Qiu Yu heard Chen Ce Bai's sharp, cold laugh and looked up at him.
But Chen Ce Bai didn't look back.
He let go of her hand, pressed the engine button, and took hold of the steering wheel.
Qiu Yu noticed that his grip wasn't particularly tight—no blue veins stood out on the back of his hand—yet the steering wheel suddenly shattered from within, like it had suffered some kind of internal trauma.
Qiu Yu gasped. "What was that...?"
Chen Ce Bai's expression barely shifted. "Let's switch cars."
With that, he activated his chip, selected the nearest garage, and called for a self-driving car to come to them.
The garage was only 200 meters away, and the car arrived quickly. As Qiu Yu got out, she took a moment to examine the shattered steering wheel.
The way it broke was... strange. If it had been damaged by external force, or even by something inside, the signs would've been visible. But this wasn't like anything she'd seen before. It was more like it had... disintegrated.
She'd never witnessed anything like it—didn't even know how to describe it.
If she had to use a physics term, it felt like some mysterious force had acted directly on the material's microscopic structure, causing it to break apart from the inside out.
That was just her guess, of course—human eyes couldn't see that deep.
By now, Chen Ce Bai had taken his seat in the new car. He honked once, signaling for her to get in.
She shoved her questions to the back of her mind and walked around to the passenger seat.
Chen Ce Bai said nothing as he started the car and drove them home.
The whole way, Qiu Yu kept glancing at him. He never looked at her. Not even from the perspective of a watcher.
It never occurred to Qiu Yu that Chen Ce Bai might know what she'd discussed with Lu Zehou. She'd asked Lu Zehou afterward. He told her he had activated a scrambler device—one that blocked electromagnetic signals, a range of sound frequencies, and even some biological ones. There was no way Chen Ce Bai could've eavesdropped.
Still, Qiu Yu couldn't help but feel a little disappointed.
She'd secretly hoped he had heard the conversation—so he'd confront her, and she wouldn't have to wrestle with whether to lie to force the truth out of him.
They didn't speak again until they got home.
He changed his shoes, brushed past her into the bedroom, and stepped under the warm yellow light. His arm lifted, wrist bone sharp beneath the skin, as he slowly took off his watch.
Something about him felt completely different.
Before, he used to do this with effortless ease. Now, there was something... deliberate about it.
Like a man who had suddenly gained an unfathomable power, and was now figuring out how to control it.
Maybe it was because he seemed so eerily calm—but for a brief moment, he looked almost divine.
Qiu Yu swore it wasn't just her bias talking. Sure, she saw Chen Ce Bai through a hundred layers of rose-colored lenses, but this sense of divinity wasn't from any filter she had on him. It felt more like a primal reaction—what humans must've felt when they first saw fire, or lightning, or rain. Something so far beyond comprehension, it could only be called a miracle.
That kind of awe was almost hard-coded into the species.
Two minutes later, Chen Ce Bai tossed the watch aside casually, the "divinity" gone as if it had never existed—just a hallucination after all.
But remembering his past as a watcher, Qiu Yu didn't let herself ignore the little signs this time. She made a mental note.
During dinner, Chen Ce Bai still didn't say a word—or watch her from any unseen perspective.
His appetite had always been massive, and he favored meat. Like some kind of large carnivore, he needed enormous energy intake just to maintain his body for high-level hunting.
Qiu Yu used to wonder why he ate so much, yet his body temperature stayed so low. Where did all that energy go?
Now she figured—it was probably consumed by his "new abilities" from genetic modifications, or by the tremendous strain of his mental processing.
The fact that he didn't eat constantly was a miracle in itself.
She watched him chew quietly, feeling increasingly nauseous as she forced down her rice.
Her thoughts were scattered and restless. Why was he suddenly ignoring her?
Had he really heard her talk with Lu Zehou?
And if he had—why was he reacting like this?
Qiu Yu stared down at her bowl, then took two mechanical bites.
The truth was, she didn't know how he should react.
There were too many secrets between them.
Trying to communicate with Chen Ce Bai felt like navigating a maze—one that he designed and controlled. He decided whether she advanced or stayed stuck. He built the walls. He opened the paths.
Qiu Yu hated that feeling.
She'd had enough of it. She wasn't going to keep putting up with this.
She set down her chopsticks, stood up suddenly, and stormed off to shower—ready to finally confront him.
She'd made up her mind.
She hated the way Chen Ce Bai kept things from her. And if that was the case, why should she resort to deception herself to force his truth?
