Manipulated by a conspiracy and reduced to a pawn, Su Yao accidentally leaves her beloved Gu Yichen gravely injured and disabled. Burdened with bloodstained shares and soul-crushing remorse, she exiles herself to a frigid, isolated island in the Norwegian fjords. For five years, she lives like a silent shadow of ice, atoning through a near self-destructive regimen of penance: anonymously funding nerve repair research while enduring poverty, loneliness, and a body that grows increasingly frail. As Gu Yichen is reborn in the fire on the other side of the world, becoming a "bedrock" and "beacon" of technological ethics, Su Yao is utterly broken by the blizzards at the edge of the world. In the end, her own physical disability mirrors his irreparable hand. In this eternal frost, she carves the final punctuation mark of her atonement, leaving deep in her soul only an eternal ice monument named "Gu Yichen."
