It was obvious—becoming one of them only led to one end: death.
Zhou Jiao almost laughed out of sheer rage.
If death was inevitable either way, what good was his protection? Would she get an extra set of parents in her next life?
She turned her head and stared directly at Jiang Lian, her eyes burning with a cold, seething fury.
"Don't even think about it."
Jiang Lian was watching her, too.
He had no concept of human beauty or ugliness. To him, humans were nothing more than walking slabs of flesh, radiating either freshness or decay.
Even Zhou Jiao, in his eyes, was just a chunk of meat with an unusually saccharine scent.
But after their lips had touched, something had shifted—he suddenly saw the details of her lips. Full, red, warm and slick.
Not hot in temperature, yet somehow scalding like fire.
Recalling the sensation, the tentacle gripping her chin bulged with thick, visible veins, glowing an excited crimson. Its surface grew slick and glistening.
To Zhou Jiao, it felt like she'd dipped her hand into some sticky glue—no matter how she tried, she couldn't shake it off. It made her scalp tingle.
Yet, undeniably, the creature before her was both terrifying and beautiful.
Deeply... alluring.
Jiang Lian's human disguise was flawless—sharp features, high nose bridge, well-defined jawline. Even with grotesque tentacles writhing around him, his presence remained cold and elegant.
As for those tentacles—
At first glance, they were horrific, nightmare-fuel. But when they moved, the thin membrane along their surface shimmered with tiny bioluminescent blue sparks—like glowing plankton in the sea, flickering in and out of existence.
Like a creature that should only exist in myth.
Beautiful, but deadly.
Zhou Jiao looked at the tentacles coiled around her limbs. A strange, twisted emotion rose within her—a mix of rage, fear, and something more... forbidden.
Excitement.
Just then, her jaw throbbed with pain. The tentacle clamped tighter around it.
She saw Jiang Lian lean down, his face inches from hers, their noses almost touching as he took in a deep, frenzied breath.
"You..." Zhou Jiao gasped.
"You're aroused," Jiang Lian said, "because of me."
He stared at her with dark, impenetrable hunger, his gaze pressing down on her like a physical weight.
"You want to become a part of me. Why won't you say yes?"
"I don't want to," Zhou Jiao enunciated each word clearly. "No one wants to become part of a monster."
"You do," Jiang Lian said softly. His nose brushed against her lips, inhaling deeply. "I can smell your emotions."
And with that, he opened his mouth—suddenly, a purple-black tentacle lashed out.
"If you don't believe me," he whispered, "I can smell you even deeper."
He moved to force her jaw open, like he intended to run that tentacle down her throat and sniff her from the inside.
"Enough!" Zhou Jiao shuddered. She gritted her teeth. "Fine—I am excited. But not because I want to be a part of you."
Jiang Lian said nothing.
She always smelled the best when she was emotionally worked up.
He wanted—badly—to kiss her again?
No. Not enough.
Should he parasite her? Bind her to himself forever, preserve that scent?
No. Parasitism would alter her chemical makeup.
No, what he craved was her saliva. He wanted to savor again the dizzying flavor that had numbed the root of his tongue.
Jiang Lian thought for a moment.
One hand gripped her jaw. The other curled around the back of her head.
He towered above her. A tentacle, as fast and venomous as a sea snake, flashed between them—aiming to invade her mouth.
But Zhou Jiao moved faster. She yanked out the Taser and fired—bang! bang! bang! bang!
Four bursts of electric-blue arcs shot straight at his head and chest—lethal zones for any human.
But Jiang Lian didn't even flinch.
He merely turned his head, throat shifting as he swallowed. Calmly, he plucked the arcs from his glasses, nose, and collarbone, and tossed them aside.
"You made two mistakes," he said. "You attacked me—and you picked the wrong weapon. Voltage has no effect on me."
Zhou Jiao's voice was cold. "Then what's the right choice? Lie down and let you perform an endoscopy?"
Jiang Lian stared at her.
The more she resisted, the sweeter her scent became.
He had a thousand ways to force her mouth open. But the closer he got, the more he lost control.
He feared that if he gave in to his urges, he'd rip her to pieces.
It was a strange, maddening sensation. He had always looked down on Zhou Jiao, saw her as beneath him. And yet, now—after just a few electric arcs—he was filled with a wild, consuming rage.
She was so small, so weak, so laughably fragile.
