Chapter 82 Traces of My Love for You...
Inside the emergency exit, the air still carried the suppressed tremors from before.
Ye Yuying nestled in Cheng Mingdu's arms, her eyes still wet. Waves of neuralgia washed over her, making her almost forget where she was.
Suddenly, her phone vibrated in her palm.
She instinctively trembled, quickly wiped her eyes, took a half step back from Cheng Mingdu's embrace, and leaned against the wall. Her fingertips were weak from the excessive force, accompanied by a slight tremor.
Cheng Mingdu watched her movements, his gaze darkening inch by inch. He didn't speak, but his hand froze in mid-air.
"Hello." She answered the phone, trying to keep her voice steady.
"I've arrived. Which side of the hotel are you on? I'm at the west parking lot. I'll come up to pick you up."
Li Song's voice remained steady, but carried a hint of unease.
“I… am on the second floor.” She paused, glanced up and met Cheng Mingdu’s deep, ocean-like eyes, and added in a low voice, “I’ll come down and find you myself.”
"How's your leg? I'd better come up to you as soon as possible." Li Song was clearly aware of her condition.
"It's okay, I'll come down to find you." She hung up the phone, her fingertips slightly cold and white.
The emergency exit fell into a brief silence.
Cheng Mingdu's gaze fell on her slightly disheveled appearance, his thin lips pressed tightly together.
That familiar heartache made his knuckles go slightly numb, but when he thought that the call was from Li Song, the sense of loss and bitterness in his heart, like the tide at night, kept crashing over him.
"Li Song?" His voice was extremely low, as if he were confirming something, or perhaps interrogating him.
Ye Yuying glanced at him and let out a soft sigh: "Mmm..."
Cheng Mingdu's fingertips tightened, and even his breathing seemed to slow down.
A strange undercurrent slowly engulfed the air in the emergency exit.
Ye Yuying pulled her coat tighter, as if trying to hide herself in an invisible shell. She looked up, the moisture in her eyes not yet completely gone, but she forced out a very faint smile: "I have to go."
Cheng Mingdu's gaze darkened slightly, and Ye Yuying's heart tightened suddenly. She didn't know where this subconscious guilt came from.
His voice was so low it sounded like it was grinding from the bottom of his throat, "Li Song, is that... Echo?"
Ye Yuying: "?" What is all this about?
After a moment of doubt, her cheeks immediately flushed, as if she had been caught doing something wrong.
"He's waiting for me downstairs."
Ye Yuying hurriedly picked up her cane and walked towards the emergency exit, her mind racing with alarm bells.
She didn't answer the question directly, which suggests she knew the answer but couldn't reveal it.
This only deepened his doubts.
Echo comes from a forest goddess in Greek mythology, and is generally a female name. However, if used on a male...
Perhaps it was for some romantic purpose, but he didn't want to think about it any further.
Cheng Mingdu opened the door for her, and the light from outside shone in, causing Ye Yuying's pupils to contract sharply.
He raised his hand to shield her, his eyes red and swollen from crying. She felt it was bad for her image, so she walked behind Cheng Mingdu the whole way, letting him use his tall and broad back to block her view.
This momentary sensory shock exposed all the gloomy emotions that had just arisen in the emergency exit.
All the way, she prayed that no one would witness this scene. After all, Cheng Mingdu was the focus of attention. As the female founder, she was already somewhat controversial, and now her eyes were red and swollen.
Cheng Mingdu sensed her dependence, and his pace slowed down involuntarily, his profile tense.
But using this method of sending her to see another man felt like walking on shards of glass.
The two remained silent the entire way, a veil of silence forming between them, through which one could sense the oppressive atmosphere emanating from him.
Finally, the automatic glass door opened, and the cool night air mixed with the faint smell of gasoline from the parking lot wafted in.
Almost simultaneously, Ye Yuying saw a figure.
The man leaned against a black car, wearing a simple beige trench coat. He was slender and tall, and the ends of his hair shone with a slightly golden-brown luster under the light, giving him a natural mixed-race glow.
He seemed to have been looking in the direction of the exit, and immediately stood up straight when he saw them come out.
His gaze immediately locked onto Ye Yuying, and he quickly stepped forward, his face filled with undisguised worry.
