“Gu Chen.”
Qin Hongyi’s voice came from behind him.
She holstered the gun and stepped forward, ignoring the blood on his face entirely as she reached out to stroke his neck.
“Did you hear what he said just now?”
Gu Chen lowered his head and looked at the woman who had just fought a monster to the death for him.
The bloody gash on her throat was still seeping.
“What if I did?”
Gu Chen suddenly smiled.
His thumb wiped the bead of blood from the side of her neck and slipped it into his mouth.
The metallic sweetness spread across his tongue. This was the strongest sedative there was.
“He called me a dog.”
Gu Chen leaned in until their noses touched. The vertical slits in his pupils had already vanished, leaving only endless black.
“Then it depends on who’s holding the leash.”
“Qin Hongyi.”
“Since you want to be the owner, you’d better grip that rope tight.”
“Because if you ever let go, this mad dog will bite back and swallow the bones whole.”
Qin Hongyi gazed at the handsome face inches from her own and laughed, wild and unrestrained.
“Don’t worry.”
She caught the back of his head with one hand and deepened the blood-tinged kiss.
“Even if I tie this rope to my own ribs, I won’t let it slip.”
***
The rain had stopped.
But the stench in the air had grown thicker.
It was not the clean scent of rain-washed earth. It was rust, sewage, and fermenting rot all mixed together.
For Gu Chen’s nose—freshly upgraded by the Eden Project’s forced gene-lock version—it felt like someone had shoved an entire ton of herring cans straight through his nostrils into his skull.
“Ugh.”
Gu Chen pinched his nose and kicked the soda can at his feet in disgust.
“Did that pervert 002 forget to shower? The smell is so strong it’s burning my eyes.”
Qin Hongyi kept one hand in her pocket and the other wrapped around the Desert Eagle she had just used to finish the monster.
“According to Buddha’s intel, Subject 002 took heavy damage and disappeared somewhere around here.”
She paused and glanced at Gu Chen, who was still dry-heaving.
“What’s wrong? You were yelling about being hungry earlier. Now the scent of your own kind makes you queasy?”
“President Qin, please watch your wording.”
Gu Chen straightened, his refined features full of arrogance—if one ignored the tears of revulsion at the corners of his eyes.
“That lizard-looking, brain-dead, hygiene-challenged creature and I are two different species. I’m a limited edition. He’s scrap that slipped out of the junkyard.”
His mouth kept talking trash, but his body was honest.
Every muscle tensed.
The golden pupils were hidden, yet his instincts screamed nonstop warnings.
The fleeing 002’s vital signs were plummeting.
It was as if something far more terrifying was eating it alive.
“Something’s wrong.”
Gu Chen’s smile vanished, his expression turning ice-cold.
“The blood scent changed.”
“Besides 002’s dead-fish stink, there’s another…”
Gu Chen’s nostrils flared.
This smell was far too familiar.
Expensive Chanel No. 5 mixed with a girl’s unique body fragrance—intensely fresh, sweet, and metallic from freshly ruptured organs.
“Go!”
Gu Chen barked the order and sprinted deeper into the alley, no longer caring about the filthy puddles.
This was an old slaughterhouse slated for demolition.
Rusty meat hooks swayed in the wind.
In the center, on the cement slab once used to drain pigs, something crouched.
It was 002.
Or rather, what was left of 002.
The monster that had roared in the parking lot minutes ago about swallowing Gu Chen alive now lay like a deboned salted fish.
Its limbs twisted at impossible angles, its chest cavity ripped wide open, grayish-white fluid pooling across the floor.
Beside the corpse squatted a white figure.
Su Rou.
She wore the dress she had specially changed into to redeem her fiancé’s substitute.
The hem was now soaked an eye-searing black-red.
Her back was to them.
Her shoulders heaved as she made a bone-chilling chewing sound.
Crunch.
Crunch.
Like gnawing sugarcane, or crunching cartilage.
Or more like some sick immersive mukbang.
Gu Chen stopped short.
Qin Hongyi followed right behind him.
Even someone as seasoned as her raised an eyebrow at the sight, gun muzzle snapping upward.
“Who’s there?”
