“You’re saying Aotuo Games is running human experiments?”

Right after maintenance, fresh from spawn, NeverGiveUp followed the coordinates Nana Toki sent, and the news hit like a thunderclap over still water.

“Is the source solid?”

“As solid as bedrock.” Nana Toki narrowed her eyes like a knife’s slit. “You really think all those shutdowns were just bug fixes?”

“Aren’t they?” NeverGiveUp asked, face blank as a white page.

“...”

“Bottom line, Aotuo Games isn’t clean. If this little imp didn’t have her claws on the game’s lifeline, they’d have snuffed me like a candle.”

[Nearby] NeverGiveUp: “...”

Did she have to be that dramatic?

“But there’s no motive,” he pressed, thoughts churning like a muddied river. “Why would a rising giant risk a felony?”

It felt like digging their own grave with gold-plated shovels.

“How should I know?” She shrugged, a feather in a lazy wind. “Rich people get bored. They hunt thrills. Why waste breath on their kinks?”

NeverGiveUp: “...”

Annoying, but it rang true like a bell in fog.

Patient for once, Nana Toki laid out how they’d approached her during an update, like wolves sniffing the camp at night.

“They want to find me a new body, then stitch my mouth shut. For you, that’s a window swinging open. Don’t miss it.”

“...”

“You already agreed?” After her explanation, NeverGiveUp’s voice dropped, heavy as rain clouds. He didn’t look happy.

“Of course. Who wouldn’t take a door out of a cage?” She spread her hands like dry leaves. “How else could I swear they’re doing human experiments? You think I’m a goddess, reading the wind?”

“But if you agree, some innocent gets dragged under like a swimmer in a rip current. Then how are you different from the suits at Aotuo?”

He clenched his fists till knuckles turned white as frost. His eyes on her were a tangle of thorns and pity. “Won’t you feel guilt gnawing like ants?”

“No.” Her tone was flat as winter stone. “Their life or death isn’t my weather. If they’re pulled in, that’s bad luck. Why should guilt perch on my shoulder?”

She was the designated villainess cannon fodder, a weed stamped into the dirt. If she hadn’t glimpsed the hidden boss today, she might’ve forgotten her own label.

“You…really think like that?”

His voice trembled, a reed in wind. He hadn’t imagined a girl could be this cold, trading someone’s breath for her own future with a steady hand.

Was this really, as the case file said, just a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old schoolgirl?

NeverGiveUp searched himself and found no such steel. Why was her heart a blade and his a rope?

“Of course I think like that,” she said, smile like a crack in ice. “If you were caged in lightless void, tortured drip by drip, and even in death reduced to disposable data to float in-game—wouldn’t you hate?”

She laughed at him, a thorned rose. “Don’t preach broad-minded when you don’t know my wounds.”

It’s always easy to speak kindly when your back isn’t bearing the load. She hadn’t lived the original body’s pain, but the body was hers now. Every debt would be repaid coin for coin.

She wasn’t a saint; she was a knife.

“But aren’t you living fine?” NeverGiveUp lifted his head too fast, like a fish breaking the surface, missing the strange shadow in her eyes.

“You call this living?” Her voice was a cold well. “No sleep, no food, no pain. Is that breath, or a ghost walking? If we swapped fates, could you stand it?”

“I…”

He met her gaze and reeled. Her eyes were a bottomless black hole, swallowing color and warmth, leaving only cold and hollow echo.

He knew she was right; in her place, he’d break like clay in a storm. But he still couldn’t bless her way.

“So, your answer?”

Nana Toki pulled her gaze back and let it drift to Nan Jin, daydreaming under a tree like a bird in dappled shade. “Are you in, or not?”

“...”

“Give me time.”

NeverGiveUp drew in a deep breath, like a diver before the plunge. “I’ll give you a clear answer.”

“Fine. Suit yourself.”

He left without looking back, footsteps fading like rain.

Truth be told, Nana Toki didn’t care much about the flesh. Virtual or real, a lone shadow is still a lone shadow. Nesting Phoenix was gone; when the two Systems finished tossing her their shameless quests, she’d end this run and hop worlds like a stone skipping a lake.

Chasing her body back was just a way to burn spare hours, like counting stars on a sleepless night.

Aotuo moved fast. In barely a week, they came knocking again.

The visitor walked in with the ID “Moonlight over the Lotus Pond” floating above like a pale halo. Nana Toki was lurking in the world channel, fishing for gossip, and shot a quick message to Moonlit West River.

[Private Chat] Treasure Imp: “They’re here.”

And nothing more, a pebble sinking without ripples.

“How should I address you?”

Arms crossed like a shield, Nana Toki shooed Nan Jin to play and lifted her chin, a small, proud crescent.

“Zhao Qian. Miss Xia, we met last time.”

He’d come on a private account, a shadow among shadows. Meeting mid-service with a work account would stir hornets.

“You already know my name?”

She found a boulder and sat, a smile curving like a hook.

“Of course. As you said days ago, our company did put you through human experiments.” Zhao Qian met her eyes, then looked away like a moth from flame. “We found fragments, nothing whole. Your body vanished three years ago.”

“So the new body you promised—ready?”

Her look was a flint spark. Zhao Qian raised a hand, and a virtual screen flowered in the air.

“This is test subject 7201. Preserved since three years back, the only vessel that can bear Miss Xia’s consciousness. If you agree, you’ll leave this purgatory within an hour.”

“Is that so?”

She stared, unblinking. On the screen, a massive cylinder of green nutrient fluid glowed like a stagnant pond. Inside, a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old girl floated like a drowned lily; face gaunt, skin bare, her small frame laced in a web of fine lines that bit like thorns.

“This is Nan Jin’s body, isn’t it?”

She lifted her head, eyes like twin needles. “So it wasn’t just me. Nan Jin was one of your test subjects too?”

“Who can say?”

Zhao Qian shrugged, water off a duck’s back. “I don’t know the details of three years ago. Back then I was a small cog under Aotuo’s wheel.”

“...”

“So? Will you use it, Miss Xia?” He glanced at Nan Jin by the river, skipping stones like silver fish, and his smile twisted. “Or does wearing your old friend’s skin make your stomach turn?”

“...”

“Do you know why I chose to deal with you that day?”

Her question came out of nowhere, a bird cutting across the moon.

“Why?” Zhao Qian followed, curious as a cat.

“Because you people love your pedestals.” She bared her teeth in a grin, bright as a blade. “You really take me for an idiot?”

“What do you mean?” His face tightened, a storm gathering behind glass. Bad wind was rising.

“Come on. We both know the game.” She hopped off the boulder, light as a spring hare, leaned to his ear, and whispered like a needle sliding into silk: “Outside is the real world. Who knows how many of your men are circling like wolves, waiting to bag me the second I log out?”

“You’re dumb. I’m not.”

“I’m not so full of myself I can’t spot a cheap snare.”

Her words were clear and cold, each syllable a drop of ice down his neck.

“...”

“So? Am I wrong?”

Her smile curled, mocking as a fox’s tail.

And she was right. Zhao Qian had ringed the lab with men like a net around a school of fish. The moment she surfaced, they’d drag her in. He wasn’t about to let a vault of company secrets walk free.

“Then Miss Xia doesn’t want to leave this virtual pen?” Zhao Qian’s smile didn’t reach his eyes; it hung like paint on cracked wood. “You schemed and scraped to get out. The door’s open. Why flinch now?”

“I know a crack in the wall from a road out.” Her voice carried a chill, like moonlight on steel. “Save the fake concern.”

“It’s not time to step through. We wait.”