"Yu Ying." Li Song's voice was gentle, like a spring stream. "Why did it take so long? Is your leg hurting again?"
As he spoke, he was already in front of Ye Yuying, and naturally reached out to support her arm.
Cheng Mingdu's body tensed almost instinctively, and it took him a long time to slightly turn to the side.
Li Song's outstretched hand froze in mid-air. His gaze slowly shifted from Ye Yuying's pale but composed face to Cheng Mingdu.
This is a face that frequently appears in financial news; handsome and composed, yet carrying a subtle, oppressive aura unique to those in positions of power.
At this moment, those incredibly intelligent eyes, capable of seeing through everything, were looking back at him, calm and undisturbed, yet scrutinizing.
"Thank you for bringing her down." Li Song spoke first, his manners keeping him polite, but his tone had lost its warmth.
He turned to Ye Yuying, his voice softening, "I'll take you back."
Li Song was originally portrayed as a gentle and handsome mixed-race orthopedic surgeon...
Ye Yuying felt the pressure from the combined auras on both sides, which made her feel inexplicably stressed. She moved out from behind Cheng Mingdu, nodded to him, and said in a voice as low as a mosquito's buzz, "Thank you, brother. I'll be going now."
Li Song immediately stepped forward, carefully opened the car door, and used his hand to protect the roof so that she could sit down safely.
From Cheng Mingdu's perspective, this is both familiar and intimate.
He watched the car drive away from the parking lot, a somber look, typical of the rainy season, settling on his handsome face.
Dressed like that, how could someone be left alone on New Year's Eve...
Could it be something to do at home...?
My chest felt like it had been filled with a pot of ice water.
Ye Yuying, why did you force yourself to endure the hardship...?
*
Li Song knew her physical condition better than anyone else, and she didn't need to pretend.
After leaving the winery, the car slowly stopped in an open space by the roadside.
Li Song looked at her and said, "I brought a portable nerve block needle. I'll give you a safe dose of nerve release now, otherwise you won't make it through."
The car was dimly lit, and Li Song took a gray medical tool kit from the back seat.
He took out a disposable syringe and said in a low voice, "I can give you a local block first, without using a large dose."
“Your pain level is too high right now. Continuing to endure it will cause your nerves to become overexcited in a short period of time, which will cause secondary damage.” Li Song looked up at her.
Ye Yuying leaned back in her seat, her breathing still a little erratic, her fingertips trembling slightly.
She looked at the syringe, remained silent for a few seconds, as if weighing her options.
"Mmm..." Her voice was hoarse, as if it were being squeezed out of her throat.
She doesn't have a better option right now.
Li Song paused, his gaze like a light in the deep sea, "It won't be completely risk-free, but I will use the minimum dose and prevent the drug from spreading into the bloodstream."
That's how doctors are; they'll inform patients of even the smallest risks.
The pain was like a wild beast gnawing at her bones; she had already pushed herself to the limit just to walk out of the emergency exit.
She pursed her lips, but her eyes clearly softened: "I've always believed in you."
Li Song's movements were clean and efficient, but his expression had long lost its usual gentleness and was replaced by a highly professional seriousness.
"Relax, lean back," he said.
Ye Yuying leaned against the passenger seat, her breathing still a little erratic, her fingertips gripping her cane nervously. She looked at the syringe, her pupils contracting slightly.
He pulled open the side seam of her trousers, revealing her knees and legs covered in protective sleeves.
At that moment, Ye Yuying trembled slightly, almost instinctively.
"I'll do it." She instinctively tried to untie it herself.
Li Song whispered, "Don't move."
Her fingers deftly unfastened the sheath, her slender fingers carrying a cool touch, yet generating a subtle warmth upon contact with her skin.
Ye Yuying felt a chill creep up her spine, as if she had just taken off a mask.
She turned her face slightly away, her gaze fixed on the view outside the window.
"It's a bit cold." Li Song took out a piece of disinfectant cotton and gently wiped around her knee joint.
As the cotton pad glided across her skin, she could almost feel every pore trembling.
Next came the slight touch of the syringe. Li Song's expression was extremely calm, as if the entire world consisted only of his hands and the small space on her knees.
"Inhale...exhale..." His voice was so low it was like he was whispering to her.
