Xie Lin, 28, is a specially appointed forensic doctor for the city bureau. Thin as a bamboo stalk, he always speaks in a cool, academic tone. Nobody knows that the hidden compartment in his office contains his mother's severed finger, a bloodstained hair ribbon, and an anatomy notebook filled with "death poems." He is convinced that he is the "vessel" for some vast experiment.
Cheng Xu, 32, is the criminal investigation team's captain, Xie Lin's senior from university and his partner, a fire that can never be put out. At first, he admires Xie Lin's composure. Then unease creeps in. Xie Lin secretly collects victims' fingernails, whispers to corpses in the autopsy room, and even writes "last words" in the victims' voices in his case reports. Stranger still, every murder scene bears the mark of the "Ouroboros," a symbol identical to the one found where Xie Lin's mother died.
During his investigation, Cheng Xu discovers that the records of the experiments on Xie Lin's mother were deliberately destroyed. The only lead points to his own mentor, Zhou Zheng, a retired professor of neurology. When Zhou Zheng sees Xie Lin, he suddenly falls to his knees and sobs. "I wronged Su Mingyue, Xie Lin's mother, and I wronged this child even more..."
"Cheng Xu, are you going to arrest me or help me?" Xie Lin grips a bloodstained scalpel, his eyes red. Cheng Xu grabs his trembling wrist. "I'm a cop, but I'm also your brother. We'll dismantle this deadly trap together."
"They want us to devour each other, but unfortunately..." Xie Lin takes Cheng Xu's bloodstained police badge. "I only want to make it out of this game of death alive, together with you."
A contest over experiments, memory, and human nature, and a life-or-death story of salvation between a yandere forensic doctor and a criminal investigation captain, is about to tear open the next chapter of the "Ouroboros"...