If the maze wouldn't let her through, then she'd just stop walking and wait for the walls to fall down. After all, a maze was still a man-made game—it wasn't a dead end unless someone made it so.
She was done playing.
He couldn't make her keep playing if she didn't want to.
Fuming, Qiu Yu yanked off her suit jacket, wiped off her makeup in a few quick motions, and headed to the bathroom in just a shirt.
Angry as she was, she still followed her usual habit of opening her chip to pick a movie while showering—only to see her message icon flashing wildly in the bottom-right corner.
She hesitated, then tapped it open.
It was a message from Pei Xi.
A long one. Practically a heartfelt essay.
He apologized for what he'd said to her, begged for forgiveness, and hoped she'd still be willing to be friends. He promised never to cross the line again.
They had been friends once, so Qiu Yu patiently read it to the end.
The second message came twenty minutes later. Pei Xi must have spent that time battling himself.
And then—he sent her several encrypted files.
Format: Unknown.
Encryption Level: Red.
That meant these were top-secret, internal company files.
Qiu Yu's heart began to pound, so hard it felt like it might jump up her throat.
Her fingers trembled as she clicked into the first file. She didn't need to use a mouse, but her hands shook anyway. Her brain felt foggy, lightheaded.
It was a surveillance video.
No audio.
A middle-aged man with his face encrypted walked into something like a lab. He turned to say something to a nearby security guard.
The moment he finished speaking, the guard drew his weapon and aimed without hesitation.
If it weren't for the recoil and the muzzle flash, Qiu Yu wouldn't even have realized the gun had fired.
That's when she finally noticed the rows of white treatment pods lining the walls. The footage was grainy—she'd mistaken them for odd tiles at first.
The instant the shot rang out, blood and brain matter splattered in every direction.
The nearest pod was also hit, crimson spattering across its surface. Inside it, a person was awake—but didn't move at all. Like a living corpse.
After the faceless man walked off screen, the image went black. Then, a single line of text appeared:
Cebai Chen
2053.2.11
...It was surveillance footage of Chen Ce Bai—from twenty years ago.
Qiu Yu's heart dropped.
In that footage... who was Chen Ce Bai?
Was he the one who got shot?
Or was he the one splattered with blood?
Her chest tightened painfully. She didn't dare keep thinking.
She knew what her company was capable of. That's what made that video so horrifying.
It had been a random execution.
No target. No warning. No logic.
No matter how smart you were, there was no way to predict—or avoid—that kind of sudden death.
If Chen Ce Bai had been inside one of those nearby pods... what had he felt?
Something pinched at her heart like a crab claw, and saltwater flooded the wound—stinging and bitter.
She felt sorry for what he'd gone through. Angry at everything he'd hidden from her.
The second file was also a video.
This time, the camera showed a sealed, human-sized cylindrical chamber, lit from above with a pale, eerie glow.
Inside was a mass of living flesh—twisting and writhing grotesquely.
Qiu Yu had never seen anything so horrifying. Her stomach turned.
The hot water raining down from the shower suddenly felt cold.
She shivered violently under the spray, her teeth chattering as if she had a fever.
When the footage ended, the screen faded to black. Slowly, text appeared once again:
Cebai Chen
2145.5.11
...That lump of flesh—was Chen Ce Bai.
Qiu Yu no longer felt afraid.
But she still couldn't breathe.
What had Chen Ce Bai been through?
She took a deep breath and grabbed the handrail beside her to keep from collapsing.
The third file, unsurprisingly, was another surveillance video.
This time, however, the image quality was much clearer than the first two. It was clearly footage from recent years—crisp enough to zoom in, change viewing angles, even choose different perspectives. It felt like an old-school 3D video game from decades ago.
Qiu Yu hesitated for a moment, then selected the first-person view.
Maybe this way, she could gather more critical information.
The screen shifted abruptly to a first-person perspective.
She was seated at a desk, seemingly working.
Then, the metal office door suddenly slid open, and she shot to her feet in panic.
A figure stepped slowly into her line of sight.
Chen Ce Bai.
For the past three years, she had always believed he was cold and distant toward her. Only now did she realize—she had never actually seen him truly cold before.
Like right now.
He wore a long black coat that hung to his knees, hands tucked into the pockets. A pair of thin-rimmed glasses perched on his nose, and the look in his eyes behind them was icy, razor-sharp, oppressive. Just meeting his gaze felt like being cut—so sharp it hurt.
Chen Ce Bai stared at her and said calmly, "You did a good job hiding. It took me a while to find you."
She knew perfectly well he wasn't talking to her, yet still, she felt a wave of unease.
