The Drowing Summer

Xia Xiaoman woke in the darkness, the pungent scent of Burmese chili stinging her nostrils. This was no hallucination. Her temple pressed against the cold concrete floor, the nylon rope around her right wrist cutting deep into the scar shaped like the Roman numeral "Ⅶ." The pain from three years ago, from the forced demolition at the Gulf Project site, flooded back like a tide.

"Awake?" A man's leather shoe crushed the strands of her hair, the sandalwood cologne betraying his identity—Zhao Shiheng, the biggest rival of the Li Corporation. "Li Moting trained you well. The sedative barely lasted this long."

Xia Xiaoman quietly bent her knee. The rented Dior dress was already torn, and her exposed calf brushed against a shard of glass. She kept her breathing steady, like a lurking panther waiting for the right moment.

"I want the raw data from Project MN-07." Cold metal pressed against her carotid artery, the blade's serrations scraping her skin like a viper's hiss.

"Still resorting to such clichéd threats, Director Zhao?" Xia Xiaoman suddenly spoke, her bloodied lips curling. "The old trick of burying bodies in concrete is outdated."

The blow came without warning. Her left ear instantly rang, warm liquid trickling down her jaw and pooling in the hollow of her collarbone—where the mark of Li Moting's teeth still lingered, his blood mingling with hers.

Blinding fluorescent lights flickered on.

Xia Xiaoman was yanked up violently. As the black cloth was torn away, her retinas burned with afterimages. Squinting, she found herself dangling at the edge of a ten-story-high abandoned reactor, rusted railings barely holding back the torrential rain outside. More suffocating was what lay below—a twenty-meter-wide chemical waste pool glowing an eerie green, its surface littered with the rotting fur of some animal.

"Know why I chose this place?" Zhao Shiheng adjusted the pulley suspending her. "Twenty years ago, this pool disposed of three bodies." He leaned in, cigar breath hot against her bleeding ear. "Your parents almost became the fourth and fifth."

Xia Xiaoman's pupils contracted violently. That date burned in her memory—the official report claimed her parents died in a car accident, but the autopsy photos showed skin corrosion matching the pool's contents perfectly.

A surveillance screen suddenly lit up, showing Li Moting's black Maybach smashing through the factory gates. Zhao Shiheng licked his lips in excitement. "Let's see if Director Li is willing to trade the memory key for his..." His fingers trailed over her tensed abdomen. "...personal collection?"

In the storm, Li Moting tore off his tie and wrapped it around his palm. He looked up at the vertical steel structure, rainwater forming a mirror-like sheen on the rusted surface. The three scars on his left wrist burned red—an ancient warning from his body.

He chose the most impossible path: the drainage pipe.

The narrow pipe's interior was slick with algae, his elbows and knees leaving dark streaks of blood on the metal. Mid-climb, he felt the vibration from his pocket watch—Xia Xiaoman's heart rate was spiking. The signal made him snap a healing rib fracture, pain searing through his lungs like a red-hot iron rod.

When he tore open the ventilation grate, his ring finger bent unnaturally. This detail was transmitted to a tablet inside a black sedan three hundred meters away. Li Yunzheng smiled and pressed the jammer's button.

Xia Xiaoman heard the steel frame crack.

In the split second Zhao Shiheng turned, she drove the glass shard into the pulley's core bearing. As metal groaned under stress, she swung like a pendulum into the reactor's inner wall, a ceramic blade slipping from her hair into her palm—the neurotoxin Li Moting had personally distilled for her last week, extracted from Burmese chili.

"You think—" Zhao Shiheng's gun hand spasmed. "—what?!"

Darkness surged like a tide. Before falling, Xia Xiaoman saw a figure leaping from the vent—Li Moting, a steel rod embedded in his left shoulder, his blood arcing through the rain. More terrifying were his eyes: the golden-brown rings around his irises were spreading wildly, like the MN-07 reagent splitting in her father's petri dish.

A gunshot.

The bullet pierced Li Moting's old wound—that perfectly circular scar on his left chest. Yet he only swayed slightly, his dagger piercing Zhao Shiheng's throat with the precision of signing a document.

"Close your eyes." He covered her vision, but in that instant, Xia Xiaoman saw the surveillance feed's final frame—Li Yunzheng deleting an encrypted file labeled "Subject No. 7."

In the safe house, Xia Xiaoman used tweezers to extract rust from Li Moting's shoulder. As the alcohol swab touched the wound, his muscles twitched.

"Through-and-through," she murmured, studying the crisscrossed scars on his back. "Same angle, same depth." She pressed the surgical clamp deliberately against the wound's edge. "Repeated at least three times?"

Li Moting suddenly grabbed her wrist, pressing her palm against his left chest. His heartbeat pulsed unnaturally fast through his warm skin.

"For my twelfth birthday," he rasped, "my father's gift was a simulated kidnapping drill." His thumb brushed the callus on her hand. "Passing meant no screaming, no tears."

Thunder cracked outside, illuminating the photo frame on the nightstand. In it, a ten-year-old Li Moting stood stiffly in a suit beside a Christmas tree, his father adjusting his tie—while blood seeped through the boy's cuffs.

Xia Xiaoman suddenly leaned down, pressing her lips to the fresh wound on his shoulder blade. Li Moting froze as she whispered, "Now you pass."

Her tongue tasted blood and rain. "Because you came for me."

At dawn, Xia Xiaoman found a yellowed child's drawing in Li Moting's suit pocket. On the crumpled paper, two stick figures held hands, with clumsy crayon scribbles in the corner:

"For Xiao Qi, remember me."

