Shadow Parade Under the Bell

Chapter 7 · Before the Bell, Hearts Move

The day after the blue glow at the observatory west of the Bell and Drum Towers went dark, an abandoned post office near Xizhimen* lay as silent as a tomb.

Dust and the rot-sour of old paper hung in the air. Lin Xiao leaned against a flaking wall, fingertips absently rubbing the cold slide of an M1911. But his eyes kept returning to Su Wan, curled at the instruments a few paces away.

Su Wan had not closed her eyes for two days and nights.

She had fed the bio-wave data from that not-even-three-second “history confirmation code” through a hundred rounds of teardown and replay. On the screen, a green data stream writhed like a dying snake; each twitch pulled every nerve in the room tight.

Suddenly she sat bolt upright, fingers hammering a string of terse commands.

The stream was forcibly cut. A tiny, almost imperceptible noise was peeled out and magnified.

It was an encrypted signal, embedded inside the system’s normal feedback. Its format was exactly the same as what they had seen on the Temporal Reversion System terminal before they left.

“Lin Xiao,” Su Wan said, voice low and hoarse with exhaustion, and carrying a chill that went straight to the bone, “we thought we shut the bomb down… but someone is recording all of this remotely.”

Lin Xiao’s heart clenched hard.

He strode to her side and stared at the alien signal. Which meant that besides them, there was another force—another crew from the future—watching Beiping in 1945.

Just then the back door of the post office creaked open. A thin figure slipped in, bringing with him a gulp of alley wind.

Zhou Tiezhu, out on reconnaissance, was caked in dust; his face was darker than the sky outside.

…

Understanding hit Lin Xiao in a flash.

The encrypted signal Su Wan had found was the very signal that impostor was waiting for.

“Xuanwu,” Lin Xiao’s voice cracked the dead midnight like a blade-edge, all iron decision, “switch to silent mode. All units, target Guandi Temple*. Advance covertly.”

Everyone moved at once.

Disguised as a freight truck, Xuanwu slid out of the alley without a sound and flowed into the night.

In the cargo bay the air felt heavy enough to bend. Chen Tie checked the detonators on the shaped charges, then asked in a voice barely above a whisper, “Captain… if even a hero like Commissar Li can be swapped out, then what we are about to die to save—is it truly the real history?”

Lin Xiao did not answer at once.

He took a group photo from the pocket over his heart, the picture worn white at the edges. In it, Zhao Zhiguo grinned wide like the sun.

Lin’s thumb traced the young face of his brother-in-arms. When he spoke, his voice was steady and sure.

“As long as there are still people willing to bleed for the truth of this land, then it is worth us holding the line.”

In moonlight, the truck drove into the deep shadow of Deshengmen*.

Far off inside Guandi Temple*, a single candle wavered.

A solitary figure slid a finished telegram draft carefully into an envelope. Then he lifted his head and gazed into the soundless night sky, as if waiting for a signal that had crossed time—one that did not belong to this moment.