Memory City
Thunder rumbled outside the window, and rain poured down, covering the windowpane with countless water droplets that slid down the glass, leaving long streaks.
"Lu Min, come back... I don't want you to leave..."
Sang Qi lay on the hospital bed with tears streaming down her face, her pillow soaked through.
The nurses who were making their rounds saw this and quickly went to call the doctor.
In a daze, Sang Qi saw several people in white coats moving back and forth in front of her.
In the latter half of the night, the thunder and rain continued, and apart from the sounds of thunder and rain outside, the ward was completely silent.
Listening to the sound of rain outside the window, Sang Qi slowly opened her eyes and unconsciously sat up in bed.
She bent her legs, hugged them, rested her chin on her knees, and silently shed tears.
The moment she awoke, she was fully conscious. She knew she hadn't died and had been saved, but Lu Min's death was a real event, and no one had saved him.
He desperately wanted to die, but failed to do so.
In the end, she was unable to be with Lu Min.
Lost in thought, I heard footsteps outside the door, growing ever closer.
Sang Qi was taken aback, and inexplicably became nervous.
She sat up straight and looked towards the door.
When the door opened, Sang Qi's brows furrowed abruptly.
It was a completely unfamiliar face.
The man who entered was tall and thin, with refined and scholarly features.
"I came to see you because the doctor told me you were awake." The man spoke as soon as he entered the room and saw Sang Qi sitting blankly on the bed.
Sang Qi looked at the man in front of her and noticed that there were water stains on his shoulders, clothes, shoes, and trouser legs, indicating that he must have come from outside.
Sang Qi asked somewhat warily, "Who are you, and why am I here?"
The man smiled unconsciously upon hearing this and said calmly, "Don't worry, I'm not one of Qian Ganpeng's men. You don't need to be nervous. This is Taiyuan; Qian Ganpeng's men won't be able to find you. You'll be fine..."
"Taiyuan? How did I get to Taiyuan?"
“I saved you in Yunnan and brought you to Taiyuan for treatment. Now Qian Ganpeng considers you dead and will not come after you anymore. After you recover, you can go back to Nanjing and live a normal life.”
“No…” Sang Qi’s mind went blank.
She quickly cleared her mind: "Who are you, and why did you save me?"
The man smiled and said, "You don't need to know that. You just need to know that I saved you, you were unconscious for half a month, and you're currently in Taiyuan. Understand?"
Sang Qi blinked blankly, and after a moment of hesitation, nodded slightly.
She knew the man didn't want to say too much, so she didn't ask any more questions.
"You get some rest, call me if you need anything."
Just as the man was about to leave, Sang Qi suddenly called out to him.
"What's wrong?" He turned around.
Sang Qi hesitated for a moment, then asked, "Do you know Lu Min?"
The man's gaze darkened, and he said calmly, "I know him."
Sang Qi asked again, "And him, is he really dead?"
At that moment, she felt like she was gambling, a game that would determine her life or death.
The man in front of her didn't speak, his gaze lowered.
Silence filled the air. Sang Qi slumped his shoulders, shook his head, and gave a self-deprecating twitch at the corner of his mouth.
"I understand, I get it." Sang Qi's eyes reddened instantly, and tears were about to well up again.
At first, she thought this person could save her and Lu Min as well.
In reality, Lu Min was not rescued by anyone and was shot dead by Qian Ganpeng while covered in wounds.
She lost this round without any surprise.
"Call me if you need anything." The man's voice was cold and ruthless.
After saying that, he turned and left the ward.
Sang Qi withdrew her gaze, lay back down on the bed, turned to her side, closed her eyes, and tried to stop the sadness through sleep.
………
The heavy rain stopped before dawn, and the sun shone brightly.
Sang Qi woke up only after the sunlight streamed in hurt her eyes.
She got out of bed, walked to the windowsill, opened the window, and a refreshing, crisp breeze rushed in, while the warm sunlight enveloped her.
The sky after the rain is always exceptionally blue, so clean that there isn't a single cloud.