Su Rou seemed to hear them.
She turned around slowly, movements stiff.
The scene would have made any horror director nod in approval.
The once pure, tearful little white-flower face was now smeared with gray-white slime and clots of blood.
A chunk of purplish-black, still faintly pulsing flesh hung from her mouth—002’s gland, the mutant’s energy core.
Gulp.
Su Rou’s throat bobbed as she swallowed the stinking gland whole.
Then she smiled.
Not the timid, pitiable smile they knew.
This was a satisfied, slightly deranged, seductive grin.
“Oh, isn’t this Miss Gu?”
Su Rou licked the corner of her mouth, cleaning the residue with her tongue.
“And President Qin. What a coincidence. Are you two here for a midnight snack too?”
Gu Chen stared at Su Rou as if she were a total stranger.
“Su Rou?” he tested. “Did a donkey kick you in the head?”
“Head?”
Su Rou tilted hers, reached back into 002’s chest cavity, and pulled out another handful of unidentifiable tissue.
She kneaded it like playdough, making wet squelching noises.
“Brother Gu Chen, you’re the one who’s wrong.”
Her gaze slid past Qin Hongyi and locked onto Gu Chen’s disguised face.
It was no longer the look she gave a substitute.
It was raw greed that saw straight through skin to the soul.
“How much longer are you going to keep pretending?”
Su Rou stood up, stepping through the blood, and walked toward him.
“Before, I thought I wasn’t good enough for you. You’re the crown prince of Beijing’s elite circle. I’m just the crying illegitimate daughter of the Su family.”
“Even if I bankrupted us, I would have bought back your remains.”
“But why?”
She stopped three meters away.
Tears suddenly spilled down her cheeks, mixing with the blood already there.
“Why would you rather become a woman? Why would you rather be Qin Hongyi’s dog than spare me a single glance?”
“And why humiliate me like that and force me to leave?”
Gu Chen’s heart skipped.
This silly girl had actually seen through everything?
“You’ve got the wrong person.”
Gu Chen’s face went blank, voice cold.
“I’m Gu Qingcheng. That dead ghost Gu Chen rotted away in the car long ago.”
“Shh.”
Su Rou raised a bloodstained finger to her lips.
“Stop lying. Even if you changed your skin, even if you became a woman, I can smell that arrogant scent of yours—the one that annoys me and fascinates me—from eight hundred meters away.”
She pressed a hand to her own heart.
“When I ate that lizard monster just now, everything suddenly became clear.”
“You pushed me away because I’m too weak, right?”
“In your eyes I’m nothing but a burden, a little white rabbit, a useless thing that needs protecting.”
Suddenly Su Rou’s body convulsed violently.
The 002 gland she had swallowed began to take effect.
“Ugh… ah…”
She doubled over in pain. The white dress on her back ripped open with a loud tear.
No wings sprouted. She did not turn into a monster.
But along her spine, several dark-red bone spikes burst through the skin like bamboo shoots, glistening with clear mucus.
Her pupils dilated rapidly. The black irises vanished, replaced by a sickly white.
Identical to 002’s, yet purer. More evil.
“Look.”
Su Rou straightened, feeling the explosive power surging inside her. A sickly flush colored her face.
“The Su family is also a shareholder in the Eden Project. You didn’t know that, did you, Brother Gu Chen?”
“Ever since I was little, Dad injected me with all kinds of strange drugs. He said it was to make me prettier and more obedient.”
“It turns out he was turning me into a vessel.”
Su Rou smiled. The tears at the corners of her eyes turned to blood.
“002 was too weak, but he made an excellent catalyst. With that extra piece of flesh, I’m high as hell right now.”
She jerked her head up. Her deathly white pupils locked onto Gu Chen.
“Since you like monsters.”
“Since you became a monster.”
“Then I’ll become one too.”
“That way, aren’t we a match made in heaven?”
Bang!
A gunshot rang out.
Qin Hongyi pulled the trigger with an expressionless face.
The bullet flew straight toward the center of Su Rou’s forehead.
“Too much talking.”
Qin Hongyi spoke coldly.
“Trying to steal my woman right in front of me? Did you even ask the gun in my hand first?”