The security monitor displayed the footage from the other side.
The Dean, temporarily neutralized, sat far off in a corner. Li Xin sat propped against the operating table, his fingertips subconsciously pressing against the wound in his palm.
Chen Dan was currently in a greenhouse, sitting by a window and scribbling dense equations. When he paused, he could see lush green trees outside. The desk was covered in chemistry textbooks; one of the volumes even had Chen Dan listed as the author.
When Yu Suheng and the Cleaner appeared, Chen Dan only paused for a moment before smiling and gesturing toward the sofa. “I don’t know what time it is outside, so I won’t ask. Please, sit.”
The greenhouse maintained a constant temperature and stable light year-round. There were no clocks or calendars; even Chen Dan couldn’t remember how long he had been here. Yu Suheng did not refuse the invitation and sat on the sofa opposite Chen Dan with the silent Cleaner.
“You were brought here by the Dean, I assume?” Chen Dan placed two cups of tea on the table, his voice devoid of fluctuation. “What did you come to learn from me?”
Yu Suheng observed the “perfect experimental subject” protected so heavily by the Dean and spoke calmly: “We found your original experimental procedure.”
Unexpectedly, this news didn’t trigger a reaction from Chen Dan. He simply smiled and said, “Have the school doctor and the Dean finally reached a truce?” Without waiting for an answer—it seemed to be a casual remark rather than a real question—he added, “You want to know if that procedure is authentic?”
“Yes.” Yu Suheng recognized this man’s brilliance and stopped beating around the bush. “We want to know the things that weren’t written down.”
“Things… not written down?” The phrase made Chen Dan frown. The inaccessible past caused him to instinctively press his forehead, which still throbbed with intense, sharp pain.
Seeing this, the Cleaner stood up abruptly and hurried to Chen Dan’s side, her tone anxious. “What’s wrong?”
“I…” Chen Dan shook his head involuntarily. He tried to smile bitterly and say something, but the moment he turned back, he met the Cleaner’s eyes. He froze, staring in disbelief at that aged, wrinkled face. Fragments of memory flashed through his mind, only to be cruelly torn apart.
The intense pain forced him to his knees. The Cleaner panicked and tried to pull away, but Chen Dan grabbed the hem of her clothes. “Don’t go…”
The person he gripped remained motionless in confusion, while Yu Suheng stood up calmly. He looked down at Chen Dan, his voice carrying a fleeting sense of pity before returning to his usual indifferent detachment: “Now, it’s time for you to make a choice…”
Chen Dan realized something. Covering half his face, he struggled through the agony to look up at the Cleaner’s ugly, wrinkled face. That face bore no resemblance to his own—but those eyes… he couldn’t be mistaken.
Those were… his eyes.
“Who exactly…” Chen Dan clutched the fabric tightly, as if he had found the only road sign in the chaos, while tears slid down his cheeks.
…
“Hmm… Memory segmentation.”
The overhead lights in the room clicked on. Li Xin took a pair of rubber gloves from a drawer; the tight film clung to his slender fingertips, accentuating his distinct knuckles. He pulled a brand-new scalpel from a box and set it on the operating table.
His voice was steady, carrying just the right amount of thoughtful contemplation as his gaze rested on the still-playing security monitor. “What a moving scene. There, the final question is answered.”
“He didn’t truly want to choose the ‘Life Trajectory Correction,’ but due to some reasons—perhaps livelihood, perhaps family, perhaps something else we can’t guess…” Li Xin tilted his head, looking at the flickering parameters on the light screen, and said nonchalantly, “Whatever the reason, in short, the excessive negative emotions in the solitary confinement room caused his consciousness to split into two parts.”
“One part became the numb, self-deceiving present… the other part, the glorious past.”
He paused, looking at the Cleaner’s face—so aged it was unrecognizable—on the screen. He reached into his pocket, blinked, and let out a light, cryptic chuckle. Dismissing the distraction, he continued to watch Yu Suheng’s profile on the screen.
“The forcibly separated spirit took the memories with it. It used the shadow you left in the solitary confinement room to form a new individual and carried Chen Dan out. As for this female disguise, it’s not important, but I suspect it needed a disguise and processed one based on memories.”
Li Xin paused again, looking a bit helpless. “Though she seems to have misunderstood one thing—thinking that memory wiping was part of the solitary confinement process. In fact, that place was just to intensify negative emotions to make him give up, reducing the difficulty of the shadow fusion. If I hadn’t taken Feng Hao out of that room, I might have been misled too.”
Li Xin returned to the operating table, watching the Dean’s actions, and said languidly, “Now it seems Chen Dan’s escape from solitary confinement isn’t the point. The point is the memory separation caused by the accident.”
The Dean thoroughly dissected Feng Hao’s skull. His hands were steady. As the scalpel descended, he precisely removed the hippocampus where memories were stored. Following this, the blood-stained scalpel descended upon his own left arm. With a fanatical light in his eyes, the Dean cut without hesitation, severing the entire left limb.
The moment the arm fell, it dissolved into a thick, viscous black shadow, which swallowed the piece of flesh just excised. Li Xin withdrew his gaze from the Dean’s sores and watched the formless entity twist, gradually taking on a human shape. The face forming on it began to align perfectly with the person on the operating table.
Finally, it opened its eyes in confusion.
