It started when a bloody rain was about to fall.

"The analytical approach is clear, and the data collection is accurate."

Upon hearing Su Wanqing's question, Ye Qingrou gracefully raised her head and responded, her eyes, like two precisely calibrated, cold laser beams, refocusing on the scrolling charts on the projection screen.

That gaze seemed to penetrate the surface of the numbers, looking directly at the causal chains and probability clouds hidden behind them—

That's the gaze forged through the dual trials of Harvard and Stanford, the gaze of someone who has spent countless hours in labs and data centers until 3 a.m.

Ye Qingrou's voice was not loud, but it had a peculiar penetrating power that could stabilize any frequency.

The sound instantly calmed all the subtle ripples of agitation that had arisen from the brief silence, bringing the entire conference room back to the track she had set.

"Regarding the subsequent cost control of supply chain restructuring, I need to see sensitivity analysis reports based on the 'Möbius strip' multivariate model, under at least three different macroeconomic scenarios. By noon tomorrow at the latest."

"Okay, Mr. Ye."

Upon hearing what Ye Qingrou said, Su Wanqing responded, but at the same time, only Ye Qingrou herself knew the truth.

Beneath her rationally constructed, flawlessly calm surface, a kind of indescribable, cold, and subtle "premonition" spreads out like cosmic background radiation.

It lingers endlessly, omnipresent.

The mysterious fainting of father Ye Zhenglan—the fainting came without any warning, and the medical team did all the tests they could, but could not find any cause.

He was like a precision instrument that had suddenly lost power, lying quietly in the intensive care unit, breathing steadily and with a normal heartbeat, but he could not be woken up no matter what.

The unusual behavior of the elders—those old men who have been with the group since her grandfather's time have been meeting privately frequently lately, their actions discreet and orderly, as if they are waiting for a certain opportunity, or as if they are preparing for something.

The research team's somewhat absurd, vague, yet unsettling report—

The report mentioned a bunch of obscure concepts such as "spacetime ripples," "probabilistic cloud collapse," and "system-level disturbances."

Finally, in the conclusion section, it is written in bold: "There are observable, systematic signs of disharmony pointing to the next six months."

And just now, the face of a boy, a moment long forgotten in the past, suddenly reappeared in my mind, a face that was both extremely "broken" and "perfect".

Everything is like a lone piece randomly scattered on the chessboard of fate.

Everything seemed to be quietly connected by invisible threads of gravity from a giant hand hidden behind a curtain of deep space, gradually outlining the silhouette of a vast and unfamiliar constellation that sent a chill down one's spine...

Just as Ye Qingrou was feeling lost and confused because of recent events, Lin Ye was in a rented room in another part of the metropolis of Beijing.

At this moment, his thoughts drifted back to that morning five years ago, a morning also marked by the dawn light.

2020 October.

Opening ceremony of the Medical School of Kyoto University.

The shadows in the last row of the auditorium were as thick as the tide, and the light died weakly there.

It's not that they died, it's that they could never reach them—those meticulously designed lights were only meant to illuminate the stage and the "important people" in the front row.

As for the last row, it's just a background that's not really necessary; it's just filling in the darker areas of the image.

Lin Ye stood in the shadows, like a plant struggling to emerge from a crack in the cement—its roots exposed, its branches and leaves withered, yet stubbornly alive.

The collar of his faded secondhand shirt was completely loose; the cotton fibers had lost their last bit of structure after countless rubbings, giving it a sickly grayish-white appearance in the dim light.

That grayish-white color is not a color, but rather the residue left behind after the fibers have been drained of all their vitality, proof that they "once existed".

Three hours ago, he had just transferred the tuition fee for the entire academic year.

The balance notification pushed by the mobile banking app displays a cold, impersonal message:

"123.6"

This is all the resources Lin Ye has to survive for the next thirty days.

