It was late at night.
Ella could not sleep at all.
The ship rocked gently on the water—left, right, up, down—like a giant cradle.
But for someone who had lived on solid land for ten years, the motion was not soothing.
It was torture.
Her stomach churned in time with the hull. Her head spun with every wave.
Every nerve in her body screamed for the unmoving, solid ground she had lost.
That ground was gone.
Today was the first day she had lost her insect nest and become completely trapped in the grasp of those failures.
Humiliating. Heartbreaking.
The moment her connection to the swarm had been severed still played vividly before her eyes—tens of thousands of light points winking out one after another like a silent, dazzling, suffocating meteor shower.
When she closed her eyes, those dying lights reignited behind her eyelids, only to extinguish again and again.
“Ugh… blegh! Here it comes again!”
She bolted upright, lunged for the trash can beside the nightstand, and vomited. Stomach acid burned her throat. What came out tasted bitterly sour and rotten.
She had already thrown up everything there was to throw up.
Her stomach was empty.
Each heave was dry, her stomach walls spasming without producing anything except a trickle of yellow bile and clear mucus that dripped from the corners of her mouth.
But her body refused to listen. Its reactions were more honest than her will—it hated this ship. It wanted off this ship.
“Aaah… it hurts so much…”
She hugged the trash can, forehead pressed against the rim.
Her silver hair fell across her face and swayed with every retch.
Her back trembled. Her fingers trembled. Physiological tears clung to her lashes from the strain.
She stayed crouched like that for about five minutes.
Until her stomach finally settled.
She set the trash can back beside the nightstand, wiped her mouth with her sleeve, then leaned back against the bed and stared up at the ceiling.
She tried to empty her mind.
But her brain refused.
She could not sleep.
She could not sleep at all.
In a fit of irritation, she decided to stop trying.
Ella sat up, slipped her feet into the slippers—Yiwen had given them to her after the bath. They were a little too big, gray-blue, with soles so soft it felt like stepping on cotton.
She stood without turning on the light.
Moonlight filtered through the porthole, casting a silvery rectangle across the floor.
The glow was faint, barely enough to reveal the wood grain, but not enough to chase away the darkness in the room.
Her gaze shifted to the bed beside hers.
Zhuluo was asleep.
The black-haired girl lay curled on her side, hands folded neatly beside the pillow, knees slightly bent.
Her sleeping posture was as still as a painting—no restless tossing, no unconscious kicking, not even the slightest noticeable rise and fall of her breathing.
Moonlight fell across her face, softening her features in the dark.
Her golden pupils were closed, lashes casting small fan-shaped shadows beneath her eyelids.
The six small eyes on her collarbones were also shut, lined up neatly above the collar like six dormant pearls.
She looked like a princess when she slept.
Quiet. Elegant. Beautiful.
A completely different creature from the one who had clamped Ella’s tentacle with spider legs during the day.
Ella stood beside the bed, looking down at her for a long time.
Her gaze slowly traveled downward—across Zhuluo’s neck, across her collarbones, across the gentle curves beneath the blanket, across the fair ankles left exposed.
Then her eyes moved to the spot behind herself.
The stump of her tentacle had formed a thin scab. Tender pink flesh was slowly regrowing, but it would take a long time before it was usable again.
“Tch… if only the tentacle hadn’t been severed…”
The thought rose instinctively, and she agreed with it in her heart.
If the tentacle were still intact, she could have slipped it in while the other girl slept and injected her DNA.
She could have turned this black-haired, quiet, princess-like girl into an incubator while she dreamed.
By the time Zhuluo woke up, dozens of eggs would already be developing inside her.
Her nutrients would be drained bit by bit. Her body would serve the swarm—
Exactly as she should.
Exactly as all the failures should.
Thinking about it made Ella’s face feel a little warm.
But she told herself it was only excitement at the coming revenge.
She would never feel any desire toward these failures.
Even if she pierced them or pressed against them, she would feel nothing.
These failures would only become her birthing machines.
She was very confident in that thought.
She nodded, as if confirming something, then turned away from Zhuluo’s bed.
She sat back down on her own bed, hugged her knees, and began to think.
“But I really don’t remember these failures…”
She muttered under her breath, so softly that only she could hear.
Zhuluo from seven years ago, Dieyi from even earlier, and Yiwen who she had no memory of at all—they all claimed she was their creator, that she had made them and then discarded them, that she had thrown them into the sea as worthless failures.
But she did not remember.
She truly did not remember.
Or did she simply not want to remember?
She shook her head, flinging the thought away.
“I get it now.”
Her voice suddenly grew firm, as if she were giving herself a pep talk.
“It must be that I was pursuing maximum efficiency and simply didn’t pay attention to these failures. That makes sense. Yes, that’s exactly it.”
The corners of her mouth curved slightly.
“They’re lying to me. I am myself. The insect nest will is my will. I was never eroded.”
Even as she said the words, something felt off.
But she did not examine what that “off” feeling was. She shoved it, along with everything else that made her uncomfortable, into the dark corner deep inside her chest.
Her gaze moved to the porthole.
It was probably two or three in the morning.
The time when everyone on the ship would be sleeping the deepest.
She slipped quietly out of bed again and stepped into the oversized slippers.
Her movements were light enough that the floor made no sound.
She even held her breath, like a cat stalking through the darkness.
She walked to the door and placed her hand on the knob.
Then she glanced back at Zhuluo.
Zhuluo had not moved. She remained in the same curled position, breathing steady and slow, the small eyes on her collarbones still tightly shut.
Ella turned the knob, opened the door, slipped through the gap, and gently pulled it closed behind her.
Click.
The lock made a faint sound.
She stood in the corridor and took a deep breath.
The corridor was long, lined on both sides with closed doors.
Moonlight spilled through a porthole at the far end, casting a round patch of light on the floor.
The air carried the distinctive smell of an old ship—wood, tung oil, sea salt, and some indefinable hint of mold.
She did not know the ship’s exact layout, but she knew one thing—she needed to find a hidden spot that would not be easily discovered.
Then she would leave her bodily fluids there and wait for the bacterial carpet to slowly form.