Bai Muxue rarely dreamed.
Her profession had taught her to draw a clean line between wakefulness and sleep—absolutely alert when working, utterly still when asleep. A forensic pathologist couldn't bring what was on the autopsy table into her dreams. Do that long enough, and she'd go insane.
But tonight, she couldn't sleep.
Not because of a dream. Because of big brother.
After Sunday's family dinner, everyone left the old house one after another. Bai Muwan fell asleep on the couch, fourth brother tucked a blanket around her, second brother put the leftovers in the refrigerator, third brother washed the dishes—for once—and big sis checked all the smart locks on the doors and windows. Bai Muxue was the last to leave. She always made sure everyone was safe before going.
When she reached the foyer, she looked back.
Big brother was still sitting at the dining table.
The dishes had already been cleared, but the place settings at those two empty seats remained. Big brother stared at the two bowls without moving, like a stone statue. His hand rested on the tabletop, his fingers unconsciously rubbing the old watch on his wrist—Dad's watch.
Bai Muxue stood there for several seconds without saying anything.
She noticed his fingers were trembling.
Barely. If she hadn't been the kind of person who habitually noticed tiny details, she never would have seen it. But she did. Big brother's fingers were shaking, while his expression was as calm as a lake.
She had seen that contradiction countless times on the autopsy table.
When people suppressed an emotion too deeply, the body revealed the truth before the mind did.
She didn't ask. She closed the door softly and stepped into the December night air.
But the image stayed in her mind like a thin splinter. It didn't hurt, but she couldn't pull it out.
On Monday morning, Bai Muxue arrived half an hour earlier than usual.
Her office was in the basement of the City Forensic Identification Center, where the fluorescent lights were always on and the air always smelled of disinfectant and formaldehyde. She changed into her white coat, dripped two drops of lavender essential oil onto the inside of her mask, and turned on her computer.
There were no new cases today.
She opened another folder—private and encrypted.
It contained only one file, its name a string of numbers: the date four years ago, the day her parents died.
Bai Muxue stared at the filename for a long time.
She was a forensic pathologist. She had seen too many bodies from car accidents and knew exactly what kind of marks each angle of impact left on the human body. She had also seen her parents' autopsy reports—not the simplified versions officially given to the family, but the complete original reports, every piece of data laid out in meticulous detail.
She had pulled them using her official authority.
There was one detail in the report she had never mentioned to anyone.
There was an extremely fine cut mark on her father's seat belt buckle.
It hadn't been caused by the impact or by wear and tear. The angle and depth of the cut looked as if someone had deliberately scored it with a sharp tool beforehand—not enough to sever it, only enough to leave a final layer of fiber, so it would snap automatically under a violent impact.
She understood what that meant better than anyone.
But she had no evidence. The car had been scrapped soon after the accident. By the time she went looking, all she had managed to obtain were a few blurry photos from the scene. The approval process for scrapping it had been abnormally fast—too fast to resemble normal administrative procedure.
She had looked into the approver's name. That person resigned three months later, and after that, no information could be found anywhere.
It was as if they had evaporated from the face of the earth.
Bai Muxue closed the file, took off her glasses, and rubbed her eyes.
Her phone buzzed.
It was big brother.
“Any cases today?”
She replied, “No.”
After a while, big brother sent another message: “Come back to the old house for dinner tonight. Second brother's cooking.”
Bai Muxue stared at the message, her fingers hovering over the screen.
Big brother had never gone out of his way to tell her to come home for dinner. Sunday dinner was a standing tradition; the rest of the time, everyone was busy with their own lives. They came home if they felt like it and fended for themselves if they didn't. A message like this, sent out of nowhere, wasn't like him.
She typed, “Okay. Big brother, are you all right?”
She waited a long time.
The reply came: “Mm.”
Bai Muxue stared at that one syllable, the corner of her mouth twitching faintly.
Big brother's “mm” had many varieties. A happy mm, a dismissive mm, an angry mm, an exhausted mm. She had worked cases alongside him for three years and had learned to tell them apart long ago.
