The archive courier arrived at the capital engineering laboratory before noon. He carried two sealed cases, one from the Ashfall batch ledger and one from the institute archive. Ning had labeled the sources separately and attached the delivery record to each.
Gu checked the seals before opening them. Qinghe placed Yun Cang’s laboratory notes beside the table. They now had records from the research chamber and from the medicine batch that had first awakened Yan’s System.
“Let’s compare the seals and page numbers first,” Wei said. “Then we read.”
The courier opened the Ashfall case. The ledger identified a trial draught prepared for poisoned workers. Zhao Heng’s office had recorded a grey fragment in the batch as inert trace material. A different impurity appeared in the next column as the source of the poisoning.
The two entries had been written separately, but a later copy had blurred them together. Qinghe held the copy against the original and pointed to the crossed line.
“This is where the distinction disappeared,” she said. “The fragment was not listed as the poison.”
Gu compared the fragment’s geometric description to Yun’s catalyst sketch. The shapes aligned. He did not yet call the connection complete.
“We still need the handling record,” he said. “That will tell us how the fragment entered the dose.”
