A blood-stained account book, three "most familiar strangers" to each other.
My name is Shen Yanzhi, the deputy financial director of Agent 76 headquarters in Shanghai. My daily job is to balance accounts for the Japanese. They don't know that for every "rural cleansing" fund I handle, the 3.7% Wastage rate contains the coordinates of the arsenal, and the 500 scrapped pens point to the underground transportation station. All accounts are information encrypted using the "four-pillar clearing method" taught by my father.
My sister is the chief reporter for a pro-daily newspaper, and every economic comment she makes is a coded directive. My brother is a Japanese translator for the French Concession Police Department, and every document he submits "happens" to translate the key coordinates wrong.
We ate at the same table in the apartment on Xiafei Road every night, passing the Morse code with the distance between cups and plates, and discussing the assassination plan based on the stock market trends. We all knew that the other person was acting, but we didn't know for whom the other person was acting—until the top-secret account book that marked the risk of the whole family being wiped out appeared.
This is a war between abacus and guns. Numbers are more deadly than bullets. When family affection becomes the most perfect disguise, this silent secret war that begins at the family dining table will eventually use the entire Shanghai night as the cover of the account book.
