Ever since Qiu Yu had brought up "the past," Chen Ce Bai's expression had grown noticeably colder.
It wasn't intentional; rather, it was the kind of instinctive detachment that even he didn't seem to realize was happening.
Anyone else might have missed the subtle shift—but she had grown so used to watching him that even the smallest flicker didn't escape her notice.
It wasn't the kind of question that could be addressed through a video call. Qiu Yu decided to wait until they were face-to-face.
When the call ended, she sat there for a moment in a daze, then tapped her tablet back to life. It was still on the same screen.
She hesitated, brows furrowed, then tapped into the video's profile page and searched the keyword: Chen Ce Bai.
One by one, she began watching the videos in chronological order.
It was immediately clear these weren't made by the same person.
Some videos were aggressively opinionated, calling Chen Ce Bai a traitor to the lower classes, accusing him of groveling to capitalists.
Others attempted a more rational reconstruction of his background—trying to piece together how he rose to become a top-tier scientist.
The latter were clearly more credible: they cited books, interviews, public records, and cross-referenced documentation.
Qiu Yu spent the entire afternoon watching every single video related to Chen Ce Bai.
And she discovered something unsettling:
No matter how they reconstructed his life story, there was always a gap—
His whereabouts between the ages of seven and fourteen remained completely blank.
In this era of digital transparency, almost no one could escape documentation.
Surveillance footage, electronic records, browsing history, chat logs, financial statements... All of it formed a footprint.
Yet for those years, Chen Ce Bai had left nothing.
Either he had already developed anti-tracking habits as a child,
Or—more likely—the company had deliberately wiped that part of his history.
Qiu Yu closed the videos.
She disliked speculation, preferring to ask the person directly.
Just then, a sudden chill crawled up her spine.
Her whole body went rigid with alarm.
She whipped her head around—
Nothing.
But the presence was unmistakable.
The voyeur had never stopped watching.
She'd been so absorbed in the videos, she'd completely forgotten to stay alert.
Her heart thumped violently.
Seeing it was almost time to clock out, she hurriedly called Chen Ce Bai.
It rang for several seconds before he picked up.
"Hello," came his voice—distant and cold, as if it were echoing off a snow-covered mountainside.
He must've answered on a tablet, the audio tinny and remote.
"Can you come pick me up after work?" she asked softly.
"I'm already on my way," he replied.
Qiu Yu smiled, warmed by the thought. She was about to coo a thank-you—
But he hung up before she could speak.
She didn't think much of it. Maybe he was navigating heavy traffic and couldn't talk.
She packed up her things, grabbed the flash drive her boss had handed her, and went down to the underground parking lot to wait.
The moment she stepped into the garage, she saw him.
Leaning against the driver's side door, arms folded across his chest—
As if sensing her gaze, he looked straight at her.
Qiu Yu had met his eyes countless times, and yet the suddenness of it still made her heart race.
It was strange. The lot was full of nearly identical business sedans—one of the reasons she hated parking underground: everything looked the same.
Yet her eyes found him instantly.
It was instinctual.
Like a prey animal catching the scent of its predator from afar.
And that's what struck her—
This moment felt eerily familiar.
It felt just like the moment before—when some part of her, some primal reflex, had told her someone was watching.
But it couldn't be Chen Ce Bai.
He had no reason to spy on her.
If he wanted to look at her, all he had to do was say so—they could video call each other 24/7.
She wasn't afraid of his gaze.
Shaking off the chill that ran down her spine, Qiu Yu jogged over to him and threw herself into his arms.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, buried her face in the cold curve of his neck, inhaled his familiar scent, and grumbled:
"You scared me to death… I thought the voyeur didn't show up today. But right before I got off work, I suddenly felt his gaze again…"
Then another thought occurred to her—
What if the voyeur wasn't watching with eyes, but with surveillance tech?
What if they recorded her watching those exposé videos about Chen Ce Bai, twisted the narrative, and posted it online?
Qiu Yu wasn't naive—at least, not as much as she appeared.
She was just used to always having someone clean up after her, to always being shielded.
The world outside was something she'd never had to fully face.
