Chapter 110 Are These All Lies from the Deep Sea?

Sitting in his wheelchair, Zhao Xilai had expected a lengthy explanation, but he never imagined that Lu Nanzhi would give him such an answer.

If…

There was no runaway train at all.

Then those who were tied to the abandoned tracks and sacrificed… were innocent victims.

Their sacrifices were meaningless.

The trade-offs on both ends of the scale were also meaningless.

“This… sounds familiar…”

The old man murmured.

Perhaps it was because of his age, or because his time was approaching, countless fragmented images from his long life surged forth, and for a moment he couldn’t remember who had said this.

The wheelchair rolled to the top of Little Barren Mountain.

There stood a wooden tombstone.

After struggling to recall for a long time, Zhao Xilai finally grasped that fleeting inspiration.

With a complex expression, he said, “I remember… Lao Lu said this to me.”

“So you were also a member of the Guwenhui (Ancient Text Society)…”

Lu Nanzhi crouched down, sweeping away the dust accumulated on the wooden tombstone. She neither admitted nor denied it.

The dust of the past was brushed away with those few gestures.

The three words “Guwenhui (Ancient Text Society)” were the truth that Zhao Xilai had been unwilling to tell Lu Nanzhi all these years… The reason why Huazhi (Flower Flag) was fully taken over by the Zhao family after Lu Cheng’s death was because of the Guwenhui.

As early as twenty years ago, the federal government had ordered the extermination of all members of the Guwenhui.

Leaving none alive!

This purge lasted for many years.

Though the skin was destroyed, the blood and bones remained.

Before the Lion Alley Massacre… the Dadu (Metropolis) Council had launched a secret investigation into Lu Cheng, and this secret investigation task was led by Zhao Xilai. At the time, the investigation team strongly suspected that Lu Cheng was a remnant member of the Guwenhui and had obtained some evidence.

The federal government suspected that.

Some survivors of the Guwenhui were still in contact.

And their method of contact… was through encrypted meetings established in the Deep Sea network. Because the founder of this organization was Alan Turing, they still retained the crude method of subduing the Deepwater Zone’s authority.

The federal government called it… the “Encryption Gate”.

Because the Deep Sea network was fully open to all people of the Five Continents, with billions of people connecting every day and countless computational powers being distributed… the Guwenhui’s encrypted conference room was attached to one of its roots, adopting the same source algorithm as the Deepwater Zone. To find this theoretically existing independent space was like searching for a needle in a haystack.

Unless, one could find the so-called “Encryption Gate”.

The investigation team suspected that Lu Cheng carried the “Encryption Gate”… and the Lion Alley Massacre that followed proved the man’s “innocence”.

This was the real reason for Zhao Xilai’s guilt.

But now.

Looking at the back of Lu Cheng’s daughter… he realized that the events of that year were not so simple.

Lu Nanzhi straightened the wooden tombstone, knelt before the grave, and respectfully kowtowed.

After doing this, she stood up, turned her back to the old man, took out a folded paper lantern from her pocket, and slowly unfolded it, using the remaining embers of the sandalwood incense to light the wick.

The last rays of twilight vanished beyond the horizon.

The light emitted by the lantern enveloped the entire Little Barren Mountain.

Lu Nanzhi finally spoke, “Actually, Lao Lu told me everything… about the investigation team… and about you…”

As the eldest daughter of the Lu family.

She had shouldered that secret responsibility earlier than Nan Jin… This weight might be a misfortune, but now it seemed that bearing this weight was a blessing.

If she had been any younger and unable to bear this responsibility, then the Hongmen (Red Gate) would have been exposed with the Lion Alley Massacre, and more than just Lao Lu would have died.

She slowly turned around, faced Zhao Xilai, and said calmly, “Yes… I am a member of the Guwenhui. The ‘Gate’ you are looking for is on me. The reason I oppose the bill is because I don’t trust the federal government, nor do I trust the Deep Sea.”

The old man’s expression was somewhat dazed.

After Lu Cheng’s death.

Those guys in the investigation team didn’t stop… they even proposed to continue investigating Lu Cheng’s family, determined to dig out the truth about the Guwenhui.

Zhao Xilai was furious at the time.

Because Lao Lu’s wife had passed away, and the only family left were two daughters, one just barely an adult, and the other still a child.

The so-called “investigation of family members” was to use the same tricks and tactics used on Lao Lu on the children!

He voiced strong opposition and protest.

And not long after the Lion Alley Massacre… the federal government began to fully support Zhao Xilai. He successfully took over Huazhi, and this absurd proposal was naturally directly rejected, and the original investigation team was also dismissed.

The investigation into the “Encryption Gate” disappeared. Zhao Xilai used his parliamentary privileges to raise the finalized investigation results on Lu Cheng’s file high, and then gently put them down.

The dead… have no secrets.

And that “Encryption Gate” that only existed in theory was also deemed by Zhao Xilai to be nonexistent.

The power of the council was also limited… With the complete disappearance of the Guwenhui, the federal government never established an investigation team again to pursue the illusory “Gate”.

He did all this because of Zhao Xilai’s guilt.

Because of this investigation, he became the owner of Huazhi as he wished, and also became the person in charge of Dadu. Anyone would see him as the biggest beneficiary of the Lion Alley case.

But at this moment.

In the old man’s heart, a stone suddenly fell to the ground.

He looked at Lu Nanzhi, the girl who had entered Huazhi ten years ago, still young and inexperienced. Over the past ten years, she had experienced much hardship and had become an independent “madam”.

In fact, after Lu Cheng’s death… he had regarded Lu Nanzhi as his own “daughter”.

This was definitely not because of guilt.

But because he also had tenderness in his heart, and also had hopes, and also had reluctance… Beneath that iron heart, he always remembered the agreement with Lu Cheng many years ago, that he shouldn’t be the only one raising the flag.

He also had a daughter.

If one day she could take over the flag for him… perhaps it wouldn’t be a violation of the agreement that year.

Now that Zhao Xilai knew the whole truth, he didn’t feel regret, but instead felt… fortunate.

If he had hesitated even a little at the time.

Then what would have happened after Lu Nanzhi was targeted by the investigation team… was self-evident.

“These… are not important anymore…”

The old man murmured softly, “Today, let’s not talk about those heavy topics… I’m here to see an old friend.”

At the end of his life.

He no longer needed to dwell on those painful, complicated, and difficult-to-distinguish right and wrong cognitions, consciousness, culture, beliefs, and other issues…

He just wanted to relax a little now, a little more relaxed.

So Zhao Xilai pushed the wheelchair hard, moving towards the wooden tombstone, gazing intently from a distance.

[Unnamed, Lu Cheng.]

What an ironic epitaph… Buried outside the barren mountain, a handful of forgotten bones, actually the backbone of the soul shaking the multi-layered building, the flag of ten thousand people.

Ten years later, no one remembers the name of Lu Cheng.

But compared to him.

He… was the real nobody.