Hong Kong.
Lu Shen's life had returned to its rightful track.
In the three days since the Yu Ruoyin incident concluded in his hands, the entire Hong Kong Station remained undisturbed.
Station Chief Macallan continued to hold the morning meeting at ten o'clock each day, delivering work assignments in his unhurried Midwestern accent.
Everything was as usual.
Lu Shen even began preparing his year-end report materials for December, following the established annual work rhythm.
According to his previous plan, after the report, he would submit a six-month rotation application to headquarters, citing the expansion of intelligence sources in the Asia-Pacific region as the reason. His target position was locked on the East Asia Analysis Division at Langley Headquarters... the closest legitimate path to Jin Youdai, and a critical stepping stone he designed for a series of subsequent actions.
Six months of rotation, gaining a foothold, building connections, understanding Jin Youdai's current situation and security status, then calmly setting up and gradually intervening.
Time was ample, the pace controllable.
Everything was within his grasp.
At least, that's what Lu Shen believed until that thought arrived.
...
Lu Shen sat in his office, a political and economic analysis report from a Southeast Asian country spread open beside him, making annotations in the margins with a red pen.
Sunlight streamed through the blinds, casting stripes of light across the desk, with fine dust floating in the air.
Everything was quiet.
Quiet as a stagnant pool.
Then, without warning...
The thought came.
"Jin Youdai's exposure was never because of Yu Ruoyin."
The red pen made a sharp deviation on the paper.
Lu Shen's hand stopped.
He froze there, as if pinned to the chair by an invisible nail.
His pupils contracted suddenly, his breath completely halted in that instant.
Memories from a past life surged forth like a file folder suddenly torn open, page after page... the texts he had repeatedly studied in top-secret files, those critical details now piercing his consciousness like sharp knives.
Early 1985.
CIA Counterintelligence Center.
Not Yu Ruoyin.
Before Yu Ruoyin's defection... even before he had the thought of defecting... the Counterintelligence Center at Langley Headquarters had already smelled blood.
The trigger was the consecutive failures of three top-secret infiltration operations against China.
In the intelligence community, one failure is accidental, two failures are coincidental, but three failures... three consecutive failures in top-secret operations targeting the same direction... there is only one explanation:
An insider.
The CIA Counterintelligence Center immediately initiated a Level One internal investigation.
The investigation focused on all personnel who had access to the core information of these three operations, with emphasis on the East Asia Division and the China Operations Group.
And Jin Youdai... naturally became the most conspicuous name.
Not just because of his racial identity. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
But also because, during the early evaluation stages of these three operations, Jin Youdai had provided reasonable objections to the operational plans from a professional standpoint.
His objections were well-founded, logically sound, and cautiously worded, each perfectly wrapped in professional judgment... but when these objections were examined alongside the total failure of the three operations, they were no longer professional judgments.
They became evidence.
Indirect, but extremely dangerous evidence.
Lu Shen remembered... in the files from his past life, the counterintelligence agent in charge of Jin Youdai's case was a veteran named Tom Price.
This man had been immersed in the field of counterintelligence for fifteen years, known for his patience and persistence.
He was not in a hurry to succeed, did not alert the enemy, like a spider lurking in the shadows, meticulously weaving his web of evidence.
By mid-1985... Price had already pieced together two core chains of indirect evidence.
Two chains of evidence, just one step away from closing the loop.
And what that final step might be... a secret search warrant, a deep retrieval of communication records, or merely a flash of inspiration from Price... Lu Shen did not know.
If Yu Ruoyin's defection intelligence was supposed to fall into CIA's hands a few months later, it would have been the final deadly piece of Price's evidence chain... because in the list Yu Ruoyin held, Jin Youdai's codename was prominently listed.
Now, Yu Ruoyin had been intercepted by him, that piece would never reach Price's hands.
But...
The secret investigation that had been running in the shadows for more than half a year would not stop because of Yu Ruoyin's disappearance.
Price was still there, his evidence chain was still there, his patience was still there.
Lu Shen had only blocked the visible knife.
...
Cold sweat.
