Ice skates forward, regardless of east or west.

The gunshots rang out at the door of the safe house, just seven minutes after they had entered.

The bullet grazed Gu Xidong's left ear, pierced the insulation cotton inside the warehouse's iron door, and embedded itself in the cement wall.

The cement around the bullet hole cracked in a spiderweb pattern, and powder fell in a flurry.

Gu Xidong did not dodge.

He pushed Ling Wuwen, still in her wheelchair, into the shadows of the shelves inside the warehouse, then turned around, his back to the door, using his body to block her silhouette.

His movements were as fast as muscle memory—three years ago on the ice rink, he turned in the same way, trying to block the light debris that was hurtling towards Lin Wufeng.

"The sniper position is to the southwest, 300 meters away, at a high vantage point." Ling Wuwen's voice came from the shadows, as calm as reading a weather report.

"Wind speed level 4, visibility low, this shot is a warning."

"Or is it positioning?"

"Warning." She paused for half a second.

"The bullets were aimed at the air about ten centimeters from your ear, not at any vital organs. They were saying, 'We know you're here.'"

The sound of an engine could be heard outside the warehouse.

It wasn't a car, it was a motorcycle—the low growl of a single-cylinder engine approached from afar, then stalled in a small alley beside the warehouse.

The footsteps were solitary, very light, but the rhythm of their footsteps on the gravel was unusually regular.

Gu Xidong pulled the ice pick out from his lower back.

That was the only thing he took from the ruins; the tip of the cone gleamed coldly in the dim light of the warehouse.

"Don't move." From the shadows, Ling Wuwen pressed down on his wrist.

Her hands were cold, and her palms had the rough feel of scabbed wounds healing. "It's a raven."

The small door on the side of the warehouse was pushed open.

The person who came in was wearing a black motorcycle suit, with his helmet still on, and his mask reflected the pale light from the warehouse overhead lights.

He is about 1.7 meters tall and has a slender build. His right shoulder sags slightly when he walks, a posture formed from carrying heavy objects on one shoulder for a long time.

The person walked to the center of the warehouse, stopped, and raised his hand to take off his helmet.

It's a woman.

She looked to be around 27 or 28 years old, with short hair dyed dark purple and a row of silver earrings on her left ear cartilage.

He has a thin face, high cheekbones, and light brown eyes. When he looks at people, his pupils slightly contract, like a feline assessing distance.

"Gu Xidong." Her voice was the same as on the phone, a slightly European-accented Mandarin, each word pronounced clearly.

"I'm sorry to present you with a gunshot as a gift on our first meeting. But your route was being monitored by three groups of people. If we hadn't fired this shot to cut off their tracking signal, you wouldn't have gotten here."

Gu Xidong stared at her: "Raven?"

"It's just a code name." She placed the helmet on the wooden crate next to her, took a small signal jammer from the inner pocket of her motorcycle suit, and pressed the switch. The red light on the jammer lit up, emitting a low-frequency hum.

"You can speak normally now. The shielding of this warehouse can withstand military-grade scanning, but the tracking residue on you will need to be manually removed."

She walked over, ignoring Gu Xidong, and first squatted down to inspect the tire gaps, the bottom of the armrests, and the backrest lining of Ling Wuwen's wheelchair. Her movements were as professional as those of an airport security officer.

He picked out two rice-grain-sized metal particles from the tire seam, threw them on the ground, and stomped on them until they were crushed.

"Zhou Wentao's habit. He likes to scatter miniature launchers on vehicles his targets have been on, with an effective range of five kilometers." She stood up and then looked at Gu Xidong.

"You have it too. In the lining of the right pocket of your coat, at the seam of your shoe heels, and—"

Her hand reached towards the back of Gu Xidong's neck.

Gu Xidong took half a step back.

The raven's hand froze in mid-air, a slight twitch at the corner of its mouth:

"Below the tag on the back of your collar, there's a skin-contact temperature sensor. This thing is powered by body heat and can continuously transmit vital signs and rough location data. You ran seventeen kilometers with it on."

Ling Wuwen spoke from inside the wheelchair: "Take it off."

The raven glanced at her, its gaze complex—not the look of someone looking at a stranger, but more like the look of someone recognizing an old object seen again after many years.