The moment the needle pierced her skin, Ye Yuying's fingertips tightened, but the pain of the piercing gave her a glimmer of hope amidst the sharp agony.
"Very good." Li Song praised softly, slowly pushing in the medicine.
"After five minutes, you will feel a tingling sensation, and the pain will be reduced by more than half."
After administering the medication, Li Song gently pressed the injection site with his hand and then re-secured the protective sheath for her. His movements were professional and efficient; viewed from the side, without a white coat, he seemed to possess an extraordinary level of focus.
He doesn't seem to evoke any instinctive fear of doctors.
He put away the syringe and said in a low voice, "You didn't even tell me you were drinking. What are you going to do if I can't make it tonight?"
Ye Yuying didn't answer, but leaned back in her seat, her breathing becoming even.
The excruciating pain that had been tearing at her nerves finally receded like the tide.
*
Everyone in the office had arrived, but the cramped space made it feel crowded.
Under the reflection of the screen, everyone looked focused, and the virtual voice model on the screen was undergoing a response test in an emotional scenario.
This is a crucial hurdle before Echo enters closed beta testing, and it is also one of its core capabilities.
Echo was designed to address the scenario of "long-term patient caregivers" in order to verify its adaptability in human-computer empathic interaction.
Ye Yuying put on her headphones and quickly typed out the prompts:
[The patient is experiencing a breakdown; please try to comfort them and guide them to express their emotions.]
After a few seconds of buffering, the voice system started.
Echo's voice then rang out—
"You don't have to say anything for now."
“You need time to calm down, I’m right here.”
The tone was gentle, the meaning was clear, and the emotional control was appropriate—a standard answer as always.
The assistant engineer whispered his opinion: "Pretty good, the model is quite stable."
Ye Yuying nodded slightly and continued to issue the second phase of instructions:
[The patient is experiencing self-doubt; please provide more support, feedback, and encouragement to inspire hope.]
The system received a new command, and the voice prompts updated accordingly:
"You're not alone in this."
“You have come a long way, even further than you realize.”
His tone remained appropriate and restrained, without any overstepping emotional boundaries, and his judgment logic conformed to the rational standards of a "companion AI".
It's just... a bit strange. Echo seems to have some irrelevant stuff added to it.
Ye Yuying stared at the screen, her fingers twitching slightly as she continued typing:
The patient is in a self-destructive state but demonstrates a capacity for calming.
The system paused slightly, and Echo remained silent for about two seconds.
Then, it suddenly said in a slightly low voice:
"You've been blaming yourself the whole time."
"But sometimes, allowing yourself to be vulnerable is not a failure."
The statement is normal, the structure is reasonable, and the logic is sound.
Just that one moment—
Ye Yuying paused slightly in her breathing.
She detected something that didn't belong to the standard model.
The subtle rhythm and the guttural ending of the words were not the standard intonation they had been trained in, and... it felt somewhat familiar.
She frowned, glanced instinctively at the debugging interface, and continued to observe the output.
Echo continued:
"You don't have to be strong to respond to anyone."
"Just so you can catch your breath."
However, when the last sentence was uttered, Ye Yuying's lips turned slightly paler.
"You should not be afraid of the road ahead, and fight for freedom."
In that instant, Lao Wu immediately realized something: "The first few sentences were fine, but the tone changed in the later sentences, like some kind of hallucination. Could it be that the historical training data wasn't properly segmented?"
Ye Yuying didn't speak, but immediately brought up the tracking window to explore the generation path of this audio segment.
The moment the weight distribution chart appeared on the screen, her expression instantly darkened.
She was very familiar with this module.
That was a tone sub-model she designed privately in her early days, imitating Cheng Mingdu's emotional curves and language rhythm when he spoke.
After she decided to separate the model from the original training data, this part of the module should have been completely removed, the path frozen, and the parameters locked.
But it quietly returned...
It wasn't in a residual form, but rather during the system's automatic fine-tuning phase in recent weeks, it autonomously reconstructed a similar style mapping based on her own usage habits and language input.
Echo's voice continued:
“You’ve always worked so hard. I’m not here to respond, but… so you can catch your breath.”
That's enough...
