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

On the floor of the North Front Supply Department, three doors were sealed off, and red numbers were affixed from the corridor to the entrance of the confidential elevator.

Sand and wind lashed against the window.

Wearing gloves, Zhou Weiguo checked the scratches on the edge of the safe for the second time, with the notebook tucked under his arm and the pen cap between his teeth.

Shen Zhong stood outside the threshold, his military uniform buttoned up to the top, the stars on his shoulder straps shining brightly under the light, making him look like a piece of iron pressing down on the doorway.

The second ledger was incredibly accurate.

The contract copy was sealed, and the backup account was empty; the old channel's follow-up was listed separately as evidence of interference, and the surveillance was interrupted for seven minutes at night.

Zhou Weiguo spat out the pen cap and lowered his voice, "Someone is watching our every move."

Shen Zhong glanced at the second layer of the safe, but didn't touch it. He held the cigarette between his two fingers and stubbed out the embers in the metal ash container.

"Keep a close eye on him. The closer you watch, the more it means he's running out of cards."

hurried footsteps came from the end of the corridor.

The confidential clerk stopped outside the cordon, held the red envelope to his chest, and said, "Secretary Shen, the confidential office has an urgent document. It just arrived through the military channel and is being given the highest priority."

Zhou Weiguo received the document first, checking the seal, number, and receipt date one by one. The paper still held the warmth of the printing press, the red stamp was thick, and the security classification column was stamped with three layers of seals.

He unfolded the first page, his brow bone drooping.

"Joint briefing on military discipline by the Central Military Commission. You are required to immediately hand over temporary command of the joint exercises and training on the northern front and report to the rear within two hours."

It has a very high reputation.

Jointly issued, forwarded through old channels, and the military discipline special task force being mentioned—any one of these phrases could be used to suppress a command point.

Shen Zhong did not reach out.

"Bottom end".

Zhou Weiguo turned to the last page, scanned the corner of the paper with a UV lamp, and then tilted the page under the light. The watermark layers appeared, but a small square was missing at the very bottom.

That was the routine filing watermark from Mr. Xu's office.

Very small.

No one usually watches over them.

But Shen Zhong had just walked past Xu Lao's office line before leaving Wuhan, and Zhou Weiguo could memorize the location of that watermark even with his eyes closed.

Zhou Weiguo laid the paper flat. "The channel is the old one from the Central Military Commission. The packaging number is correct, and the key version is also correct. The bottom is missing the watermark from Xu Lao's office."

Shen Zhong then took it, his gaze sliding from the document number to the top of his head, and then stopping at the four words "preliminary handover".

The instinct honed from ambushes on the battlefield in his past life struck him on the back of the neck.

The enemy did not fire at him.

The gun barrels were pointed at the command of the northern front.

The second ledger was lost, the site was just sealed off, and additional orders arrived immediately. The rhythm was like artillery firing: the first shot was for range finding, the second for correction, and the third shot went straight for the core of the position.

The red-line phone rang.

Zhou Weiguo glanced at the number. "The contact person from the old channels."

Shen Zhong raised his hand.

"Connect to external playback."

A steady male voice came through the microphone, "Secretary Shen, the transfer order has been issued. Why hasn't your department responded?"

Shen Zhong leaned heavily against the edge of the table, speaking so quickly that there were no unnecessary pauses, "Verification in progress."

"The military transport route has been completed. We will proceed with the execution first and complete the formalities later. There is no time for delays during the wartime period. Please transfer command immediately, Secretary Shen. The vehicles behind are ready to go."

Zhou Weiguo stared at the phone, his pen hovering in mid-air.

Shen Zhong placed the transfer order back on the table, the corner of the paper just covering the spot where the watermark was missing.

"The caliber is wrong."

There was a pause on the other end of the phone.

"Secretary Shen, please be mindful of military discipline."

"The old route transferred me away from the northern front, the military discipline briefing interfered with my command of the exercises, and they even demanded that I relinquish power first. Who reviewed your statement?"

The breathing on the other end became a little heavier. "During wartime, obeying orders is the first principle."

"Military affairs documentation is incomplete, and the record-keeping chain is incomplete; therefore, this order will not be accepted."

"Secretary Shen, you need to consider the consequences."

Shen Zhong picked up the receiver, his voice as steady as a gun with the safety on.

"I'll keep track of the consequences. You should also keep a record: whoever bypasses Mr. Xu's office to file a report will have to explain to me in person."

The call was disconnected as soon as he finished speaking.

No one spoke.

The light bulb is whitish.

Two seconds later, Shen Zhong pushed the transfer order to Zhou Weiguo, "The true intentions have been revealed. The frontline coordination group wants to remove me from the northern front."

Zhou Weiguo put the red-sealed document into the evidence bag. "The second ledger is in their hands. The transfer order will transfer you away, and then they can change the scene according to their version of events."

"They want to make the old grievances on the northern front a unique case within the military."

He turned around heavily, his leather boots stomping across the corridor floor, short and forceful. "Zhou Weiguo, command post enters Level 1 information silence."

"Switch external connections, switch internal network to audit mode, put personal terminals in boxes, satellite backup links only receive and do not transmit, and double-lock the confidential room."

Zhou Weiguo raised his hand in salute, "Yes, sir."

