In this highly digitalized near-future city, death is no longer the end, but another form of "data residue." Those obsessions that desperately want to be remembered will turn into "cognitive viruses" that lurk in surveillance cameras and people's retinas. Lin Yan is a top "cognitive cleaner" who is responsible for erasing these electronic ghosts. However, during the investigation of a seemingly ordinary falling case, he encountered an unprecedented strangeness: the shadow on the surveillance camera could kill people independently, but his own shadow disappeared unknowingly.
As his partner melted bizarrely and the surrounding physical parameters collapsed, Lin Yan was horrified to discover that the "ghost" that was tampering with reality had no entity and was in his mind. In order to find the truth, Lin Yan was forced to embark on a desperate path of inward exploration. He peeled back his carefully forged memories layer by layer, only to find that every time he got closer to the truth, he was pushing himself into an abyss of eternal destruction. This is not only a suspenseful pursuit of electronic ghosts, but also a cruel trial about "who am I". When the virtual filter is completely torn apart, what awaits him is the salvation of rebirth or the nothingness of eternal annihilation?
Concept: The core concept of the story is "the definition of existence" and "the true price". In the highly developed digital age, when memories can be tampered with, when senses can be simulated, and even death can be circumvented, how can we prove that we have truly lived? The story breaks the binary opposition of "life and death" in traditional horror stories and puts forward a deeper philosophical proposition: If false memories can bring eternal peace, but the cruel truth only brings endless nothingness, do humans still have the courage to choose sobriety? The real horror is not the ghosts, but the discovery that the world and identity you live in are nothing more than a string of codes that can be deleted at any time.