Sang Qi admired the scenery for a while before sitting back down on the bed.
The nurses and doctors came to check on her routinely. She was fine and would be discharged after a few more days of observation.
During my hospitalization, the man came by a few times, but he didn't say anything. When he came, he would just sit to the side and look at his phone, rarely speaking to me.
At first, Sang Qi tried to find out his true identity through casual conversation, but he was always taciturn or silent. Gradually, Sang Qi stopped trying to strike up a conversation.
The day before he was discharged from the hospital, he handed Sang Qi his plane ticket back to Nanjing three days later.
Sang Qi took the plane ticket, somewhat surprised.
They even bought her plane ticket.
"After returning to Nanjing, live a good life. If possible, don't go to the Yunnan-Guizhou region again. Qian Ganpeng's influence is entrenched there. If you want to survive, try to avoid that area."
“And…” he added, “Don’t think about suicide anymore. Lu Min doesn’t want to see you like this. Don’t do anything foolish. Live well.”
This was his final instruction to Sang Qi.
Sang Qi's gaze was firm, and she unconsciously clenched the plane ticket in her hand. She nodded and said, "I understand, thank you."
The man waved his hand in response.
"By the way, what's your name?" Sang Qi looked up at him, her face full of sincerity.
The man seemed to have no intention of saying anything, only smiling indifferently: "It doesn't matter. We may never see each other again. Whether you know it or not is irrelevant."
"All right……"
This person is really strange. He knows everything about everyone else, but he just won't talk about his own affairs.
"Bon Voyage."
These were his last words to Sang Qi.
………
Three days later, the plane that took off from Taiyuan landed in Nanjing.
After exiting the terminal, Sang Qi took a taxi directly back to the city.
As winter approached, the car window was half-open, letting in a cold draft, but Sang Qi didn't feel cold.
Looking out at the city's skyscrapers, she couldn't help but feel as if she were in another world.
In the past, she traveled through remote high-altitude areas, from ancient cities to snow-capped mountains, to wilderness, and finally to forests...
The journey was thrilling, yet also filled with sweetness and joy.
Now that she's back in the city, back in a safe place, her emotions suddenly become complicated, a mixture of unease and strangeness.
After a drive of more than an hour, Sang Qi returned home.
That was the house her mother left behind. She used to live there with her mother, but now she lives alone.
When I got home, all I saw were familiar things and smells.
She first opened the doors and windows of the living room and her bedroom to let in some fresh air. The weather in Nanjing was nice today, sunny and warm, though it was chilly.
After settling her luggage, Sang Qi took a hot shower and then ordered takeout.
After ordering takeout, she walked to the living room while drying her hair. As soon as she sat down, she thought about the storage device.
Everyone says the storage device is on her, and that her father is Chen Yaohua, which plunges her into deep confusion.
She got up and walked to her mother's room.
She has never set foot in her mother's room since her mother passed away.
She felt that the only way to resolve her doubts was to open this door, so without saying a word, she opened the door.
The room's furnishings and layout remained unchanged from the previous one.
Sang Qi entered the room, which was dark. She drew back the blackout curtains, and sunlight instantly flooded the room, making it bright. She then opened the window to allow air to circulate between the window and the open door.
Sang Qi sat down at her mother's desk, opened the drawer, and found several photo albums and notebooks inside.
She first flipped through the photo albums, the first few of which were photos of her growing up, living with her mother, and taking pictures of her travels.
Looking at these photos again, tears welled up in my eyes.
She wiped her face and continued looking at the remaining photo album.
The photo album was old and worn, and it was clear that my mother often looked through it.
Sang Qi carefully flipped through the photo album. The first photo on the album was of her mother and a man.
It was a photo of my mother with a young man when she was young. The background of the photo was a range of snow-capped mountains, and the surrounding area was vast and desolate, as if it had been taken in a high-altitude region.
Was that her father?
She turned to the next page, which was mostly filled with photos of her mother and the man, including their wedding photo.
The mother, dressed in a wedding gown, embraced and kissed a man in a suit. That was the first time Sang Qi had seen that photograph.