Lu Shen felt cold sweat instantly soak through his shirt from his back.
That icy, sticky sensation felt like a warning from the depths of fate.
His hands unconsciously gripped the edge of the desk, the red pen had somehow slipped from his hand, leaving a shocking mark on the report.
He closed his eyes, forcing himself to breathe.
Then, he rearranged all the timelines in his mind.
His previous plan was the year-end report, a six-month rotation application.
...Absurd.
Lu Shen mentally slapped himself hard.
The premise of this plan was that Jin Youdai's situation was safe, at least for the next six months to a year.
And the condition for this premise was that Yu Ruoyin's defection intelligence... that most deadly puzzle piece... would not fall into CIA's hands.
He had achieved that.
But he forgot, the puzzle was not just that one piece.
Price did not need Yu Ruoyin.
He already had his two evidence chains, he only needed the final trigger... any small trigger... to push the entire investigation across the line from suspicion to confirmation.
And that trigger could appear at any moment.
Tomorrow.
The day after.
Lu Shen opened his eyes, the panic in his pupils completely replaced by clarity and determination.
All original plans were scrapped, all timelines overturned, all priorities rearranged.
From this second on, his only goal, top priority, highest-weight task, was just one...
Save Jin Youdai.
He must obtain the transfer order to Langley Headquarters at the fastest speed, not a six-month rotation application, not a leisurely stepping stone... but now, immediately, at all costs, a rapid advance.
He needed to enter Langley.
He needed to face Jin Youdai!
Lu Shen did not touch the Southeast Asia political and economic report for the entire afternoon.
The red pen lay on the desk, its cap off, ink slowly coagulating into a dark red bead at the tip.
His eyes were fixed on the stripes of light cut by the blinds outside the window, but his gaze was empty... all his computational power was running at full speed deep in his mind.
How to return?
The conventional path of a six-month rotation application had already been personally vetoed by him.
That path was too slow, slow enough that Jin Youdai might not wait for him to step through Langley's doors.
An exceptional transfer order?
On what grounds?
He was just an analyst at an overseas station, no matter how impressive his resume, it was not enough to make the headquarters' Personnel Office break protocol for him.
Unless... he could present something that Langley Headquarters could not ignore, something that would compel them to bring him back.
A report? An intelligence? An achievement significant enough for the top brass to remember his name?
Lu Shen's fingers unconsciously tapped on the desk, the rhythm growing faster.
By six in the evening, colleagues gradually left the office, footsteps in the corridor becoming sparse.
Lu Shen still sat there, unmoving.
Until the last stripe of light outside the window slipped off the desk, and the office plunged into darkness...
He stopped tapping.
The Plaza Accord.
These three words surfaced from the depths of memory, carrying the certainty of a past life, precisely fitting into the current predicament.
In September 1985, the Group of Five signed an agreement at the Plaza Hotel in New York, jointly pushing for the devaluation of the dollar against major currencies.
Two months had passed, and the yen-dollar exchange rate had appreciated from 1:240 at the time of signing to the 1:203 mark.
The mainstream market judgment was highly consistent... the Federal Reserve's economic analysis department, Langley Headquarters' Economic Intelligence Division, Wall Street's major investment banks... almost everyone believed: the yen's appreciation had peaked, and the Bank of Japan would strongly intervene near the 200 mark, causing the exchange rate to fluctuate and adjust.
But Lu Shen knew, they were all wrong.
The yen would not adjust, the Bank of Japan would not intervene.
This wave of appreciation was far from over... it was just beginning.
History from a past life had already provided the answer: the yen would soar all the way, eventually appreciating to the insane level of 1:120, and the financial shockwaves released during this process would completely rewrite the economic landscape of the entire Asia-Pacific region.
Lu Shen slowly turned on the desk lamp, pulling a blank sheet of paper under the dim light, he was going to write a predictive report that completely contradicted the mainstream market judgment.
Not an empty qualitative analysis, but a hardcore report with precise point predictions that could be verified by subsequent trends.
The moment the pen tip touched the paper, Lu Shen's gaze completely settled.
This report would be his ticket in.