And the scar on her right wrist—the Roman numeral Ⅶ—burned as if set aflame.### **"The Crucible Game: The Boundary Between Blood and Memory"**

Xia Xiaoman woke in the darkness, the pungent scent of Burmese chili stinging her nostrils. This was no hallucination. Her temple pressed against the cold concrete floor, the nylon rope around her right wrist cutting deep into the scar shaped like the Roman numeral "Ⅶ." The pain from three years ago, from the forced demolition at the Gulf Project site, flooded back like a tide.

"Awake?" A man's leather shoe crushed the strands of her hair, the sandalwood cologne betraying his identity—Zhao Shiheng, the biggest rival of the Li Corporation. "Li Moting trained you well. The sedative barely lasted this long."

Xia Xiaoman quietly bent her knee. The rented Dior dress was already torn, and her exposed calf brushed against a shard of glass. She kept her breathing steady, like a lurking panther waiting for the right moment.

"I want the raw data from Project MN-07." Cold metal pressed against her carotid artery, the blade's serrations scraping her skin like a viper's hiss.

"Still resorting to such clichéd threats, Director Zhao?" Xia Xiaoman suddenly spoke, her bloodied lips curling. "The old trick of burying bodies in concrete is outdated."

The blow came without warning. Her left ear instantly rang, warm liquid trickling down her jaw and pooling in the hollow of her collarbone—where the mark of Li Moting's teeth still lingered, his blood mingling with hers.

Blinding fluorescent lights flickered on.

Xia Xiaoman was yanked up violently. As the black cloth was torn away, her retinas burned with afterimages. Squinting, she found herself dangling at the edge of a ten-story-high abandoned reactor, rusted railings barely holding back the torrential rain outside. More suffocating was what lay below—a twenty-meter-wide chemical waste pool glowing an eerie green, its surface littered with the rotting fur of some animal.

"Know why I chose this place?" Zhao Shiheng adjusted the pulley suspending her. "Twenty years ago, this pool disposed of three bodies." He leaned in, cigar breath hot against her bleeding ear. "Your parents almost became the fourth and fifth."

Xia Xiaoman's pupils contracted violently. That date burned in her memory—the official report claimed her parents died in a car accident, but the autopsy photos showed skin corrosion matching the pool's contents perfectly.

A surveillance screen suddenly lit up, showing Li Moting's black Maybach smashing through the factory gates. Zhao Shiheng licked his lips in excitement. "Let's see if Director Li is willing to trade the memory key for his..." His fingers trailed over her tensed abdomen. "...personal collection?"

In the storm, Li Moting tore off his tie and wrapped it around his palm. He looked up at the vertical steel structure, rainwater forming a mirror-like sheen on the rusted surface. The three scars on his left wrist burned red—an ancient warning from his body.

He chose the most impossible path: the drainage pipe.

The narrow pipe's interior was slick with algae, his elbows and knees leaving dark streaks of blood on the metal. Mid-climb, he felt the vibration from his pocket watch—Xia Xiaoman's heart rate was spiking. The signal made him snap a healing rib fracture, pain searing through his lungs like a red-hot iron rod.

When he tore open the ventilation grate, his ring finger bent unnaturally. This detail was transmitted to a tablet inside a black sedan three hundred meters away. Li Yunzheng smiled and pressed the jammer's button.

Xia Xiaoman heard the steel frame crack.

In the split second Zhao Shiheng turned, she drove the glass shard into the pulley's core bearing. As metal groaned under stress, she swung like a pendulum into the reactor's inner wall, a ceramic blade slipping from her hair into her palm—the neurotoxin Li Moting had personally distilled for her last week, extracted from Burmese chili.

"You think—" Zhao Shiheng's gun hand spasmed. "—what?!"

Darkness surged like a tide. Before falling, Xia Xiaoman saw a figure leaping from the vent—Li Moting, a steel rod embedded in his left shoulder, his blood arcing through the rain. More terrifying were his eyes: the golden-brown rings around his irises were spreading wildly, like the MN-07 reagent splitting in her father's petri dish.

A gunshot.

The bullet pierced Li Moting's old wound—that perfectly circular scar on his left chest. Yet he only swayed slightly, his dagger piercing Zhao Shiheng's throat with the precision of signing a document.

"Close your eyes." He covered her vision, but in that instant, Xia Xiaoman saw the surveillance feed's final frame—Li Yunzheng deleting an encrypted file labeled "Subject No. 7."

In the safe house, Xia Xiaoman used tweezers to extract rust from Li Moting's shoulder. As the alcohol swab touched the wound, his muscles twitched.

"Through-and-through," she murmured, studying the crisscrossed scars on his back. "Same angle, same depth." She pressed the surgical clamp deliberately against the wound's edge. "Repeated at least three times?"

Li Moting suddenly grabbed her wrist, pressing her palm against his left chest. His heartbeat pulsed unnaturally fast through his warm skin.

"For my twelfth birthday," he rasped, "my father's gift was a simulated kidnapping drill." His thumb brushed the callus on her hand. "Passing meant no screaming, no tears."

Thunder cracked outside, illuminating the photo frame on the nightstand. In it, a ten-year-old Li Moting stood stiffly in a suit beside a Christmas tree, his father adjusting his tie—while blood seeped through the boy's cuffs.

Xia Xiaoman suddenly leaned down, pressing her lips to the fresh wound on his shoulder blade. Li Moting froze as she whispered, "Now you pass."

Her tongue tasted blood and rain. "Because you came for me."

At dawn, Xia Xiaoman found a yellowed child's drawing in Li Moting's suit pocket. On the crumpled paper, two stick figures held hands, with clumsy crayon scribbles in the corner:

"For Xiao Qi, remember me."

And the scar on her right wrist—the Roman numeral Ⅶ—burned as if set aflame.