Ice skates forward, regardless of east or west.

1

Four o'clock in the morning, in the basement of an abandoned ice rink.

Gu Xidong struggled violently on the cot, like a fish thrown ashore.

His eyelids were tightly closed, his eyeballs darting wildly beneath the thin eyelids, and cold sweat soaked the pillow on his forehead, giving it a greasy sheen under the dim bedside lamp.

A suppressed, beast-like growl escaped his throat, his teeth clenched so tightly his lower lip bled.

He went back to that night.

The backstage corridor of the National Sports Center was filled with the pungent smell of ammonia mixed with cheap perfume. The fluorescent tubes hummed and shone, making everyone's faces look deathly pale.

"Something's wrong with this knife."

Fragments of memory, like sharp glass, suddenly pierce the mind.

The footage is shaky and the angle is very low—he's crouching on the ground, checking the angle of his ice skates.

His partner, Ling Wufeng, squatted down beside him. The boy's fingers traced the metal seam at the heel of the ice skate, his brows furrowed.

"Feel here," Ling Wufeng grabbed Gu Xidong's hand, forcing his fingertips to press on the connection between the heel of the ice skate and the sole. "There's a gap. A gap that shouldn't be there."

Gu Xidong's memory of touch was awakened at this moment—his fingertips felt a subtle, unnatural misalignment of the metal edge, as if something had been forcibly stuffed inside.

"Didn't we just have a pre-match check-up?" His own voice echoed in his memory, filled with pre-match anxiety.

"The equipment team got a new batch today," Ling Wufeng said in a low voice, his eyes scanning the empty corridor warily. "I saw them carrying boxes out of the coach's office with my own eyes."

The image is shattered.

Reorganization.

Next fragment: Entrance to the entrance.

A young man wearing a volunteer vest walked over carrying a tray with two bottles of blue liquid labeled "Official Energy Drink".

"Gu, Ling, pre-match briefing." The man's smile was perfect, as perfect as if it had been printed.

Ling Wufeng reached out to take it.

But the moment his fingertips touched the bottle, he stopped moving.

His gaze was fixed on the almost invisible, pinhole-sized hole in the bottle cap.

"I'll drink it for him."

In my memory, Ling Wufeng's voice was eerily calm.

He picked up the bottle that belonged to Gu Xidong, unscrewed the cap, tilted his head back, and took a big gulp.

His Adam's apple bobbed, liquid slid down his throat, but his expression remained unchanged.

Then he picked up his own bottle and handed it to Gu Xidong: "This bottle is for you."

"Are you crazy?" Gu Xidong growled in a low voice within his memory. "What if there's a problem—"

"That's why I'm drinking yours." Ling Wufeng turned his head and smiled at him. The smile was faint, as if it would shatter at any moment. "If I collapse, at least you can..."

He hadn't finished speaking.

The announcement came over the loudspeaker urging everyone to go on stage.

The debris exploded again.

2

A silver needle pierced Gu Xidong's temple.

The needle tip precisely avoids all blood vessels and pierces the temporalis fascia layer between the skull and scalp to a depth of 3.2 mm.

Ling Wuwen knelt beside the cot, his left hand holding Gu Xidong's head, which was struggling violently, while his right hand held a silver needle and made extremely fine twisting motions at a frequency of 240 times per minute.

Fine beads of sweat appeared on her forehead.

This is not an ordinary acupoint for calming the nerves.

This is a "soul-suppressing needle" that she learned from a forbidden book in the Ming Dynasty court—specifically used to deal with hysteria, nightmares, and mental breakdowns caused by extreme fear.

Acupuncture must be performed in coordination with a specific breathing rhythm, and the practitioner's heart rate must be synchronized with the patient's. Slight carelessness can lead to intracranial hemorrhage or, in severe cases, permanent autonomic nervous system disorder.

She's gambling.

Gu Xidong's fragmented memories are being pieced together.

They were betting that his brain could withstand the pain of this forced "awakening."

"Ugh—!"

Gu Xidong suddenly opened his eyes wide.

His pupils were unfocused and undivided, staring straight at the ceiling as if a horror movie was playing out there that only he could see.

Ling Wuwen continued to twist the needle with his right hand, but his left hand quickly pulled out another, longer silver needle and pierced the "Anmian" acupoint on the side of his neck.

