Chapter 331: The Webpage and That Ditch

January 20th, 9:20 a.m. The small office on the first floor of the Chengnan Notary Office. Hu Yongnian pushed his reading glasses up the bridge of his nose, glanced first at the corner of the ceiling—the camera light was on—and only then pulled open the drawer.

"What's it for."

"Webpage evidence collection." Shen Zhixia slid a sheet of paper across. Four pages, one per line: the enterprise registry, pollutant discharge permit information, administrative penalty disclosure, and the public page for the plant's environmental assessment approval.

He didn't look at the paper. He looked at the people first. "Who's the applicant."

"Jiangzhou Qinghe Environmental Public Welfare Service Center." Cai Qingru pulled the dark-red-covered registration certificate from her bag, the plastic cover creased at the edges, and slid it over together with a pre-filled application. "I'll sign."

He turned the certificate over and held it to the window light to examine the red seal, then checked her ID, and when the check was done he held out a pen. "Signature. Date. Today's date."

"What do I write for purpose," he asked.

"Litigation," Shen Zhixia said.

Cai Qingru's hand stopped over the paper. "Add 'intended' in front."

Hu Yongnian glanced up at her, then set the pen down and wrote "intended to file environmental civil public interest litigation."

"How many days to get it back?" Lu Jibai asked.

"Three working days." He filled in the time on the form header. "Three days for the webpages. The on-site work depends on how many segments you film."

Then he turned the machine around so the screen faced the three of them. "You read the links, I'll click. All three of you—keep your hands off the desk."

Page one, the enterprise registry. The address was typed in, the page loaded slowly. He didn't click a single link; first he maximized the window, waited for all the text on the page to render, then said, "Name: Jiangzhou Hengyue New Materials Co., Ltd."

"Read it in full," he said.

"Registered address, Jiangzhou High-tech Zone. Business scope includes battery cathode materials. Registration status: active." She looked further down. "There's a line of small print at the bottom with a date on it."

He wrote down the URL, wrote the time of access, wrote the date in the small print. One screenshot, the page saved separately, the filename a string of numbers. Then he pulled up the checksum tool, got a mixed string of letters and numbers, and copied it after the record.

"You don't need to memorize that string. It's on the paper."

Page two, the discharge permit. This page was longer than the last and loaded slower. She read: unit name; production and operations address, East Hill, Baixi Village; types of permitted pollutants—when she reached "lead and its compounds," she moved her finger down a notch; stormwater outlets: one.

Hu Yongnian entered it into the record line by line, offering no comment on a single word. Cai Qingru stood with both hands clasped behind her back, took half a step closer, looked, and stepped back.

[Thud. The permit lists lead. That line is public record. Anyone can look it up.]

Page three, administrative penalty disclosure. A table, row after row. The penalty date column read September 2025. The cause column read: stormwater outlet discharge exceeded lead standards. She reached "fine" and stopped.

"There's a number on this page?"

"Yes."

"Read it."

She read it out, and he copied the number down, the pen tip pausing on the paper a beat before lifting. "This page has 'lead' and 'stormwater outlet.' That's enough. I won't write down anything else."

Page four, the environmental assessment approval. The address went in, white screen, loading for a long while. The assistant said quietly by the door that the network was slow. He didn't turn around. "Wait. Let it come up on its own. Don't rush it."

The page finally spread open. The approval's signatory block bore the name of an approving department and a date; the project column stated what was being built. She read those lines out word by word, slower than before.

When the four pages were done, she reached into her bag and pulled out a sheet of paper. The corners were brittle—a printout she'd fished out from under a stack of case files earlier. It had one line about this company on it, which she'd copied down once, unable to write out its source.

She slid it over.

Hu Yongnian gave it one look and slid it back.

"I won't do this one."

"What it says is the same as their public disclosures."

"Same or not, I won't do it." He took off his reading glasses. "I only handle things I watch being opened on the screen in front of me. That sheet in your hand—who printed it, where it was printed from, you can't say. If you can't say, I can't give it a source."

"So it stays a piece of paper with no provenance."

"Set it aside for now." He pushed it toward her. "Today we handle four pages. Those four pages are on the internet; anyone can open them. You're not giving me a piece of paper—you're giving it a provenance."

The record was one page. He read it aloud for the three of them to verify: the applicant, purpose, equipment, four URLs, access times for all four pages, four filenames, four checksums, method of sealing. When he finished reading, he flipped the page over and had them check line by line.

