Chapter Three – Words Engraved Upon the Skin

The city's clamor rapidly receded outside the car window as Shen Mo drove toward the Municipal History Museum. A thought grew ever clearer in his mind: if the phenomenon of "obsession manifesting" truly existed, it could not have happened just once.

Human emotions are so intense; the accumulated grudges, loves, and sorrows throughout history must have left marks in some unknown corners.

In the museum's reception hall, the air was filled with a faint dust scent of old paper and camphor wood.

The person attending to him was a young woman wearing thin-framed glasses, her name tag reading "Restorer, Su Wanying."

Her gaze was calm and focused, as if appraising an artifact in need of restoration rather than a police officer bearing a bizarre story.

Shen Mo skipped all preliminaries and directly stated his purpose, fully prepared to be dismissed as a madman or a novelist.

Yet Su Wanying simply listened quietly, her fingertips tapping unconsciously on the table.

After he finished, she did not ridicule him. Instead, she adjusted her glasses and softly said, "The phenomenon you describe—we have some informal discussions about it internally. We call it 'object erosion'—the marks left on objects after being invaded by intense spiritual energy. Please, follow me."

She led Shen Mo through corridors where tourists were barred, into a temperature and humidity-controlled storage room.

The lighting was dim, and rows of massive metal racks displayed objects covered in white cloths, resembling a city in slumber.

Su Wanying took out a yellowed dossier from a cabinet labeled "Qing Dynasty—Ministry of Justice," then, donning white gloves, carefully lifted a heavy iron instrument from a nearby storage box.

It was a grimly constructed pair of pincers, its jaws flat—clearly meant to clamp onto fingers.

Spreading the restoration files on the worktable, she explained, "This is a Qing Dynasty torture device called the Finger Branding Pliers. Used for coercion, the jaws were heated red-hot before use."

She pointed to a passage in the records: "Thirty years ago, we conducted rust removal and restoration on this piece. The master craftsman in charge suffered the same nightmare for three consecutive nights—dreaming his own palm was seared through by the red-hot pliers, the pain so vivid it woke him in the middle of the night. At first, everyone thought it was psychological. That was until, while cleaning the inside of the jaws, he discovered some carbonized organic residues."

Shen Mo’s breath caught.

"We commissioned the best laboratory at the time for analysis," Su Wanying’s voice echoed clearly in the silent storage room. "Ultimately, minute traces of human skin tissue DNA, damaged by high temperatures, were successfully extracted from tiny fissures inside the jaws. Cross-referencing the database, this DNA matched a scholar from the late Qing who was wrongfully executed during a literary inquisition. The records show he never confessed, was subjected to this brutal torture, and died in prison."

Shen Mo’s heart sank deeply; this was the perfect evidence supporting his theory of "informational contamination."

Su Wanying continued, "We speculate that extreme emotions—intense pain, injustice, hatred—if carried by a person with strong enough willpower, can be 'written' like data onto an object capable of long-term preservation. We call these objects 'memory condensates.' Under certain conditions, such as similar environments or emotional triggers, these sealed 'memories' might be reactivated, replayed, or even... evolved."

"Object erosion..." Shen Mo pondered the term, feeling as if lightning had cleaved the fog within his mind.

He immediately took out his phone, pulled up a photo of the cufflink, and handed it to Su Wanying.

She stared intently at the strange symbol on the screen. After a long pause, she spoke slowly, "Made of copper. Copper is an excellent conductor—not only of heat and electricity but, according to ancient metaphysical theories, also of 'thought.' The ancients used copper mirrors to ward off evil, copper coins for divination—not merely superstition, but perhaps a rudimentary understanding of this property."

They exchanged a glance, instantly reaching silent agreement.

One was a case steeped in bizarre reality, the other grounded in profound theory and history; collaboration was the only choice.

"I need to analyze the exact material composition of this cufflink," Su Wanying said decisively. "The museum has a partnership with a local university’s physics lab. We can borrow their equipment for ion beam scanning."

