But if he had to make up some plausible excuse to make him wait these four days, it would have been better not to have called him at all. They should have just tried to get through these four days on their own.
But the call had been made, and he was already on his way.
What’s done is done. He was caught between a rock and a hard place.
Yu Xian paced anxiously under the rain shelter. No matter how he started the conversation, it seemed destined to trigger a chain reaction he couldn’t control.
’I’ll just have to say it and see how he reacts.’
Just then, a pair of headlights lit up the end of the street.
A black SUV slowly approached, its wipers sweeping back and forth across the windshield. Its tires rolled through the puddles, sending up a spray of water.
The vehicle stopped in front of the apartment building. The driver’s side window slowly rolled halfway down, revealing his cousin’s sharp, chiseled face.
Yu Zhengze leaned out, his brow slightly furrowed.
"Get in."
Yu Xian pulled open the passenger door and slid inside. The car’s heater was on, and the warm air blowing on his face carried the faint scent of tobacco.
His cousin didn’t start the engine. He turned to the side and looked Yu Xian up and down, his gaze lingering on his face for two seconds before his brow relaxed slightly.
"Where to?"
"School, I guess."
"Are you hurt?"
"No, it’s not that kind of trouble."
His cousin rolled the window back up, shutting out the downpour. The cabin fell silent.
"Talk," Yu Zhengze’s voice was flat. He took a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, pulled one out, and stuck it between his lips.
"What’s going on?"
Yu Xian leaned back in his seat, staring at the streaks of rain on the windshield that were wiped away only to gather again. He was silent for a few seconds.
"Do you remember me telling you about TDI?"
The words were barely out of his mouth when Yu Zhengze’s eyebrow twitched, but he didn’t interrupt, gesturing for Yu Xian to continue.
"There’s a new audio technology now. This audio can hijack a person’s brainwaves during sleep, locking them to a specific frequency. When multiple people’s brainwaves are hijacked to the same frequency..." Yu Xian paused, then said slowly, "they enter the same dreamscape. In other words, they’re ’networked’ in their dreams."
He glanced at his cousin. Yu Zhengze’s expression hadn’t changed, but Yu Xian noticed that the cigarette dangling from his lips had suddenly stopped twitching.
"The most dangerous part is that this dream can freely access the memories of every networked person without any permission or authorization. For example, if it needs to construct a ’note with Yu Xian’s bank card PIN’ while building the dream, my memory will be precisely accessed to generate it with the real information. And I might not even realize it’s happening."
Yu Zhengze turned his head, frowning, his sharp eyes fixed on Yu Xian.
"Do you have any proof for any of this?"
Yu Xian had expected this reaction from his cousin.
Any criminal detective who relies on physical evidence would have the same first reaction: disbelief.
Just like when he was in the office telling them Xia Li had vanished into thin air.
But this time, Yu Xian didn’t back down.
"I know it sounds crazy," Yu Xian said, his tone steady and earnest.
"But I have complete test logs and a sample of the audio that can hijack brainwaves. I can replicate it for you, and you’ll see for yourself that what I’m saying is true."
The cabin was silent for a few seconds. The wipers scraped rhythmically—a swipe, the water gathered, another swipe, it gathered again.
"Source of information," Yu Zhengze said, his voice icy.
"Where did you learn about this stuff?"
Yu Xian’s heart skipped a beat. ’Here it comes,’ he thought. ’The one question I was dreading.’
"I... intercepted it by chance."
"Intercepted?" Yu Zhengze scoffed and turned his head, staring hard at Yu Xian.
"Do you have any idea what you’re saying?"
"I do," Yu Xian said, looking at Yu Zhengze just as earnestly.
"Nonsense!" Yu Zhengze slammed his hand on the steering wheel. Yu Xian had never seen his cousin this angry. His voice suddenly rose. "I’m asking you where you got this information! Where did you get this intel! Do you think I’m playing games with you?! Or do you think I can’t find out if you don’t tell me?"
"I don’t want to say!" Yu Xian raised his voice, too.
He looked at the man before him, the man who had always treated him like a child who needed protection. He took a deep breath and said, enunciating every word,
"I’m grown up now. I’m an adult. I can make my own judgments, and I have principles I have to follow."
Yu Zhengze was stunned.
He stared at Yu Xian’s face, his eyes filled with astonishment.
Yu Xian turned back to face the front, staring at the curtain of rain on the windshield. His voice wasn’t loud, but it was firm.
"Article 173 of the Rules of Criminal Procedure: When a person reporting a case, making an accusation, or acting as an informant is unwilling to reveal their identity, that identity must be kept confidential."
Yu Zhengze gave Yu Xian a long, deep look.
In his gaze, there was anger and worry, but more than that, there was a complex, unreadable emotion.
He took out a lighter and lit the cigarette he’d been holding, unlit, this whole time. After a long moment, he exhaled a single word:
"Fine."