She opened her mouth—and a thick, masculine voice emerged, trembling with fear:
"What do you want? There are cameras in here! Full-sensory panoramic surveillance! If you lay a finger on me, you'll spend the rest of your life in prison!"
Chen Ce Bai looked completely indifferent. "I'm not here to hurt you. I just wanted to see you."
If he'd said that to her, it might've sounded like something tender and romantic.
But in the footage, all Qiu Yu could hear was a terrifying, bone-chilling threat.
Chen Ce Bai pulled a pair of rubber gloves from his coat pocket and slowly put them on.
Then he stepped forward—and grabbed "her" face.
The first-person, full-sensory feed only simulated about 15% of real touch, but even so, Qiu Yu felt a faint sting.
The first-person perspective let out a sharp, agonized scream.
Pain, fear, and disgust—these responses to seeing or hearing suffering are instinctive, embedded deep in human evolution as a survival mechanism.
Qiu Yu trusted Chen Ce Bai absolutely. She knew he would never hurt someone without reason. But even so, when she heard that scream, she frowned slightly and looked away.
It was the kind of wince you give when watching someone stub their toe—reflexive, sympathetic, but distant.
No matter how the first-person feed screamed or begged, Chen Ce Bai's fingers didn't move. They were like iron clamps—cold, unyielding.
He stared, eyes sweeping across "her" face inch by inch.
Perhaps because she knew Chen Ce Bai would never treat her like that, Qiu Yu felt no emotional connection to the scene.
The first-person view, however, was sweating profusely, nearly hysterical. "W-What are you even looking at? Just get it over with, please!"
Chen Ce Bai let go, peeled off the rubber gloves, lit them on fire with a lighter, and tossed them aside.
First-person view: "You trying to burn me alive? This office is built with top-grade flame-retardant materials—you won't succeed."
Chen Ce Bai replied flatly, "I'm just too lazy to find a trash bin."
The air was stifling. Oppressive. He still hadn't said why he was there, and the first-person perspective was nearing a mental breakdown—calling for security in every possible way. But no signals got out. The office had become a sealed electromagnetic chamber.
Then Chen Ce Bai lifted his wrist and glanced at his watch.
"I just wanted to see the face of the person who almost killed me," he said quietly.
He paused, then added:
"Time's up."
The screen went dark. The sensory feed cut out abruptly.
Two or three seconds later, the footage resumed.
The first-person view had ended—because the perspective's owner was dead.
—Self-inflicted. He had put the barrel of a gun down his own throat and pulled the trigger.
Chen Ce Bai gave the camera a glance, then turned and walked out of the office. His figure remained cold, upright, and untouchable from beginning to end.
From his second-to-last sentence, Qiu Yu deduced two things:
—The "first-person view" belonged to the middle-aged man from the first video—the one whose face had been encrypted.
—Chen Ce Bai had been the blood-splattered experimental subject.
Qiu Yu hated the word "subject," but there was no other word for it. Chen Ce Bai had been the product of a biotech experiment.
She thought she could imagine what the company had done to him. But compared to reality, her imagination had been woefully lacking.
She hadn't expected it—hadn't imagined that he had once become a mass of blood and twitching tissue, only to eventually reassemble into a living human being again.
Why didn't he tell her?
She didn't want to blame him. But at that moment, she was furious—furious at how much he'd kept from her.
And worst of all—she had learned all this from Pei Xi, a total outsider.
Who knew if Pei Xi had sent those videos out of kindness or just to sow discord?
Did Chen Ce Bai really trust her that much—trusted that she wouldn't be shaken, wouldn't pull away, no matter what she saw?
Qiu Yu stormed through her shower, still fuming.
She changed into a bathrobe, stepped barefoot out of the bathroom—
—and her foot landed in something cold, wet, and sticky.
The room was dim, all the curtains drawn. It felt like the deep, silent bottom of the sea.
Whatever she had stepped in clung to her ankle, soft and slimy—like some kind of aquatic creature. Goosebumps broke out all over her skin.
She called out on instinct, softly:
"…Chen Ce Bai?"
A hand appeared out of nowhere, clamped around her wrist, and yanked her to the side.
Startled, Qiu Yu turned her head—but saw only shadows, deeper and darker than before.
A familiar presence enveloped her.
Chen Ce Bai embraced her from behind, his chin resting against the side of her neck—a closeness that left no space between them.
His voice, usually so cold, now sounded almost disturbingly tender:
"Yu Yu… while you were in the shower, what did you watch?"