Chapter 35: The Unheard Cries

(Page 1/3)

The old wooden building of the municipal archives glowed a tea-brown in the morning light. As Su Wangying carried a cardboard box down the corridor, her shoe soles made faint, squeaking sounds on the waxed floor.

She had specifically chosen to wear a linen-white shirt today, the cuffs secured with blue cloth bands—a rule she had learned from an old archivist to prevent sweat from corroding ancient documents.

At the very top of the box lay a copy of the *Classic of Burials* from the Republican era. As she shifted it, fine particles drifted from the dark red flyleaf, looking like dried scabs.

Just as Su Wangying reached for her gloves, something jabbed her fingertip.

She looked down and saw an old, gray-covered book pressed at the bottom. Its spine was worn smooth and shiny, and the title, *Elementary Sign Language Tutorial*, had faded almost to white.

"This wasn't listed in the donation manifest." She flipped to the copyright page: printed in 1998 by the "Qiyin School for the Deaf and Mute."

The paper smelled of damp mold, but as she opened the first page, a sudden chill crept up the back of her neck. The edges of the pages were covered in fine, dense scratches, as if made by fingernails repeatedly tracing the surface, shimmering with an iridescent, mother-of-pearl luster in the sunlight.

Su Wangying’s breathing quickened.

She heard it.

Not with her ears, but through a more ancient sense: her temples throbbed as if countless needles were pricking her auditory nerves.

The scratches danced on her retinas, gradually connecting into lines—it was sign language. "Quiet," "Focus," "The teacher is watching you."

"Xiao Su?" Old Zhang from the office next door poked his head in. "Need help moving..."

Before he could finish, the book in Su Wangying's hand hit the floor with a thud.

She staggered, gripping the edge of the desk, her nails digging crescent marks into the wood grain.

The box tipped over. The *Classic of Burials* landed near her feet, but her eyes remained locked on the sign language manual. The pages were turning on their own, from the first chapter to the last, accelerating until they clicked to a stop at a page holding a dried ginkgo leaf.

On the back of the leaf was a line written in pen: "Xiao Tang learned 'thank you' today. Her hands are like butterflies."

Su Wangying’s knees went weak.

Before darkness swallowed her, the last thing she touched was the spine of that book. The rough texture felt exactly like Xiao Tang—a deaf girl she had met at a special education center three years ago, who always used sign language to say, "Big sister's hands are so warm."

"The patient's EEG shows continuous high-frequency discharge in the auditory cortex, yet there is no physical stimulus in the external auditory canal," the doctor on duty said, removing his glasses. "In twenty years of practice... I have never seen a case like this."

Shen Mo stood at the doorway of the ward, his knuckles pressing against the freezing doorframe.

Su Wangying’s hand was still clutching the sign language manual, tiny beads of blood seeping from her fingertips—the result of gripping it too tightly.

He noticed her eyelashes fluttering, as if chasing a sound only she could hear.

"It’s not a sound..." she whispered, tears pooling on her lashes. "It’s the feeling of 'being heard.'"

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"It’s like countless children are crowded inside my ears, reciting lessons in sign language. Their hands are moving, and though I can't hear any sound, I know... I know what they are saying."

Shen Mo’s Adam’s apple bobbed.

He crouched down and used tweezers to gently flip through the book.

A yellowed library card fluttered out from between the pages. The last registration date was three days ago, and the borrower’s column contained seven names. Beside each name was a crooked symbol—as if written with the left hand, the strokes stiff and childlike.

"These symbols." He pressed his knuckles white as he snapped a photo of the card to send to Xiao Wu. "Check them. Immediately."

Xiao Wu’s frantic typing echoed over the phone. "Seven people. All of them borrowed the same batch of old textbooks from the city library within the last month. The one who spent the least time—only 23 minutes reading—lost their voice immediately afterward. They were all repeatedly writing these symbols before they fell ill, and... they’re changing."

"How?"

"They’re becoming more like the handwriting of one specific person."

"Whose?"

"Teacher Lin Qiuping from the Qiyin School." Xiao Wu pulled up an old photograph: a teacher in a blue tunic standing at a blackboard, her hands forming the sign for "Please sit." "There was a fire at the school three years ago. She was the last to evacuate and was buried in the basement. The official report says the basement wasn't registered; it might have been an illegal structure."

Shen Mo tapped a rapid rhythm on the desktop.

As he grabbed his coat, he glanced at the book by Su Wangying’s bed. The scratches on the edges of the pages suddenly reminded him of the creases in Zhao Yuhang’s experimental logs—all marks of obsession.

Police tape cordoned off the ancient books section of the library. Old Zhou, the administrator, wrung his hands. "Forensic Investigator Shen, those books... are you sure you want to touch them?"

Shen Mo put on a protective mask embedded with a bone-conduction headset modified by Xiao Wu, capable of broadcasting his EEG frequencies in real-time.

As he opened a copy of *Life and Language*, a sudden hum erupted in his headset.

His pupils contracted. It was children’s voices—hundreds of them—reciting *Autumn Rain* in unison: "The autumn rain has a box of colorful paints..." The tone was as mechanical as a recording, devoid of breathing or inflection, as if seeping out from a vacuum.

His temples throbbed.

When he turned to the illustration page, the hair on the back of his neck stood up. The little girl in the red cotton coat in the drawing was turning her eyes toward him.

A moment ago, she had been looking toward the inner margin, but now her black, grape-like pupils were fixed directly on the bridge of his nose.

He flipped the page frantically. The boy in the next illustration was also turning his eyes. The gaze of every child seemed to be pulled by a string, tracking his every movement.

(Page 3/3)

"Found it," Xiao Wu’s message popped up. "Construction surveillance at the old school site shows the foundation revealed a basement. The walls are covered in charred blackboards, all carved with sign language symbols. I had someone sample the blackboard dust; the phosphorus content is absurdly high, identical to the composition of neurotransmitters. Shen, that dust isn't residue... it’s a memory carrier, like the magnetic powder on a tape."

Late at night, Su Wangying’s apartment smelled of traditional medicine.

She sat on the carpet with the sign language manual spread before her, her fingertips forming the sign for "What is your name?"

Outside the window, the glass of the old building was veiled in condensation. Suddenly, a line of text slowly appeared: "Teacher Lin’s Final Lesson."

Shen Mo stared at the video on his phone, his breath hitching.

In the video, Su Wangying’s shadow was moving, her hands forming "Please speak," while the words on the glass began to change: "I want to give the children..." "Their voices shouldn't be..." "Listen to me..."

"The reverberation isn't just a copy of memory," he wrote in his notebook, the pen tip tearing the paper. "It’s constructing a cognitive loop. It needs a response. It needs an audience. Every line we read is acting as its voice."

His phone buzzed. It was a message from Xiao Wu: "Construction at the Qiyin site has stopped. Boss Zhao says the data center needs a 're-evaluation of safety coefficients.' But I hacked into their surveillance and saw the basement entrance has been sealed with riot-grade concrete."

Shen Mo closed his notebook and looked out the window.

Moonlight shone on Su Wangying’s sign language manual. The scratches glowed with a ghostly blue light in the night, looking like countless small hands waving between the pages.

He touched the bone-conduction headset in his pocket. It still held the recording of those children’s voices from the library—the unison recitation without the sound of breathing, which now sounded like a countdown.

"Tomorrow," he whispered, his voice swept away by the night wind. "We go to the old school."