This mm was avoidance.
That same morning, on the other side of the city.
The top floor of an unmarked commercial building.
Beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows stretched the entire city skyline, the morning light tinting the glass pale gold. The office was decorated in minimalist style: black marble floors, dark gray walls, and a massive walnut desk. The only things on the desk were a laptop and a silver lighter.
Shen Yesi leaned back in his chair, spinning the lighter with one hand.
The lighter flipped between his fingers, its silver surface flashing like a blinking cat. His movements were slow, slow enough to seem as though he were killing time. His eyes were not.
His gaze rested on the laptop screen, which displayed an ownership chart for a logistics company.
Bai Logistics.
On the surface, it was a midsize logistics company whose business covered domestic transportation and some cross-border trade. After its founder died four years ago, a trust fund took over its management, while daily operations were handed to a professional manager. None of the seven children had involved themselves in the company's affairs.
But Shen Yesi knew what was hidden in the company's basement.
Or rather, what had once been hidden there.
Four years ago, after Mu Baiyuan died, a shipment of weapons transported through Bai Logistics vanished into thin air. They hadn't been intercepted or resold. They had been erased from every record, as if they had never existed at all.
The shipment was worth enough to buy the armies of three small countries.
Shen Yesi had been searching for four years.
He had gone through every clue Mu Baiyuan left behind and tracked down everyone who had handled that shipment. He had even personally visited several locations Mu Baiyuan had frequented while he was alive—three times. He had found nothing.
Mu Baiyuan had scrubbed away every trace, as if he had known from the start that something would happen to him.
“Boss.”
The door opened, and a man in a black suit walked in carrying a tablet.
“We've finished checking Bai Logistics' old accounts. There are no irregularities on the surface. Every flow of funds lines up. But—”
“But?” Shen Yesi's voice was soft, touched by a hint of careless amusement.
“Four years ago, three million was transferred from Bai Logistics into an offshore account. Not a large amount. But the beneficiary information for that account is encrypted. Our people can't crack it.”
Shen Yesi stopped spinning the lighter.
“Can't crack it?”
“Yes. The encryption is extremely advanced, not ordinary commercial encryption. Our technical team says this kind of encryption… looks military-grade.”
Shen Yesi was silent for several seconds. Then he smiled.
It was a faint smile, barely lifting the corners of his mouth, but the light in his eyes changed—from lazy to razor-sharp, like a leopard catching the scent of prey.
“Interesting.”
He set the lighter on the desk with a crisp click, like a trigger being pulled.
“Investigate Mu Baiyuan's children. All seven. Leave no one out.”
“Boss, Mu Baiyuan's children all changed their surnames to Bai. We've looked into them before. They all appear to be ordinary people—”
“Ordinary people?” Shen Yesi tilted his head, the curve of his eyes carrying a hint of playful interest. “How could Mu Baiyuan's children possibly be ordinary?”
He rose and walked to the floor-to-ceiling windows, both hands slipping into his pockets as he looked down at the city below.
“Especially the eldest.” His voice dropped, as if he were speaking to himself. “Mu Baiyuan's firstborn son became a police officer. Don't you think the fact itself is interesting?”
The man in black didn't answer.
Shen Yesi turned around, picked up the lighter from the desk, and began spinning it again.
“Go. Dig into every one of them.” He paused, then added, “Keep it subtle. I still owe Mu Baiyuan that much.”
The man in black nodded and left.
The office fell silent again.
Shen Yesi lowered his head and looked at the lighter in his hand. Two words were engraved on its silver casing, written in Mu Baiyuan's handwriting—
“Ye Si.”
His thumb brushed over the two characters, his touch gentle, as if he were handling something fragile.
Then he slipped the lighter into his pocket, turned, and sat back down in his chair, continuing to study the ownership chart.
The sunlight outside grew brighter and brighter, but a shadow remained in his office—one the light could never reach.