CHAPTER 101: CHAPTER 101; OR IS IT THEM?

Daylight filtered in through the high windows, glancing off the decorative sconces and rippling faint reflections across the marble.

By the time he sank onto the couch, his expression was unreadable, serene, almost, but too still to be natural.

Not long after, Liang Chen stepped in, face taut with restrained frustration, a slim file held in his hand.

"Master Shen," he said, voice low and respectful. "The special team tried recovering the corrupted files, but it seems impossible. It’s as if the data was not only corrupted but laced with some kind of virus. Everything tied to Miss Yueyao, her image, her vitals, the surveillance feed from that wing on the day of the incident, even the internal clearance logs, it’s all gone. We are not finding anything traceable. It’s like we are searching for something that never existed in the first place."

Shen Xiao didn’t speak right away. He leaned back slightly, eyes fixed on a point beyond Liang Chen’s shoulder as if trying to see through the walls, into the void where all the answers had vanished. His jaw tightened.

"Untraceable?" Shen Xiao repeated, his voice dangerously quiet. His gaze lifted slowly from the folder in his hands, eyes narrowing.

"It was a public hospital, not a war zone. How do CCTV files, medical logs, and clearance records all disappear, simultaneously, without a trace?"

He rose from his seat, walking slowly toward the window, jaw tight.

"Has the team tried parallel recovery, external backups, cloud relays, or mirrored systems? Is public CCTV available at street corners and parking lots? It’s not like they got rid of all those!"

A long silence stretched. His next words were lower, more clipped.

"There’s nothing! They have checked thoroughly! Data like that doesn’t just vanish... unless someone wants it gone." Liang Chen was very certain of that.

He turned back to face the man, eyes dark.

"And if someone had access to that level of clearance, either they were working from inside the hospital..."

His voice dropped colder still.

"Or they are in-formidable powers we will have to be careful dealing with!"

"And what about the staff? What do they have to say?" His voice was quiet, but it held the weight of command.

Liang Chen nodded grimly. "I interrogated every single person who was on shift that day. Nurses, guards, and all the aides. I even pulled up employment records for the past six months to track any unusual hires."

"And?" Shen Xiao asked.

"Clean," Liang Chen replied. "Too clean. No one remembers seeing anyone unusual that day. Their schedules line up, their alibis cross-check, and there are no inconsistencies in their movements. I thought maybe someone had tampered with their memories, but even our psychological profiler didn’t find signs of coercion. Either they are too well-trained to slip... or they really don’t know anything."

Silence fell between them. They were at a dead end.

Shen Xiao slowly leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, his hands clasped together. The low light from the chandelier caught the edge of his expression, sharp, worn, dangerously calm.

He wondered if there was someone behind all this! Because, why can’t he be able to find anything he wants about his wife?

Did something happen that day that he isn’t supposed to know? What is it that these people are trying to hide from him?

When did Yueyao come across such a kind of powerhouse?

The only ones who could tell him what really happened were Auntie Mei and the chauffeur, but both were in comas, likely vegetative, with little chance of ever waking up.

Yueyao hates him now, and all she wishes for is to disappear; she wasn’t mentally stable enough to ask her what could have happened back then. Why was he knocking the wall, like some force pushing him away from the truth?

"Do you think this person behind all this is protecting Yueyao or do they want to hide things from me? What is that?" He couldn’t understand what that could be! For everything to suddenly become mysterious.

"The person behind all these erasures must be powerful, someone we can’t afford to offend," Liang Chen said grimly. It wasn’t as simple as it looked. Everything was at a standstill now, and no matter what they tried, they couldn’t recover a single thread of information. They had hit a dead end.

Shen Xiao’s gaze darkened. He stood slowly, his movement precise, almost measured, as if any sudden shift would crack the thin veneer of control holding him together.

He walked toward the window, the heavy drapes drawn just enough to let the fading afternoon light seep through. His reflection stared back at him faintly in the glass, calm on the outside, but inside, a storm was churning.

"Dead end," he echoed under his breath, voice like steel dragged against stone. "No, not yet. If someone has gone to this length to wipe out every trace of her existence from that day... then there is something worth hiding."

Liang Chen remained silent, but the look in his eyes showed that he agreed. This wasn’t just about Yueyao anymore. This was about control, about power, and about someone sending Shen Xiao a message.

"They left nothing behind," Liang Chen added grimly. "No digital footprint, no backups, no error fragments in the database. It was a clean sweep. Even the surveillance backups stored in the external, disconnected servers, were completely wiped."

"No one could have done that unless..." Shen Xiao’s eyes narrowed. "Unless they had inside access, like they owned the place or something!"

His voice lowered into something colder than fury, with a calculated suspicion.

Liang Chen tensed slightly. "You think someone on the inside helped them?"

"Or is it them?" Shen Xiao turned back from the window, walking to the coffee table and flipping open the slim file Liang Chen had brought. His eyes scanned the incomplete records and redacted lines. "Keep digging. Don’t stop until you find who had clearance to those external servers. Start from the top,....