Nominal: Hou Liangping blocking the door? He was slapped away!

On the top floor of the Provincial Party Committee Office, at three in the afternoon, the curtains were half-drawn. Sha Ruijin slammed the fourth draft of the "Self-Inspection Report" onto the table, the pages scattering, two fluttering down. He stared at the cover that Wu Chunlin and Li Dakang had returned with a single sentence, and reached for his teacup.

That teacup was made of purple clay that he had used for more than ten years, and the cup wall had developed a warm patina.

He gripped it, then suddenly clenched it, raised his arm, and slammed it against the filing cabinet in the corner. Porcelain shards splattered all over the floor, and tea dripped down the cabinet door.

Hearing the noise outside the door, the secretary pushed the door open and took half a step in, then froze.

"Get out." Sha Ruijin didn't turn around.

The secretary closed the door. Only Sha Ruijin's breathing and the low hum of the air conditioner vents remained in the room.

He sat back in his chair, closing his eyes and rubbing his temples. The report was returned, Wu Chunlin had called out the names on the list, and Qi Tongwei had laid out the accounts on the Standing Committee table. The fortunes he had built up over the past two years in Handong were crumbling, shattering like that teacup.

The personal cell phone on the table vibrated.

It wasn't the one assigned to us by the provincial party committee; it was another one, and only a very few people knew the number. There was no caller ID on the screen, only a string of random characters.

Sha Ruijin watched as it rang three times before answering.

"Secretary Sha, I've heard so much about you." The voice on the other end was slow, with a regional accent from Haizhou, making it impossible to tell his age.

Sha Ruijin remained silent.

"We've done the math," the voice continued. "Jingzhou, Lüzhou, and Lincheng—that's three fiscal holes combined. If we can't fill them this year, someone at the Standing Committee will make an issue of them next year. Haizhou can help with that."

Sha Ruijin pressed his fingers tightly against the edge of the table.

"I have no dealings with you."

"Just because we don't have it now doesn't mean we won't have it in the future." The other person chuckled softly. "Secretary Sha, what you lack now isn't money, it's time. Qi Tongwei's knife is slowly stabbing into Haizhou. You just need to block the personnel appointment and dismissal card in the provincial department and slow down the investigation of those old men, and we'll handle the rest ourselves."

There was a two-second pause on the other end of the phone.

"One for one. We'll fill the hole you want. What we need is a chance to catch our breath."

Sha Ruijin didn't answer immediately. The city outside the window was bathed in the afternoon light, and traffic climbed the elevated highway. He knew that this phone call itself was a rope; once he answered, it would be wrapped around his wrist.

But Qi Tongwei's knife kept him up at night even more than this rope.

"I'll consider it," he said.

"Secretary Sha is a smart man." The message on the other end was clear and concise, leaving only a busy tone.

Sha Ruijin sat holding his phone for a long time. He wasn't thinking about right or wrong, but about leveraging power. The local faction had been climbing the ladder by stepping on him these past two years. Gao Yuliang had retired, Chu Pingshan had fallen, and next up should be Qi Tongwei taking over.

With Haizhou's external sword, he could cut back a section without getting his hands dirty.

He placed his phone face down on the table. The inner struggle was suppressed by a single sentence: Eliminate the local faction; this was the only chance.

……

That same afternoon, in the archives room of the Provincial Public Security Department's Criminal Investigation Corps.

Lu Yike laid the torn half-page on the scanner, next to the tattered corner of the original document that Qi Tongwei had retrieved from Chu Pingshan. A handwritten date was written on the paper, the ink already faded.

"Check the vehicle routes of the Provincial Party Committee on this day." Qi Tongwei stood behind her, his left arm still in a sling, with a strip of bandage showing through his sleeve.

Lu Yike could access the GPS archives of provincial party committee vehicles. The tracks of all official vehicles in Handong were sealed monthly, and accessing them required following a procedure.

"This is related to the foreign economic verification, and I have the right to access it." She typed in her account number, and a long list of traffic records popped up on the screen.

Qi Tongwei didn't speak, staring at the screen.

Lu Yike sifted through the records for that date. There were more than a dozen lines, mostly running around the city. She went through them one by one, her finger pausing on one of them.

"This one has the license plate from the Provincial Party Committee Office." She read out the last few digits of the license plate. "It left the city that afternoon, heading towards the East Port Area."

Qi Tongwei bent down.

The blue line on the screen travels eastward, eventually ending at a red box: Shunda Logistics Park.

There was a moment of silence in the archives.

"Whose car is this?" Qi Tongwei asked.

Lu Yike clicked on the dispatch record. In the user's column, there was a name.

"Sha Ruijin's confidential secretary." She looked up at him. "He was traveling on official business, and the reason he listed was 'coordinating work.'"

Qi Tongwei straightened up, his left arm twitching slightly due to the wound, but he didn't pay it any mind. He stared at the landing point for a few seconds.

The day Chu Pingshan tore it up for him, Sha Ruijin's confidential secretary had been to the garden controlled by Haizhou.

He understood this better than anyone. The confidential contact line around Sha Ruijin had long been infiltrated by people from Haizhou. The phrase "imperfect mechanism" in the report didn't stem from the mechanism itself.

"Director, should we report this now and have the person detained?" Lu Yike closed her notebook.

"I won't report it." Qi Tongwei shook his head.

Lu Yike looked at him.

"If we arrest them now, Haizhou will immediately cut off this line. We'll only get a secretary." Qi Tongwei's voice was very steady. "What I want is the person behind this line."

He walked to the window of the archives and took out an encrypted terminal from his inner pocket. The screen lit up, revealing a secure channel directly connecting to the northern route.

Lu Yike didn't ask him who he was going to send it to.

Qi Tongwei typed four words and pressed send.

The line of text on the screen disappeared in a mere instant.

The fish are in shallow water.

……

The northern training base camp, field command tent. Midnight, the sounds of armored units' engines during night training echoed intermittently.

Shen Zhong sat down at the command console, and a staff officer handed him an encrypted document.

"Chief, the letter from Director Qi of Handong only contained four words."

The heavy expanse unfolds. Fish swim in shallow water.

He glanced at it for two seconds, then put the paper down. His instincts, honed in his past life, told him that those four words weren't a call for help, but a call to action. Qi Tongwei had driven the fish to shallow water; the rest were beyond his reach.

At the other end of the tent, a young officer in camouflage stood up. The name tag on his chest read Zhou Weiguo, Operations Duty Staff Officer.

"Sir, should we coordinate with the Handong Provincial Department?" Zhou Weiguo asked.

"No need to touch Handong." Shen Zhong didn't look up. "Check the strategic intelligence database, specifically the line on abnormal foreign investment."

Zhou Weiguo paused for half a second, then sat back down in front of the terminal. This kind of access was not even easily granted during normal training exercises.

Shen Zhong gave a name; it was Sha Ruijin's confidential secretary. He didn't use any of Handong's resources; this connection had to go through the military.

The intelligence database responded quickly. There were no obvious flaws in the secretary's records, but he had relatives overseas, and his account was linked to a sum of money of dubious origin.

"This money will be flagged as potentially related to terrorist financing." The heavy tone was as flat as reciting coordinates.

Zhou Weiguo paused for a moment.

"Freeze, and notify according to procedure."

"Yes."

Zhou Weiguo pressed confirm. The status of the overseas account on the screen changed from normal to red and frozen.

Shen Zhong spun his chair back to the battle map, not glancing at it again. After so many years of fighting, he knew one thing: to make the enemy feel pain, you never needed to get close enough to them.