She went around behind Gu Xidong, pinched the edge of his collar with her fingers, and gently tore it.

A faint hissing sound.

A transparent film was peeled off, revealing a chip smaller than a sesame seed embedded in its center.

The raven threw it on the ground and crushed it as well.

"It's safe now." She took a few steps back, creating some distance. "At least for now."

Gu Xidong was still holding the ice pick:

"You said you were a student sponsored by Ling Wufeng."

"Sports Medicine major at ETH Zurich, 2019-2022." Raven pulled up a PDF on her phone and handed it over.

"This is the electronic record of the funding agreement from back then. The remitter's name is 'LF,' but the bank record matches Ling Wufeng's personal account. It was 500 Swiss francs per month for three years."

Gu Xidong didn't answer his phone. He looked at Ling Wuwen.

Ling Wuwen stared at the raven, her pupils trembling slightly in the dim light. After a few seconds, she whispered:

"After the 2018 World Junior Championships, I did anonymously sponsor a Chinese student applying to a Swiss university. I didn't leave my name, only the code 'LF'—the initials of Ling Wufeng in pinyin. How did you know that?"

"Because there are hidden clauses in the funding agreement." Raven swiped her phone screen, zooming in on a line of small print at the end of the PDF.

"In the event of an accident involving the donor, the beneficiary shall reimburse the donor in the same amount to the designated associate." This clause was personally added by Ling Wufeng, and the notary was Dr. Schmidt.

She looked up, her gaze shifting from Ling Wuwen's face to Gu Xidong's.

"So I came back. After he 'died,' I started investigating the suspicious points of that match. I investigated for three years and found more than you can imagine."

The warehouse fell into a brief silence.

The sound of a cargo ship's horn could be heard in the distance, deep and lingering.

This safe house is located deep within a cluster of abandoned seafood warehouses in a coastal industrial area, with views of rusty cranes and the grey-blue sea in the distance.

The air was filled with the smell of the sea and rust, and a certain... icy scent.

Gu Xidong turned his head to look into the depths of the warehouse.

It was converted into a makeshift ice rink.

It wasn't a standard venue; it was just a rectangular area enclosed by insulating panels, about 25 meters long and 15 meters wide.

The ice surface looked very new, with an unnatural milky white color—traces of a new type of quick-setting agent.

Several secondhand training machines were piled up at the edge of the ice rink: a bench press rack, a balance ball, a leg strength trainer, and a portable motion analyzer with a cracked screen.

Above the ice rink, twelve holographic projectors hung, exactly the same as the ones in the ruined ice rink.

"I salvaged the equipment from your ruins." Raven followed his gaze.

"Six hours after the fire, I hired people to go in and clean up. They dug these out from under the collapsed steel beams. Three projectors were burned, but the rest can be repaired and still work. I poured the ice myself. The quick-freezing agent formula came from a closed sports laboratory in Germany. It solidifies four times faster than the regular one, and the ice is harder, which is suitable for practicing jumps."

She walked to the edge of the ice rink, bent down, and touched the ice with her palm.

"The temperature is maintained at minus ten degrees Celsius. The refrigeration unit is a second-hand unit salvaged from a slaughterhouse cold storage. It's noisy, but it's sufficient. This place was originally a warehouse for storing frozen fish balls. The insulation layer is intact, and external thermal imaging cannot detect the internal temperature difference."

She straightened up and looked at Gu Xidong, "The conditions are simple, but enough for you to practice for fifty-seven days."

Ling Wuwen pushed the wheelchair to the edge of the ice rink.

She stretched out her hand, her fingertips hovering a few centimeters above the ice, feeling the familiar, sharp chill.

"Why are you helping us to this extent?" She didn't look at the raven. "The obligation to reciprocate anonymous funding isn't enough to make you take this risk. Everything you're doing now is enough for a black swan to kill you ten times over."

The raven laughed.

The smile was faint, as faint as a mask pasted on one's face.

"Because I was there at that match three years ago," she said softly.

"ETH Zurich and China's China University of Sport have an exchange program, and I was selected as a temporary medical volunteer for that competition, responsible for the backstage first aid station. When Ling Wufeng was carried off the field, I participated in the initial hemostasis."

Her voice was steady, but her fingers unconsciously rubbed the zipper pull of her motorcycle suit.

