Chapter 62: The Mistake Is Not in the Notes, But Rather...

The cold fluorescent lights of the autopsy room were still piercingly bright at four in the morning.

Shen Mo took off his rubber gloves, pressing his knuckles against the edge of the console as he stared at the newly printed waveform on the electroencephalogram machine.

During his watch on the seventh night, the miniature recorder he had hidden in his cuff was now connected to the neural monitor, translating the bioelectric signals from his cochlea into a pulsing green line.

"0.7 Hz..." he murmured the frequency, his Adam's apple bobbing.

In the morning mist of the potter's field three days ago, when the wandering figure dissipated, he had thought the residual wave had completely metabolized.

Yet now the monitor showed that the vestibular nerve endings were still exhibiting regular micro-tremors—matching precisely the geological pulse frequency at the patrol starting point of the crematorium, as measured by Director Lin using geological sensors.

The old wall clock in the corner struck four times.

Shen Mo bent down, took an otoscope from the drawer, and adjusted the angle against a reflector.

The pale blue crystals on the inner side of his right cochlea had vanished; those were the residue of evaporated turpentine. However, the sub-mucosal nerve plexus was twitching slightly in time with his heartbeat.

He recalled that while keeping watch outside the mourning tent on the seventh night, the scent drifting in the wind had not been that of rotting leaves, but a mixture of turpentine and rust—the smell of surgical scalpels being wiped with old medical cotton, repeatedly mentioned in the old archives.

"Ding—"

His phone vibrated on the desk; it was a WeChat video call invitation from Su Wanying.

Shen Mo pressed accept. On the screen, the woman was standing on a wooden ladder in the museum's storage room, dust staining the cuffs of her light brown knit sweater, her loose hair brushing against a yellowed duty logbook as it fell.

"I've found the night watch records from 1947." Her voice carried a suppressed urgency, her fingertips caressing the inner pages of the log. "Look here." The camera moved down. A light-gray dog hair was wedged into the edge of the page, alongside a marginal note faded to a pale brown ink: "Seventh night of the watch, dogs barking at the third watch, the person did not arrive."

Shen Mo's pupils contracted.

He remembered that in the manuscript fragment brought by Ah Huang the night before, the diary of Military Doctor Zhou Mingyuan mentioned: "Calling the roll on the seventh night is the final ritual of the night watch." And he himself, on the seventh night, had blown the wrong sequence of notes into the bone flute—the pentatonic scale, which should have been "gong, shang, jiao, zhi, yu," had instinctively come out as "jiao, zhi, gong, yu, shang."

"Back then, Military Doctor Zhou failed to crawl out of the mourning tent to complete the roll call on the seventh night because of a gunshot wound infection in his thigh." Su Wanying's fingertips moved along the edge of the marginal note. "The sequence you blew wrong matches his residual mouth shape at the moment of interruption perfectly." When she raised her head, her gaze through the screen pierced straight through to him. "Doctor Shen, you didn't terminate the ritual; you..."

"Became the person in its memory," Shen Mo finished the sentence, his throat tightening.

He remembered the photograph of the deceased's right hand gripping the bone flute last night; the arc of the dead man's white knuckles overlapped precisely with the hand shape he had used when blowing the wrong notes.

The phone suddenly rang with another incoming call alert, Director Lin's name blinking on the screen.

Shen Mo switched calls, and the documentary director's face appeared on the display against a backdrop of the monitoring room at the potter's field ruins, where dozens of screens flashed with a ghostly blue light.

"The humidity data you wanted." Director Lin clicked his mouse, and a line graph popped up on one of the screens. "Ever since the anonymous stele was erected, at 1:13 AM every day, the soil moisture in front of the stele rises by 0.7% and lasts for 13.7 seconds—exactly the same as the resonance duration when the bone flute was buried." He brought up another piece of surveillance footage where Ah Huang was lying flat in front of the stele. "Look at the time it closes its eyes."

Shen Mo leaned closer to the screen.

On the first night, Ah Huang closed its eyes for 3 seconds; on the second night, 3.7 seconds; the third night, 4.4 seconds... delayed by 0.7 seconds every night.

