Ice skates forward, regardless of east or west.

1

The helicopter swayed like a drunkard in the blizzard.

Gu Xidong held the unconscious Ling Wuwen tightly; her body temperature was frighteningly low.

The clone's fingers were frozen purple, but he dared not let go—

This body, just like his original one, had undergone ice training at minus thirty degrees Celsius, but now the cold seeped from his very bones.

"Ten minutes left!" the pilot's voice blared in his headset. "Visibility is too poor, I have to make an emergency landing!"

Old Gun turned around: "We can't land! There might be pursuers behind us—"

"If we don't land, we'll crash to our deaths!"

Outside the window, it was pure white.

Gu Xidong saw the altimeter on the instrument panel jumping wildly, and the alarm lights turning completely red.

The mouse gripped the equipment box tightly: "There's a heat source on the ground! Five kilometers to the northwest, it looks like a cluster of buildings!"

"A radar station left behind by the Soviets," the driver gritted his teeth and adjusted the course, "abandoned for twenty years, hold on tight!"

The helicopter suddenly swooped down.

Ling Wuwen convulsed in his arms, and the heart rate monitor showed a dangerous trough.

"Her condition is worsening!" Gu Xidong shouted.

Old Gun pulled out an adrenaline pen: "Inject! Quickly!"

The needle pierced Ling Wuwen's thigh. A few seconds later, his heart rate returned, though still weakly.

The moment the helicopter crashed into the snowdrift, Gu Xidong shielded her with his body.

A shrill, twisting metallic sound, shattering glass, and a rush of cold air.

It was eerily quiet.

Old Gun pulled the deformed hatch.

The mouse crawled out, its face covered in blood. The driver was stuck in his seat, groaning.

Gu Xidong checked Ling Wuwen—she was still alive, breathing shallowly and rapidly. He carried her out of the wreckage.

The blizzard immediately engulfed them.

Visibility was less than five meters, and the wind felt like it was going to tear people apart.

Gu Xidong's clone began to tremble. The temperature was minus forty degrees Celsius, the wind speed was fifteen meters per second, and the perceived temperature was minus sixty degrees Celsius.

"The building is over there!" The mouse pointed at the shadowy figure.

They dragged the driver through waist-deep snow.

Gu Xidong experienced severe pain in his left knee—the clone's nerves were mimicking an old injury.

It took me twenty minutes to walk three hundred meters.

2

The building is a three-story concrete fortress, with a rugged Soviet style.

The door was made of thick iron plates and was locked. Old Qiang smashed it with a crowbar.

"Get out of the way!" The driver, dragging his injured leg, pulled out an old-fashioned key.

My grandfather...served here...

The key turned, and the door opened.

Inside was darkness and twenty years of dust.

The mouse shone a flashlight inside: the hall was empty, the walls were peeling and covered in thick dust.

The structure is intact, with wooden crates piled in the corner.

There are two diesel generators in the basement, and more than a dozen oil drums are still half full.

The generator roared to life.

One by one, the light bulbs from twenty years ago lit up overhead, their dim yellow light flickering.

Gu Xidong placed Ling Wuwen in a corner and wrapped him in a military overcoat.

Her face was pale, but her breathing became more steady.

"I need medical equipment."

"There should be a medical room," the driver said, pointing down the corridor.

"Soviet bases were equipped with medical units; I wonder if they're still usable."

When the door was opened, everyone was stunned.

This is the operating room of a small hospital.

The operating lights, operating table, and monitors—all old models from the last century—are well preserved.

The refrigerator by the wall was still humming.

The mouse opened the cabinet: antibiotics, anesthetics, blood plasma bags... Production date 2001, well sealed.

"The base from twenty years ago still has electricity?" Old Gun was shocked.

"Unless someone maintains it," Gu Xidong said.

A search of the entire building revealed over forty rooms, all the equipment miraculously preserved. In the top-floor command center, the control consoles were still operational.

3

The screen displays: [Base self-sustaining system remaining time: 127 days]

[Last updated: November 23, 2023] — The day of their final.

"Someone is performing remote maintenance." (Clicking the mouse on the keyboard)

"The record has been cleared. The last manual operation was... three years ago."

Gu Xidong's heart sank. Three years ago, on the day he fell on the ice.

"Save lives first."

They moved Ling Wuwen to the operating room.

Gu Xidong, who had studied first aid, used the mouse to connect with a doctor trusted by the ice debris organization for remote guidance.

"Her body temperature is too low, but the abdominal trauma is more complicated. The fetus could be affected. Has there been an ultrasound?"

They found an old-fashioned ultrasound machine in the equipment room.

When the probe was placed on Ling Wuwen's abdomen, Gu Xidong held his breath.

A blurry image appears on the screen: an eight-week-old embryo with a weak but regular heartbeat.

"Still alive..." Ling Wuwen woke up at some point, his voice hoarse.

"Don't speak." Gu Xidong pressed her down. "The child is here, and you're here too. We're safe."

