Chapter 81: The Devil’s Sacrifice (31p1)
Seeing Nie Hongshen like this, Yu Jiao inexplicably felt a sense of being used. Yu Jiao’s face immediately darkened, and she ruthlessly dug her fingers deep into the soft, exposed “mycelium,” easily tearing open a not-so-shallow wound. A viscous, fluorescent green liquid, like blood, gushed out.
Nie Hongshen’s face, which had been flushed as if with alcohol, instantly turned pale. A physiological reaction made Nie Hongshen frown immediately, but his eyes still held a lingering glow of pleasure.
Nie Hongshen suppressed the intense pain and, without dodging or flinching, he lifted his trembling eyelashes, his voice also trembling slightly.
“Sister-in-law… it hurts… me…”
Nie Hongshen gasped for breath with each word. It was unclear if he was acting spoiled or making an invitation.
Between his messy hair, his pale eyebrows were furrowed.
The life-threatening, intense pain from the opening in his abdomen was transmitted to every nerve ending in his body. A cold sweat rolled down, and his expression was one of painful pleasure, as if a small mortal were willingly accepting the destructive grace of a god.
Yu Jiao knew that because this was in a dream, as long as it wasn’t a real brain death, it wouldn’t endanger his real body. Besides, Yu Jiao had a personal grudge against this person. If she didn’t take revenge now, when would she?
Yu Jiao was also testing Nie Hongshen’s bottom line.
After all, Yu Jiao hadn’t expected that just a casual test, without any expectation that the old fox Nie Hongshen would honestly confess, would so happily deliver what she wanted.
Too strange.
This was not like the high and mighty, suspicious and sharp Nie Hongshen—who seemed to see everyone as ants—how could Nie Hongshen entrust his life and death to an ant?
The information was obtained too easily. Yu Jiao was half-believing, half-doubting, and planned to find a reliable person to verify if this vital point was real after she got out.
Too many thoughts flashed through her mind, and her movements paused for a moment. As sensitive as Nie Hongshen was, he immediately noticed and was dissatisfied with her distraction.
“Sister-in-law, who are you thinking of?”
The “mycelium” in his abdomen tightened, and it was as if it were taking the initiative, wanting to swallow her fingers into its body, like a naughty child, pulling at an adult’s fingers to get attention.
Though it was his most vulnerable vital point, the foreign sensation of Yu Jiao’s fingers deep inside, the fatal, bone-deep, intense pain, made a cold sweat drip from his forehead. The smile on his lips was a little tight, but his cold eyes were fixed on Yu Jiao without blinking.
This predator-like gaze, combined with the strange sensation of his fingers being squeezed by the resilient internal structure of his abdominal cavity, gave Yu Jiao a thrilling feeling of being entangled in a spider’s web, unable to move, and watching the spider open and close its mouthparts as it came towards her.
—Though at this moment, Yu Jiao was the one who held the power of life and death.
Yu Jiao narrowed her eyes. In the dim light, her glistening, cold eyes were exceptionally cold.
“I’m thinking of you,” Yu Jiao answered nonchalantly.
Yu Jiao did not resist the devouring of her fingers by the tissue in his abdomen at all. Instead, she took the initiative and, with her bent knuckles, she fumbled in the resilient nerve tissue.
At this moment, Yu Jiao had a direct sense of his non-human nature. Under the open breastplate, there was no human internal organ structure. The nerves in this giant insect’s body were intricate, forming a series of ganglia. The touch was like a wet, slippery fungus, and it was layered like petals.
It was unclear when, but Yu Jiao had already passed through the fog of the overlapping muscle tissue and had gone deep into the ganglia, exploring the insect’s vital point, which no one had ever set foot in.
Unlike the wet, cool, and resilient nerve threads and ganglia, this tissue was warm and soft, and it was beating in Yu Jiao’s palm with a rhythm, like a heart.
The moment Yu Jiao’s fingertips touched this “heart,” Nie Hongshen, who had been feigning a sickly weakness on the bed, suddenly froze, and his waist and abdomen arched, like a fish on a beach, at the mercy of others, helplessly flopping.
His pale neck was exposed to the air, trembling. The blue veins on the back of his hands were bulging, and he had grabbed the bedsheet in a flustered, wrinkled mess.
This was its blood vessel pump.
It was connected to the nerves and was an important core that provided energy for combat, eating, and the operation of various organs.
Seeing this, Yu Jiao smiled, the corners of her eyes tilting up, and the red lips under her veil were like a vibrant, curved knife.
As Yu Jiao nonchalantly played with the palm-sized, flesh-made pump with her fingers, she said darkly:
“I’m thinking, how to make you—die.”
“…”
Like kneading a rubber toy. The energy that was being transported from the blood vessel pump to the whole body was sometimes a violent impact, and sometimes it was cut off dryly. It was like being on a roller coaster, one moment in heaven, one moment in hell.
His most fatal vital point was being so cruelly tortured. The young man’s whole body was tense, but there was also a strange, near-death relaxation. His slightly parted lips were gasping for breath.
Until Yu Jiao coldly withdrew her hand and wiped the viscous, green “blood” on his clothes half-dry, and then, without looking back, she closed the door and left. He did not come back to his senses for a long time.
