Slippery, ice-cold, and reeking of rotting corpses.
Gu Chen wanted to vomit, but his body betrayed him with a shameful tingle from the intense genetic contact.
“Get off me, you zombie!” Gu Chen drove his knee upward, trying to launch her away.
But Su Rou’s strength was monstrous now.
Several bone spikes pinned his limbs down hard, spreading him into a humiliating starfish shape.
“Don’t move. Just let me have one bite… just one…”
Su Rou opened her mouth crammed with razor teeth and lunged straight for the carotid artery on Gu Chen’s neck.
At that instant, a hand shot from behind and seized a fistful of her hair.
“Stealing food right in front of me?”
Qin Hongyi’s sinister voice rang out.
She was drenched in blood.
The drug’s side effects had thrown her into a state of extreme frenzy.
Instead of yanking Su Rou off, she pressed her whole body down on top.
Slap!
Su Rou was slammed hard against Gu Chen.
Gu Chen felt his chest cave in; he nearly blacked out on the spot.
Great. A human sandwich?
Qin Hongyi’s fingers clamped around Su Rou’s throat, forcing her head aside.
“He’s mine.”
Qin Hongyi lowered her head. Crimson eyes locked onto Gu Chen pinned at the very bottom.
Blood from both women streamed down Su Rou’s body and dripped onto Gu Chen’s collar.
It was scalding.
Like boiling water.
Qin Hongyi seemed dizzy from the scent herself.
Instead of killing Su Rou, she reached out and traced Gu Chen’s lips with her fingers.
“Gu Chen…”
Qin Hongyi breathed heavily. “You smell so good.”
They were all fucking insane.
Gu Chen was sandwiched between two female monsters: one former fiancée who wanted to eat him like sashimi, the other an arch-rival who wanted to lock him away as private property.
Su Rou kept thrashing wildly; her claws tore open Gu Chen’s skin.
To keep Su Rou pinned, Qin Hongyi shifted nearly all her weight onto him.
Scorching body heat seeped through their soaked clothes, making his whole body go numb.
Was this some kind of twisted threesome?
Gu Chen let out a muffled groan.
If this kept up, he wouldn’t get eaten—he’d be crushed into paste by these two lunatics.
Worse, this body reacted on a genetic level to both women.
The instinct to submit, to melt into their flesh and blood, hammered at his sanity.
“Fuck.”
Only one word remained in Gu Chen’s mind.
Two mountains crushed down on him, squeezing every bit of air from his lungs.
Rainwater mixed with rust flooded his nose.
Su Rou’s mouth, split ear-to-ear, hovered inches above his face; saliva dripped onto his neck—hot and nauseating.
“So fragrant…”
Su Rou murmured. Her brown pupils were completely devoured by gray-white.
Without any chance to negotiate, she lowered her head.
Crunch.
Sharp teeth pierced skin.
Pain.
Along with it, an electric current shot straight to the top of his skull from the wound.
It wasn’t nerve signals. It was the Eden Project body’s gene-deep resonance between mutants.
Bodily fluid exchange. A forced channel opened.
Gu Chen’s oxygen-starved vision shattered into white light.
The sound of rain and the stench of corpses vanished.
He stood in the piano room of the old Gu family mansion five years ago, on a dry, drowsy afternoon.
Dust motes danced in shafts of sunlight.
A girl in a faded school uniform sat at the piano only Gu Chen was allowed to touch, clumsily pressing the keys.
“Brother Gu Chen,” the girl turned her head. No blood, no fangs on her face—only careful, pleading affection. “I learned it. This is your favorite piece.”
At the door, Gu Chen held a half-smoked cigarette, brows knotted. “Who let you in? It sounds awful. Get out.”
The girl shrank back.
Her eyes reddened instantly.
Tears welled up, but she bit her lip and refused to let them fall.
The scene shifted.
Late night, hospital emergency corridor.
“No matter the cost, fix her hand. If there’s even a scar, I’ll tear this hospital apart.”
The young, hot-blooded Gu family heir slapped his card onto the dean’s face. Blood stained the collar of his white shirt.
It was the wine-bottle shards he had blocked for this silly girl.
In the corner, Su Rou huddled with knees to her chest, staring at that back with obsession so humble it lay in the dirt—and a certain madness already twisting and sprouting inside her.
“As long as I can stay by his side… I’ll become anything…”
“Even… a man-eating monster.”
***
Memories rampaged through his brain.
His eyelids flew open. His chest heaved violently.
These weren’t his memories. They were Su Rou’s.