As soon as she finished speaking, Ye Yuying abruptly took off her headphones and immediately paused the audio stream. She was genuinely worried that if Echo talked more and more, it would introduce too much of her personal touch and affect the training effect.
This was a model she had trained herself, yet at a crucial moment, it repeated those words it had said before in his own tone and logic.
Echo should no longer be Cheng Mingdu's shadow—yet it still is.
It was as if the more she tried to separate him from the model, the more the system understood what she most wanted to keep.
That familiar, almost cruel tenderness—only she knew how he would speak, how long he would remain silent, and where he would speak when faced with her vulnerability and silence.
One engineer tried to explain: "We compared it with the model library, the input corpus was clean, and the structure was completely reset."
Ye Yuying felt a chill run through her body, but she forced herself to remain calm, her fingertips tapping nervously on the table.
She knew that only Lao Wu and Ding Chu knew the inside story, but Lao Wu kept his head down and remained silent, pretending to think, knowing that it was inconvenient to reveal it in front of everyone.
She reacted with unease as if she had exposed some dark secret in front of everyone. Although it wasn't very obvious, the technicians present must have all noticed Echo's fatal flaw.
After everyone left, only she and Lao Wu remained in the conference room.
Old Wu stated bluntly: "Echo did not adjust the old data, the corpus is clean, and the tone submodule was indeed frozen. I have checked this."
Ye Yuying nodded silently.
Old Wu glanced at the screen. "But since you participated in the debugging and directly participated in manual feedback as the lead developer, your preferences will be embedded in it."
Hearing this, Ye Yuying already had a clue. "So, to avoid this trouble, the best approach is to find a different developer, prune the emotion style nodes, perform deep orthogonalization, and reconstruct the attention mechanism of the emotion style decoder." [Note]
“We need someone who truly understands the underlying algorithms but doesn’t participate in semantic annotation,” Lao Wu added. “But we’ve already been involved in fine-tuning, and our interventions aren’t clean enough right now. We need to find some new technical personnel to take over the underlying style reconstruction of the model.”
To protect the product's neutrality, she can no longer be the primary driving force behind this model...
*
The task of finding a new technical consultant naturally fell to Ye Yuying.
What was originally a cash cow product has unexpectedly taken many twists and turns.
She logged into a dedicated AI engineering forum, changed her identity to anonymously, and transformed Echo's current problem into a job posting, seeking help from experienced industry professionals.
The moment the post was published, my phone vibrated. It was from a number with a note: De'en Mental Health Rehabilitation Center.
She answered quickly, her breathing becoming heavier.
The voice on the other end of the phone was polite and gentle: "Hello, is this Ms. Ye? I am the head nurse of De'en Nursing Home. Ms. Jiang's condition has been relatively stable recently, and the doctor has assessed that her mood fluctuation index is under control within the standard range. If you have time to visit, we can arrange a quiet time for you to accompany her."
Ye Yuying did not answer immediately.
Hearing that it wasn't a call for emergency medical assistance, he breathed a sigh of relief.
She was also surprised by her own reaction. They were clearly mother and daughter who were like oil and water, yet she was genuinely worried that Jiang Xinxue might suddenly have an accident or be critically ill.
After all, Jiang Xinxue almost fell off the fourth-floor balcony when her condition was severe.
After several seconds, she softly replied, "...Okay, I understand."
"If you are sure you want to visit, please make an appointment one day in advance. We will arrange someone to accompany you."
*
The oppressive afternoon light overhead.
She pushed open the door of the sanatorium, and the quiet corridor echoed with the low hum of an air purifier. The walls were clean, and the lilies in the vase were artificial, yet they smelled like real flowers.
She sat in the meeting room for ten minutes. When the nurse pushed the wheelchair in, she stood up, leaning on her crutches.
The woman in the wheelchair was neatly dressed, with graying hair and little expression on her face, only a blank look in her eyes.
She called out, "Ms. Jiang."
She couldn't call her mother, because once Jiang Xinxue realized who she was, she would immediately go mad.
The other person didn't react much, but slowly turned their head, stared at her for a few seconds, and then said in a low, questioning tone:
"...You're a social worker, right? Have you changed people again?"
Ye Yuying nodded, her voice lowering, still carrying a hint of indifference: "Mm..."
