The temperature inside the refrigerated truck continued to drop.
Xia Xiaoman's fingertips began turning purple, yet her mind remained unnervingly clear. Her hyperthymesia forced her to remember every detail—her father's MN-07 research report from the lab had mentioned that in shared hallucinations, intense sensory stimuli could rebuild the boundaries of consciousness.
She bit her tongue until it bled, then used the blood to write on the mirror:
**"I hurt, therefore I am."**
The crimson words quickly froze over in the subzero cold. Li Moting stared at the message, his expression cracking.
"These were your mother's words," Xia Xiaoman said, her voice trembling from the cold. "She wrote it in her final treatment notes—pain is the last proof of existence."
Li Moting's breathing grew ragged. The hallucination began to waver, the walls of the refrigerated truck warping like water.
"You don't remember, do you?" she pressed on. "Because your father erased that memory. Your mother didn't kill herself—she was silenced by Li Chenzhou for trying to stop the MN-07 experiment."
"Shut up!" He flew into a rage, his hands closing around her throat.
Xia Xiaoman didn't resist. Oxygen deprivation darkened the edges of her vision, but she forced out the last words:
"The scar on your wrist... wasn't from training... It was from the scalpel cut... when you tried to save her..."
A second before blacking out, Li Moting suddenly released her.
The refrigerated truck vanished.
They were back in the real world—their bedroom. Li Moting collapsed to his knees, clutching his head as a bestial groan tore from his throat. Coughing violently, Xia Xiaoman crawled toward him and pulled his shuddering body into her arms.
"Remember..." she whispered against his ice-cold forehead. "Please..."