She had heard of corporate scandals, and of social platforms using big data to stoke public outrage and mass hysteria.
But those things had always seemed like distant shadows under a bright lamp—
And human nature being what it is, most people never notice the darkness right beneath the light.
Now, though, the shadow was threatening her directly.
If the voyeur posted manipulated footage of her online, all it would take was a few inflammatory lines of text—
And the mob would come for Chen Ce Bai.
The only way to stop that was to skip the speculation and go to the source.
To ask him directly what had happened during those blank years.
She looked up at him.
"I need to tell you something…"
Chen Ce Bai's glasses flashed under the overhead light. He jerked his chin toward the passenger door.
"Get in. We'll talk inside."
Qiu Yu nodded and walked around the car.
But Chen Ce Bai didn't get in right away.
Instead, he pulled out a cigarette, tapped one out of the box, held it between his lips with a cold expression, and lit it with a flick of his thumb.
The smoke curled around his face like a ghostly halo.
All afternoon, he had been multitasking at a level beyond normal comprehension—
Directing lab researchers, logging experimental data,
And silently watching every video Qiu Yu had watched, following her gaze, syncing to her pace.
Not a single mistake.
Not a single missed detail.
He knew she would bring it up.
She wasn't the type to hide things.
She would ask: Why are there no records from age seven to fourteen?
Because during that time, he hadn't been a person.
There were biological limits to gene editing.
Push past a certain threshold, and the genome collapses.
That's why they used test subjects with IQs around 850—the only ones who could withstand the neural load of augmentation.
And still, it failed.
Every genome ruptured during the final phase of editing—snapping apart under the pressure, only to be forcibly reassembled under artificial intervention.
Skin dissolved, sloughed off, regenerated.
Organs split open in red, pulsing seams—then sealed back together.
They became… things.
Masses of raw, pulsing tissue, conscious and aware, but utterly devoid of human form.
Brains in jars—alive, awake, and screaming.
In the end, the company gambled everything.
They injected a foreign substance—highly active, aggressive, capable of infinite replication.
Later, Chen Ce Bai would learn where it came from:
An extra-galactic source.
No one knew what it really was, what it was made of, or what it would do.
No one cared.
The company didn't care if they died.
Didn't care about their future.
They just wanted one viable result.
He was the one that survived.
People online said his IQ was 240.
In truth, no machine could measure it.
If he chose to, he could fulfill Laplace's Demon:
Calculate every outcome in the universe, see the past and predict the future.
But no human brain could survive the heat that calculation would generate.
Only by uploading his mind into a supercomputer array could he truly become that demon.
Put simply—he was a monster.
So how was he supposed to tell his wife?
That the man who slept beside her at night wasn't what he seemed—
That for years, he hadn't even had a human form,
Just a writhing lump of sentient tissue?
Sure, they could have children—technically.
But what kind of children would they produce?
Would they even be… human?
Chen Ce Bai held the cigarette between his fingers, eyes flicking to the rearview mirror.
His expression remained smooth—thanks to years of perfected facial control.
But physical reactions couldn't be hidden.
Veins bulged at his temples.
His jaw clenched tight.
His eyes were bloodshot, red with restrained tension.
He looked like a predator moments before it snapped.
With a final drag, he stubbed out the cigarette, closed his eyes, and exhaled hard.
When he looked back in the mirror, the veins were gone—
But the redness in his eyes remained.
He didn't wait any longer.
Opening the driver's door, he climbed into the car.
The moment he sat down, Qiu Yu leaned in, grabbed his coat collar, and took a deep sniff.
Then she giggled.
"Be honest," she teased. "Are you sure you don't have a nicotine addiction?"
"No," he said.
The physiological mechanisms that cause addiction simply didn't work on him.
Take internet addiction, for example. People become addicted because of the constant stream of fresh, flashy information online—most of which is consumed passively, without much effort to determine truth from falsehood. This endless, fast-paced novelty creates a feedback loop of stimulation and distraction. Especially now, when entertainment has evolved to favor brevity—videos have gone from minutes long to just a few seconds, shifting from flat screens to immersive holograms. In the span of a heartbeat, your senses are overwhelmed, and before your mind can catch up, the next clip has already begun.
