Undercover

The glittering bustle of Jincheng has always been a false facade. Beneath the city, a hidden root has lain dormant for decades.

The Thirteenth Division is concealed among ordinary people, quietly controlling the lifelines of every industry in the city and enforcing its own underground rules, which no one dares to break. For decades, countless people have tried to uncover the truth. In the end, they were all silently swallowed up, vanishing without a trace or leaving behind a single clue.

The grudges of the mortal world can be settled, but the backlash of fate accumulates over the years and never ends.

Police officer Lin Yueming insisted on investigating the Thirteenth Division's smuggling network and tearing open the shadow that blotted out the sky. In the end, he died under mysterious circumstances, and the case was hastily sealed, becoming an old wound Jincheng dared not speak of. The director of an orphanage crossed the Division's line over a land requisition dispute and then vanished from the world, with no proof of life or death and no trace of their whereabouts.

These two cold cases were not unsolvable. No one dared to solve them. From that moment on, invisible shackles bound the young Mu Yi.

Mu Yi spent years undercover, mired in the mud and treading on thin ice at every step.

The Thirteenth Division's defenses were airtight. Every ordinary investigation sank without a trace, revealing not the slightest weakness. With no way out, he wagered everything he had left, laying a vast, elaborate lie in the hope of locking onto the financial affairs as his only lead and prying open layer upon layer of darkness.

But no one ever understood that a secret game is utterly merciless and never under anyone's control. One move, and the winner is still unknown, but the price is paid first. Before he could shake the darkness at all, his closest brother was inexplicably caught in a car accident, becoming the first victim of the game's backlash.

No one willingly sinks into darkness. It's just that some people's fates were forcibly sealed when they were young.

Years ago, an undocumented, unresolved special operation swept up a group of innocent children. No one knew what secrets the operation concealed. They only knew that afterward, everyone was left with wounds in their hearts that would not heal.

Their natures were rewritten, their fates bound together. They struggled to grow up in shadow and mud. All they wanted was not fame or fortune, but to peel back the layers of dust and uncover how much filth lay hidden in the darkness that had trapped them for half their lives.

Time is good at burying the truth, but sooner or later, the right moment will let what was hidden break through the ground.

After years of maneuvering and tracing the truth back layer by layer, Mu Yi finally found a clue and identified the culprit behind the orphanage director's disappearance. But once he brushed aside one layer of dust and darkness, an even deeper, murkier mystery lay beneath.

The secrets the Thirteenth Division had hidden for half a lifetime were fully exposed. A century-long feud between the Bai family and the Thirteenth Division slowly came into view. The evils people had seen were only the tip of the iceberg. The true conflict had long since seeped into the blood of two generations, deeply rooted and impossible to dislodge.

As the game neared its end, old grudges surged to the surface, and the battle between light and shadow reached its final impasse.

Mu Yi fought a bloody battle, gravely wounded, his life hanging by a thread. The visible villains appeared one by one, and every small crime was laid bare, but this century-spanning game in the shadows had never truly ended.

The visible perpetrators had vanished, but no one had yet glimpsed or uncovered the core cause buried deepest in the fog. The hidden root beneath Jincheng remained. The backlash of fate would never cease, and no one who entered this game could ever emerge unscathed.

Theme: Light is won through the quiet efforts of many "night walkers."