"Safety?" She gave a wry smile. "Look at yourself."

He looked in the mirror. His features were the same, but his skin was pale, and his eyes were vacant—

The clone has not yet fully adapted to the traces of neural connections.

"Is this me?"

"It's your genes. But has your consciousness... truly been completely transferred?"

Gu Xidong closed his eyes. He remembered everything:

The father's key, the ice surface of the final, Wang Zhenhua's recording, Ye Shen's death, Ling's mother's frozen face.

But he also remembered things he shouldn't have: the numbers in the lab, the parameters for cloning, the consciousness transfer algorithm...

Those were Chen Zhenghua's knowledge, which flooded into his brain along with the data chip.

"I know all the technical details of Project Nirvana."

Ling Wuwen's eyes widened warily: "So now... are you Gu Xidong? Or a part of Chen Zhenghua?"

"I don't know. But we must live. For the children, for all those whose lives have been destroyed."

Three days later, they settled down.

4

With stable power supply, indoor temperatures have risen above freezing after heating was restored. Supplies are sufficient for twenty people for a year.

The training room even has complete ice equipment—a small artificial ice rink, and the refrigeration system is still working.

Gu Xidong stood at the edge of the ice rink, his clone's muscles contracting in a memory-like manner.

He wanted to go ice skating. But then a phantom pain shot through his left knee.

"The brain is telling the body it should hurt," Old Gun said, "even if the body has never been injured."

Gu Xidong stepped onto the ice.

The clone perfectly replicated his original level of balance, but the phantom pain caused him to stagger when he turned.

"This body needs to be retrained to forget the pain."

"Or remember new memories." Ling Wuwen walked in, leaning against the wall, his face pale but able to walk.

They skated slowly side by side. Their skates traced parallel arcs.

"I dreamt that the child grew up and was gliding on the ice like you."

But her eyes... were as cold as Ling Yaqin's.

silence.

"She was gene-edited. What about our children? If they were also gene-edited... would they still be our children? Or just tools of the club?"

"I don't know. But as long as he's alive, we have a responsibility to treat him as a human being, not a tool."

"What can we do? We don't even know who we are." Ling Wuwen stopped.

"Are you Gu Xidong? Or a copy? Am I Ling Wuwen, or just a vessel?"

No answer.

On the fourth day, they found a yellowed Russian diary in the library.

Driver translation:

"April 12, 1987. Three children were brought in, their eyes vacant. Dr. Andrei said it was 'neurological adaptation training,' but I heard crying all night long..."

The diary's owner was Ivan, a military doctor.

"November 3, 1988. Andrei went mad. Moscow ordered the disposal of 'unfit experimental subjects.' Three children disappeared..."

"December 25, 1989. The base was to be closed. Andrei destroyed the documents; I stole some."

The diary entry was interrupted.

"Experimental subjects...were human experiments conducted during the Soviet era?"

"It might be the precursor to the 'Nirvana Project'." Gu Xidong recalled Ling's mother saying that the technology had been researched for thirty years.

The mouse was used to locate the file in the hidden compartment:

The child in the black-and-white photograph has vacant eyes. Experimental records include nerve shocks, low-temperature tolerance, memory erasure…

"Project Polaris" – training gold medal athletes to be absolutely obedient, while losers become experimental subjects for neural control.

"This has never been a training base; it's a laboratory."

That night, Gu Xidong practiced his quadruple jump extra. The moment he landed, his left knee was in excruciating pain, and he fell and curled up.

But the pain subsided quickly—there was no injury to the knee; it was just a hallucination.

He lay there, looking at the dim light.

"You're torturing yourself." Ling Wuwen was wearing his oversized coat.

"I need to confirm that I am still me."

"Skating can't define you, just as motherhood can't define me."

"Have you decided to keep this child?"

"I don't know. But if even we give up, he really is just a tool."

silence.

"Chen Zhenghua has a coordinate in his memory, further north in Siberia."

"Another base?"

"Maybe. But he's terrified of that place."

Ling Wuwen looked out the window at the pure white blizzard: "We must leave once the snow stops."

Where to?

"Finding answers. About who we are, what the children are, and where 'Nirvana 2.0' is."

5

On the morning of the fifth day, the snow stopped.

The sunlight was blinding.

Gu Xidong observed through binoculars from the watchtower and discovered snow tracks—regular geometric shapes, large circles with a diameter of fifty meters, the edges of which were compacted.

At the center of the circle is a cylindrical black metal container, half-buried in the snow.

The surface features a double-snake scepter symbol, with red snake eyes.

Mouse scan: "Weak radiation, life signals, there's life inside!"

Pry open the container, and a six-month-old fetus floats in the transparent culture chamber, its umbilical cord connected to the life support system.

Tags: [Nirvana 2.0 - Prototype 1 - Gene Source: Gu Xidong/Ling Wuwen - Status: Stable]

When you find this, Phase One is complete. Phase Two will begin after the child is born. We are everywhere.