Agent: Intercepting Yu Manli at the start!

Chapter 24 Silence is the instinct for survival!

Zhou Xiao's gaze slowly swept over the two young faces, finally settling on Yu Xiaowan, and he asked, word by word, "Did your father leave behind a fountain pen?"

"pen?"

Yu Xiaowan paused for half a second, then her eyes lit up: "Right! There's an old fountain pen that's been kept in the drawer—what's wrong with it?"

"Could you please take it out and let me see it?"

"Okay!" She got up and quickly walked into the inner room, her steps light and brisk, carrying a hint of inexplicable anticipation.

Zhang Li frowned and stared at Zhou Xiao: "What exactly... do you want?"

He lowered his eyes and smiled, his expression resolute: "You'll find out soon enough."

Zhang Li's heart tightened, and her fingertips quietly curled up.

Not long after, Yu Xiaowan, clutching an old, worn-out fountain pen, strode up to Zhou Xiao and Zhang Li: "This is what my dad left me—I haven't touched it since he passed away. It's the only thing I still have of him."

To her, the pen was not an object, but a living thought.

Zhou Xiao's gaze darkened, and he gestured, "Xiao Wan, take the pen apart."

"Take it apart?" Yu Xiaowan frowned slightly, her eyes full of confusion, but she still held her breath and her fingertips trembled slightly as she unscrewed the pen cap section by section.

As soon as the pen cap came off, a tightly rolled-up piece of thin paper slipped out. The paper was yellowed and covered with tiny, densely packed handwriting...

Yu Xiaowan's pupils suddenly contracted, her fingers froze in mid-air, her lips moved silently, and she seemed to be nailed to the spot. She abruptly looked up, her gaze sweeping back and forth between Zhou Xiao and Zhang Li's faces, as if seeing them clearly for the first time.

Zhang Li was also stunned, her breath caught in her throat, and her eyes widened as she stared straight at Zhou Xiao—she never expected that Yu Shunnian's old pen, which he had used for many years, would contain a letter written in blood.

Everything was exactly as Zhou Xiao had anticipated.

The three of them leaned closer at the same time, their eyes fixed on the words on the paper:

My beloved daughter, Xiaowan:

As I write this, I hope you never read this letter. But there are some things I must say; if I don't write them down, no one will ever speak for me again.

First, I was an underground member of the Communist Party, staying in the mountain city to fight against the Japanese. I was doing work that couldn't be done in the light of day, but I couldn't stop.

Secondly, I recruited a comrade, codenamed "Camel." This person has a clean background and excellent abilities, and should have been a sharp blade on the front line of the fight against Japan—but recently strange things have been happening one after another, and I have narrowly escaped being assassinated three times, each time by him.

Human hearts are like fog; I cannot speak for myself, yet I have already placed a knife to my own throat. We've been out of contact for a long time. I'm alone in this mountain city, with no one to rely on. Today, I've decided to keep my promise to see him—I only hope I'm just being paranoid, I only hope he still remembers the burning heartbeat he had when we made our vows.

If you do not return, please be sure to have someone deliver this final letter to the organization. Whoever can read the code is a trustworthy person and a comrade-in-arms.

People may pass away and their names may be erased, but 400 million people remember them, and history remembers them.

Yu Shunnian's Last Words

As Yu Xiaowan read, tears streamed down her face, large drops falling onto the pages and soaking into dark welts. She had never imagined that her father, who always smiled, patted her head, and hummed tunes while repairing the radio, was this kind of person.

"Dad—" A sob ripped through her throat, and childhood images rushed back: her father's back as he worked at his desk late at night, the cold moonlight filtering through the cracks in the window, the candy wrappers he secretly slipped into her schoolbag... She squatted down, her shoulders shaking violently, crying so hard she could barely breathe.

Zhang Li's mind jolted, and his fingertips felt icy cold.

She herself was an underground member of the Kuomintang secret service, living a life of constant danger and peril. But she never knew that Yu Shunnian was also in the same boat.

In a flash, she stood up abruptly and reached behind her waist—in the blink of an eye, a black pistol was firmly pressed against Zhou Xiao's temple.

This reaction was not surprising. In Chongqing, revealing one's identity is tantamount to a death sentence.

Just as the muzzle pressed against his skin, Zhou Xiao flicked his wrist, so fast it was a blur, his five fingers gripping the barrel like iron clamps, twisting and pulling—Zhang Li felt his palm go empty, the gun already in his opponent's hand.

too fast.

It happened so fast she didn't even have time to pull the trigger.

"You're way off the mark." Zhou Xiao weighed the gun in his hand, blew lightly on the muzzle, and handed it back to her. "If you were really the enemy, you'd be counting the cracks in the bricks in the interrogation room right now, not drinking cold tea here."

Zhang Li froze, hesitatingly taking back the gun, but his gaze remained sharp as a knife: "How do you know Uncle Yu's identity? And how are you so sure the letter was hidden in the pen?"

Zhou Xiao smiled faintly: "You don't need to ask these questions. Zhang Li, who am I? — I'm the one who pulled you back from the brink of death at Xin Xin Cafe that day."

"My savior?" Zhang Li was stunned, his mind racing, but he couldn't recall a single clue.

"Forgot?" He smiled slightly. "At Heart Cafe, at three in the afternoon, you were fiddling with the radio when someone sat down diagonally across from you and casually asked, 'It's really windy today, why aren't the windows closed properly?'"

Heart Heart Cafe?

A flash of lightning struck Zhang Li's mind—that day! She was exchanging coded messages when the man, seemingly chatting casually, repeatedly glanced at the doorway and the second-floor stairwell. She instantly became alert and immediately put away her equipment. As she went outside, she was indeed caught in a checkpoint by Kuomintang agents. If it weren't for that one comment, "The window isn't closed properly," she would have been pinned down on the spot, forced to reveal the radio, the list, her identity—everything.