"The cut on his neck was wrong. A cut from an ice skate should be angled, but this wound... the edges were too clean, as if it had been cut by something thinner and sharper. I questioned it at the time, but the team doctor said I was overthinking it and told me to go treat other injured people."

She paused, "An hour later, the official cause of death report came out: 'The ice skate accidentally severed the carotid artery.' My volunteer privileges were revoked on the spot, and I was sent back to Switzerland the next day."

Only the low rumble of the refrigeration units remained in the warehouse.

"After returning to China, I received Ling Wufeng's last email." Raven pulled up a screenshot of the email on her phone and sent it to Gu Xidong's phone.

"The timestamp indicated it was four hours before his 'death.' The email contained only one attachment: an encrypted patient file. The note read: 'If I am no longer here, please give this file to Gu Xidong. The password is his birthday plus my birthday.'"

Gu Xidong opened the attachment.

He was prompted to enter a password. He typed in 08071123.

File unlock.

It was a surgical record—not Ling Wufeng's rebirth surgery, but an earlier record from 2019. The patient's name was listed as "Ling Wuwen," the diagnosis was "acute lymphoblastic leukemia," and the treatment plan was "allogeneic bone marrow transplantation." The donor's name was blacked out, but the blood type matching section showed that the donor's blood type was A, which did not match Ling Wuwen's O type.

"Do you see the problem?" the raven said.

"Allogeneic bone marrow transplantation requires the same or compatible blood types; a blood type A donor donating to a blood type O donor will cause a severe hemolytic reaction. But this surgery was successful. The surgeon wrote a small note in the remarks column: 'The donor is a special chimera with abnormal blood type, but the actual bone marrow is a perfect match.'"

Ling Wuwen gripped the armrests of the wheelchair tightly.

"This file proves one thing," Raven said, looking at her.

"Ling Wuwen—the real Ling Wuwen, the girl who is Ling Wufeng's twin sister by blood—did not receive a bone marrow transplant from an ordinary donor. She was a chimera, meaning she likely had two different blood types flowing through her body. And the probability of such a chimera occurring naturally is less than one in a million."

She took two steps closer, lowering her voice even further.

"I investigated the background of that German hospital's 'New Life' center. Ostensibly, it's a private plastic surgery hospital, but secretly it undertakes 'special life support projects.' One of the project's funders is a foundation registered in the Cayman Islands, and the actual controller of the foundation is—"

She uttered three words.

"Zhou Wentao".

Gu Xidong felt his blood turn cold instantly.

"You mean," he said, enunciating each word clearly.

"Was Zhou Wentao aware of Ling Wuwen's bone marrow transplant back then? Or perhaps... the one who arranged it?"

“Not only that.” Raven shook his head. “I tracked the fund’s transactions. Three months before Ling Wuwen’s surgery, a sum of two million euros was transferred from the fund’s account to the ‘New Life’ center, with the note ‘Special donor procurement and processing fee’. And two months after the surgery, another three million was transferred in, with the note ‘Long-term observation and data collection’.”

She pulled up a screenshot of the running water.

"They're 'purchasing' Ling Wuwen's bone marrow donor. They're 'observing' Ling Wuwen's post-operative physical data. Why?" She looked at Ling Wuwen, her eyes filled with an almost cruel clarity.

"Because the real Ling Wuwen might be some kind of... natural chimera. Her bone marrow, blood, and even cells have special research value. And her twin brother, Ling Wufeng, is the best control sample."

Ling Wuwen closed his eyes.

Her chest rose and fell, and the soft hissing of the ventilator hose hidden under her clothes filled the air.

Before leaving, Dr. Schmidt switched her to a portable oxygen device that could last for eight hours, but at this moment her face was as white as paper.

"So," she opened her eyes, her pupils filled with unfathomable darkness, "my sister's illness might not be an accident."

"I have no evidence," said the raven.

"But the timeline is too coincidental. Ling Wuwen was diagnosed with leukemia exactly three months after the launch of the 'National Figure Skating Reserve Talent Gene Archive' project led by Zhou Wentao. That project collected blood samples from all members of the national team and their immediate family members, nominally to 'establish a genetic early warning system for sports injuries'."

She paused.

"As for Ling Wuwen, as Ling Wufeng's only direct blood relative, her sample must be in the archives."

