Chapter 321: The Empty Paper Bag

Three knocks at the door. Zhi'an was shaking noodles into the pot, didn't turn around. "Get it."

She opened the door. Lu Jibai stood outside, scarf still on, left hand holding that kraft paper bag, the mouth gaping open. Wind from the stairwell rushed up, puffing out the bottom of the bag, then letting it fall slack again.

"Really brought it over empty."

"That's what we said yesterday." He stepped in and changed his shoes, setting the paper bag beside the stack of binders on the corner of the desk. Nine binders, neatly lined up, the top one still wrapped in old newspaper with the corners folded over the back. He glanced at it but didn't reach for it.

Zhi'an leaned out from the stove. "Lu-ge, you eating noodles?"

"Yeah."

"One bowl?"

"Two."

"You two each get one, or you get two."

"Your sister gets one, I get one." He hung his scarf over the back of a chair. "Your own portion, you figure out yourself."

Zhi'an added a ladle of water to the pot and dropped in three servings of noodles, stirring with chopsticks and pushing the cilantro bits away from the edge of one bowl. "Lu-ge's bowl, no cilantro."

"You remembered."

"Jie told me." Zhi'an brought that bowl out first, slid it toward him. "She said you don't eat it."

She moved the paper bag a little closer to her own side and pinched the mouth of it. "What's the plan today."

"Not going into the village today." He said, "And no phone calls to the village either."

"I wasn't going to call."

"I was afraid you might."

She picked up a mouthful of noodles and didn't answer that. Two scallion slices floated on the broth, steam fogging her glasses. She wiped the lenses with a finger.

"Then what are we looking into."

"Whatever's on paper." He nudged the vinegar bottle toward her. "The kind of paper anyone can look up."

"Public records?"

"Public records." He said, "Permits, penalties, registrations. It's all posted online for anyone to see. Read a line, copy a line, note the source."

Zhi'an looked up from his own bowl. "You two working today?"

"The firm's on holiday," she said. "I can get the door open."

"Then I'm coming too."

"You stay home and do your homework." She glanced toward the exercise books spread open in his room. "Three days off—don't leave it all for the last day."

"It's not like I don't know how to do it."

"Knowing how and staying up till midnight doing it are two different things." She carried her bowl to the sink. "Heat up your own lunch."

They left at 8:55. The stairwell was cold, a white haze on the handrail. Someone downstairs was sweeping up firecracker scraps, the scratch of the broom dragging all the way to the mouth of the alley.

The noodle shop's door was shut, a cloth hung behind the glass, a sheet of paper taped to the door. She went up through the small side door. The stairwell light was sound-activated—two steps, it clicked on; walk past, it went dark. No heat in the second-floor hallway, only a gray-white strip of light leaking from under a door.

9:40. She flipped through the keys in her hand, found the oldest one, and jiggled it twice before the lock turned. The room smelled of paper and old wood. The fluorescent light flickered twice before catching. The desk, the paneled walls, the chair by the window—all in their usual places.

"Materials room, second shelf." She said it to herself and walked over.

She carried out the medical case volume and set it on the long table. The white label on the spine read "Drug Sources." She flipped to the evidence index. Behind the seventh page, at the very bottom of the stack, a single page was clipped with a paperclip.

The paperclip had a spot of rust.

She slid the page out and flattened it. The one she'd printed on April 7—the group's external investment list. On the last page, below the two pharmaceutical companies, there was one more entry: Jiangzhou Hengyue New Materials Co., Ltd., business scope including "battery cathode materials." That day she'd said, "This one has nothing to do with the case." He Xiufen had taken it and scanned it top to bottom, then said, "Leave it for now."

It had sat there ever since.

"Which page." Lu Jibai stopped beside her.

"This line." She turned the paper toward him. "Jiangzhou Hengyue New Materials Co., Ltd., business scope: battery cathode materials."

"That one line."

"That one line."

"One line's enough." He took the paper and held it to the window, reading that line, pressing his thumb on "New Materials" before setting it down. "Make a copy. Put the original back exactly where it was. Don't move a single page."

The copier was slow to warm up; the green button took two presses before paper fed through. The copy came out with a gray shadow along the edge—dust on the glass. She copied the shadow too, folded it in half, and tucked it into her notebook, behind the Qingshi Village page. The original went back, edges aligned, the paperclip pressed into its old indent.

10:40. The computer took nearly two minutes to boot, the fan rattling like it was out of breath. He pulled over another chair. A blank sheet lay open on the desk, pen cap off, and across the top he wrote: Source.

"Read," he said. "Read one item, I record one. Don't skip, don't add."

"National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System." She rubbed her palms on her knees and typed. "Jiangzhou Hengyue New Materials Co., Ltd."

The page loaded. She read line by line: "Registration status: active. Registered address: Jiangzhou High-tech Zone. Business scope… battery cathode materials."

He wrote. When he finished, he looked up: "The branch office section—anything there."

"No. Not a single one registered."

"So the plant isn't at the registered address." He said, "Keep going. Find the permits."

Under the pollution discharge permit section, she entered the company name and one line appeared: Jiangzhou Hengyue New Materials Co., Ltd., Baixi Plant.

Her hand paused on the mouse for a moment before she clicked.

"Production and business premises address," she read. "Baixi Village East Hill."

"Copy it exactly." His pen tapped the paper. "Word for word, don't change a thing."

"Baixi Village East Hill." She read it again, slower.

