In the evidence room of the Jiangcheng Criminal Police Team, Li Zhengyang's old belongings box gleamed coldly beneath the dust. As Chen Yanxiu donned cotton gloves and lifted the lid, the scent of old leather mixed with gun oil hit him.
On the bottom layer lay a gilded notebook. The rose pattern on the cover was identical to the Interpol emblem. On the title page, a line of small words was written in pen: "JSY, Star Tracks, Sleepless."
"JSY...Jin Suyun?" Chen Yanbai leaned over to take a look, his fingers brushing against the wax seal on the edge of the notebook. "How did Teacher Li Zhengyang get his stuff?"
Chen Yanxiu turned the page and found a yellowed boarding pass stuck on the yellowed paper. The date was three days before Li Zhengyang's "accidental" car accident ten years ago, and the destination column read "Singapore".
Below the flight information, a star-shaped pattern was drawn with secret writing chemicals. When he shone the ultraviolet lamp sent by Jin Suyun on it, a string of coordinates emerged at the edge of the pattern: 1.3017°N, 103.8551°E - exactly the geographical location of the Jin Group's headquarters.
Li Zhou's call suddenly cut into the holographic projection. The electronic screen behind him was scrolling through Interpol's Red Notice: "Mr. Shen, the New Delhi police found this in Ding Feng's safe."
The scene switches to a metal badge with a Nightingale head on the front and tiny monogram engraved on the back: "Nightingale-03".
"Nightingale No. 3?" Chen Yanxiu's fingertips traced over Li Zhengyang's signature on the notebook. "Li Zhengyang's codename is Nightingale, so what does this number mean..."
Suddenly, an urgent encrypted signal from Jin Chanyun came from the communicator, and his image appeared in the center of the evidence room, with the night view of Singapore's Marina Bay as the background, and the floor-to-ceiling windows behind him reflecting the bright lights of the financial district.
"Mr. Shen, Mr. Li Zhengyang planted three undercover agents in the Night Owl Organization. I am Nightingale Number Two, Ding Feng is Number Three, but the real Nightingale Number One..."
He paused and enlarged the tablet in his hand. The screen showed a photo of the scene of Li Zhengyang's car accident. A black ribbon was wrapped around the steering wheel, with a star-shaped sapphire cufflink tied to the end.
The underground data center of the Jin Group was as bright as day. Jin Suyun stood in front of a quantum computer, data streaming across the screen like a galaxy as he analyzed the secret writings in Li Zhengyang's notebook.
Suddenly, the alarm light on the main console flashed red, and the firewall was forcibly breached by an unknown quantum algorithm. The other party's IP address was displayed as the public network of a university.
"Is it her?" Jin Suyun frowned and called up the surveillance footage.
Jin Annuo was sitting in the corner of the university library, with complex codes jumping on the laptop screen in front of her. The way she bit the tip of her pen was exactly the same as when Li Zhengyang was lecturing at the police academy ten years ago.
He pressed the communicator, his voice filled with the helplessness of a brother: "Annuo, don't touch that firewall, there's a trap inside."
Jin Annuo in the library was startled and almost dropped his coffee cup.
She looked at the message from her brother that suddenly popped up, stuck out her tongue, and quickly closed the cracking program, but she didn't notice a very thin red light flashed next to the computer camera - it was a tiny pinhole camera recording her screen.
At the same time, Chen Yanxiu found a folded note in Li Zhengyang's notebook. On it were three connected star patterns drawn in simple strokes. The middle star was circled in red pen, and next to it was written: "Be careful of the stars around you."
Chen Yanbai looked at the note and suddenly remembered that when he was in the Shen family cellar, the Jin family emblem on Shen Mingzhe's windbreaker was three connected stars.
"Brother, you said Jin Suyun..."
"He's not a mole." Chen Yanxiu interrupted him, pulling up the undercover file sent by Jin Chanyun. "The three undercover agents of the Nightingale Project don't know each other's identities. Teacher Li Zhengyang used different code words to contact us. I received the heraldic key, he received the star pattern, and Chen Feng received..."
He magnified the Night Owl badge in Ding Feng's safe, and the "03" on the back suddenly glowed, forming a mirror image of the Shen family's coat of arms.
The Night Owl's secret base is located in a monastery in the southern foothills of the Himalayas. Jin Chanyun's private plane flew through the clouds, the cabin temperature maintained at 23 degrees Celsius, a stark contrast to the freezing -30 degrees Celsius outside.
Wearing a custom-made winter suit, he slid his fingers across a tactical tablet, bringing up a three-dimensional model of the monastery.
"According to Professor Li Zhengyang's notes, the Night Owl's core database is hidden in the monastery's bell tower."
He pointed to the weather vane atop the clock tower in the model. "That seemingly ordinary copper owl is actually the heat dissipation vent for the quantum encryption server."
Chen Yanbai gazed through the porthole at the white snow below, his hand unconsciously reaching for the pistol at his waist. This was his first time participating in a cross-border operation, and his stomach felt like ice.
Chen Yanxiu seemed to sense his nervousness and handed him a cup of hot cocoa. "When Teacher Li Zhengyang took me on my first undercover mission, he also gave me this."
As the plane landed on the temporary runway, the ground suddenly shook.
Jin Sunyun's face changed. He opened the hatch and saw thick smoke rising from the direction of the monastery. The spire of the bell tower was collapsing. "Oh no! Someone got there before us!"
When they drove to the monastery, the main gate had been blown open, and the snow was littered with bullet shells and fragments of black cloaks.
Chen Yanxiu picked up a piece of cloak fabric, which was embroidered with a tiny rose pattern - the same pattern as the Interpol emblem.
"Is he one of us?" Chen Yanbai clenched his gun.
Jin Chanyun shook his head and pointed at the footprints on the ground: "These boot prints are from Eastern European special forces. Night Owl is silencing people."
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