The Ye Family Under Watch

She walked towards the bathroom, her steps light, as if afraid of disturbing the dreams of the third person in the room.

Yun Jingheng remained seated cross-legged. The moonlight had dimmed somewhat, casting a long, faint shadow on the floor.

Ye Xinglan walked to the bathroom door and was about to push it open when the voice of Half-Sweet Coffee suddenly came through her earphones again.

"Ms. Ye, there is something I need to report to you. It concerns some findings I made recently through satellite observations."

Ye Xinglan stopped at the door, her hand on the doorknob, without moving.

"Explain."

"Over the past four weeks, about two hundred miles east of Heaven Dou City, near the city border, there has been a residential house, and an unidentified squad has appeared in the vicinity."

"They number between four and seven, usually disguised as traveling merchants or day laborers, but their movements are very regular. They appear at least twice a day on the east and north sides of the houses, and conduct fixed-point observations of the houses at night."

Ye Xinglan's fingers slowly tightened.

She heard her heartbeat suddenly quicken, as if a very thin string had snapped in her chest.

She didn't turn around, but asked in a low voice, "Which house?"

Would you like to take a look?

Half-Sweet Coffee said in a still-flat voice, "I've already set up the coordinates so it can be projected onto the spare screen in the room."

"However, you might be surprised to learn that the address in question highly overlaps with an address you checked through the Federation household registration system three months ago."

Ye Xinglan's body stiffened.

She slowly turned around and looked at a corner of the bedroom.

The backup screen lit up, its surface bathed in a very faint blue light.

The Half-Sweet Coffee had already conjured up the scene: an old house on a hillside, with blue bricks and gray tiles, surrounded by a grove of ginkgo trees.

As the camera zooms in, two figures dressed in gray are indeed resting against a tree trunk on a forest path to the east of the house. Several carrying poles are laid out in front of them, making them look like itinerant merchants. However, there is a bulge at their waists, indicating that they are hiding something.

Looking at the ginkgo forest, Ye Xinglan felt as if someone had splashed a bucket of snow water on her face, chilling her from head to toe.

"Them..."

Her voice was a little unsteady, as if she were walking on a very narrow ice floe, "Are you keeping an eye on the Ye Family?"

"Yes."

Half-Sweet Coffee paused for a moment. "The other party is very good at disguising themselves. But judging from their behavior, at least three people are working night shifts to monitor the address you provided."

"Satellite imagery shows they've been monitoring the area around that house for about a week. Ms. Ye, do you recognize the place?"

Ye Xinglan did not answer.

She just stared at the familiar ginkgo trees on the screen, as if trying to see through the house bit by bit into the night.

That's home.

Her home, which she hadn't been back to in a long time.

And now, someone is "guarding" it for her.

It took her a long time to find her voice, which was very low, so low it sounded like it was being ground out from between her teeth:

Do you know who they are?

"Unable to confirm. They were not wearing any standard equipment, and their communications were not connected to the Federation public network. But one of them—"

The screen suddenly zoomed in, focusing on the profile of one of the men in gray. "After facial recognition, it matches 79% of an old image in my database."

"That old footage came from a backup of the Federation Eastern Frontier Trade Route Inspection Bureau, which means that the other party is very likely connected to the official forces of the Federation Eastern Frontier Trade Route."

Ye Xinglan didn't say anything more.

She turned around and walked back to the window.

The rain had lessened a bit, but the night had grown even darker.

She raised her hand and slowly pushed the window open a crack.

A cold wind blew in, making the stray hairs on her forehead dance wildly.

Her voice seemed to drift back from a very distant place, so soft it was almost swallowed by the wind:

"Don't let Jing Heng know. At least... don't let him know now."

Half-Sweet Coffee paused for a few seconds, then replied gently, "Okay. This message has been marked as 'on standby' and will not be proactively notified to the owner."

Ye Xinglan closed her eyes.

"Could you... confirm their specific identities?"

Ye Xinglan didn't turn around, her voice low, like a wisp of cold wind squeezing in through a crack in the window, "Whose people are they? Which department of the Federation? Why are they targeting the Ye Family now of all times?"

There was a brief moment of silence in the headphones.

The Half-Sweet Coffee didn't answer immediately, which was unusual for it.

The silence was brief, lasting only two breaths, but to Ye Xinglan it felt like an eternity.

The last light in the Federation building outside the window went out sometime ago, and the entire city was completely submerged in the deep rain, fog, and night.

She waited, her fingers unconsciously gripping the window frame.

"Miss Ye, I'm so sorry."

Half-Sweet Coffee finally spoke, her voice even softer than before, almost an apology, "Under the current circumstances, I cannot verify their identities online."

"Why?" Ye Xinglan's voice remained subdued, but a hint of urgency crept into the end of her tone.

"The Federation network is currently experiencing a widespread outage."

"Public network nodes are severely damaged, and the remaining military and government networks have switched to older wired and stand-alone communication systems," said Half-Sweet Coffee.

"Without a unified entry point, I can no longer access external databases as before; all I can obtain are historical data that has already been cached."

"There is no further information in the database regarding the real-time identities of these individuals."

Ye Xinglan closed her eyes.

The rain intensified, pattering on the ginkgo leaves outside the window, rustling like someone turning the pages of an old book in the distance.

She suddenly felt as if she were standing in the center of a huge blind spot.

She could clearly see the house, and the gray shadows swaying in the woods, but she couldn't reach them or touch them, as if she were looking through a layer of glass filled with rain and mist.

The person who created this blind spot is sitting quietly behind her, eyes closed, completely unaware of anything.

But if they don't destroy the network, they might not even last a week before being discovered.

"Is there really no way?" she asked, her voice hoarse.

"What can be confirmed is that, based on existing behavioral characteristics and historical footage, the other party is highly likely to be related to the Eastern Frontier Trade Route Inspection Bureau."

"However, the deeper affiliation, the purpose of the operation, and whether it is under the direct command of the Federation military cannot be determined at present."

Half-Sweet Coffee paused for a moment, then said gently, "Ms. Ye, if you need, I can try to access a few old intelligence nodes through the remaining civilian wired signals, but the success rate is low, and it's highly likely to expose our current location."

"No need," Ye Xinglan said almost before it could finish speaking.

She opened her eyes, gazing at the unseen ginkgo forest deep in the rainy night, her voice low but decisive, "We can't let Jing Heng's position be risked in the slightest. You've done everything you could."

"Then... can you confirm the safety of the people inside the house?"

"Sure," came the crisp reply from the Half-Sweet Coffee shop.