Shen Jingqi entered the VVIP room, where Li Baiyu was waiting for him.
The edge of the chopsticks suddenly cracked a fine line.
Li Baiyu paused while serving soup, her earring swaying a greenish hue in the warm light.
"Change the tableware." She stood up to search.
"No need." Shen Jingqi pressed her wrist. Her pulse throbbed under his fingertips, reminding him of those brainwave patterns in the lab. The Angelica black-bone chicken soup on the table steamed, weaving a thin veil between them.
Li Baiyu sat back down, her fingernail grazing the porcelain spoon's handle.
"You're going to be discharged tomorrow."
Shen Jingqi's spoon hit the edge of the bowl with a crisp sound.
"Tonight, Lin Shuwang will also be discharged."
Shen Jingqi suddenly smelled the scent of disinfectant mixed with a cloying fruity aroma. This scent made the back of his neck tense—it was the unique smell of neuron link agents.
"His test results showed that the obsessive symptoms have..." Shen Jingqi's words were cut off by a honk outside the window. The glass window vibrated, and the surface of the soup rippled with fine waves.
Li Baiyu's action of ladling soup suddenly sped up. The broth splattered on the beige tablecloth, like a dark red stain of blood. "Returned to normal levels," she said, "All compulsive behaviors have disappeared."
Shen Jingqi stared at the stain on the tablecloth. In the last test, he had seen Lin Shuwang's brainwaves showing abnormal gamma frequency oscillations in the lab. At that time, Qin Si was adjusting the intravenous pump, with light blue liquid in the needle shining with a pearlescent luster.
The phone vibrated in his pocket. It was a photo sent by Lin Shuwang—a young boy standing at the hospital entrance in a light gray hoodie, with shadows of phoenix trees crawling over the white walls behind him.
Shen Jingqi went to the floor where Lin Shuwang was.
His parents came walking from the end of the corridor.
"Thanks to your care, Shuwang can return to normal life." Mrs. Lin handed over a fruit basket.
Shen Jingqi smelled a familiar scorching odor—the smell of burnt circuit boards when the Sensory Paradise server overloaded.
Father Lin's shoe tip was stained with mud. In the dark brown soil were several leaves, with indigo edges. Shen Jingqi recalled the restricted area behind the lab's mountain, where he had seen such mutated phoenix leaves in the mud after a rainstorm last week.
"Dr. Shen, this is for you." Lin Shuwang suddenly spoke. In the young boy's palm lay a silver USB drive, engraved with a snake-like pattern. As Shen Jingqi's fingertip touched the cold metal, he heard a very faint electric current sound.
Returning to his office, Shen Jingqi remembered his sensor was still in the meeting room.
When he arrived at the meeting room, he inserted the USB drive into the system on the table involuntarily.
Instantly, all lighting devices flickered simultaneously. The screen jumped to a completely black interface, with a blood-red countdown floating in the center: 71:59:58. Shen Jingqi touched the scar on his temple, finding it heating up.
"Reviewing cases?" Qin Si's voice came from behind him. She held a coffee cup, the rim stained with lipstick marks. Shen Jingqi quickly unplugged the USB drive, catching a glimpse of her right hand in the screen reflection reaching for the coat pocket—where a protruding long shape was identical to that of a memory erasure injector.
Shen Jingqi chuckled and returned home.
At 12:03 AM, Shen Jingqi suddenly awoke. The headache was gone, but the pillow carried the scent of rust. He reached for the glass on the bedside table, discovering a few strands of silver metal thread floating on the water surface. The moonlight outside the window was devoured by dark clouds, leaving only a broken halo.
The phone screen lit up automatically. Lin Shuwang's social account updated his location—the abandoned bioengineering research institute in the Western Suburbs. In the photo, fluorescent moss climbed the cement wall behind the young boy, exactly the gene-edited strain leaked during early experiments in Sensory Paradise.
Grabbing his jacket, Shen Jingqi felt the USB drive in his pocket heating up. In the hallway mirror, the scar on his temple was seeping light blue phosphorescent liquid. Amidst the weightless descent of the elevator, he heard the cries of countless children mixed with the countdown of a mechanical female voice:
"71:32:15...71:32:14..."
