Chapter Three: Client, Surrender Your Heart First

In the footage, the maid who delivered it entered an elevator and turned toward the camera. Her badge belonged to Yaochuan's neurotechnology laboratory. Behind her ear was a silver symbol shaped like two facing sound waves. Xu Zhi had seen the symbol on her mother's medical file. Tang Man brought the records thirty minutes later. A previously unnoticed consent form clung to the last yellowed page. The project code had been blacked out, leaving one line: "Bidirectional neural resonance under intimate-relationship stress conditions." The signature was not her mother's. At the same moment, Gu Yanchen received an anonymous email containing an experiment roster. First-generation samples: Xu Qinghe and Gu Minglan. Xu Qinghe was Xu Zhi's mother.