For the next few months, she secretly tried to track down the man, but to no avail.

So it was him?

"It was you?" Her voice tightened, her pupils dilated, and she stared intently at Zhou Xiao. "Was it you who reminded me that day?"

"Otherwise what?" he said calmly. "If it weren't for me, you'd be listening to the rain in the Zhaizidong prison right now."

"You're...one of us?" Zhang Li was taken aback at first, then a smile spread across his face, a mixture of shock and elation in his eyes. "You're also...a member of the underground Communist Party?"

Zhou Xiao just smiled and didn't answer.

He knew who they were, but the mountain city was teeming with informants, and the word "identity" carried immense weight. A single wrong word could stain the bluestone pavement with blood.

Silence is the instinct for survival.

Yu Xiaowan was still lost in grief. Zhou Xiao and Zhang Li's conversation seemed to be muffled by a thick pane of glass. She just clutched the paper tightly, her nails turning white, staring at the word "camel" over and over again. Suddenly, she looked up, grabbed Zhang Li's wrist, and cried out in a hoarse voice, "Sister Li...who is Camel? Tell me, who exactly is Camel?!"

Her eyes burned with fury, her voice trembling uncontrollably: "It was him...he killed my father!"

Before the words were even finished, the man was nearly out of control, his fingers digging deeply into Zhang Li's forearm: "Please, tell me!"

Zhang Li took her cold hand in his and gently wiped away her tears with his thumb: "Xiao Wan, don't be afraid. I promise you—I will personally pull this camel out of the woods."

Yu Xiaowan trembled violently, her eyes burning with a crimson fire, her nails digging almost into Zhou Xiao's wrist: "Zhou Xiao! Who is Camel—you must know! Tell me!"

Zhang Li also stared at him without blinking.

She trusted him. During the life-or-death ordeal at the Heart Heart Cafe, he was the one who reached out and pulled her out of the gun barrel; in the subsequent confrontations, he had countless opportunities to pull the trigger, yet he never fired a single shot at her or Yu Xiaowan. Even though he has never uttered a single word about being a member of the underground Communist Party, she trusted the discretion behind his silence.

She took half a step forward, her voice extremely low, yet sharp as a blade scraping against brick: "Zhou Xiao, since you recognized the suicide note hidden in Yu Shunnian's pen—it couldn't have been a mere coincidence. You know very well who Camel is, don't you?"

Zhou Xiao slowly swept his gaze across the two tense faces, his Adam's apple bobbing: "You really want to hear this?"

"I want to hear it!" Yu Xiaowan's voice cracked, each word dripping with blood. "He's the one who killed my dad! I have to find him and get revenge myself!"

"I must also get rid of this venomous fang." Zhang Li clenched his fist, his knuckles turning white. "Neither public duty nor personal vendetta will allow him to live."

Zhou Xiao paused, then raised his hand to wipe away the tears that had slid down Yu Xiaowan's chin, his movements as gentle as if afraid of breaking something: "Xiaowan, this is something you shouldn't be involved in... but you have the right to know the truth. What I'm about to say is top secret—once you hear it, there's no going back."

Following the original plot of "The Awakening of Insects," the secret hidden in that fountain pen would eventually shatter Yu Xiaowan's peaceful life. Revealing it now is merely shifting a storm to tonight.

Two pairs of eyes were fixed on his face.

He took a deep breath and uttered four words: "Fei Zhengpeng—Deputy Director of the Second Division of the Military Intelligence Bureau."

The air suddenly froze.

Zhang Li's pupils suddenly contracted, and his breath hitched; Yu Xiaowan swayed, her lips trembling, but she couldn't make a sound—Godfather? The Uncle Fei who always stuffed candy into her palm, taught her to write calligraphy, and shielded her from all the gossip?

It's so absurd it's chilling.

A thought flashed through Zhang Li's mind: How could a veteran underground party member rise to a powerful deputy position in the Military Intelligence Bureau? If he hadn't betrayed them, what a sharp knife he would have been! But ironically, this knife had turned around and stabbed itself into the back of one of their own…

Looking at their distraught appearance, Zhou Xiao's voice deepened: "Don't believe me? Zhang Li, you can contact your upline immediately to verify. Yu Shunnian must have left traces when he developed his downline—Camel has a bad habit: when folding paper, he only folds two triangles, symmetrical on both sides, with sharp corners, like two daggers sticking out."

"A double triangle?" Yu Xiaowan grabbed a sticky note from the table, her fingers flying across the paper as she quickly folded it into a sharp double triangle. She held it up to Zhou Xiao's eyes, her fingertips still trembling. "Is this it?!"

Zhou Xiao nodded: "That's right."

In that instant, Yu Xiaowan felt as if all the bones in her body had been removed. She slumped into the chair, her face as white as if covered in ash, unable to even cry.

Fei Zhengpeng, Yu Shunnian, and Zhuang Qiushui—three men who grew up barefoot in the mud. Fei Zhengpeng once held Zhuang Qiushui's hand, but when he turned to pursue his own future, it was Yu Shunnian who stayed by his bedside, his eyes red with worry. In the end, Zhuang Qiushui married Yu Shunnian and gave birth to Yu Xiaowan. Years later, Fei Zhengpeng returned home in glory, but Zhuang Qiushui had already turned to dust on her grave. The old fire in his heart hadn't been extinguished; instead, it had turned into poison. Yu Shunnian wanted to recruit him into the organization, but he first put a knife to his benefactor's neck—to protect himself, and even more so to remove the thorn in his heart.

Zhou Xiao didn't mention these things.