This time, Gu Xidong's body jerked violently, and then—

Completely frozen in place.

Only the eyeballs are still moving.

It spun wildly and desperately.

3

Ice rink.

spotlight.

Deafening music.

Gu Xidong's memory was forcibly dragged back to that decisive moment—

He landed after completing a quadruple jump, and the gap that shouldn't have been there on the heel of his left skate suddenly burst open under the huge impact. He lost his balance and fell to the right.

Slow down.

Time was stretched to its limit.

He spun and fell through the air, his gaze sweeping across the ice, over the judges' table, and over the stands—

Finally, the image freezes on Lin Wufeng, who is also falling down, ten meters away.

The boy's face was deathly pale under the spotlight.

His lips were moving.

They are saying something.

At this moment, the memory was forcibly "magnified" by Ling Wuwen's silver needles—Gu Xidong's visual cortex was stimulated to its limit, and the blurry mouth shape from back then was infinitely slowed down, analyzed, and reconstructed at this moment.

First sentence lip movements:

"Little—Care—Lamp—"

First, tighten your lips, then open them, with the tip of your tongue touching your upper gum.

The standard mouth shape for pronouncing "deng".

Second sentence mouth shape:

"They drugged him/her."

This time, the movements of the lips were more rapid and more desperate. The shape of the mouth for the word "down" was almost distorted, and the end of the word "medicine" was trembling violently.

Then--

Ling Wufeng's body slammed heavily onto the ice.

Fresh blood gushed from his neck.

The spotlights all went out at that instant.

The entire arena was plunged into absolute darkness for three seconds.

4

The silver needle was pulled out.

Gu Xidong suddenly sprang up from his cot, like a corpse that had been suddenly electrified.

He was gasping for breath, his lungs hissing like a broken bellows.

Sweat soaked through his body, and his training clothes clung to his skin, outlining the lines of his violently trembling muscles.

He turned his head and looked at Ling Wuwen, who was still kneeling by the bed.

The confusion and fear in his eyes quickly solidified into a cold, sharp anger within seconds.

"You knew all along."

This is not a question.

It is a verdict.

Ling Wuwen slowly put away the silver needles and placed them into the sterilization box. Her movements were slow and steady, but Gu Xidong saw that her knuckles turned white from the force she used to grip the edge of the sterilization box.

"Know what?" she asked calmly.

"Drugded me." Gu Xidong gritted his teeth, each word seemingly squeezed out from between his teeth. "That night, someone drugged my energy drink. Ling Wufeng drank it for me—that's why he..."

The conversation abruptly ended.

He suddenly realized a terrible possibility.

If Ling Wufeng hadn't drunk that beverage for him...

Could it be that he himself was lying in a pool of blood?

Ling Wuwen stood up, walked to the small refrigerator in the corner of the room, took out a bottle of ice water, unscrewed it, and tilted his head back to gulp down a few mouthfuls.

Then she turned around, leaned against the refrigerator door, and looked at Gu Xidong.

"The third video on the USB drive," she said, "is a blood test report."

Gu Xidong's breath hitched.

"The blood sample from Ling Wufeng's post-match emergency treatment, and the blood sample from yours that was forcibly taken three hours after the match," Ling Wuwen continued, his tone as calm as if he were reading a lab report.

"Both reports have been altered. But the original data is still there. His blood contained high concentrations of benzodiazepine sedatives and trace amounts of beta-blockers—the former causing sluggishness and the latter interfering with heart rhythm, which could lead to sudden fainting during strenuous exercise."

She paused, then added:

"Your blood sample contained only benzodiazepines. The dosage was one-third of his."

The room was deathly silent.

Only the low hum of the refrigerator compressor could be heard, like a trapped beast panting in the darkness.

Gu Xidong stared intently at Lin Wuwen.

His brain was working frantically, forcibly piecing together the fragments of his memory—the gaps in the ice skates, the energy drink, Ling Wufeng's lip movements—with the truth he was hearing now.

A terrifying puzzle is taking shape.

"Why are you only telling me now?" he asked, his voice hoarse.

"Because you're only now getting ready to listen." Ling Wuwen walked to the cot, bent down, and pulled out the black USB drive from under the bed. "And, I have a condition."

Gu Xidong sneered: "As expected. A deal."