…
After this battle, Nie Hongshen’s already sickly body was even worse.
He might have been feigning illness before, but now he was really sick. Even in the virtual world, he couldn’t adjust his physical state in such a short time. This kind of serious injury, he would probably have to lie in bed for ten days or half a month to recover.
After staying in this dream for a short while, Yu Jiao had a deep sense of how lowly Yu Shui’s (Nie Hongshen’s) status was.
Yu Jiao left the patient’s room with obvious “crime” marks, but no one noticed anything was wrong, and no one wanted to care about the young master’s safety.
—No wonder he had developed such a vengeful, arrogant attitude later.
Yu Jiao snorted and, with her eyes lowered, she washed her hands clean.
Nie Hongshen’s confession was an unexpected surprise, but Yu Jiao still had other goals for this trip.
In reality, the secrets of the Apocalypse Cult were not something Yu Jiao could access. Even eleven could not open the authority for her. So, Yu Jiao planned to find a breakthrough in the past Yu family in the dream.
Yu Jiao walked through the dim, bright corridor and went straight to the study. Before she could take out the key, the closed door naturally opened to her—just like Nie Hongshen, who had willingly opened his vital point to her.
Yu Jiao had the untimely thought.
The Yu family’s study was like a maze. It was more like an archive than a study. The tall, transparent bookshelves were neatly lined with black files.
So Yu Jiao was even more puzzled. No one had stopped her from coming in. Not only that, but after Yu Jiao had entered the study, as she went deeper, the floor lamps lit up one by one, and the towering bookshelves even moved, like a changing maze, guiding her to the depths.
Her vision suddenly brightened. The layered, concealing bookshelves were gone. In the center of the empty study was only a long, transparent table, and a long, snow-white scroll was hanging down to the ground.
A black-clad Yu Fenghe was bent over the long scroll, writing something.
Yu Jiao couldn’t see his expression clearly, only his high-bridged nose and his slightly pursed, dark lips. When the two thin braids at his ears slipped and were about to fall into the inkwell on the table, a mechanical arm suddenly extended from the side of the table and timely stopped the hair from falling.
Yu Fenghe put down his brush.
Yu Fenghe straightened up and looked at Yu Jiao.
“You’re here.”
Hearing this, Yu Jiao didn’t know if it was because she was dazed, but she actually felt that Yu Fenghe had made a sound without opening his mouth.
At this moment, his already pale face was illuminated by the cold floor lamps, and it had a cold, mechanical quality. His two dark, black eyes were like two long-forgotten, raw, black screws.
Yu Fenghe suddenly smiled.
The empty screws were lubricated with oil, and his pupils glowed with a light.
“Hongyue.”
Yu Fenghe smiled and beckoned.
“Didn’t you always want me to teach you painting? It’s a rare moment of leisure. Come.”
Yu Jiao did as he said and walked over. Yu Fenghe naturally took her to the desk, put a brush in her hand, and, gently holding her hand, he guided her hand to hover over the scroll.
At this moment, Yu Jiao finally saw the pattern he had been drawing—it was an abstract symbol, very much like a traditional tai chi diagram.
Yu Fenghe half-enclosed her in his arms, and his cool, dark breath brushed past her ear, giving Yu Jiao the strange feeling of being held in the arms of a skeleton.
“The world is a giant insect.”
Yu Fenghe’s voice was a little hoarse, as if it were carrying a faint, jumping, electric sound. By the time Yu Jiao had turned her ear to catch it, there was nothing left.
Only a flat, human voice.
“Legend has it that there were two creator gods.”
As Yu Fenghe spoke, he held Yu Jiao’s paused hand and put the brush to the paper.
“One ruled the sand domain, and the other ruled the water domain. The two gods were constantly arguing, but they also balanced each other.”
The ink spread, and he drew two images, one like an insect, one like a fish.
“However, for some unknown reason, the god who ruled the water domain fell into a deep sleep. Now, the rudder of the world has fallen into the hands of the god who rules the sand domain, and the water domain has become a dead sea.”
“The small humans can only survive in the cracks of the dangerous sand domain.”
“Yin and yang are out of balance.”
Yu Fenghe leaned in and whispered in her ear:
“So, the human experiments of the Apocalypse Cult are all trying to merge the two forces.”
The cool air he exhaled as he spoke brushed against the side of Yu Jiao’s neck, like a cold scalpel, stirring a physiological shiver.
“Don’t be afraid.”
Yu Fenghe held Yu Jiao’s hand, which was trying to retreat.
“In the end, these experiments are just a human-shaped program—no different from eleven.”
As he spoke, Yu Fenghe guided Yu Jiao’s hand to the electronic program next to the desk. The dripping ink awakened the screen.
“They are dangerous biological weapons. To prevent this sharp knife from being pointed at themselves, the Apocalypse project has secretly set up a ‘scabbard’—that is, their underlying code.”
The ink that had dripped on the electronic screen was rolling uncontrollably, affected by gravity, breath, and vibration. The screen was flashing. The water droplets, which had no will of their own, were constantly selecting unknown options.