65: You dragged me down with you.

The air in the ward was instantly sucked dry by that sharp, prolonged alarm sound.

Time seemed to freeze.

"Shadow," slumped in the chair, still wore a sinister smile of relief.

Bureau Chief Zhou and Zhao Dahai were still immersed in the immense shock brought by the three words "doomsday clock."

Only Su Qingxue.

In her world, all that remained was that glaring, cold straight line.

"Doctor!"

Her scream tore through the deadly silence.

"Someone, quickly!"

Hurried footsteps echoed in the corridor.

The door was violently thrown open, and doctors and nurses in white coats flooded in like a tide.

"The patient has lost consciousness! Heart stopped!"

"Prepare the defibrillator!"

"Everyone move back!"

Su Qingxue was abruptly pulled away from the bedside.

Her body resisted and struggled, but the hand gripping her was as strong as iron tongs.

It was Bureau Chief Zhou.

"Calm down!"

Bureau Chief Zhou roared.

His voice also carried a barely noticeable tremor.

"Get the prisoner out of here!"

Two Norwegian SWAT officers snapped out of their daze, lifted the already distraught "Shadow," and quickly dragged him out.

The ward was chaotic.

The blond attending physician rushed to the front again.

He tore open Chen Mo's hospital gown at the chest, preparing to grab the electrode pads.

"Wait!"

He suddenly stopped.

He stared intently at another EEG monitor.

The expression on his face was more horrified than if he had seen a ghost.

"His brain waves... are almost zero."

"But... but..."

He reached out a trembling hand and felt for Chen Mo's carotid artery.

One second.

Two seconds.

His eyes widened suddenly.

"There's a pulse!"

"Extremely faint! But it's definitely there!"

He turned his head to look at the ECG monitor, which displayed a flatline, then looked at his fingers; his entire being was plunged into immense confusion.

"This... this is impossible!"

"The machine can't detect a heartbeat, but he still has a pulse!"

"His heart... his heart is still beating in a way we cannot comprehend!"

"This isn't shock! This is... this is extreme nervous exhaustion! His brain has forced a shutdown!"

The doctor roared incoherently.

These words completely overturned his decades of medical understanding.

Su Qingxue's body stopped struggling.

She understood.

Chen Mo was not dead.

The "Judge" was just tired...

In the corridor.

The smell of disinfectant was overwhelmingly pungent.

Zhao Dahai paced back and forth like a bear trapped in a cage.

"Old Zhou, what exactly is going on? 'doomsday clock'? What the hell is that?"

Bureau Chief Zhou leaned against the wall, lit a cigarette, and took a deep drag.

Surrounded by smoke, his face was so grim it looked like it could drip water.

"I don't know."

"But that name makes me very uncomfortable."

He looked at Su Qingxue, who stood silently nearby.

She stood motionless by the ward door, staring blankly at the floor.

"Qingxue."

Bureau Chief Zhou spoke.

"Just now in there, how did Chen Mo know about 'Shadow's' past?"

Su Qingxue's body stiffened almost imperceptibly.

She raised her head, meeting Bureau Chief Zhou's scrutinizing gaze.

The gaze was sharp as an eagle's.

"I don't know."

She lied.

She couldn't say.

She couldn't tell them that Chen Mo had "heard" it.

And she certainly couldn't tell them that she had "heard" it too.

That chaotic heartbeat, filled with fear and lies, still lingered in her mind.

Like an indelible brand.

"You are my only witness."

Chen Mo's words echoed in her ears.

Only now did she understand the true meaning of that sentence.

Witnessing didn't just mean seeing.

It also meant protecting.

Protecting a secret powerful enough to overturn the entire world.

Zhao Dahai walked over, his tone filled with lingering fear and complaint.

"Qingxue, you shouldn't have agreed back then! I said this kid was fooling around! Now look, we got the intelligence, but he almost died!"

Su Qingxue's lips moved.

"Director Zhao, if we hadn't let him try, we wouldn't even have gotten the three words 'doomsday clock.'"

Her voice was cold and calm.

"Moreover, he succeeded."

Zhao Dahai was choked into silence by her response.

Bureau Chief Zhou extinguished his cigarette and looked deeply at Su Qingxue.

"You seem... not surprised at all."

Su Qingxue's heart skipped a beat.

"Director Zhou, I don't understand what you mean."

"What I mean is."

Bureau Chief Zhou's tone became serious.

"Chen Mo is no longer the Chen Mo we knew before."

"He is now an extremely important, and extremely dangerous... strategic asset."

"Qingxue, you are the closest to him. I need you to tell me everything about him. No abnormality, no detail, can be overlooked."

This was no longer a superior questioning a subordinate.

This was an order.

Su Qingxue's fingernails dug deep into her palms.

She stood at the crossroads of reason and emotion, duty and promise.

On one side was the police discipline and materialism she had believed in for over a decade, which constructed her entire world.

On the other side.

Was a man who had returned from death and shown her another side of the world.

A man who treated her as his "only witness."

She took a deep breath.

"Reporting, Director Zhou."

"All of Chen Mo's anomalies stem from his near-death experience."

"As for how he achieved it, I believe that falls within the domain of medicine and neuroscience."

"As a criminal investigator, I focus more on the results."

"The result is that in fifteen minutes, he obtained core intelligence that we might never have gotten through conventional means."

Her words were watertight.

She cleverly tossed the question to science and credited the result.

She protected Chen Mo's secret and fulfilled her duty.

Bureau Chief Zhou fell silent.

He stared at Su Qingxue for a long time, so long that Su Qingxue felt her disguise was about to be seen through.

Finally, he nodded.

"You are right."

"The process is not important; the result is."

"I will immediately report the 'doomsday clock' situation domestically and activate the highest level contingency plan."

He turned and left, his silhouette heavy with seriousness.

Only when Su Qingxue was left alone in the corridor did she realize her back was completely soaked with sweat.

She leaned against the cold wall and slowly slid to the floor.

Exhaustion overwhelmed her like a tide.

Not just physical, but mental.

She pushed open the ward door and walked inside.

Chen Mo lay quietly on the bed, his chest rising and falling steadily.

The waveform on the monitor had resumed a faint but steady beat.

He was sleeping soundly, like a harmless infant.

Who could have imagined that this man, just minutes ago, had unleashed a storm that swept away everyone's understanding.

Su Qingxue walked to the bedside and sat down.

She reached out, wanting to touch his face, but stopped halfway.

She looked at her hands.

These were hands that held guns, hands that dissected corpses, hands that believed in evidence and science.

But now, she was unsure.

Was the world truly only as she saw it?

She closed her eyes.

In her mind, Chen Mo's gaze during the interrogation of "Shadow" reappeared.

That god-like indifference that saw through everything.

And that incredibly clear heartbeat, filled with lies and fear.

She had already crossed that line.

From the moment he made her the "only witness," she could never go back.

She looked at the man on the bed, his face pale from weakness.

This man had not only returned from the dead.

When he crawled out of the grave, he dragged her down with him.

Dragging her into that bottomless abyss named "Truth."