In the digital age, data deletion has always been an illusion. Traces are merely sealed away, buried, or erased. They never truly disappear.
Lin Yan, a big data compliance auditor, has always believed that data leaves a verifiable trail and rules cannot be crossed. But after he follows regulations to destroy the encrypted files from a missing-person case sealed for three years, a series of inexplicable, eerie events begins to haunt him: system notifications appearing without a trace of intrusion, ghostly snapshots materializing out of thin air, furtive footsteps testing his door lock late at night, and a mysterious faceless data shadow, S0729, wandering between reality and code.
The incident tears through layer upon layer of false appearances at Qingzhou Technology, a top tech company. Armed with special government compliance privileges, the company has secretly built back doors to steal data on a massive scale, copied the data profiles of living people, and activated a covert file-deletion mechanism, quietly erasing every ordinary person who glimpses the truth. Su Wan, an algorithm engineer who mysteriously disappeared three years ago, was the first victim completely erased by this data system.
Simply for destroying the files and touching on a long-buried truth, Lin Yan is placed on the deletion list and becomes a target locked onto by the city’s entire data network. Little by little, his existence is stripped away from reality. In his desperate hour, the remnant data consciousness of Su Wan breaks free from its cage, guiding him with cold warnings and exposing the dark truth of capital manipulating data and placing itself above all rules.
When offline devices are invaded by invisible code and a person’s existence is gradually wiped from the entire internet, Lin Yan, once an enforcer of the rules, finally breaks out of the trap and fights back. Armed with the last embers of data left to him, he takes on the digital web enveloping the entire city and investigates the case of the three-year-old erasure. In a prison where reality and illusion intertwine, he tears open the truth deliberately buried from view.