The sound-controlled lights in the garage did not turn on. When Shen Jingqi reached for the car door handle, the sticky sensation made him withdraw his hand. The phone's flash illuminated for a moment, revealing his palm covered in a pearlescent deep blue liquid—the same as the solution inside Qin Si's injector that night.
As the engine roared to life, a figure suddenly flashed in the rearview mirror. Qin Si stood behind a pillar in a scarlet nightgown, the fruit knife in her hand dripping the same color liquid. Shen Jingqi slammed the accelerator, noticing the instrument panel time bizarrely jumping back to 11:59 PM.
Fluorescent text started appearing on the windshield: [Don't trust anyone]. The windshield wipers automatically started, scraping out a series of blood-red numbers: 71:15:22. Shen Jingqi gripped the steering wheel tightly, discovering the countdown seeping into his skin like a snake across his palm lines.
The Western Suburbs gate hung with a new chain, but the keyhole had that snake-patterned USB drive inserted. As Shen Jingqi pushed the door open, he heard the hum of countless servers running. Mucus seeped from the corridor walls, glimmering a neuron synapse-like silver blue under the phone's light.
All the cultivation pods in the lab's depths were open. Scratch marks remained on the inner walls, with blood-stained restraint straps scattered nearby. Shen Jingqi reached under the console for a hidden compartment, ejecting a carved iron box—inside were twenty-six yellowed photographs, each one marking a different age of himself with a blood-red X on his temple.
Suddenly, all the monitors lit up at once. The surveillance footage showed Qin Si rummaging through his home study.
Shen Jingqi's back hit the glass of a cultivation pod. The cold sensation climbed up his spine, forming a bizarre contrast with the scar's heat on his temple. The monitor footage suddenly switched to real-time imagery—Qin Si's high heels stepping into the lab door, the heel stained with fluorescent blue mucus, leaving a snail trail on the floor.
The countdown showed 69:47:23. Shen Jingqi gripped a metal plate engraved with ghost-repelling talismans, suddenly realizing the third stroke of the talisman had an extra snake-like branch. This was different from the one he carved in childhood. Or rather, the version he remembered never existed.
"Dr. Shen always likes to venture into forbidden places." Qin Si's voice, mixed with electric noise, came from the speaker overhead. The vent at the top of the cultivation pod began releasing a light pink gas, carrying the rotting sweet smell of lychee. Shen Jingqi reached for the emergency stop valve under the console, only to find the handle's shape different from his memory—it was rotating counterclockwise.
The metal plate edge cut his palm. As the blood bead dripped, all the monitors jumped to show Lin Shuwang's face. Seventeen split-screens of the boy spoke simultaneously, their voices combining into a roar: "Have you seen my teddy bear?"
Shen Jingqi suddenly had a splitting headache. Within those implanted memory fragments, a crying boy held a torn stuffed bear in his arms, the right eye button exactly matched the style of the lab's access card chip. He stumbled toward Pod 7, feeling a hard object in the mucus—a bloodstained restraint buckle, with THX-1138 engraved inside. ʀᴇᴀᴅ ʟᴀᴛᴇsᴛ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀᴛ novᴇl(ꜰ)ire.ɴet
This was the code for Sensory Paradise's first-generation experimental subject.
Scratching sounds came from the ventilation duct. Shen Jingqi looked up to see the vent grill vibrating, a scaled limb squeezing out from the gaps. He turned and knocked over the reagent rack, the sound of shattering glass waking the creatures in the dark. Two rows of luminous green dots lit up on the ceiling in succession—the eyes of mice embedded with luminescent membranes.
The countdown suddenly sped up. 69:12:07 jumped directly to 66:06:06. Shen Jingqi's pocket started heating, the snake-patterned USB drive melting, the silver shell turning liquid as it seeped into the fabric. He pulled out the soaked hem, discovering a maze pattern woven with blood threads emerging in the fabric fibers.
"Watch out!" a woman's shout came from behind. Shen Jingqi was pulled down, as a scorching ray grazed his nape, burning a black hole into the cultivation pod. The one who saved him was Li Baiyu, but at this moment, her irises shone with the cold blue gleam unique to mechanical prosthetic eyes.