She actually thought that toy could protect her.
She should feel honored that he was willing to protect her.
Zhou Jiao frowned, trying to step back—but the floor was covered in a forest of tentacles. She had no choice but to stand still, watching him like a cornered animal.
"What are you thinking?" she asked, voice steady, arm raised.
"I'm thinking..." Jiang Lian loomed over her, his voice low and slow. "...whether I should kill you. You're seriously pissing me off."
Yet even as he said that, his head leaned closer and closer—like he was drawn to her by some primal, magnetic pull.
It should have been an intimate image: a man with a sharp profile and golden glasses, face so pale and perfect it looked like sculpted porcelain, leaning in until their breaths mingled.
—If not for the writhing tentacles beneath his skin.
And then, horror struck.
Jiang Lian's straight, elegant nose split open down the middle, blooming like the jaws of a monstrous flower. Dozens of purple-black tentacles burst out and clamped around Zhou Jiao's throat.
The apex predator had shed its mask.
He wasn't bluffing. He meant to kill her.
And "Xie Yuezhe" and the mutated corpse puppets lost control as well.
Zhou Jiao felt herself sinking into an icy abyss—her life force being drained rapidly. She turned her head with great effort and saw the truth:
Her limbs were ensnared by the puppets' tentacles.
They didn't share the master's intelligence or restraint. The moment they latched on, they began sucking the life out of her without hesitation.
Soon, her arms and legs grew cold, stiff, numb.
Jiang Lian didn't even notice how pale she was turning.
In fact, he didn't even notice his own madness.
At first, yes—he had meant to kill her.
But her scent was too sweet. Just one whiff sent electric pulses through his nerves, made his brain buzz with static.
He didn't even realize how crazed his gaze had become.
From this moment on, he had only one thought:
—Smell. Smell. Smell. Mark. Mark. Mark.
Inhale her scent. Stamp her as his.
She was his.
Only he could smell her. Only he could touch her. No other being was allowed to look at her, get close to her, leave even a whiff of their pheromones on her.
Time passed. The air thinned. Her vision blurred.
Zhou Jiao struggled to breathe—but the more she inhaled, the more the tentacles stole her breath away.
It was worse than drowning.
She had never been so close to death.
Her chest burned.
Her mind was unraveling—words running like ink on wet paper.
Where was she?
What was happening?
Jiang Lian... was going to kill her.
Her vitality drained. Consciousness faded. Limbs numb.
She was still alive, yet already just meat on a hook.
No strength left to resist.
Then—pain.
A jolt of searing agony in her finger snapped her awake. Cold sweat beaded on her forehead.
She raised her hand with effort—her fingers were shriveled and yellowed, as if completely drained.
Even Jiang Lian's puppets could tear her apart at will.
Rage surged in her chest.
She wouldn't die like this.
She couldn't die like this.
She had to live.
What could she do?
She had to fight back.
Her fist clenched. The pain in her withered fingers cleared her mind like never before.
Jiang Lian was nearly drowning in her scent.
It was as if he had been split into two beings—one consumed with utter contempt for Zhou Jiao, and the other gripped by a strange, obsessive craving for her scent.
Sweat, blood, saliva, tears… anything that carried her scent, he wanted to savor over and over again.
If he were a man, and she a woman—
Then he would undoubtedly be the most fanatical, the most abject of lovers.
But unfortunately, he was a monster. She was human.
Jiang Lian stared at Zhou Jiao with an unrelenting gaze. His gold-rimmed glasses had already been shattered by an electric arc, leaving only the frames and shards behind. In his eyes, desire raged wildly.
If Zhou Jiao didn't possess an extraordinary will, she would've already died at his hands.
But it wasn't enough.
The membrane on the surface of his tentacle possessed both mimicry and bioluminescent properties. When in camouflage or defense mode, his outer skin became undetectable to heat or electromagnetic scans.
At the same time, it was extraordinarily resistant—impervious to temperature or pressure changes, immune to bullets or electric shocks. But such protection came at the cost of some sensory input.
Should he shed this membrane—just to get closer to her scent?
Was she really worth that risk?
Jiang Lian didn't ponder long.
Almost instantly, the tentacle's membrane peeled away, revealing its silver-white core.
If Zhou Jiao had opened her eyes at that moment, she would have seen the tentacle in its most vulnerable form—smooth and tender like a peeled egg, easily marked with a single bite.
