Chapter Two: Twelve Hours at the Apex

“I didn't ask you.” Qi Man looked at Shen Yan. “The buyer doesn't want youth. Before four tomorrow afternoon, he needs to become the man who dared to sign his name.” She handed over a private medical file. Progressive neurodegeneration. Beneath it was a photograph of a man in a wheelchair. On the wall behind him hung a portrait of Gu Changzhou. The photograph was dated 1961. Gu looked exactly as he did in the negative. He had not aged a day. After Qi Man left, Shen Yan found part of an auction catalog inside the case: NO-DAY SOCIETY PRIVATE PREVIEW, three months hence, at midnight. Lot One: The Lost Seven Minutes.