“Next is… memory implantation…” The Dean covered his slowly regenerating arm, his brow furrowed deeply. “Every previous case has spiraled out of control at this stage.”
“It can’t be helped. Forcibly adding new memories without clearing the existing ones is like trying to force a new piece into a saturated puzzle; human mental strength simply cannot withstand it.” Li Xin watched the panicked “Feng Hao” with great interest. “But an empty shell without memories is much better—after all, there’s now a vacancy in the puzzle.”
The Dean looked at the “monster” he had created with his own hands, furrowing his brow in belated realization. “If clearing memories is enough, then what is the purpose of this?”
“Just a precaution. We don’t have absolute certainty, so naturally, following an identical process is safer.” Li Xin squinted, his eyes flickering toward the monitor with a sense of intuition.
On the screen, Chen Dan was already gripping the Cleaner’s hand, and their memories were beginning to merge. Yu Suheng pulled out the black liquid that had mysteriously vanished from Li Xin’s side.
Li Xin, having been outsmarted by his own trick, laughed helplessly.
“Dean, we need to hurry.” Li Xin turned to the Dean, his tone meaningful. “Better act fast; a long night brings many dreams.”
“You don’t need to remind me,” the Dean roared, irritated. His severed arm couldn’t regenerate quickly, leaving him significantly weakened.
“The uncertainty in simulating this process is too high.” The Dean frowned, feeling the loss of his power. “What we are doing is essentially a low-quality knockoff.”
Li Xin remained unmoved by the Dean’s questioning. The cool light hit his face, making him look like a ghost crawled out of the abyss. “But the fact is, this is the only option.”
Li Xin casually entered a few strings of numbers and, under the Dean’s disbelieving gaze, opened the bottom-most freezer. Inside were many black, card-like storage chips. The Dean treated these like precious jewels, but Li Xin stirred them mercilessly until his fingers pulled out the required one.
“Where are you going to find so many people who are unwilling and yet possess the mental fortitude to separate their memories? Naturally, you need manual assistance.” He held up the black iron chip, checked the label against the light, confirmed it was correct, and tossed it to the ashen-faced Dean.
Pushing the cabinet shut, Li Xin glanced at the Dean’s face, which had turned the color of a burnt pot, and smiled innocently. “Don’t look at me like that, Dean. I just happened to catch your password when you typed it. Who would have thought you used the same one for the entire room?”
Dean: …
The Dean looked like he wanted to scream. He had typed the password twice, and both times he had been sure he was shielding it from Li Xin’s view. Damn it, just who is the monster here?
Unable to vent his rage, the Dean could only bottle it up and summon Feng Hao’s restless shadow. Before the shadow could realize what was happening, the Dean jammed the knowledge-storage chip into its head and shoved the confused shadow back into Feng Hao’s body. The entire process was brutal and impatient.
A chill ran down Li Xin’s back. He strongly suspected that the failure of previous test subjects had a lot to do with the Dean’s volatile temper. The storage chip, also made of the Dean’s own shadow, began to integrate upon contact with the nervous system wrapped in black shadows.
The Dean stitched the skull back together with a few quick movements. The moment he stepped back, Feng Hao on the bed began to shriek. Integrating knowledge that didn’t belong to one’s own mind was like forcing an alien stone into a healing wound. It ground down a spirit already scarred, and the natural defense system instinctively tried to expel the foreign object. But the shadow had been ordered to integrate it. The tug-of-war left a fragile spirit hanging by a thread.
The Dean stared fixedly at the person on the bed, and Li Xin watched just as closely. The integration lasted a long time; he heard the screams of Feng Hao growing weaker and the Dean pacing anxiously. The probability of failure was rising, but Li Xin didn’t care—he just watched the person forcibly restrained before him. The shadow integrated into Feng Hao’s body had fully taken over the repair process, constantly knitting and mending the torn flesh—even more efficiently than white blood cells.
Li Xin witnessed the entire repair process, his fingers touching his own heart, which felt as if it were being torn apart.
“There’s hope! The vital signs are stabilizing!”
Behind him came the Dean’s exclamation. Li Xin looked up subconsciously—and saw the “door” open at the same moment. The door opened with clear intent, right behind the Dean.
Sure enough, the second after the Dean sensed something was wrong, a dagger pierced straight through his body.
Yu Suheng’s figure appeared in the doorway. His face remained emotionless, but his hand gripping the dagger was steady. Not feeling the core beneath the blade, he frowned slightly and decided to retreat immediately.
But Li Xin’s voice rang out before he could withdraw:
“The core is in the center.”
The sudden change made the Dean, who had just breathed a sigh of relief, look up in disbelief—only to be met with Li Xin’s smiling face under the lights. In an instant, the Dean realized the truth about the “replica” that had consumed so much of his power while proving unnecessary. He realized the conspiracy, but it was too late.
The blade didn’t hesitate for a fraction of a second; the moment he heard the instruction, Yu Suheng adjusted his aim. The Dean tried to dodge, but he had exhausted too much power creating a body, and Yu Suheng was faster.
A crisp sound echoed, accompanied by a cracking fissure. The Dean’s eyes widened in disbelief, his mask of skin already beginning to peel away.
At the very last moment, all he heard was a light chuckle:
“I told you already—better act fast, Dean.”