He recalled how Ah Huang had crouched on the windowsill wagging its tail the night before, and suddenly understood that it was not calm at all; it was a kind of waiting carved into its genes—like a loyal dog waiting for its master to complete an unfinished night patrol.

"I need Xiaozhou's help." Shen Mo hung up the phone and grabbed his white lab coat, slipping it on. "She can spot anomalies in footprints."

Su Wanying had already climbed down from the wooden ladder, holding the duty logbook to her chest. "I'm coming with you."

The iron door in the back alley of the crematorium creaked in the chill of 5:30 AM.

Xiaozhou stood inside the door wearing an off-white knit sweater, clutching a glass jar filled with pale purple induction powder—borrowed by Su Wanying from the museum to capture the vibration trails of unnatural forces.

"We need to scatter the powder at the patrol starting point." Shen Mo squatted down, pointing to a sunken bluestone slab on the ground. "Military Doctor Zhou's combat boots wore a mark right here."

Xiaozhou nodded, her fingers gesturing rapidly. "I've seen the old photos; this is the position of the seventh step." Her sign language flowed like a stream, the mole at the corner of her eye trembling slightly with her movements.

The moment the powder was scattered, a delicate purple glow suffused the air.

Shen Mo stepped back two paces as the second hand of his watch pointed to 1:12.

Su Wanying gripped her phone, ready to record. Ah Huang suddenly darted out from the corner, crouching three steps away from the bluestone slab with its ears pricked upright.

Precisely at 1:13.

The first grain of powder moved.

The purple light spread along the ground, tracing first the vague outline of a shoe print, then the distinct pattern of a military boot—the wrinkles of the leather, the iron nails on the heel, matching the pair in Military Doctor Zhou's old photograph down to the smallest detail.

The second step, the third step... the footprint of the sixth step suddenly paused, as if someone were adjusting their breath.

When the seventh step fell, the purple light suddenly burst outward, overlapping two shoe prints together: one deeper, one shallower, the toe of the latter pointing slightly toward the heel of the former, like a pursuer catching up.

"It's rewalking," Xiaozhou's fingers traced paths in the air before her eyes. "But the seventh step..." Her hand suddenly stopped, her eyes tightening. "It forgot. The seventh step is supposed to pause."

A chill crept up the back of Shen Mo's neck.

He remembered a line from Zhou Mingyuan's manuscript: "Every seven steps the night watchman takes, he must pause for three breaths to ensure no shadow is following behind him." And on the seventh night, after blowing the wrong sequence of notes, he had paused for exactly three breaths—performing the exact same action as the military doctor who had failed to complete the roll call all those years ago.

When they returned to the autopsy room, dawn was already breaking.

Shen Mo opened the manuscript fragments sent by Professor Lin, the yellowed pages flipping at the edges in the morning breeze.

He searched page by page until his eyes were stung by a tiny marginal note at the very edge of the final page: "The night watch is not to supply a missing name, but to bear witness to 'I am here.'"

With a sharp snap, he closed the volume, his knuckles pressing until they turned white.

His phone vibrated in his palm with a message from Director Lin: "There are damp marks on the surface of the anonymous stele, like characters formed by dew." In the attached photograph, a character resembling "Shen" faintly appeared on the blank surface of the stele, the moisture trails still slowly spreading.

"Remove the anonymous stele," Shen Mo called Director Lin, his voice heavy. "It's not waiting for a name to be fully read; it's waiting for 'that person' to return.

Right now..." He gazed out the window where Ah Huang was still crouching in front of the stele, its tail beating rhythmically against the ground. "It thinks I am him."

Just as his voice trailed off, the door of the autopsy room was gently knocked upon.

Doctor Chen's silhouette was cast against the frosted glass, holding a faded iron box in his hand. The label on the lid was wrinkled by age, but the numbers "1945" remained clear.

"Doctor Shen." Doctor Chen pushed the door open, the iron box making a dull thud as it landed on the desk. "I dug this out while tidying the old forensic office. It might be related to the case you've been investigating lately."

Shen Mo stared at the iron box, a very faint scent of turpentine seeping from its edges.

He reached out to touch it, but before his fingertips even brushed the surface, he heard a faint, crisp snap from within the box—like a pen nib breaking, or the trailing note of a bone flute.

Outside the window, the character "Shen" in the morning mist grew clearer and clearer.