He Almost Wanted to Sigh in Satisfaction Like a Human
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Until the chip was halfway decrypted, Xie Yueze didn’t know what to say.
He didn’t know that he had once been controlled by Jiang Lian. He only remembered a few vague images—a dimly lit laboratory, a cold atmosphere, purple-black tentacles everywhere. At a glance, it looked like an indescribable and terrifying nest.
Yet all of this was not as terrifying as that figure.
His figure was cold and upright, dressed in a white coat that draped down to his knees. From the bridge of his nose, to the curve of his lips, to the angle of his jaw, and finally to his long and powerful fingers—each feature was incomparably refined, incomparably handsome.
But upon closer inspection, one would notice that at the junction of his figure and the shadows, something was constantly writhing madly. A strange, hair-raising buzzing sound occasionally rang out.
That buzzing sound still echoed in Xie Yueze’s ears, making his blood run cold.
Xie Yueze looked at Zhou Jiao, wanting to say something more, but something flickered in his ear, forcing him to change the topic: “How are you feeling now?”
Zhou Jiao: “Still okay.”
Xie Yueze thought for a moment and said, “If you were still working at the Special Bureau, I wouldn’t help you decrypt the chip. Although the credit chip has the least functions, it is the one most likely to alter your brain.”
“Many people don’t understand why the most widely promoted form of Biotech is the credit chip. They don’t realize that to establish a massive monopoly, the first step is to build a credit system distinct from other companies…”
Zhou Jiao looked at the decryption progress bar on the monitor, pressing her temples with some exhaustion. “I worked in Biotech for a long time. I know where credit chips come from…”
But Xie Yueze shook his head. “Establishing a credit system is only the first step. Once the system is in place, the company can track everyone’s movements, tailor advertisements for high-credit customers, and promote core products. At the same time, they can restrict low-credit customers from making purchases, track their locations, and send them to company-owned factories as laborers.”
“And that,” Xie Yueze said softly, “is only the most basic function. A deeper function is likely to involve using big data to calculate people’s political preferences and manipulate elections…”
At the same time, the decryption progress bar reached 85%.
Zhou Jiao lifted her gaze and scanned her surroundings—a typical chip surgery room, with a monitor, a mainframe, and a reclining chair. Behind it was a row of refrigeration cabinets filled with stimulants, sedatives, and painkillers. The labels were dirty, but faintly recognizable as belonging to Biotech.
—Biotech?
Zhou Jiao suddenly lowered her eyelashes and said in a trembling voice, “…Stop talking. My parents were…” She let out a suppressed sob. “I can’t listen to this right now…”
Her brows were sharp, and her complexion was pale. Suddenly revealing such a vulnerable expression would evoke sympathy in anyone, especially with the shocking dark purple bruises encircling her neck—making it impossible to guard against her.
If Xie Yueze had been a little closer, he would have noticed that from her shoulders to her waist, her entire body was taut like a drawn bow—a stance ready to launch an attack at any moment.
But Xie Yueze had already believed her words.
The data showed that Zhou Jiao’s parents had died in a chip explosion.
She had every reason to grieve.
He leaned forward slightly, grasping her hand once more. “Don’t be afraid, Jiao Jiao. As long as you trust me, I can help you avenge your parents…”
At that moment, the progress bar displayed 100%. The decryption was complete.
Before the words had fully left his mouth, Zhou Jiao yanked out the personal connection wire with one hand while the other moved like lightning, clamping around Xie Yueze’s throat—so fast that even she was momentarily stunned. But she quickly realized it was due to her modifications. With no hesitation, she squeezed Xie Yueze’s throat and flung him backward into the reclining chair!
She stuffed the connection wire back into the port behind her ear, lifted her knee, and pressed down on Xie Yueze’s shoulder. “—Let me guess, which company do you belong to?”
Xie Yueze was about to speak when he froze at her words.
“Biotech accused you of ‘downloading and disseminating confidential information,’ but these past two days, I’ve been searching the web for anything about Biotech. Nothing you said is anywhere online.” Her voice was cold. “So tell me, where exactly did you spread it?”
“—There are only two possibilities,” she said as she tightened her grip. Almost instantly, Xie Yueze’s throat bones let out a terrifying cracking sound. “The first possibility is that you’re a mercenary who stole this information to sell it, and the recipient is your client. The second is that you belong to another giant monopoly, and you stole this data for the benefit of your own company…”
Her grip was truly too strong. Xie Yueze could only gasp painfully as he said,
“…You’re really smart, Jiao Jiao. I am indeed from another company… but I really mean you no harm… trust me…”
Zhou Jiao coldly looked down at him.