But her eyes wouldn't open.
She felt herself dissolving, disintegrating. A waterfall seemed to pour before her eyes.
Only much later did she realize—it wasn't a waterfall.
It was her life force, draining away in torrents.
She was dying.
How can a human fight a monster?
Humans once emerged from water to walk on land, climbed down from trees, rose from crawling to upright, advanced from raw flesh to kindling fire.
Within her flowed the blood of her ancestors. Her genes carried the most intricate answers—
No god could reassemble heredity, probability, environment, mutation, and evolution to recreate humanity anew.
...If she was so perfect, then why couldn't she defeat a monster?
She didn't want to die.
She couldn't die.
Zhou Jiao's eyes snapped open.
Her face was the pallor of near-death.
But her jawbones suddenly jutted from her cheeks, both mandibles clamping down with a jolt—sinking deep into Jiang Lian's tentacle.
Jiang Lian's pupils shrank abruptly. He tried to pull back.
In the next moment, Zhou Jiao reached up and gripped his neck.
Her palm seemed to carry ten thousand volts. He was immune to electricity—at most, it felt like a bug bite.
And yet, in that instant, every cell touched by her seemed to burn and tingle, opening and contracting in frenzy.
Her touch sent a wave of joy through him.
He was ecstatic.
But then he froze.
Zhou Jiao bit off his tentacle—and swallowed it.
It shouldn't have been a big deal. The tentacle was still a part of him; he could retrieve it at any time.
But the moment it entered another organism's body, that organism would be contaminated—almost like parasitism.
Her scent—her precious, unique scent—would be changed by his tentacle.
Completely.
Irrevocably.
He had lost it forever.
Jiang Lian slowly rose to his feet.
The tentacles that had latched onto Zhou Jiao and coiled around the lab snapped back into the fissures on his face like lightning.
In an instant, his appearance returned to normal. His expression was blank, devoid of all emotion.
With no glasses to obscure them, his eyes appeared even less human—cold and detached, utterly disconnected from mankind.
Not terrifying. Not horrific.
Just… profoundly alien.
He didn't even look at Zhou Jiao.
He turned and walked away.
A mutated corpse tried to follow him. Jiang Lian didn't raise an eye—just snapped his fingers. The creature's skull exploded instantly.
He considered killing "Xie Yuezhe" too, but after a pause, he merely withdrew the tentacle embedded in him.
He didn't want to smell humans anymore.
He was disgusted.
·
Zhou Jiao had a terrible dream.
She hovered at death's edge, unable to breathe. Every time she tried to inhale, blood gushed like a spring from beneath her tongue.
Her spirit withered. Her body decayed.
She couldn't stop it.
She struggled to breathe, to fight back, to grasp at some distant piece of driftwood on the water's surface. She even replayed her life, hoping to find a regret, anything to spark a will to survive.
But there was nothing.
She had always lived without desires or demands.
Cold, numb, suffocating, spasms of dying breath. Her consciousness sank like it was filled with lead.
She seemed to become some kind of soft-bodied creature, mindlessly wrapping, winding, waiting for commands.
Because she wasn't a separate lifeform.
She was a subsidiary.
An appendage to some other creature.
An appendage?
—No fucking way.
Like surfacing from deep underwater, Zhou Jiao's face was soaked in sweat as she gasped for air—desperately, repeatedly.
Her dying mind flared back to life. Her ruined body began to revive.
She was not some monster's appendage.
Her eyes flew open.
She was fully awake.
Trembling, she looked down—and found all her wounds gone. Even the finger that had shriveled and withered from being drained was whole again.
Everything that had happened last night felt like a nightmare.
But she knew it wasn't.
Zhou Jiao took a deep breath and stood, stepping over the unconscious Xie Yuezhe on the floor.
She picked up a scalpel.
Her face was impassive, unnervingly calm. She even disinfected the blade with practiced ease.
Then, with the scalpel in hand, she slashed her own arm—hard.
The wound opened—
Then vanished in an instant, leaving only a faint white scar.
After swallowing Jiang Lian's tentacle, her body had… changed.
Maybe it wasn't just a mutation.
Maybe it was something else.
Zhou Jiao gave a cold, sharp laugh and tossed the scalpel aside.
Whatever had changed in her—
She would kill Jiang Lian.
And repay the agony of that night a thousandfold.