Mo Chen folded his arms slowly. "This doesn’t look modern."

"No," Su Wan agreed quietly. Her fingers hovered near several faded symbols carved deeper into the skin than the surrounding routes. Unlike the rest of the markings, these appeared older, almost burned into the material rather than inked. Some sections looked deliberately damaged.

"It’s been modified multiple times," she murmured.

Li Chen frowned. "How can you tell?"

"The layering." She pointed to the lower section. "The original markings are older and darker. Some routes were added later using different pressure and tools."

Mo Chen leaned closer. "You mean someone updated the map over time?"

"Yes."

The answer deepened the chill in the room. The map was not merely historical — it was still being used.

Su Wan’s gaze moved to the center where several hidden routes converged beneath overlapping terrain. Then she noticed something else: very small, nearly invisible numbers. Not coordinates, but sequences.

"These aren’t geographical markers," she said.

Li Chen stepped closer. "What are they?"

"I don’t know yet."

Instinctively, the sequences felt familiar from her past investigative work — layered directional coding designed to conceal locations rather than reveal them. Almost like access patterns.

Mo Chen lowered his voice. "If this map really leads to that mine..."

He didn’t need to finish the thought. All three of them understood what was at stake. Whatever lay hidden there had already caused murders, secret excavations, hidden drug funding, political corruption, and years of silent searching.

Suddenly, Su Wan’s gaze froze on one corner of the skin map. Near the lower edge, beneath a folded seam, she caught the faintest trace of writing. She carefully adjusted the material under the concentrated sunlight.

Faded characters slowly became visible.

Not complete. Only fragments remained.

"The key opens..."

The rest had been damaged.

Li Chen noticed the shift in her expression. "What is it?"

"There’s writing hidden underneath," Su Wan said.

Mo Chen moved beside her as she repositioned the skin. More faded text surfaced, broken and ancient-looking, carved unevenly as though by hand directly into living flesh before preservation.

"The key opens the..."

The remaining words vanished beneath damaged sections near the center.

Silence settled heavily over the room.

Then Li Chen spoke quietly. "The watch."

Su Wan did not answer immediately, but inwardly she already suspected the same. The watch was not treasure or inheritance. It was a key. And if the map required it to function properly, then the people searching for it were no longer simply greedy.

They were trying to unlock something.

Su Wan stared at the stretched skin map for a long moment, her expression grave.

"The possibility of more maps like this existing out there is very high," she said quietly. "And if they were also tattooed onto human bodies, then we should expect more corpses and more pieces of preserved skin exactly like this one."

The atmosphere in the office grew colder. The reality of the map now felt far uglier than before.

Li Chen’s expression darkened while Mo Chen folded his arms tightly across his chest. Neither man could look away from the thing lying on the table. This no longer resembled ordinary criminal activity. It felt ancient, deliberate, and disturbingly organized — something passed secretly through generations beneath the surface of powerful families and hidden networks.

Mo Chen nodded slowly. "That’s possible."

"No," Su Wan corrected softly. "Probable."

Her fingers traced lightly along several overlapping lines before pausing near the converging marks close to the center. The visible map deliberately distorted the terrain, while the hidden markings beneath it corrected those distortions. Whoever had created this had never intended for any single piece to reveal the full picture.

"We won’t waste time searching blindly for the remaining sections," she decided.

She picked up a nearby pen and lightly marked several points on a blank sheet of paper beside the map. "When multiple maps are designed to connect, they usually revolve around a single central reference point. We can use the coordinates and corrected routes from this piece to identify that center first."

Li Chen’s eyes sharpened with understanding at once. Instead of hunting for every missing fragment, they could locate the convergence point and then map the surrounding area using ordinary geographical references.

Su Wan tapped the marked notes. "This skin map distorts the terrain on purpose, but the actual national geography doesn’t change. By comparing the hidden routes against real terrain, we can narrow down the central region."

Mo Chen nodded. "That’s much faster."

"And safer," Li Chen added quietly.

Searching openly for other map fragments would only draw dangerous attention. Studying geography, however, could still be done discreetly.

Su Wan leaned back slightly. "We focus on the center first."

Li Chen gathered the copied coordinates and hidden route sketches. "We’ll start building overlays tonight." 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

Su Wan gave a small nod, then shifted her attention to the black bags still resting near the edge of the table.

"Alright," she said calmly, reaching for one of the sealed stacks. "Let’s see how much we actually stole."

Mo Chen quickly cleared space on the table while Li Chen closed the map and set it safely aside, away from direct light. They unpacked the bundles of cash — large denomination notes, tightly sealed and unusually clean.

Su Wan picked up one stack and flipped through the bills under the light. Her expression sharpened almost immediately.

"There are markings."

Both men looked at her at once.

"Tracking marks?" Mo Chen asked quietly.

"Possibly." She spread several notes across the table. Tiny symbols had been stamped near the lower serial numbers on specific bills. They were subtle, intentional, and clearly not standard bank markings.

"These are organizational," she said. "Routes, ownership, movement sectors... or laundering classifications."

The realization settled heavily over the room. The cash was not merely emergency reserves. It was operational— structured and part of something far larger hidden beneath the surface.

Mo Chen lowered his voice. "How deep does this thing go?"

Su Wan stared silently at the marked bills spread beneath the morning light.