The West Wing of the Wan Old Residence had not seen sunlight in decades.

  Wan Ruyi sat before an ancient rosewood vanity. But she held no eyebrow pencil. Instead, her fingers gripped a miniature oscilloscope, its tiny screen casting a green glow on her pale face.

  Although Dashan had physically severed all external digital signals, the walls of this old house still hummed with a faint, unsettling vibration that made the hair on her arms stand up.

  “Ruyi! Big Brother says come to the front hall! Madame Shen needs help with the ledgers!” Xiaotian’s muffled voice called from behind the door.

  “Let him wait,” Ruyi muttered, not turning around. Her eyes were locked on the jittering waveform on the screen. “The ledgers are on paper. But the real secrets are in the walls.”

  In the Xu family’s old rules, daughters were never allowed at the table of power. But Wan Changqing had always feared Ruyi the most. Why? Because she had eyes that could see through decency.

  Right now, those eyes were staring at a Nanmu wood pillar that supposedly stood for a hundred years. And embedded within its grain was an incredibly faint ultrasonic pulse.

  It wasn’t a signal. It was Resonance.

  Ruyi sneered. From a hidden compartment in her vanity box, she drew a slender silver needle. Slowly, deliberately, she slid it into a hairline crack in the pillar’s lacquer.

  Hiss…

  A barely audible electromagnetic interference echoed in the room.

  “Father,” Ruyi whispered to the wood, her voice cold. “You really are a cunning rabbit with three burrows. You calculated that Dashan would play the ‘Power Cut’ card, and Madame Shen would play the ‘Old Debts’ card. So you left your final backdoor here: in physical vibration. As long as someone speaks in this house, the sound waves travel through this pillar and convert into data. You never died. You’ve been listening all along.”

  There was no response from the pillar. But the jumping waveform on the oscilloscope instantly flattened, as if a thief caught red-handed was suddenly holding his breath.

  Outside the old house, a commotion of footsteps erupted.

  Zhao Tianqi had lost patience. He dared not cross Uncle Wang’s ink line, but he had deployed dozens of “Sanitization Personnel” in grey uniforms. Ostensibly there to prevent viruses in Old City, their real mission was to set up an acoustic sensor array around the perimeter walls. They wanted to listen to everything inside.

  “Ruyi! Come out!” Dashan’s voice boomed from the courtyard, sharper and more severe than she had ever heard.

  Ruyi yanked the silver needle out. A spark of ruthless cunning flashed in her eyes.

  She stepped out into the courtyard. Dashan stood in the center, gripping a pair of rusted, long-handled shears. Madame Shen stood by the gate, her face as calm as deep water.

  “Zhao has set up a formation outside,” Dashan said, pointing to the wall. “He’s using sonar to record every sound inside this house. Then his AI will reconstruct our conversations. Every word we say from now on will become a lethal chip in his hand.”

  “Brother, don’t be afraid,” Ruyi said calmly. She opened her palm, revealing the electrified silver needle. A smirk curled her lips—a smile so eerily similar to Wan Changqing’s that it sent a shiver down Dashan’s spine.

  “Father left an ear in the pillar. Zhao wants to eavesdrop from outside the wall. Perfect. Let’s give them a performance of ‘The Empty Fort Strategy’.”

  She turned to Madame Shen. “Madame, in your opera costumes… do you still have those powders that can alter the pitch and timbre of a voice? The ones used for role-switching?”

  Madame Shen looked at Ruyi, then at Dashan. Suddenly, she let out a long, relieved sigh.

  “Wan Changqing,” she murmured to the sky. “Your greatest algorithm in life wasn’t your code. It was giving birth to a daughter who is exactly like you.”

  Dashan looked at the needle in Ruyi’s hand, then at the scheming glint in her eyes. He understood instantly.

  The three-day silence protocol had just shifted. It was no longer a Defensive War. It was becoming a Counter-Infection.

  They would use the old pillars and Zhao’s own external sonar arrays to feed the enemy a piece of Fabricated Truth so deadly, it would poison the entire algorithm from the inside out.

  “Set the stage,” Dashan commanded, a grim smile forming. “Let’s tell Zhao a story he’ll never forget.”

  [SYSTEM ALERT: EXTERNAL AUDIO SENSOR DETECTED.]

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  [STATUS: RECORDING ACTIVE.]

  [WARNING: INPUT DATA INTEGRITY COMPROMISED.]

  [SOURCE OF CORRUPTION: INTERNAL.]

  She found a physical backdoor in the wooden pillar and decided to turn Zhao's own spy gear against him. Time for some classic 'Empty Fort Strategy'! ????

  They are about to feed the AI a Fabricated Truth. What story do you think they'll tell? A fake location for the ledger? A fake weakness? Or a fake surrender?

  Question: What's the best lie you've ever told that turned out well? (No judging! ??) ??

  Next Chapter: The trap is set. Zhao takes the bait. Let's see how the 'Counter-Infection' plays out! ????