The results came the next afternoon—so startling neither could speak.

The report showed the cufflink was primarily a copper alloy, but contained trace amounts of a rare element never found in natural copper ore—technetium-99.

"Technetium-99..." Su Wanying’s expression grew grave. "It’s a man-made radioactive isotope, a product of uranium-235 fission, with a half-life of 210,000 years. It hardly occurs naturally and mainly comes from nuclear reactors or weapons tests."

Nuclear testing—a detail Shen Mo had overlooked—exploded suddenly in his mind.

He recalled that the prison where Zhou Wenhai was executed was uniquely located on the site of an abandoned nuclear physics research institute from the Cold War era!

That cufflink had accompanied a death-row inmate harboring overwhelming resentment through his final days in an environment saturated with intense radiation residues.

That night, Shen Mo sat in his office, sleepless, staring at the cufflink’s symbol redrawn on the whiteboard.

He disassembled and reassembled those seemingly chaotic seven arcs repeatedly until dawn brought a sudden revelation.

What if it was not a mere symbol, but a form of script?

He immediately accessed an ancient scripts database, attempting to map the shapes onto variants of archaic seal characters.

An hour later, he succeeded.

The seven arcs perfectly decomposed into three twisted ancient seal variants: "No," "Trace," and "Judgment."

No-trace judgment.

A cold shiver ran down Shen Mo’s spine.

This was no curse—it was a verdict from hell.

He recalled another crucial detail: the forensic report confirmed the marks on Zhou Zhenguo’s chest were made with his own fingertips, no tools involved.

To carve such deep grooves into a hard sternum with just fingernails required at least 800 newtons of pressure—the instantaneous force of a small hydraulic press.

He quickly ran the physics calculations, working backward to determine the kinetic energy needed to apply such force.

The conclusion was clear: pure muscle contraction was impossible.

The only explanation was that some immense potential energy was conducted through the skin as a medium, released instantaneously at the fingertips.

As Su Wanying said, copper can "conduct thought"—perhaps it can also channel energy.

The next morning, a sharp phone ring jolted Shen Mo awake less than an hour after lying down.

It was an urgent alert from the bureau: Zhou Wenhai’s son, Zhou Mingyuan, had been caught trying to break into the city bureau’s evidence room in the early hours.

In the interrogation room, Zhou Mingyuan remained silent, his eyes vacant, as if his soul had been drained.

Through the one-way glass, Shen Mo’s gaze locked onto Zhou Mingyuan’s right hand.

The hand lay limply on the table edge, the palm showing a faint red swelling; the skin texture subtly different from the surrounding area, faintly displaying a ring-shaped raised pattern.

A terrifying hypothesis sent chills down Shen Mo’s spine.

He immediately ordered an emergency physical examination of Zhou Mingyuan.

The forensic center’s results confirmed Shen Mo’s worst fears.

Under high magnification, beneath the skin of Zhou Mingyuan’s right palm, a new, unfamiliar fingerprint was slowly forming—its pattern identical to the "regenerated fingerprint" his father had left on the cufflink.

The cufflink had been sealed in an evidence bag the entire time; Zhou Mingyuan never touched it.

This meant the force called "obsession" or "object erosion" had detached from its original medium and was now spreading through a deeper connection—bloodline or equally intense grief and anger—conducting "targeted contamination."

Shen Mo looked up at the clouds darkening outside the window, the city skyline heavy and grey.

He finally understood completely—this was far more than a mere case.

This was a silent, spreading "reality decay."

He turned swiftly toward the forensic data analysis room, determined to immediately reexamine the high-definition footage of the regenerating fingerprint on Zhou Mingyuan’s palm.

He felt he had missed something.

Deep within that eerie pattern, as it emerged beneath the skin, seemed to lie a secret even more profound than the fingerprint itself.

The computer screen lit up. He opened the recently archived video file and pressed play.

The image looped—the ring-shaped pattern slowly forming beneath the skin reflected twisted light in his pupils.