Ashes and Gold

After the emerging painter Lin Yan suffered permanent trauma to his right hand, the world faded to gray. Aesthetics professor Shen Yanzhou handed her a cold agreement: use her as a sample to conduct research on "The Reshaping of Artistic Trauma by Extreme Emotional Experiences." He needs to observe the most intense human emotions to fill the emotional hole created by his childhood trauma; while she needs extreme pain to complete a self-destructive ritual. This taboo game that started in the laboratory has gradually evolved into a battle of souls. He measured every tremor of hers with reason, but beyond the data, he witnessed the cracks in his frozen world. She responded to his every gaze with pain, but in the depths of despair, she touched the same desolation under another body. However, the real abyss is never far away. The trial of academic ethics, the strangulation of family interests, and the overt and covert attacks in the art circle followed one after another. He was forced to use betrayal as a shield, and she had to use fame as armor. During the years of separation, he hid in the market, looking for emotional codes in the eyes of autistic children; she stood on the international stage, sealing all unsaid pain between the cracks of the canvas. Until a reunion after many years, all pretense is torn apart. His research diaries reveal years of silent guarding, and her "Black Period" paintings are filled with inflections of his name. It turns out that in this long imprisonment in the name of science, the jailer and the prisoner have already been quietly exchanged.