"Add one more thing. From now on, all transmission logs will be mirrored in three copies: one for military discipline, one for confidential matters, and one that I will personally seal."

"clear."

When the communications battalion commander arrived, the sleeves of his training uniform were rolled up to his wrists, his shoulders were covered in sand, and his eyes were lined with the red marks of his night-long guard duty.

He stood at attention at the doorway, his boot heels clicking softly.

"Secretary Shen, the communications battalion is in position."

Shen Zhong pushed the red-sealed document in front of him, "Transfer the entire transmission link and trace it in reverse."

The communications battalion commander glanced at the document number. "A follow-up signature?"

"Don't touch the red stamp, check the transmission node. The red stamp can be misleading, but the path rarely is."

The communications battalion commander took a breath. "Which level of access is being used?"

"The military region is the highest authority. You need to sign something; get the paper."

Zhou Weiguo took out the authorization form, the pen already pulled off. "You just refused the order. If you use high-level privileges now, someone will use the program to pressure you from behind."

Shen Zhong took the pen, his right hand writing heavily, "Let him do it. If he pressures me first, I'll settle the accounts with him item by item."

The authorization form is filed, and the confidential authorization card is pressed onto the card reader.

The communications battalion commander connected the portable terminal to the audit port, and the screen switched from the green standby page to the transmission path retrieval page.

The server rack hummed softly.

"Three minutes for the first jump, ten minutes for physical attribution."

The communications battalion commander looked up. "Ten minutes is a tight schedule."

Shen Zhong looked at him intently. "The other party is more anxious than you."

After saying that, the communications battalion commander stopped haggling and started typing rapidly on the keyboard, sending instructions scrolling down one line after another.

Under Level 1 silence, all external communication with the command post was cut off, but the military clock in the corner of the screen was still ticking, and with each tick, the breathing in the room tightened.

The first one to jump out.

"Relay node of the old channel of the Central Military Commission, number matching."

Zhou Weiguo immediately took notes, "Continue."

The second jump occurred.

"The timestamp of the Northwest emergency backup node has been erased, showing signs of manual calibration."

Shen Zhong picked up the transfer order, saying, "I want to keep this paper very clean."

The third one jumped out.

"The East China Civilian Maintenance Network has outsourced its maintenance services to an external company. This company participated in the northern optical cable project three years ago."

Zhou Weiguo looked up. "It's like going back to three years ago."

Shen Zhong was not surprised; the line his battlefield intuition had given him was creeping forward along the screen.

The northern route project three years ago, the transfer of funds for Haizhou Port, the civilian port dispatch catalog, the stolen second ledger, and tonight's transfer order—all are tied together by an invisible rope.

The communications battalion commander gritted his teeth. "We're jumping back to Beijing for the fourth time, but we're being pulled into another layer of service support agency."

"Open it."

"Cross-domain underlying indexing is required, and the process will leave a trace."

Shen Zhong slammed his ID on the table. "Leave it."

Zhou Weiguo added, "Leaving a trace is also a mirror image."

The communications battalion commander entered the secondary password, the card reader beeped three times, and a red confirmation box popped up on the page.

He looked at Shen Zhong.

He pressed the confirmation button heavily.

Once the audit interface is approved, the gray path map unfolds, resembling a crumpled battle map, with a line circling out from the northern front and then looping back to the capital through several nodes.

"Found the jump IP."

The communications battalion commander lowered his voice, "The outer camouflage has been cleared, but the inner layer still has reserved numbers."

Zhou Weiguo leaned closer to the screen. "Retain the number range?"

"It's not something you see in regular military operations; it's more like a service and support area network."

Shen Zhong stared intently at the end address, not speaking immediately.

An overly clean order, coupled with a missing filing watermark, is inherently dirty.

A title that is too high, coupled with a tone that is so urgent that people are told to implement it first and then make up for it later, is inherently hollow.

In this round, the opponent was eager to lure the tiger away from the mountain, and also eager to find a seemingly intimidating shell for themselves.

"Check attribution."

The communications battalion commander retrieved the network segment attribution database, but found that "insufficient permissions resulted in a secondary block on the attribution field."

Zhou Weiguo opened the confidential case and took out a paper register. It was rarely used, so the cover was worn and dark, but the edges were still very neat.

He flipped through it very quickly.

The first page.

Page 2.

Page 3.

The hand stopped.

Zhou Weiguo stared at that column, his Adam's apple bobbing, the color draining from his face, but he quickly regained it.

Shen Zhong lifted his eyelids and said, "Read it."

Zhou Weiguo didn't read it aloud immediately. He first put the booklet on the table and then matched the jump server IP address on the screen with the booklet number.

It's exactly the same.

When the communications battalion commander saw the affiliation column, his back straightened a bit, and his lips pursed into a line.

The sound of the wind inside the room seemed to be thinned through the cracks in the door.

Shen Zhong did not urge him.

He looked at Zhou Weiguo's hand pressing on the paper and knew that this line had already reached the deeper walls of the capital.

Zhou Weiguo closed the booklet halfway, then stopped, raised his hand, and turned the screen towards Shen Zhong.

"The physical address is in the Western Hills of Beijing, at the High-Level Service Center for Retired Cadres."