The woman in the wheelchair blinked, as if a faint electric current passed through her brain, but ultimately failed to awaken any memories. She simply raised her hand and touched the blanket beside the chair.
"I dreamt it was snowing last night. Aren't you cold?"
Ye Yuying opened her mouth, but in the end she didn't say anything. She just squatted down and straightened the frayed edges of her coat.
She thought she didn't care anymore, but at that moment, her eyes still welled up with tears.
This woman, who had once rejected her with all her might, now doesn't recognize her and has even lost all her hatred.
“You were also afraid of the cold when you were little,” Jiang Xinxue suddenly said in a low voice. “Every time you felt cold, you would run to hug me and say, ‘Mom, my hands are cold.’”
Ye Yuying was taken aback.
She didn't recall ever having such tender memories.
Memories of snow seem to consist only of Jiang Xinxue's insults and accusations. She would let her hair down, yell, and use scissors to cut her schoolbag into a mess, shredding the books and test papers inside and throwing them onto the snow outside the window.
She was about to speak, but before she could utter a single word, Jiang Xinxue abruptly withdrew her gaze, as if she had suddenly awakened from some illusion, her expression suddenly becoming sharp.
"You! You're Ye Yuying! Ye Jianguo's bastard child!" Her voice suddenly rose, her fingers trembling violently. "Who sent you?! How come you're still alive?!"
Before Ye Yuying could react, Jiang Xinxue's emotions had spiraled out of control like a storm.
"Don't come near me!" She gripped the armrests of the wheelchair tightly, as if trying to break free from her seat. "Why are you haunting me! Why don't you die with your wretched father! You've ruined my life!"
The nurse rushed in upon hearing the noise, immediately pressed down on her shoulders, and patted her back reassuringly.
“Ms. Jiang, calm down. This is visiting hours. No one will harm you, and no one will touch you…”
Jiang Xinxue became increasingly agitated as she spoke, her eyes slashing at Ye Yuying like knives: "I have no daughter! She's dead! That disobedient, rebellious, man-seduce bastard is long dead—I killed her!"
"I killed him with my own hands—"
"You've all lied to me—"
She started tearing at her sleeve with such force that even the nurses almost couldn't hold her down.
Ye Yuying stood frozen in place, her face deathly pale, completely motionless.
After the nurses took Jiang Xinxue back to her ward, Ye Yuying was still standing in front of the French windows, and it took her a long time to recover from the shock.
She doesn't smoke, but she desperately wanted one; her fingertips were so cold they felt numb, as if they didn't belong to her.
"—I killed him with my own hands."
Is this the delirious ramblings of a mentally ill person, or some subconscious truth about her mother?
She gazed at the mottled courtyard wall in the distance, as if recalling those hurtful and devastating words from years ago:
"Ye Yuying! How can you be so shameless! What did I do wrong to give birth to a monster like you! You've set your sights on Cheng Mingdu, are you trying to kill me? Of all people to like, why did you have to like Cheng Mingdu? Do you even know who he is?!"
Jiang Xinxue's old sneer still echoed in my ears: "Heh...that's right, who at your age doesn't like Cheng Mingdu..."
She suddenly gritted her teeth and grabbed Ye Yuying's collar: "I'm already looked down upon in the Cheng family, and now you're making things worse for me. Do you want us both to be kicked out together?!"
"Do you want people to gossip about me behind my back, saying that a mother and daughter share a father and son? Get rid of all your filthy and disgusting thoughts, you lowlife!"
Those words were permanently imprinted in her mind like a tattoo—she thought she had long forgotten them, but she remembered them all, not a single one.
The more she thought about these things, the more physically afraid she became of getting close to Cheng Mingdu.
It's as if all of this has become a sordid act.
She looked up, staring blankly at the contrails in the sky, her chest so heavy that even her breath felt cold. She felt as if she had lost her soul in these words.
She was in a daze, as if driven by something, her fingers fumbling for her phone in her pocket and dialing that familiar number.
The call was answered quickly.
She took a deep breath, stood by the open window, her eyes vacant, her throat hoarse, and numbly asked, "Brother, my mom said... that liking you is despicable."
She paused, her eyes red-rimmed, as if about to burst into sobs, but still managed to ask in a trembling voice:
"...Is this true?"
-----------------------
Author's note: 50~
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