The air in the warehouse seemed to freeze.

The roar of the refrigeration unit suddenly became extremely jarring.

Gu Xidong walked to Ling Wuwen's wheelchair, knelt down, and took her hand. Her hand was trembling and as cold as ice.

"Let's rest first," he said to the raven. "We need time to process all this."

Raven nodded: "There's a separate living area on the second floor of the warehouse, with three bedrooms, basic bathroom, and enough food for two weeks. After two weeks, no matter how well you've trained, you'll have to move out—the lease on this safe house is only until the end of the month, and any renewal will leave a trace."

She turned and headed for the stairs, then stopped.

"There's one more thing." She didn't turn around.

"The lighting log you found in the ruins was incomplete on paper. The truly complete log, including the control terminal records of the backup power delay settings, was stored on the old server at the National Sports Center. The server was sealed off after the accident three years ago, but not destroyed. I know its location."

"Can you get it?"

"No." Raven turned her head to the side, a cold smile curving her lips.

"But someone can. That person will come looking for you next week."

"Who?"

"The engineer who was in charge of the lighting system back then, was Old Zhao's senior colleague who has retired. He had the backdoor key to the server room."

She walked up the stairs, and a voice came from above, "And his condition for the deal is—to see Ling Wufeng."

The door to the stairwell was closed.

Only Gu Xidong and Ling Wuwen remained in the warehouse, along with the chill in the air.

Ling Wuwen slowly withdrew his hand.

She pushed her wheelchair and glided towards the milky white ice surface.

The wheelchair stopped at the edge of the ice rink. Her fingers touched the ice, and the stinging sensation made her shudder slightly.

"Gu Xidong," she said softly.

"Um."

"If what the raven said is true..." She paused for a long time, "then who am I?"

Gu Xidong walked behind her and placed his hands on the armrests of the wheelchair.

He looked down and could see the surgical scar on the back of her neck, which looked like a pale brand in the dim light.

"You are Ling Wuwen," he said, "and also Ling Wufeng. You've returned for revenge, and you're my partner."

"What if the blood flowing through this body, the cells growing within it, are all experimental subjects that have been 'purchased' and 'observed'?" Her voice began to tremble.

"If even my existence is part of their plan—"

"Then we must finish the dance." Gu Xidong interrupted her, his voice not loud, but every word was resolute.

"On their most prized stage, with bodies they 'created,' they can perform moves they could never control. That is true revenge."

Ling Wuwen raised his head.

The holographic projector above the ice rink suddenly started automatically.

They weren't connected to any programs; they simply lit up with a blue standby light, twelve dots arranged in a ring in the darkness, like a group of silent eyes.

Then, one of the projectors started playing a video.

It was very short, only five seconds.

The footage shows the fire scene at the ruined ice rink, shot from an overhead angle.

Amidst the flames, a figure stands in the center of the ice rink—neither Gu Xidong nor Ling Wuwen. The person has their back to the camera, wears a black training uniform, and has a slender build and short hair.

In the last frame of the video, the person turned around.

The camera captured a face.

Ling Wuwen's face.

But the expression wasn't hers.

It was a cold, empty, soulless gaze, yet a strange smile lingered on his lips.

The video ended, and the blue light from the projector went out.

The warehouse returned to darkness.

Gu Xidong felt the hairs on his body stand on end.

That wasn't Ling Wuwen. At least, it wasn't the Ling Wuwen he knew.

Inside the wheelchair, Ling Wuwen's body trembled violently.

She covered her head, letting out muffled, broken gasps.

"What is that..." she asked hoarsely, "When was that..."

Gu Xidong looked towards the stairs.

Raven stood behind the second-floor railing, holding a tablet computer. The light from the screen illuminated her face, which remained expressionless.

"This video was captured by the surveillance cameras in the noodle factory area opposite the fire scene." Her voice echoed in the empty warehouse.

"The timeframe is three minutes before the fire broke out. You should have already been at sea by then, and the hospital ship had just set sail."

She walked down the stairs and turned the tablet towards them.

"So," she said, enunciating each word clearly, "either the person in the video isn't Ling Wuwen, but an imposter. Or—"

She paused, her gaze falling on Ling Wuwen's pale face.

"Either that night, the one awake in this body wasn't 'you'."