The files were written to a new USB drive. From the drawer he took a seal strip with a barcode, applied it across the seam, stamped the notary office's seal over the overlap, and held out the pen. "Sign along the seal edge."

Cai Qingru signed. She wrote slowly; when she was done she set the pen down and looked at her own name.

"Two p.m." He printed the fee slip. "This ditch you're going to on-site. Does it have a name."

"Huishui Ditch," she said. "That's what everyone in the village calls it. There's no other name."

He wrote down "Huishui Ditch (name used by villagers)." "How many people going."

"Me, one volunteer, plus the two of you."

"We're not going," Lu Jibai said.

Hu Yongnian didn't ask why. Cai Qingru answered anyway. "If I go, the villagers will know it's the Center. If the two of you go, the villagers will ask one more question about who you are. So near the New Year, one less question is one less question."

"Two o'clock, on the road at the village entrance." Hu Yongnian lifted the case from under the desk. "Don't drive the car into the village."

14:00, Qingshi Village entrance.

Qinghe's old minibus was parked by the side of the road, front facing toward the town, hazard lights blinking for a moment before switching off. Cai Qingru opened the trunk, Hu Yongnian lifted out a black case, and the assistant carried a camera and a folding pole.

The ditch came down from the foot of the hill, passed under the road through a concrete culvert, emerged from the mouth of the culvert, and ran east along the shoulder. The ditch wasn't wide—one step across. The water was thin, pushing forward in little rivulets. The sediment at the bottom was gray-white, the water flowing over it and drawing bright lines; the grass along the banks was coated in a layer of gray.

Cai Qingru stood on the road, hands in her down coat pockets, one step short of the ditch's edge.

"Start from the culvert mouth," Hu Yongnian said.

The assistant called out: "14:08."

He raised the camera—first a panorama, then the culvert mouth, then he crouched to shoot the ditch bottom, knees not touching ground, only leaning his upper body out. "Water color."

"Gray-white," the assistant wrote.

"Flow rate."

"Can't tell. Slow."

"Then write 'can't tell.'" He stood up, turning the lens cap in his hand half a turn. "Ditch width, ditch depth, whether there are other drainage outlets on the slope—look at each in turn."

The girl with the Center's name printed on her vest took a step down the slope and was stopped by Cai Qingru's outstretched hand.

"Say it from here."

"I just want to point at that opening—"

"Point from here." Cai Qingru withdrew her hand. "The moment your foot goes in, people will start asking whether you went to photograph or to collect."

[Thud. Feet do not enter the ditch. Once the feet go in, the person speaking changes.]

The three of them walked east along the road shoulder. The second section was twenty-some paces east of the convenience store, where the ditch bent in a small curve and two school uniforms hung drying on a line outside a house on the slope, still dripping. The third section was where the ditch turned east, beside a pile of unused sand and gravel at the shoulder.

A man on an electric scooter stopped, one foot planted on the ground. "What are you filming?"

"This ditch," Cai Qingru said.

"What's so interesting about a ditch."

"Keeping a record of how it looks today."

The man looked toward the camera, then at the words on the vest. "You people from the plant?"

"No."

He didn't ask more. He kicked the pedal and glided forward, looked back once after ten-some paces, then sped off. In the doorway of one house stood an old woman who never came out, both hands braced on the doorframe.

At 15:10, the assistant suddenly stopped writing.

On the earthen ridge across the ditch stood a man. Gray-blue work uniform, a badge on his chest with characters too small to read, a phone held sideways in his hand, pointed straight at them.

"Teacher Hu."

Hu Yongnian looked up once, then lowered his head again, the lens not stopping. "Let him film. Write down the time."

"Write what."

"What time, where he stood, which way he faced, what he was wearing, what he had in his hand. Name unknown, so write 'a man.'"

The assistant's hand trembled slightly as she wrote. When she finished she read it back: at 15:10, on the earthen ridge across the ditch, a man in a gray-blue work uniform, holding a phone and filming the notary equipment and personnel.

"Filming direction," Hu Yongnian added.

"First at the equipment, later at the people."

The man stood with the phone raised for less than two minutes, lowered it, took a few shots of the ditch, turned, and walked toward the village. At the second fork he stopped, looked back once, and only then turned in.