But for Chen Ce Bai, even a two-second video contained enough inconsistencies for him to analyze and deconstruct. The mechanisms that trap most people in compulsive scrolling had no hold over him.
It was the same with smoking.
The only "addiction" he couldn't shake… was Qiu Yu.
Maybe it was because she represented a longing that had never truly healed.
Even now—after becoming a world-renowned genius, after marrying her, after earning her love—he still couldn't erase the truth of what he once was.
Qiu Yu only loved this Chen Ce Bai: the aloof, brilliant, perfectly-constructed scientist.
But in the shadows, there were two other versions of him, just as real.
One was a mass of pulsating flesh and cells, barely alive, barely human, born of genetic manipulation and pain.
The other was something far worse—an aberration who still harbored a terrifying, voyeuristic obsession with her.
She might tolerate the gaze of the scientist. She might even forgive the wounded child hidden in his DNA.
But she could never bear the scrutiny of the monster.
And if she ever saw his true face, it would be the end of them.
He didn't want to hurt her. He didn't want to trap her with fear or control.
So it was better—safer—if she stopped looking into his past.
Chen Ce Bai looked at her for a moment, then reached out and rested his hand on the back of her neck, gently stroking it.
His fingers were cold. The motion slow and deliberate, like a cold-blooded creature sizing up its prey.
Qiu Yu shivered at the touch, instinctively twisting her head away. "Are you upset?"
He paused. "Why do you say that?"
"I can feel it. Your mood. Did I upset you when I mentioned the past?" Her lashes fluttered as she leaned in, half-coaxing, half-sincere. "If it bothers you, you can just tell me. I won't bring it up again. But I'd rather you tell me everything—like how I'm always honest with you."
Chen Ce Bai studied her face.
Of course he knew what she was doing. Her schemes were always written all over her face.
For a few seconds, he had the urge to slide his fingers into her soft hair, tilt her chin up a bit too roughly, and whisper into her ear:
Then let me ask you this honestly—would you be willing to bear a little monster for me?
Not in the literal, biological sense—he would never let her carry that risk. Artificial gestation was a trivial task for someone like him. He could design a synthetic womb and raise their child from a controlled embryo.
But their offspring would likely be just like he once was: a malformed, unstable mass of regenerating tissue.
Only through the injection of a foreign substance—a hyper-aggressive, self-replicating mucus-like organism—could they be stabilized.
Those substances weren't from Earth. They came from another galaxy.
No one knew what they were, what they were made of, or what long-term effects they might have.
The company that created him didn't care. They weren't interested in saving anyone—only in preserving one viable specimen.
He was the one who survived.
They say his IQ is 240. That's a lie.
The truth is, no machine can measure his intelligence anymore.
If he wanted, he could become a real-life Laplace's Demon—able to calculate the past, present, and future of the entire universe.
But a human brain can't handle the heat that kind of computation would generate. Only if he uploaded his mind into a supercomputer array could he transcend human limits.
In essence, he wasn't a man. He was a monster.
How was he supposed to explain that to his wife?
That the man who slept beside her every night used to be nothing more than an aberration of flesh—breathing, thinking, regenerating meat?
And even if their genes could still create a viable child, that child would likely be a writhing, formless mutation.
Chen Ce Bai held the cigarette between his fingers and glanced into the rearview mirror.
His face was calm, expressionless—thanks to years of precise control over every micro-muscle in his face.
But physiological responses were harder to hide.
Veins bulged on his temple. His jaw was locked tight. His eyes were bloodshot—so red they were nearly terrifying.
Like a predator pushed to the brink of losing control.
He crushed the cigarette out, shut his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, the veins had faded—but his gaze was still darkened with residual heat.
He didn't wait for the blood to fully drain from his eyes. He simply got into the driver's seat.
The moment he did, Qiu Yu leaned over, grabbed the lapel of his coat, and took a playful sniff.
"Be honest," she teased. "Are you sure you're not addicted to smoking?"
Chen Ce Bai looked at her.
Then he turned his gaze back to the road, pressed the ignition, and said flatly:
"I don't like it when you bring up the past."