Ice skates forward, regardless of east or west.

1

"Bang!"

The heavy sandbags slammed onto the ice with a dull thud, like a heavy hammer blow to Gu Xidong's heart.

At this moment, he is standing on one leg on the ice.

Left foot.

That was his "Death Leg".

In his right hand, he held a 20-kilogram black cylindrical iron disc. His left leg was slightly bent, maintaining an extremely unstable balance.

Sweat streamed down his forehead and into his eyes, causing a stinging sensation, but he dared not blink.

Because he would fall over if he swayed even slightly.

The price he paid for falling was Ling Wuwen's cold gaze and double the amount of training.

"Three minutes." Ling Wuwen leaned against the barrier, a stopwatch in his hand, his voice completely calm. "Stand on one leg, holding a weight, core engaged. This is to teach your left leg to 'support' again. Support your body, support your ambition, support all your future leaps."

Gu Xidong ignored her. All his energy was focused on the thin support line of his left leg.

He could feel the newly formed, fragile soft tissue in his left knee joint screaming. The muscle fibers were trembling violently, each contraction like pulling on a string about to snap.

Time has never felt so long.

One second, two seconds...

2

"One minute and thirty seconds."

Ling Wuwen's voice sounded like a death knell.

Gu Xidong's breathing became heavy and rapid. His vision began to blur, and the ice surface in front of him seemed to turn into a twisted, spinning kaleidoscope.

He thought of the past.

At his peak, when he did a quadruple Axel (4A), the entire process from takeoff to landing took less than a second. In that one second, his body would rotate four and a half times in the air, enduring an impact force equivalent to eight times his own body weight.

And now, he just stands here, like a fool, holding a piece of iron in his hand, standing on one leg.

This enormous disparity made him feel more humiliated than the muscle spasms.

"Uh... Ah!"

A low growl escaped from deep within his throat.

In the instant he was distracted, the muscles in his left leg seemed to finally give way, suddenly went limp, and then a violent spasm occurred!

It felt as if an invisible hand was gripping my entire leg tightly, causing the muscles to stiffen and bulge instantly, and excruciating pain surged through my body like an electric current.

"Bang!"

He fell heavily onto the ice again. This time, he didn't get up immediately. He curled up, clutching his unresponsive left leg, drenched in cold sweat.

"Useless thing," Ling Wuwen's voice came over.

Gu Xidong suddenly raised his head, his eyes bloodshot, like a trapped beast cornered in a desperate situation.

"Are you satisfied now?" he roared, his voice distorted with anger and pain. "Is this what you wanted? To watch me fall like a piece of trash in front of you? Your training methods are a joke! You don't understand figure skating at all! You don't understand my legs at all!"

He unleashed all his anger on her. He needed an outlet, a reason to escape this feeling of powerlessness.

It must be her fault.

She must have done it on purpose.

3

Faced with Gu Xidong's anger, Ling Wuwen did not resort to sarcasm as usual.

She walked over, squatted down, and looked at his convulsing left leg. There was no anger in her eyes, only an almost cold scrutiny.

She reached out, not to help him up, but to precisely press an acupoint on the outside of his left knee.

A tingling, numb, and throbbing sensation instantly spread throughout my leg, and the spasming muscles miraculously eased somewhat.

Gu Xidong was stunned.

Before he could react, Ling Wuwen spoke, his tone as calm as if stating an objective fact:

"When you did quadruple jumps before, your center of gravity shifted by 0.5 centimeters at the moment of takeoff."

She paused, gently massaging the acupoint with her fingers, a hint of meticulousness for technical details flashing in her eyes—a quality only top professionals possess.

"This is also one of the reasons why your old injury relapsed."

The air froze instantly.

Gu Xidong's breath caught in his throat at that moment.

He suddenly raised his head and stared intently at Ling Wuwen, who was standing right in front of him.

Her eyes were calm, as calm as a deep pool of water.

But in Gu Xidong's heart, a raging storm was brewing.

0.5 cm.

The center of gravity shifted by 0.5 cm during takeoff.

This was an extremely subtle technical flaw. It was a hidden problem left over from two years ago when he made minor adjustments to his take-off posture in pursuit of greater height. Even his national team coach only vaguely pointed out that "the take-off was not solid enough." Only his long-lost private technical coach from Russia had secretly measured it with sophisticated instruments and told him the exact number.

This is one of the biggest secrets of his career.

How did this woman know?

She is not a doctor, not a rehabilitation therapist, and certainly not a sports reporter.

Who is she?

4

"You..." Gu Xidong's voice trembled, not from pain, but from fear, "How did you know this?"

Ling Wuwen paused for a moment, his hand resting on his knee.

A fleeting, elusive emotion seemed to flash in her perpetually cold eyes—was it pain? Nostalgia? Or… something else entirely?

But in an instant, that emotion vanished without a trace, replaced by the same cold indifference that kept people at arm's length.

Instead of answering, she made a move that completely surprised Gu Xidong.

She suddenly leaned down and whispered in his ear:

"Gu Xidong, do you think I'm torturing you? No."

Her breath, carrying a hint of coldness, brushed against his ear.

"I'm digging 'Death' out of your left leg, bit by bit."

"That 0.5-centimeter deviation was a 'perfect trap' that someone deliberately set for you back then. They weren't teaching you to skate; they were...breaking your wings."

"And now," she straightened up, her eyes sharp as knives, "I'm going to personally break that 0.5 centimeters back for you."

After saying that, she stopped looking at him, stood up, and turned to walk towards the edge of the ice rink.

"Get up." She said, her voice trembling slightly. "Do three more sets of those exercises. This time, I'll support you."

Gu Xidong slumped onto the ice, his whole body ice-cold.

He watched her walk toward the barrier, her back still upright and resolute, but now, in his eyes, it seemed utterly unfamiliar.

She knew it was a "trap".

She knew about "breaking wings".

She even knew the 0.5 centimeters that only he and the missing coach knew.

She is not an undercover agent.

She is... someone who knows the truth.

She might even be...

5

By the end of training, Gu Xidong was completely exhausted.

He lay on the ice like a lump of mud, panting heavily. His left leg still ached, but there seemed to be something different in that pain—a forced, painful yet exceptionally clear sense of "presence."

Ling Wuwen didn't provoke him further, nor did she make any more sarcastic remarks. She simply walked over silently, handed him a dry towel, and then turned to pack up the training equipment.

An eerie silence fell over the entire ice rink.

Gu Xidong wiped the sweat from his face, his gaze unconsciously sweeping over the old surveillance camera in the corner of the ice rink.

That camera was left over from before the factory was abandoned. It had been powered off for a long time, and the lens was covered with a thick layer of dust, like an eye that was closed forever.

But at this moment, he felt that eye was coldly watching him through the thick dust in the darkness.

Watching him fall every time, groan in pain every time, struggle on the edge of despair every time.

He stared intently at Ling Wuwen—

He gazed at her hands, which trembled slightly as she corrected his movements;

I gazed into her eyes, which flashed with complex emotions when she mentioned "0.5 centimeters."

The "X" lurking in the shadows wasn't just watching them.

He might be watching all of this through Lin Wuwen's eyes.

Gu Xidong suddenly shivered.

Looking at Ling Wuwen, who was bending over and tidying up sandbags not far away, he suddenly felt that this woman was more unfamiliar and frightening to him than the cold ice in this abandoned factory.

Whose pawn is she, really?