On a cold night in late winter, countless computer screens light up in every corner of the city, twinkling like stars scattered among the world.

In several university dormitories, the sound of keyboard tapping is particularly clear at midnight. Computer science students are chopping live video into 128 fragments, each encrypted and uploaded to anonymous cloud storage devices across three continents.

They communicated using Morse code on dark web forums and hid download links in posts analyzing verses from "Dream of the Red Chamber" - just like hiding a spark in a matchbox. Every time the number of clicks exceeded 10,000, sparks would splash to unknown corners along with the data stream.

The study room of the medical school was as bright as day. The girls gathered around the dissection table, but they were not studying the structure of the human body.

They used epidemiological analysis methods to draw an information map of the capital flow, intermediary network, and medical scandals in the surrogacy industry chain.

When the mouse moved over the label "The director of the obstetrics and gynecology department of a certain tertiary hospital receives an average monthly share of 39 yuan", the projector projected a huge question mark on the wall, which coincidentally overlapped with the chest cavity of the anatomical model, as if questioning whether the conscience of this society had also developed a tumor.

At three o'clock in the morning in the hospital corridor, the smell of disinfectant mixed with the salty taste of tears.

Wang Fang stared at the phone screen, her finger lingering on the "Publish" button for ten minutes. Finally, she bit her lip and took a picture of the surgical scar on her abdomen.

The 15-centimeter-long, centipede-shaped wound is the mark of the surrogacy agency's so-called "high-quality uterine removal." The caption accompanying the image is a single line: "I was once a victim, and I am also... your sister."

When she clicked send, 37 similar photos of scars instantly appeared under the topic "I am also a victim", like 37 blood-red plum blossoms blooming in the middle of the night.

These light spots scattered in different time and space formed a data storm in the seventy-second hour.

At a confidential meeting of a provincial health commission, the chief expert magnified an information graphic intercepted from the dark web - at the top of the profit pyramid of the surrogacy industry chain, the logo of a listed company was flashing under a red warning light.

As the camera swept across the numbers on the ankles of the pregnant woman in the iron cage, the pens of the participants poked holes in the meeting minutes, and the ink smudged into irregular shapes around the word "thorough investigation", just like a torn dark crack.

Internet censor Li Jianjun found that no matter how the keywords were blocked, those scarred photos would always appear in new forms: sometimes they were secondary creations with oil painting brushstrokes, sometimes they were gesture dance metaphors on short video platforms, and more often they were encrypted compressed packages passed from mother to daughter.

He looked at the flickering hotspot on the surveillance screen and suddenly remembered a sentence from his daughter's textbook: "A single spark can start a prairie fire."

After a long silence, he quietly forwarded an unblocked link to his private mailbox - before becoming a censor, he was first a father.

.........

At dawn on the Spring Equinox in 2025, the first ray of morning light pierced through the thick clouds and shot towards the earth like a golden arrow.

The darkness of the remaining night receded like a tide, and the morning mist, carrying the fragrance of moist soil and the aroma of newly blooming magnolias, filled the streets.

The outline of the city gradually became clear in the dim light, the dormant moat began to ripple, and willow branches stretched out new buds in the breeze. It seemed that the whole world was breaking free from the shackles of winter at this moment and welcoming the rebirth of life.

This is not only the change of seasons, but also heralds a new beginning full of hope and change.

The Kyoto Media Building stands on the second ring road of Kyoto like a bronze sword piercing the clouds. When the sunlight shines down, flowing golden patterns appear on the glass curtain wall.

Su Mohui stood outside the revolving door and took a deep breath. Her black suit made her figure look as straight as a pine tree. Her six-centimeter high heels made a crisp sound when they hit the ground, as if it was the drumbeat of fate.

The moment the carved glass door was pushed open, the dazzling crystal chandelier poured down, coating the award hall with a layer of flowing gold foil.

The spotlights on both sides of the red carpet flickered one after another. Su Mohui walked forward on the fragmented light and shadow. When her suit skirt rose and fell, it made a rustling sound, which intertwined with her steady and powerful heartbeat to form a unique rhythm.

Her eyes swept across the audience and caught a glimpse of Jiang Zhao and Wu Mingwei sitting in the front row. They were cheering her on. At that moment, she seemed to be back to those days and nights when they fought side by side.

"Please welcome Ms. Su Mohui!" The host's passionate voice echoed in the hall. Amidst thunderous applause, Su Mohui accepted the crystal cup for the "Annual In-depth Report Award."

The cold touch made her subconsciously grip the cup tightly. In an instant, she remembered the cold medical equipment in the surrogacy factory, and the smell of disinfectant seemed to still linger on her fingertips.

As his fingertips stroked the lines on the cup wall, the prisoner numbers and blood-stained medical records seemed to be frozen in this crystal clear trophy.

Returning to her seat, Su Mohui gently placed the trophy on the corner of the table. Her gaze swept across the audience. Her colleagues cast admiring glances at her, and the guests smiled in appreciation. All of this was in stark contrast to the indifference of a year ago when the news was suppressed.

Outside the window, the spring breeze carries the fragrance of magnolia, and the skyscrapers in the distance sparkle with metallic luster in the sun. The city is full of vitality.

She looked out the window. The sky was a clear blue, with a few white clouds drifting leisurely by. Although this battle with darkness was far from over, the light ignited by millions of people had already penetrated the layers of fog and illuminated the path forward.

..........

2025, May Day.

The crystal chandelier on the dome of Kyoto City Hall illuminates the ground as bright as day.

Jiang Zhao stood in front of the French window, looking at his slightly hunched back reflected in the glass - that was the mark left by ten years of furious writing at his desk.

Over the past decade, she has integrated her thoughts on women's fate into reality, from writing to reality. Jiang Zhao has made suggestions along the way, not fearing the oppression of high-ranking officials, and finally, her suggestions were adopted by the Xia Kingdom.

More than a decade later, Jiang Zhao looked at his journalist friend Su Mohui sitting in the front row, then at Wu Mingwei sitting in the back row, and smiled as he shook the document in his hand.

The proposal in her hand was heavy. The 170,000 red fingerprints on the proposal spread from the paper to her cuffs, as if it still carried the body temperature of those people, like a sea of ​​plum blossoms that never extinguished.

When the applause for the passage of the Gender Equality Promotion Act rang out, her fingertips unconsciously rubbed the anti-slip grooves of the microphone.

My memory suddenly flashed back to when the gender equality proposal was first put forward. A senior official sneered contemptuously: "Women's views." And at this moment, the same person was sitting in the audience, clapping his hands until they were red.

After Su Mohui saved today's photos and records to the computer one by one, she quietly left. Today, Jiang Zhao was the heroine -

While all the reporters present were saying that her voice was precious, Jiang Zhao said, "It's precious because it's rare. My greatest hope is to become less precious."

Jiang Zhao turned and looked at the dome, where an invisible national destiny map was being reconstructed. "But I remember that it was written in the "Records of Empresses" that when Wu Zetian became emperor, the astronomical officials in the sky tried to modify the star track of the word "woman" -"

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