CHAPTER TEN
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The sky over Beijing was pale and cold, the kind of morning that made metal and glass look the same.
Inside the Red Lotus Mansion, Li Xuefang sat before her desk, the holographic interface of her lens casting faint light across her face.
Her AI display was glitching again.
At first, she thought it was fatigue — the aftermath of too many sleepless nights since the palace incident. But this was different. The lag wasn't random. It was rhythmic — repeating every forty-three seconds, as if something else was breathing through the system.
She lifted her gaze to the digital map hovering in the air. The central feed — encrypted communications from her defense network — flickered, then distorted. For a fraction of a second, she saw her own reflection replaced by someone else's profile — a man's face.
And then it vanished.
Xynra: System anomaly.
Her AI assistant reported.
General Li: Source?
Xynra: Unknown. Neural link integrity— compromised.
She shut off the projection and stood, her jaw tight.
Whoever was inside her system was inside her mind.
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Meanwhile, across the city at Guanghua International University, Jiang Ren leaned over a dusty archive drawer. He'd been tracing a list of forgotten faculty for his new art history exhibit — a collection themed around "National Memory."
But one file stopped him.
Inside was an old digital drive, labeled simply:
BLACK ECHO UNIT — MILITARY CORRESPONDENCE (RESTRICTED)
He frowned. The name sounded familiar — like something he'd once overheard his father and a strange man arguing about when he was a child.
Plugging the drive into his terminal, a series of encrypted images appeared — faded photos of soldiers, battle reports, casualty tallies.
And in one of them —
Li Xuefang.
Younger, dressed in a field uniform, standing beside six other operatives. All marked as deceased.
He leaned closer.
Jiang Ren: What the hell…
The metadata at the corner of the image flickered — Property of the National Security Bureau.
And at the bottom, a note:
OPERATION BLACK ECHO – Terminated by Li Xuefang, Commander-in-Field.
His breath caught.
The woman who'd saved the nation was the same one who'd condemned an entire unit — maybe his own family's allies — to death.
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Back at the mansion, Li removed her AI lens and set it on the table, switching to manual command mode.
The lens flickered once more before shutting down — but in that final blink, a strange image flashed:
A timestamp.
An active connection.
User ID: NSB-Director.W.Q.
Her eyes hardened.
She whispered quietly,
General Li: Wen Qian…
And at that same moment, across the city, Jiang saved the image file under a new name — "Evidence."
Neither knew it yet, but they were staring at the same ghost.
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