A battle of minds waged in the name of “redemption.”
When seventeen-year-old animal abuser Chen Mo is “packed off” by his parents to an institution called the “Sanctuary of Humanity,” he has no idea he is stepping into a mental trial ground built by Qiao Bianyun from fragments of a System. There is no punishment here, only a damp basement piled with junk and three newborn kittens.
Once a surgeon wielding a scalpel and a coder tapping at a keyboard, Qiao Bianyun weaves a virtual life for Chen Mo under the guise of an “abandoned boy.” Neural feedback makes every patch of dampness and every kitten’s meow feel painfully real. Lin Wan’s physiological monitoring report shows the boy is “numbly calm,” but when Chen Mo recoils at the brittle crackle of an old cardboard box and the kittens’ tiny cries are nearly silenced, Qiao Bianyun’s fingers pause outside the screen. This trial, meant to “correct” him, has long since blurred the line between “tester” and “subject.” Qiao Bianyun tries to use the kittens’ fragility to question humanity, yet with every tiny reaction from Chen Mo, they also see their own wrist scar, once cut by a mechanical arm, and the past in which the System turned against them.
There is no bloody judgment, only breaths resonating in a damp basement. As the vividness of the mental scenario gnaws at the barrier between virtual and real, is this “trial of humanity” truly meant to redeem Chen Mo, or to salvage the lost selves of Qiao Bianyun and those like them?