"It's a transaction," Ling Wuwen frankly admitted, "but it's also a test. I need to make sure your body and mind are capable of withstanding the truth that's about to unfold."

"What are the conditions?"

Ling Wuwen placed the USB drive on the bedside table; its metal casing reflected a cold luster under the light.

"Complete the first synchronized jump."

Gu Xidong was stunned: "What?"

"The basic synchronized jump in pairs skating, followed by the double toe loop (2T) after two weeks," Ling Wuwen said, looking directly into his eyes.

"You and I. On the ice, we jump at the same time, spin at the same time, and land at the same time. The error cannot exceed 0.1 seconds."

"Are you crazy?" Gu Xidong almost burst out laughing.

"My left leg is so weak right now that I can barely even rotate on one foot, and you expect me to do synchronized jumps? And you—" He looked Ling Wuwen up and down, "you hardly ever wear ice skates."

"That was before." Lin Wuwen walked to the other end of the room, opened the wardrobe, and pulled out a long, black hard-shell box from the very back.

She placed the box on the ground and pressed the latch.

The lid popped open.

Inside, a pair of ice skates lay quietly.

It's not new.

These are professionally customized figure skating skates that have been used for at least three years.

The blades of the skates were severely worn, and there were dark marks on the inside of the skate upper caused by long-term friction. There was a thin crack on the heel of the left skate, which looked like it had been re-welded.

Gu Xidong's gaze was fixed on the crack.

His breathing stopped again.

The location and angle of that crack, even the shape of the weld point left during welding—

The crack on the heel of Ling Wufeng's ice skates was exactly the same as the one he remembered.

"You..." His voice began to tremble, "These shoes..."

"It belongs to my brother," Ling Wuwen said softly.

"I stole it from his belongings after he died. Over the years, I wore it and practiced all the men's steps in pairs figure skating all by myself."

She bent down, picked up the ice skates, and gently ran her fingers over the crack.

"So, Gu Xidong," she looked up, her eyes filled with an almost obsessive madness, "I'm not begging you."

"I'm inviting you."

"Come with me, let's finish that dance we didn't finish back then..."

"Finished dancing."

5

Negotiation is over.

Gu Xidong finally gritted his teeth and nodded.

He didn't know if he had gone mad, or if he had finally found a reason to keep living—

Even if the reason is to dance a death dance on the ruins with a woman who may also be insane.

Ling Wuwen began packing up the acupuncture tools.

She disinfected, wiped, and placed each silver needle back into the velvet needle pouch. Her movements remained precise, calm, and meticulous.

But Gu Xidong saw it.

As she picked up the last, and finest, silver needle—

Her right hand.

trembling.

It wasn't a weary tremor.

It was a repressed, restrained tremor, as if something was raging wildly inside her.

The trembling started at her fingertips, spread to her wrist, then to her forearm, and was finally suppressed by her pressing down with her left hand.

Her face, under the dim yellow light, was as white as paper.

The sweat that had just dried on his forehead began to seep out again.

Gu Xidong leaned against the headboard, watching quietly.

He didn't speak.

But his brain was working frantically.

During acupuncture, Ling Wuwen's heart rate must be synchronized with the patient's.

So just now, when he was experiencing those terrifying flashbacks...

Was her heartbeat also soaring to the brink of collapse, just like his?

What is she afraid of?

What was it that she saw?

"Ling Wuwen," Gu Xidong suddenly spoke.

Ling Wuwen paused in his actions of packing up his needle case.

She didn't turn around.

"Your brother's blood test results," Gu Xidong asked, enunciating each word clearly, "besides sedatives and beta-blockers... what else is there?"

The refrigerator's low hum suddenly stopped in the room.

Absolute silence.

Ling Wuwen's back was as stiff as a sculpture under the light.

A few seconds later, she slowly turned around.

Her face was expressionless.

But in her eyes, there was a kind of unfathomable darkness that Gu Xidong had never seen before.

"There's something else," he said softly, his voice hoarse like sandpaper rubbing against a piece of iron, "something that the country simply didn't have the capability to test at the time..."

"Neurotoxins"

"It took me three years to figure out the Latin scientific name on the original report."

"It has a common name, it's called..."

She paused.

Then he uttered that word that made Gu Xidong's blood freeze completely:

"The Frozen Heart".