Food, transportation, and daily necessities all have to be covered by this 123.6 yuan. Meanwhile, a single medical school textbook costs over a hundred yuan.

After the ceremony, Lin Ye had to immediately hop on that creaky secondhand electric scooter and deliver food for four hours to earn enough money to buy secondhand textbooks that afternoon.

Multiple odors floated in the air:

The expensive woody perfume worn by the parents of the newborns—a mixture of cedar, sandalwood, and musk—each drop cost as much as three days' worth of food.

The new backpack's canvas exudes a chemical fiber smell—a pungent yet enviable odor, because it represents "newness," "a beginning," and that someone is willing to invest in this beginning.

There was also a kind of warm feeling that he couldn't name, belonging to another kind of life—it was probably the flavor baked by money and security, with the texture of honey and sunshine, a feeling that only people who have been loved and raised well since childhood can have.

Lin Ye could hear the faint rumbling of his stomach due to hunger.

The sound, combined with the faint background organ music in the auditorium, created an eerie duet—

A basic need arising from the body's organs, and a decorative element from the highest level of civilization, at this moment, they resonated in a way that was most discordant.

The stage lights suddenly illuminated.

The spotlight, like the hand of a god, tore through the darkness and precisely captured the figure walking toward the podium.

The edges of the beam of light were as sharp as knives, cutting space into two worlds:

Light and darkness, center and periphery, the chosen and the forgotten.

Ye Qingrou appeared.

She was wearing a very simple white dress.

But that "simplicity" is itself a declaration—pure without any embellishment, because any embellishment would only diminish its existence.

The fabric of the dress shimmered softly under the light, like mercury spilling onto the ground or moonlight flowing, outlining her silhouette in a dreamlike way.

The light flowed over her.

It's not a reflection, but rather something that is absorbed, transformed, and then gently released by her skin.

Her skin wasn't just ordinary white; it was the color of glaze formed by the first snow, gleaming with a faint, lustrous sheen under strong light.

It's as if there's a slow, pulsating light emanating from beneath the skin, and with each heartbeat, that light creates subtle ripples that are almost imperceptible to the naked eye.

Her long, black hair cascaded down to her waist like a waterfall woven from the night itself.

The natural curls at the ends of the hair seem to have been precisely calculated—each strand is curled just right, neither too much nor too little.

They all resembled the finest silks soaked in the starry night, swaying gently with her steps, reflecting delicate, almost invisible ripples of light.

The halo trailed a faint path behind her, like cursive script about "perfection" written in light.

On the giant screen in the auditorium, her face was magnified to a surreal scale:

Her eyebrows, like distant mountains shrouded in mist, were perfectly graceful—not painted on, but formed naturally by the mountains themselves, bearing the marks of millions of years of wind, frost, rain, and snow, finally solidifying into the gentlest arc.

Her eyes were like autumn waters, clear yet unfathomably deep—clear enough to see the sand and stones at the bottom, yet so deep that one might wonder if there was an even deeper world beneath.

The iris color is a rare blend of amber and grayish-blue, changing like the aurora borealis under strong light—the change is not deliberate, but natural, as natural as the color of the sky changing with the time of day.

Her eyelashes were long and thick, casting a fan-shaped shadow on her porcelain-white cheeks when she lowered her eyes.

The shadow trembled slightly with each blink, like the final flap of a butterfly's wings as it dies—

It wasn't a real near-death experience, but rather an extremely fragile beauty that made you hold your breath, afraid that if you took a heavy breath, you would disturb that fragile balance.

The lines of the nose bridge are elegant and graceful—not the kind that is too sharp, nor the kind that is too rounded and boneless, but rather the most ideal state, a perfect blend of the two, somewhere between yin and yang.

Her lips were a natural cherry blossom pink, without any makeup, yet full and plump like petals just beginning to bloom in the morning dew.

The petals seemed to still carry the weight of dew, drooping slightly and then tilting upwards, containing endless dynamism within their stillness.