The smell of gunpowder still lingered,
drifting in slow circles through the corner of the scene.

Silence settled over the space.
Shattered glass caught and scattered faint traces of light.

Jiang Zhilin stood at the edge of the warehouse, his gaze wandering,
separated from the hollow scene before him by an invisible membrane.

Silence filled every corner;
all sound seemed to have been swallowed by the images of chaos left behind.

He drew a deep breath, turned slowly toward his team, and gave the order to begin clearing the scene.

Each movement was calm and practiced.
Yet the hollow ache inside him refused to subside, like a cold wind tearing silently through breached defenses.

He did not stop moving.

“Captain Jiang, the site is secured.
Cleanup is nearly complete.”

The voice in his earpiece pulled him back.
His eyes skimmed the situation report, then swept across the surroundings—

Everything had happened too quickly, and yet felt unbearably powerless.

He pressed the earpiece, his fingers brushing the edge of his coat,
trying to grasp what remained of a reason that was steadily slipping away.

Outside the warehouse, the team remained at work—
only silent footsteps, and the occasional low instruction breaking the air.

Jiang Zhilin walked toward the cleanup area, his movements practiced yet slow, as if pulled by something unseen, his strength draining away bit by bit.

The trench coat was still in his hand, blood clinging to his palm.

“Captain Jiang, it’s time to go to the hospital.”

At the soft reminder, he gave a slight nod.
His gaze lingered on the last police badge at the scene, one that had yet to be recovered, unease quietly stirring within him.

Then he turned, the trench coat in hand, and walked toward the exit.
He did not look back.
There was nothing left to say.

Upon reaching the hospital, anxiety surged like a rising tide.
Helplessness flooded every remaining space, his steps driven forward by an unseen force.

Jiang Zhilin headed straight for the emergency room.

In the corridor, beneath the harsh white lights, medical staff moved back and forth, hurriedly adjusting equipment.

No one stopped to tell him anything.

Through a narrow gap in the curtain, he caught a glimpse of Shen Yanxing.

His face was pale, like a freshly blank sheet of paper.
An oxygen mask covered part of his features.
His chest rose and fell faintly, as if held together by a fragile thread, stretched to its limit.

Beep—beep—

The heart monitor’s rhythm was unsteady, each sharp pulse echoing against his chest.

Shen Yanxing was still alive—still being kept alive by machines.

Air around them was taut with tension.
Every second of waiting was a merciless ordeal.

Unconsciously, he clenched the trench coat in his hand, his fingertips whitening.
He came to a halt, unsure of how to speak.

“Captain Jiang, this way.”

“There are some documents here that require your signature.”

A team member approached and spoke in a low voice.

Jiang Zhilin gave a slight nod, his gaze drifting back once more toward the direction that held his concern.

His thoughts were in complete disarray.

The harsh lights of the emergency room blurred everything in his vision.

As he processed the paperwork in his hands,
a sudden series of high-pitched alarms pierced through his ears.

Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!

He turned sharply.
Before he could fully register what was happening, more medical staff rushed past him, intensifying their efforts to resuscitate the patient.

“Heart rate is unstable. Blood pressure is dropping.”

“Increase the cardiotonic injection. Continue chest compressions.”

“Prepare the defibrillator. Power it on.”

“Defibrillator ready.”

“Prepare to shock. Three—two—one—shock!”

“No response. Shock again!”

His gaze drifted unconsciously to the movements of the medical staff.

Yet everything around him felt distant, reduced to background noise.
All he heard was “No response,”
sharp as a needle piercing straight into his heart.

Beeeeee—

“Cardiac arrest. No signs of life can be sustained.”

He did not know how much time had passed before the doctor approached.

Exhaustion was written plainly across the doctor’s face, stripped of any strength.

“We did everything we could.”

The voice was low, flat—what reached him was not news of death,
but the delivery of an ordinary, indisputable fact.

In that moment, he forgot how to breathe.

He took a small step back.
The clarity of his vision blurred without warning, and the sounds around him faded into nothing.

Jiang Zhilin realized that he could no longer stay here.

“I understand. Thank you for your hard work.”

His tone was cold, merciless—
like a sharp blade slicing through the air, cutting off every trace of emotion.

He did not linger.
Turning around, he left quickly.

The air was saturated with the acrid smell of disinfectant;
everything around him felt strangely unfamiliar.