"Main pollutants."

"Lead and its compounds."

Her voice dropped half a notch at that word. He stopped writing: "Speak clearly."

"Lead and its compounds."

"Next line."

"Production wastewater treated and reused, no external discharge."

"How many discharge outlets."

"Wastewater outlets: none. Stormwater outlets: one."

He wrote even slower than before. When he finished, he lifted the pen and drew a horizontal line under "stormwater outlets: one": "Copy this item separately, on its own page."

"Why."

"No wastewater outlet, but there's a stormwater outlet," he said. "The public filing says so, so we copy it that way. As for why—we'll ask later."

11:08, the first printout came out. The bottom corner had a print timestamp, a few small gray characters. He held the footer up to the light and nodded: "The time's on it. Paper with a timestamp can hold up."

"Municipal Ecology and Environment Bureau." She typed in the URL. The site was slow. "Administrative penalty disclosure… search by company name."

One result.

Party: Jiangzhou Hengyue New Materials Co., Ltd., Baixi Plant. Violation: In September 2025, enforcement officers conducted an on-site inspection and sampling; lead concentration in discharge from the stormwater outlet exceeded the discharge standard. Penalty: fine; ordered to rectify.

"How much," he asked.

"How much what."

"The fine."

She scrolled down one line, glanced at the figure, then scrolled back. "…We don't need to copy that number."

"Why."

"It's not what matters to the child." She heard herself say it, then corrected: "What matters to the child is that outlet—and that lead."

He didn't press further, just finished writing the source for that entry: Municipal Ecology and Environment Bureau website, Administrative Penalty Disclosure, January 1, 11:23.

Three pages printed. He straightened them in order, aligned the edges, and clipped them into an old folder. The printer was still warm, the pages smelling of toner. She shut down the computer; he gathered the paper scraps from the desk and dropped them in the wastebasket.

They locked up at five to twelve. The stairwell light had a pull string. She tugged it; the cord snapped back against the wall.

"One more thing," he said as they went downstairs.

"What."

"The full penalty decision." He said, "What's posted online is just excerpts. The full document has the on-site notes, the sampling records, the sampling point locations."

"The offices are closed for the holiday."

"So we wait out these three days." He pushed open the stairwell door, and the wind rushed in.

15:20. At home, the nine binders were spread across the table, her notebook open beside the stack, the source sheet pinned under her right hand. His handwriting was neater than hers, line after line straight as if measured with a ruler.

On the Qingshi Village page, below the line about "no one willing to point the way," she skipped a line and started four new ones.

One item per line. One source per line.

Jiangzhou Hengyue New Materials Co., Ltd., business scope includes battery cathode materials. (Printed page at the bottom of the medical case volume, last page of the investment list, printed April 2026)

Jiangzhou Hengyue New Materials Co., Ltd. Baixi Plant, production and business premises: Baixi Village East Hill. (National Pollution Discharge Permit Management Information Platform, public portal, printed January 1, 11:08)

Main pollutants: lead and its compounds. Production wastewater treated and reused, no external discharge; one stormwater outlet. (Same as above)

September 2025, lead concentration in discharge from the plant's stormwater outlet exceeded the discharge standard; fined and ordered to rectify. (Municipal Ecology and Environment Bureau website, Administrative Penalty Disclosure, printed January 1, 11:23)

When she finished, she lifted the pen, wanting to add one more line beneath those four. The pen tip hovered over the paper for a while. In the end, she set it down.

He picked up the paper bag and shook it. The bottom was empty; set back on the desk, it wouldn't stand and tipped over onto the binders.

"Those lines are from the internet," he said. "Anyone can look them up. They don't go in the bag."

"Then when does the bag get something in it."

"The day someone brings us a name."

"What if no one ever comes."

"Then we keep waiting." He stood the bag upright, leaning it against the edge of the binders. "Waiting doesn't cost anything."

16:40, the desk in Zhi'an's room thumped, the chair scraping half a foot across the floor. He came out for water, the cup set on the table's edge, his eyes drifting to the four lines in her notebook.

"Jie."

"Yeah."

"What's the factory called?"

She half-closed the notebook, then opened it again, pulled out a trimmed corner of paper from the desk, flattened it, and wrote: Jiangzhou Hengyue New Materials Co., Ltd., Baixi Plant. Beneath it, a smaller line: Source — National Pollution Discharge Permit Management Information Platform, public portal, January 1, 11:08.

She turned the scrap toward him and pushed it across: "Once it's written on paper, it needs a source."

Zhi'an picked it up and read it aloud by the window. When he reached "Baixi Village East Hill," he paused.

"Where's East Hill?"

"West side of the city."

"Up in the mountains?"

"The filing says 'production and business premises address.'" She capped the pen. "I didn't write a single other word."

He nodded, folded the scrap twice, and tucked it into his own exercise book, saying "so you don't forget," then carried his water back to his room. The door was half closed when he pushed it open again: "This factory—do they know we're watching them?"

"No."

"Then let's keep it that way for now." The door closed.

The room went quiet. The sky outside had dimmed a shade. Gray light slipped through the curtain seam. The shop downstairs hadn't opened today; no one in the alley called out for noodles.

She pinched the mouth of the paper bag on the desk corner, then let go. An empty bag can't stand. It leaned against the binders, mouth open, and the wind through the window crack puffed it out, then let it fall slack again.

All day long, no echo.