The scent of gunpowder in the skywell was faint. Dominating the air instead was the sharp, sickly-sweet stench of leaking hydraulic fluid.
Dashan crouched down. With his skinning knife, he precisely sliced open the Kevlar fiber skin on the Robo-Dog’s neck. The legless mechanical beast twitched sporadically. Its camera lens flashed a dying red light, like a final curse, attempting to transmit Dashan’s pupil data back to the SUV a hundred meters away.
“Ruyi, cover it with black cloth,” Dashan ordered without looking up. “Zhao Tianqi is watching too clearly. Let’s not give him any more hallucinations to feed on.”
Ruyi grabbed a light-blocking black velvet curtain from the house and whipped it over the robot, severing its last line of sight.
“Big Brother, this chip is custom-made,” Ruyi said, crouching beside him. She pointed to a heat-dissipation aluminum plate Dashan had just pried loose. “No logo. Just a hand-carved serial number: 0927.”
Dashan’s hand froze.
0927.
It was the date Wan Changqing opened his first pawnshop in Old City thirty years ago. It was also the first entry number in Madame Shen’s “Ledger of Human Debts” mentioned earlier.
“This doesn’t belong to Zhao Tianqi,” Dashan said, his voice cold as ice. “Zhao is just a chauffeur. This dog… it crawled out of a ‘Safe Vault’ my father pre-established before he died. Zhao holds a ‘Pledge of Allegiance’ that my father left for someone else.”
Madame Shen stepped forward. She looked down at the number, her withered fingers trembling slightly. “Wan Changqing, you old fox… even in death, you insist on dragging someone down with you.” She looked at Dashan. “Do you know who 0927 represents, Dashan?”
“It represents the person who helped my father lock the opera house doors from the outside thirty years ago,” Dashan said, standing up. His gaze pierced through the darkness, locking onto the SUV at the alley entrance. “The accomplice.”
At the alley mouth, Zhao Tianqi stared at his now-black screens. Cold sweat soaked through his shirt, plastering it to his back.
“Mr. Zhao…” the technician’s voice cracked, bordering on tears. “The beacon is gone. Not just gone… the opponent used a physical connection to send a request packet named ‘0927’ back to our server. Now… our firewalls are collapsing in sheets!”
“It’s Wan Changqing’s ‘Linked Horses’ strategy,” Zhao whispered, collapsing into his seat, utterly defeated. “He never intended to pass the key to anyone. Whoever touched that dog activated a dormant proof of guilt buried for thirty years. Wan Dashan… he wasn’t guarding a spirit. He was luring a tiger into a burning mountain.”
Inside the old house, Dashan tossed the chip—stained not with blood, but with hydraulic oil—into a large pickling jar filled with brine.
Hiss…
The high-end computing chip sizzled in the cheap salt water, exhaling its final bubble of air.
“Madame Shen, Uncle Wang, thank you for your hard work,” Dashan said, bowing respectfully to the empty air. “For the next two hours, Zhao won’t dare move. He’ll be too busy trying to delete the self-destruct program running in his master’s computer.”
He turned to Ruyi. “Go brew a pot of strong tea. Before dawn breaks, we need to meet a true ‘Keeper of Ritual’.”
“Who?” Ruyi asked.
“My mother’s former piano accompanist,” Dashan said, pointing to the bottom of the lacquered box, where a yellowed photograph lay hidden. “He is the only person alive who has ever seen the true form of ‘Rosebud’.”
The courtyard fell silent again. The only sound came from the pickling jar, where the symbol of high-tech supremacy was slowly dissolving into nothingness, reclaimed by the humble, corrosive power of salt and time.
[SYSTEM ALERT: REMOTE CONNECTION LOST.]
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
[SOURCE TRACE: UNKNOWN LEGACY PROTOCOL (0927).]
[STATUS: CRITICAL FAILURE. SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE INITIATED IN HOST NETWORK.]
[MESSAGE FROM LEGACY: “THE SHOW MUST GO ON.”]
Zhao read the message on his dying screen and realized the terrifying truth: The funeral wasn’t over. The main act was just beginning.
Zhao thought he was hunting, but he just activated a 30-year-old self-destruct sequence thanks to '0927'. And now... the chip is dissolving in a pickle jar. ???? Talk about high tech meeting low life!
Next Chapter: Enter the Piano Accompanist. Who is he? And what is the TRUE form of 'Rosebud'? Is it an object? A person? Or a secret that could destroy everything? ????
Question: For those who know the reference, what do you think 'Rosebud' means in this story? A lost love? A stolen invention? Or something else? ??