Brilliant white light filled the space, shadows stretched long and thin.

Team members hurried past, mechanically carrying out each task, their footsteps quick, with no time to stop.

He stood there, breathing weakly.
Every breath weighed heavily on his chest, tightening it, his heart seeming to stall along with it.

The surrounding noise was swallowed away,
his vision gradually narrowing, settling onto an invisible expanse of emptiness.

A group of team members hurried past.
Low murmurs suddenly reached his ears.

“Why did they only take one person when they withdrew?”

“Exactly. They’d already spotted us—why wait until the very end to make a move?”

“If they’d wanted to, we wouldn’t have made it out alive.”

“Forget it. Tonight’s celebration—we’ll make him drink until he gets his money’s worth.”

“Yeah! It’s rare for the boss to be this generous!”

The words were like sharp blades, slicing through Jiang Zhilin’s emptiness, stirring ripples deep within him.

He lifted his head unconsciously, his attention locking onto the group that was speaking.

Letting them off?

His brow knit slightly.
As the team members moved away, the thoughts slipped out of control, an undercurrent of unease quietly beginning to surface.

Why?

Why was only one person taken when they withdrew?

Why were those people allowed to walk away so easily?

The questions circled vaguely in his mind, refusing to settle into any clear answers.

Unconsciously, he brushed the edge of the trench coat.
Only when his fingertips trembled did he realize he had been gripping it tightly all along.

He drew a deep breath, forcing down the hollowness and unease rising within him.

Only after shaking off those faint, surfacing questions did he turn and walk back toward the emergency room.

That cold door greeted him once more—whether he went in or walked out, nothing would change.

He pushed open the emergency room door and returned to the bedside.

By then, the medical staff had finished clearing the area.
What met his eyes was a clean white sheet.

The entire process was swift and indifferent.
Death, like everything else, required no pause, no lingering.

Jiang Zhilin’s fingertips hovered only a millimeter from the white sheet, yet he could not move any closer.

It was a distance he could not cross.

The collapse and pain surged back within him, almost more than he could bear.

This person would never open his eyes again, never smile at him again.

And he would never be able to ask the why that had long been buried deep in his heart.

As the body was pushed toward the morgue,
Jiang Zhilin stood there like a lost animal, unable to find his way.

The lighting in the hospital lobby remained bright—blindingly white.

Jiang Zhilin sat on a bench in the corner, elbows braced on his knees.
The trench coat lay across his legs, his palms still holding a damp, lingering sensation.

His sense of time had unraveled.
It felt as though something heavy had been draped over his mind, leaving only the image of Shen Yanxing collapsing, replaying again and again.

He did not even realize how long he had been sitting there.

Until a shadow stopped in front of him.

“Captain Jiang, the after-action report is in. There’s a copy for you.”

He lifted his head. His gaze paused briefly on the documents in the other man’s hand, as if it had traveled a long, distant path before finally returning to the present.

Papers pressed into his palms—
faintly cold to the touch.

The title stood out clearly: “Preliminary Report on the 6/13 Operation.”

He said nothing, only began to turn the pages.

Pages flipped in quick succession,
his eyes sliding over the number of hostile personnel, operational records, reports from each unit… until one line made his hand stop.

— “Undercover operative code S-7 was exposed by the opposing side during the final phase. Preliminary assessment: the operative was likely compromised at an earlier stage. The opposing side delayed action for an extended period, suspected to be a deliberate stalling tactic.”

Jiang Zhilin’s brow tightened, almost imperceptibly.

He hesitated for a few seconds, then read the passage again—
and then a third time.

Exposed early.
Dragged out until the end.
Deliberate delay.

The words cut a thin fissure through his thoughts, as if something had been quietly pried loose.

He could not say why.
Only that something, deep inside him, felt wrong.

The report was set aside, fingers lightly tapping along the edge of the pages, his brow drawn tight as he tried to sift a signal out of the noise.

In his mind, the scene at the warehouse interwove with the conversations he had overheard in the corridor.

— “They only took one person.”
— “If they’d wanted to, we wouldn’t have made it out alive.”

A coincidence?
Or—

He lowered his gaze to the report in his hands.
Something was hidden there.

But his mind had yet to return to a state of full analysis.
His emotions came in aftershocks, surging wave after wave beneath the surface, leaving him able to grasp only fragments—
unable to piece together the whole truth.