She pulled the photo out of the album, gently stroking her mother's face with her fingertips, then subconsciously flipped the photo over.
There was a line of text written on the back of the photo.
"Yaohua, I will never leave you in this lifetime."
Yaohua?
Chen Yaohua?
Sang Qi was shocked; it turned out that Chen Yaohua really was her father.
My mother really is Chen Yaohua's wife.
After looking at the photo album, she immediately went to look at the notebooks her mother had left behind.
The first few books contained only trivial notes, but the one placed at the very back, at the very bottom, contained the important information.
That was my mother's diary.
She had never known that her mother had a habit of keeping a diary.
Sang Qi carefully flipped through the diary her mother had left behind, reading almost every single entry.
After reading it, Sang Qi's heart was in turmoil, unable to find peace, and her emotions remained unsettled for a long time.
She regained her senses in a daze, and her thoughts gradually became clear. Her father was indeed Chen Yaohua.
However, as a gang leader, he had many enemies, so his wife and daughters were never known to outsiders.
The relationship was so secretive that even she, the only daughter, was unaware of her father's existence.
The diary makes no mention of the so-called storage device.
However, Qian Kunpeng, Jin Hai, and others unanimously believed that Chen Yaohua had given her the storage device, and were quite certain that this could not be baseless.
Could it be that the so-called storage device is actually inside me?
Sang Qi went back to her room to search for things, turning everything upside down but finding nothing.
It wasn't until she bent down and saw the titanium steel necklace hanging from her neck that she realized what was happening.
My thoughts drifted back to a day before my mother passed away.
That day, her mother gave her a necklace, something that never happened before.
She was puzzled at the time. Her mother never gave her such impractical jewelry, and it wasn't a holiday. Her mother's sudden gift made her curious.
"Why did you suddenly give me this?" she asked.
The mother picked up the necklace with a smile: "I saw it while shopping, thought it was pretty, so I bought it for you."
Sang Qi examined the necklace; it was a very masculine titanium steel chain with a titanium steel plate hanging from it, engraved with some strange totems and unreadable characters.
"Try it on." Her mother warmly put it on her.
After wearing it that time, Sang Qi never took it off again.
Now, seeing the necklace around her neck, she belatedly realized what had happened.
She casually took off the necklace, held it in her hand and examined it carefully, looking inside and out, but found nothing wrong with it.
Is this just an ordinary necklace?
Just as Sang Qi was racking her brains trying to figure it out, her phone suddenly vibrated and rang.
This startled Sang Qi, who lost her grip on the necklace and it fell to the ground.
She ignored the necklace and quickly answered the phone.
The call was from a food delivery company.
The takeout I just ordered has arrived.
She opened the door, took the takeout, casually put it on the coffee table, and then went back to her mother's room.
She picked up the necklace that had fallen to the ground and was surprised to find a hidden secret inside the titanium steel plate on the necklace.
Because it had just fallen to the ground, a crack appeared in the titanium steel sheet, and that crack seemed easy to open.
With just a little force, Sang Qi pried open the titanium steel sheet, revealing a tiny opening like a small mechanism. Inside was something resembling a mobile phone memory card, smaller than a fingernail.
Is this the storage device?
Sang Qi held it in her palm and stared at it. For no reason, her nose felt sore, and tears welled up in her eyes. In an instant, she couldn't stop crying.
So the storage device really was on her. If she had discovered it sooner, just a little bit sooner, perhaps Lu Min wouldn't have died, wouldn't have...
Sang Qi held the small storage device in her hand, tears streaming down her face, her heart breaking, feeling like she was about to suffocate.
She still retained a sliver of reason, and quickly suppressed her grief.
She composed herself and examined the small object in disbelief in her palm.
This is the storage device that everyone is fighting over. She wanted to find out what secrets it held, but after looking at it for a long time, she still couldn't figure it out.
She didn't know much about computers and technology, and if she wanted to crack the secrets, she would have to ask her senior classmates from the computer science department when she was in school.
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