“I know you’re absolutely not staying by Jiang Lian’s side of your own will… trust me, I can help you break free from him… I know how terrifying he is…”
He had thought this statement would be a sure way to move her—after all, the dark purple bruises on her neck were horrifying. She had likely experienced an unimaginable struggle just to escape from Jiang Lian’s hands with her life.
Who would have thought that after he finished speaking, she would actually let out a soft laugh?
She leaned forward, pressing close to Xie Yueze’s ear, and said, “You just jumped right into the pit I dug for you—if you really belong to another company, then why are all the drugs in the refrigeration cabinets Biotech’s?”
Xie Yueze’s pupils contracted sharply.
“Oh, I forgot to mention, there’s one more possibility—you are from Biotech, and from beginning to end, you never actually stole any classified information. That night, you came here simply because your company detected Jiang Lian’s anomaly and wanted to see what was going on.”
—Yes, Jiang Lian had been with the Special Bureau for half a year. How could Biotech not have noticed this unexpected variable? There was only one possibility: they had noticed, but they didn’t dare to act rashly.
Xie Yueze was nothing more than a surveillance camera watching over Jiang Lian.
“Do you know where you gave yourself away?” Zhou Jiao’s lips curled slightly. “Only someone from the company would know that my parents’ deaths were related to the chip. Ordinary people only know they died in a suicide attack. That’s the first point.”
“The second point—just yesterday, I had only just come into contact with the chip conspiracy theory, yet today, you’re telling me that Biotech isn’t completely ignorant about ‘chip lunatics.’ You tried to earn my trust by feeding me more information so you could keep tracking Jiang Lian. But you gave too much, too fast. I don’t believe that some so-called internal network could contain this much classified information.”
Xie Yueze remained silent.
“And the last point,” Zhou Jiao tightened her grip once more. “Even though we were connected to the chip, the moment we mentioned Jiang Lian, your voice changed. You were deliberately testing how he felt about me.”
She lowered her voice, whispering coldly into his ear, “But did you ever think—if I didn’t have much value to Jiang Lian, what you just said could have gotten me killed? And under those circumstances, you still want me to cooperate with you?”
Zhou Jiao really wanted to kill Xie Yueze on the spot.
She had zero tolerance for people who almost got her killed.
But she had to keep him alive—to send a message.
Zhou Jiao released Xie Yueze’s throat, stepped back, and pulled a disinfecting wipe from the table, carefully wiping her fingers.
“Send someone smarter to talk to me. You’re not qualified.”
After speaking, she tossed the wipe into the trash and turned to walk out of the operating room.
Zhou Jiao didn’t trust people from the company.
Not a single word they said.
But if she wanted to get rid of Jiang Lian, cooperating with the company seemed like the best option.
One was a born monster. The other was a manufactured one.
Which should she choose?
After Zhou Jiao left, a voice with a Japanese accent sounded in Xie Yueze’s ear:
“You were too hasty. You already knew she was a smart person. With smart people, you can’t use coercion—you can only entice them.”
Xie Yueze lightly touched his painfully sore neck and gave a bitter smile. “I’m sorry, sir. I messed up.”
“You didn’t mess up,” the person replied. “She’s too smart—just a little bit of information, and she can infer the whole picture. We don’t need such a clever chess piece.”
Xie Yueze realized something, and his heart tensed. “Then… what do you mean?”
“If she refuses to cooperate, we’ll just send someone else to get close to Jiang Lian,” the person said carelessly. “She doesn’t know that we can see everything she experiences through the chip. The way she treated you just now—it was because she’s terrified of Jiang Lian. She can’t control that monster either. The reason she’s still alive is that the monster likes her scent. And scent, as a chemical signal, can be replicated.”
Xie Yueze immediately understood what the higher-ups meant:
They planned to synthesize Zhou Jiao’s scent and send someone else to approach Jiang Lian.
This person might not be as intelligent as Zhou Jiao, but they would definitely be more obedient, loyal, and trustworthy.
Then, Zhou Jiao could disappear.
For some inexplicable reason, Xie Yueze had a gut feeling—this plan wouldn’t work.
—
Zhou Jiao twitched at the corner of her eye as she looked at her hand.
She knew she was going to get licked!
Jiang Lian acted as if he didn’t notice her discomfort at all. He firmly gripped her hand, and the fissures in his palm opened and closed. That damp, cold, and slimy toothed tongue coiled around her fingers with complete focus.