Through the blood link, the monster had forcibly shoved her chaotic, broken, yet scorching obsession straight into him.
The crushing weight on his ribs eased slightly.
Su Rou released her bite.
She stayed draped over Gu Chen, thin threads of blood hanging from the corners of her split mouth.
The gray-white hue receded a fraction.
A trace of the original human brown struggled desperately to surface.
She stared blankly at the devastatingly beautiful face beneath her.
Her tongue unconsciously licked the blood from her lips.
The familiar taste.
Etched into the soul.
“Gu… Chen?”
Su Rou tilted her head.
Claws sharp enough to shred steel hovered in mid-air. Her fingertips trembled, wanting to touch Gu Chen’s face yet not daring to drop.
“You’re… Brother Gu Chen?”
Confusion lasted only a heartbeat before the monster’s instinct roared back: “No! You’re food! If I eat you… I can evolve…”
“If I eat you, we’ll merge into one forever.”
“No! I can’t eat him!”
Su Rou’s words cut off. She clutched her head with both hands, nails gouging bloody trails across her scalp as she let out a tortured shriek.
“He’ll hurt! Brother Gu Chen hates pain the most! No one is allowed to touch him!”
Crazy.
This girl had completely split in two.
The human personality and the monster’s hunger were waging a life-or-death war inside the same body.
“Get off!”
Qin Hongyi didn’t care what inner drama Su Rou was performing.
She only saw that the monster had bitten Gu Chen.
Skin broken. Blood flowing.
That was her property. Who gave this creature the nerve?
The drug’s side effects had pushed Qin Hongyi to the edge of explosive rage.
She grabbed the protruding bone spikes on Su Rou’s back. Her palm was sliced open and bleeding, but she didn’t care. She yanked backward with raw power.
“Get the hell off him!”
Normally Su Rou would have been flung away.
But right now, Su Rou was in an extremely unstable protective-feeding state.
“Don’t touch him!!”
Su Rou’s neck produced a sickening crack of shifting bones as her whole face whipped around.
She swung her arm back, too fast for the afterimage to register.
Bang!
Qin Hongyi took a heavy blow to the chest. The immense force hurled her backward.
She smashed through a pile of scrap more than ten meters away and was buried under mud and rubble. She lay motionless for a long moment.
“Red!” Gu Chen blurted out. His chest tightened painfully.
Before he could move, two clawed hands clamped down on his shoulders, pinning him in place.
“Shh…” Su Rou pressed a bloodstained finger to her lips, her face twisted into sickly tenderness.
“Ignore that evil woman. She hit you. She bullied you. I saw everything.”
She lowered her head and extended her tongue like a guilty dog, licking the wound on Gu Chen’s shoulder again and again.
The enzymes in her saliva mixed with his blood. The gash burned, then began to itch as it scabbed.
“Does it hurt?” Big tears rolled down Su Rou’s cheeks, but she let out a giggling laugh. “All better now. Blow on it and it won’t hurt.”
Gu Chen stared at the half-human, half-monster face.
Absurdity, pity, and disgust tangled together, leaving him momentarily speechless.
What the hell was this?
A yandere version upgrade?
From Lin Daiyu straight to Alien Queen?
“Su Rou.” Gu Chen swallowed the metallic tang rising in his throat and tested gently, “Snap out of it. Look at me. Who am I?”
“I know,” Su Rou answered, mesmerized. Her razor-sharp nails slid down his cheek, leaving red trails.
“You’re Gu Qingcheng, that bitch’s little canary.”
Gu Chen: “…”
So all that blood-sharing was for nothing?
“But…” Su Rou’s tone shifted. She pressed her face to his chest, greedily listening to his heartbeat.
“Deep down, you smell sweet. You’re him. That woman tried to hide you, but I found you.”
She jerked her head up, fast and urgent.
“Brother Gu Chen, I was too weak before. I couldn’t protect you. You even had to block wine bottles for me.”
“It’s different now.”
Su Rou raised her claws, showing the scraps of flesh still clinging to them.
Remnants of some poor bastard.
“I’ve gotten stronger. From now on, let me protect you, okay?”
“Anyone who dares bully you, I’ll eat them.”
“I’ve wanted to eat that Qin Hongyi for a long time.” Su Rou turned her head toward where Qin Hongyi had landed and let out a low growl.
“Her meat looks tough, but once I chew it up it should have good texture.”
In the distance, the rubble stirred.
Qin Hongyi shoved aside a slab of concrete and staggered to her feet.
She wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth. Her red eyes had not dimmed—they burned even brighter.