light and shadow on the floor. The air smelled of metal, machine oil, and desiccant, cool and heavy, like a poorly ventilated basement. Cheng Ran turned on his flashlight, the beam sweeping low at waist height, illuminating the shelves on both sides. On the metal shelves were stacked boxes of varying sizes, some silver metal boxes, others dark gray plastic boxes. Each box had a label on its side, white background with a black code, the format neat and uniform, the printed text clear and sharp.

Cheng Ran leaned closer to a metal box, shone his flashlight at an angle, and read the contents of the label. “The coding format—letter blocks followed by six digits—is exactly the same as the batch of supplies we saw in the deep-sea station warehouse. The Tiangong Division’s national material coding system is unified; the first two letters represent the major category of the supplies, and the following numbers are the batch and serial number.” He continued shining the flashlight along the shelves, checking the labels of a few more boxes, then put the flashlight away and said in a low voice, “It’s their stuff. No doubt about it.”

Lin Jiqiu walked to another shelf and opened the lid of a plastic box. The lid was tightly closed; he had to pry it open several times with his fingernail before he could pry it off. Inside were neatly stacked electronic components and cables, each wrapped in an anti-static bag, the bag sealed with a date and signature-printed seal strip. He then walked to a metal box next to it, which was heavier than the previous ones. He unfastened the clasp and lifted the lid. Inside were several sealed glass bottles, their walls thick, secured in slots with special sponge linings, each bottle firmly embedded. The bottles contained a dark gray powder, extremely fine particles, which gleamed with a dull metallic sheen in the dim light of the flashlight, like some kind of ground mineral, appearing heavy and dense, unlike the porous nature of ordinary ores.

“What is this?” Lin Jiqiu asked in a low voice.

Cheng Ran leaned closer, pointed the beam of light at one of the bottles, and carefully examined the color and texture of the powder. “It’s probably a primary extract of Originium. It’s in its unprocessed state, higher in purity than raw ore, but still several steps away from usable quality. They extract it underwater, transport it to Point Seven for preliminary processing, and then transfer it to a more sophisticated facility.”

Lin Jiqiu closed the box, pressed the clasp back into place, and pushed it back to its original position on the shelf, leaving the same gaps on both sides as before he opened it. He continued walking along the aisle between the shelves, his steps very light, avoiding any debris on the floor that might make a sound. The warehouse was deep; it was about forty meters from the entrance to the innermost part. At the end of the aisle was a white door, and a sliver of warm yellow light shone through the crack in the door, warmer than the green and white light of the emergency lights, indicating that someone inside had turned on a regular light.

He pressed his ear against the door, which was made of thin sheet metal, and could hear the voices inside—two people, speaking softly and in a calm tone, the kind of relaxed rhythm one hears during routine work handovers.

“…The goods for next week are ready. We can load them as soon as the ship returns.” The first person’s voice was slightly low, with a slight nasal tone, as if the speaker was looking down at something.

“When will the ship return?” The second person’s voice was slightly clearer and faster.

“Tomorrow afternoon. We brought back more samples this time than last time, so we need more storage containers. The warehouse doesn’t have enough left, so go get another batch, the same specifications as last time.”

“Then I’ll go get it.”

The footsteps moved towards the door, the clear sound of rubber soles scraping against the concrete floor. Lin Jiqiu immediately retreated, slipping sideways into the deepest shadow between the two rows of shelves, her shoulder pressed against the cold metal frame. At the same instant, Cheng Ran extinguished his flashlight and retreated behind the opposite row of shelves, leaving only the green and white light of the emergency light in the aisle between them.

The door opened. The man with the slightly lower voice stepped out, wearing blue overalls, with short hair, high cheekbones, and an unclear age. He walked along the aisle at a leisurely pace, passing the shelf where Lin Jiqiu was hiding without pausing. The footsteps faded into the distance, the warehouse door opened and closed briefly with a dull metallic clang, and then everything fell silent again.

Lin Jiqiu emerged from the shadows and stood before the white door. The door was ajar; he gently pushed it open with the back of his hand, and through the crack, he could see the scene inside—a small room with a desk lamp and several documents on the table, and a floor-to-ceiling cabinet in the corner, its doors open, revealing rows of empty compartments. He was telling the truth; the storage containers were running low, and he was going to the storeroom to get more.

“He said the cargo for next week is ready and can be loaded as soon as the ship returns,” Lin Jiqiu repeated in a low voice, repeating what he had just heard. “The ship will be back tomorrow afternoon.”

“That ship is going to the new base,” Cheng Ran’s voice came from behind the opposite rack as he walked back to the center of the passageway in the darkness. “It departs from point seven, heads south, goes to that crater, and then returns. A one-way trip takes about ten hours. They spend the night at sea and return the next afternoon—a very reasonable operational cycle.”

“Perhaps.” Lin Jiqiu looked at the slightly ajar door. “Tomorrow afternoon, when the ship returns, we’ll come and see what’s on board. This time, it’s not about sneaking into the warehouse, it’s about checking the cargo.”

The two men retreated back to the small door along the same path, relocked the padlock, and pulled the wire out of the keyhole without leaving any scratches. They retreated from the base of the wall to the gully, then climbed back through the bushes to the car on the other side of the slope. The night wind was much stronger than in the evening, blowing large swathes of bushes in one direction, their branches rustling continuously and finely. The salty smell of the sea was stronger than during the day, mixed with a faint odor of diesel and engine oil, drifting in from the direction of the bay, sometimes strong, sometimes faint.

“Come again tomorrow afternoon.” Lin Jiqiu opened the car door and got in, unzipping his coat a little. “Wait for the ship to dock and watch them unload. Make sure you know what’s being taken off the ship.”

“Okay.” Cheng Ran reopened the tablet, the screen light illuminating his face. He pulled up the previously scanned signal frequency records. “The material codes in the warehouse perfectly match what we saw at the deep-sea station. The code prefixes are the same, and the batch numbers are consecutive on the timeline. The equipment that left the warehouse when the deep-sea station shut down was very likely transported here, then loaded onto ships at the dock and sent to the new base.”

“Point Seven is the new base’s supply transfer station. The deep-sea station is the old one; the equipment is dismantled and transported to Point Seven for storage or refurbishment, then loaded onto ships and shipped out to the new base in the crater.” Lin Jiqiu rested his hand on the car window sill, the night wind squeezing in through the cracks, chilling and stiffening his fingers. “So as long as we keep an eye on this ship—the one that docks tomorrow afternoon—we can find the new base.”

A-Zuo started the car, the engine humming softly. He turned on the low beams and slowly reversed along the dirt road back into the denser woods, stopping surrounded by several large trees and turning off the engine.

Lin Jiqiu leaned back in his seat, gazing out the window. In the brief moment before the car lights went out, the bushes cast crisscrossing shadows, like layers of fences stacked together, which melted into the darkness once the light faded. The image of the dark gray powder in the glass bottle, its dull metallic sheen under the emergency lights, heavy and embedded within, floated into his mind—like the core of some secret dredged from the deepest depths of the sea. Tomorrow afternoon, the ship would return, and the things brought up from the deep sea would be unloaded onto the dock at point seven. He was waiting for that moment, waiting for the ship to dock, waiting to see clearly what was being unloaded piece by piece from the deck and stored in the warehouse.