Cai Qingru had remained standing in place the whole time, hands never leaving her pockets.

"He'll go back and talk," she said.

"Let him talk." Hu Yongnian snapped the lens cap on. "My paper only records what I saw."

"So this trip of ours—his side has a copy too now."

"He has his." He picked up the black case. "I'll store the photos in two places when I get back. One set goes in the file, one set burned to disc. The webpage item I'll deliver to you on the 25th, the on-site item on the 28th."

15:20, they finished. The assistant closed the notebook, wrapped the camera in a cloth, and placed it in the innermost part of the trunk.

Cai Qingru opened the driver's door and stood there without getting in.

"Actual sampling is still the court's job," she said.

"This isn't sampling," Hu Yongnian said.

"It isn't. But the way things are now, someone has to preserve it first." She looked out toward the far end of the road, where the water at the foot of the hill split into a thin strand at the culvert mouth. "I've driven this stretch of road three times. The first two times, I went home empty-handed."

20:00, her home.

The notebook lay open on the table, the Qingshi Village page pressed under the desk lamp. The phone rang while she was recopying that line about the provenance onto the bag's surface.

"Lawyer Shen, this is Xiao Ji from the notary office. Teacher Hu asked me to call. He said there's something I should tell you."

"Go ahead."

"This afternoon at 15:10, there was a man across the ditch filming us."

She set the pen down. "How long did he film."

"Under two minutes. At the equipment first, later at the people."

"Did he get our faces?"

"I saw him first. When I looked at him, he angled the phone away toward the ditch."

"Which way did he go."

"Toward the village. At the second fork he looked back once."

"Is it in the record."

"It is. Teacher Hu said this line had to be included, and it'll be attached when the certificate is issued."

"Did you film him?"

"No," Xiao Ji said. "The camera stayed on the ditch the whole time. Teacher Hu said the lens can't move away from the thing you're preserving."

She wrote that sentence down, the pen tip pausing on the paper.

[Thud. He stood across the ditch. The frame he stood in—that's in the record too.]

"Thank you, Xiao Ji."

"One more thing he told me to say: when that man comes to you asking for the photos, don't give him a single one."

"Why."

"Because if you give them, they become something you gave him." Xiao Ji paused. "If he wants to ask, tell him to ask at the notary office."

She hung up, flipped back to the Qingshi Village page, and added a line at the bottom: January 20, 15:10, a man in work uniform across the ditch, holding a phone and filming; first at the equipment, then at the people; walked into the village, looked back at the second fork. When she finished, she called Lu Jibai.

He answered quickly; there was the sound of pages turning on his end.

"The on-site record is back," she said. "15:10, one man across the ditch, in work uniform, filming us. Equipment first, then people. Walked toward the village."

The sound of paper stopped for a moment.

"Hu Yongnian's record has that line in it," he said.

"He's identifying people."

"He's been identifying them for a while. Little Wu's first few visits asked whether they'd signed. This time he asked what illness the child was being treated for."

"And after this?"

"After this, if he asks, you answer; if he doesn't ask, you don't move." He said, "The families in the village who signed—what they fear most right now is a photograph."

"What kind of photograph."

"A photograph that could get someone questioned on the phone for three hours."

She thought of those four families, fingerprints on paper, with the words "will not participate in any litigation" written above the prints.

"What should I do."

"Copy that line in two places. Your notebook is one. Don't copy it onto the bag—nothing about village matters goes on there."

"Noted." She flipped back and rewrote that line; when she was done she tucked the pen between the pages and closed the notebook.

"Have you eaten?" he asked.

"No."

"Go cook. Don't hang up."

She set the phone on the corner of the desk, switched on speakerphone, and walked into the kitchen. The kettle was on, the bottom starting to sound. She stood by the stove and finally asked the question aloud: "Why do you think they're filming us. What do they want it for."

"To keep it," came his voice from the desk corner, a layer further away. "They're afraid too."

"Afraid of what."

"Afraid that this ditch has someone to preserve how it looks today."

The water boiled; she lifted the lid.

"They film us, we film the ditch," he said. "Each films their own. Everyone keeps what they have."

She wrote that sentence on the very bottom line of the notebook, read it back once when she finished. The stack of volumes still sat at the corner of the desk, the third one on top, spine facing out. The noodles went into the pot; white steam rose over the rim and fogged half the window.