—Would she feel better if he licked her like a human would?
—Hell no.
Zhou Jiao thought to herself. Either way, it still gives me goosebumps.
Should she be grateful that when he kissed her, he didn’t use this mouth on his hand?
The mere thought of him kissing her with the fissures in his palm sent a wave of cold disgust rushing up her spine, making her shudder involuntarily.
The only good news right now was that Jiang Lian didn’t seem to care about the lies she had told him… That was good. She had no idea how she would even begin to explain the meaning of “into this kind of thing” to him.
What she didn’t know was that Jiang Lian wasn’t indifferent—he was simply so consumed by extreme rage that he had no energy left to focus on anything she had said.
—After she left the operating room, there was another man’s scent on her body.
The moment he noticed this, his killing intent surged uncontrollably.
He had never experienced such overwhelming bloodlust before. It was like countless white ants burrowing into his joints, gnawing at his bones—only scalding, fresh blood could wash it away.
If Zhou Jiao turned to look behind her at this moment, she would see that his tall, slender figure had morphed into something grotesquely distorted. The writhing outlines of his tentacles bulged visibly beneath his skin, as if they could burst out at any moment.
—He wanted to kill everyone here.
Jiang Lian’s gaze was chillingly terrifying. His murderous intent and fury twisted together in a frenzied storm.
But first, he had to erase the scent of another man from her body.
Zhou Jiao had already given up struggling.
She let Jiang Lian use whatever was inside the fissures in his palms to wrap around her fingers again and again.
Now, her hand felt as if it had just been pulled out of a swamp, with an indescribable layer of dampness clinging between her fingers.
She thought that once he finished licking her fingers, he would finally stop. But unexpectedly, that thing began creeping up along her arm, carrying an icy chill as it slithered toward her shoulder and neck.
Zhou Jiao immediately pressed it down, looking at him with shock and uncertainty.
In that instant, when she looked over, she almost thought she had mistaken him for someone else.
Jiang Lian’s expression was off. Very off.
His bloodshot eyes were covered in a web of menacing veins, and every two seconds, a tentacle would violently writhe beneath the surface of his skin—making his face look as if it was spasming uncontrollably.
“…What’s wrong with you?”
Jiang Lian didn’t hear what she was saying.
He stared at her motionlessly, his mind consumed by a singular thought—
To erase the scent of another man from her body.
The only scent on her should be her own.
And his.
If he couldn’t use his toothed tongue, then he would find another way.
The fissures in Jiang Lian’s palm closed.
Zhou Jiao let out a breath of relief. As long as they could communicate, that was fine. Seeing his expression twist like that, she had almost thought he was beyond reasoning.
She cleared her throat and was just about to ask him what was wrong when, suddenly, both of her hands were pinned behind her with one of his.
Zhou Jiao: “?”
She furrowed her brows slightly, watching as Jiang Lian gripped her wrists, stepped in front of her, lowered his head, and sniffed her hair. Then he lowered his head further and sniffed her neck.
Throughout the entire process, his gaze was locked onto her—
Burning with an emotion so terrifying it was almost tangible.
His eyes were no longer pools of sticky, viscous liquid. They had transformed into molten wax—blazing hot, thick, and suffocatingly real.
The atmosphere was tense and suffused with something strange. Zhou Jiao felt her scalp tighten under his gaze.
…Was he about to kill her again?
Although she couldn’t sense any killing intent from him, he had shown that murderous look far too many times today… Could it be that her perception was wrong?
The moment that possibility crossed her mind, alarm bells went off in her head, and an icy chill shot up from her core. She instinctively took a step back.
In the next second, she saw Jiang Lian take a step forward—
And then his entire body split open down the middle.
—Yes.
His entire body.
From the center.
Tore open.
His expression didn’t change in the slightest. Behind the golden-rimmed glasses, his eyes remained fixed on her, unwavering. But from the neck down, his body split open with a massive fissure, exposing an abyssal, wormhole-like depth—
As if a rift to another dimension had appeared out of thin air.
Zhou Jiao: “………………”
What the fuck?!!!
Her eyes widened as she stared in stunned disbelief.
She watched as the fissure loomed over her, swallowing her upper body whole like the closing shell of a clam.
Jiang Lian’s hand remained locked around her wrists. With his other hand, he pressed against the back of her head, pulling her even closer.
At this moment, he almost wanted to sigh in satisfaction—like a human would.
—The scent of other men had finally disappeared.