The man seemed a bit tired, so he did not notice the reactions of those around him, and his voice was steady as he gave the order: “Rest for 6 hours, then move into the next zone at dawn.”
However, this time, the command received no response, and the tent remained dead silent.
Finally, it was the secretary who had followed Zhu Yan the longest who reacted the quickest.
The young secretary responded and then followed behind Zhu Yan.
The man returned to his temporary resting room and began to speak quietly with his secretary about their next steps. He bowed his head, expressionless, washing his gloves.
The sticky, contaminated blood on the gloves slowly washed away.
Yet, the secretary spoke very calmly:
“Great leader, I will immediately lock down the information. You’ll go to the car soon, and not many people will see you.”
There was a slight tremble in his voice.
This unusually calm demeanor finally made the man realize something.
So, he lifted his head.
In the mirror, his long-standing grey-blue eyes, now seemed contaminated by ink, were slowly turning black.
He lowered his eyes.
Slowly removing his gloves, he saw a small, exposed wound on his finger.
It was contaminated by the blood, the black blood looking like a monstrous creature, slowly seeping into the man’s body.
Calmly, the man thought to himself: Such a small wound shouldn’t get contaminated, maybe it was from three months ago, or last month.
He was very calm, and said to the mirror:
“Looks like I’m due for a long holiday.”
He cracked a joke.
The secretary’s voice was choked up, but whatever was said, could no longer be heard.
A long-neglected memory was quickly washed away in the heavy rain.
……
The young secretary’s face overlapped with Mr. Chen’s face across from him, while the faces of those nearby were blurred. However, despite the many unfamiliar faces that appeared, the scene remained as it was eleven or twelve years ago.
People instinctively backed away and fled.
Just like back then, Mr. Chen immediately realized that this was not appropriate.
A sense of alarm went off in Mr. Chen’s heart—if this was the founding member actively helping them, then the fear and retreating actions displayed by everyone were essentially a silent refusal and provocation.
Thus, the battle-hardened former secretary tried his best to ignore the sticky liquid on the ground, the aura around the mermaid, and the black blood on the umbrella as he moved forward.
But the mermaid had already stopped and turned to leave the area.
Amidst the sound of the heavy rain, someone asked him:
“Have you remembered something?”
“Is it because you remembered, that you want to help?”
The monster, holding an umbrella, walked in the rain curtain.
The man in the memories would probably help them.
But the mermaid would not. This cold monster was acting merely out of some territorial instinct.
When the monster grew to the size of half a city, it naturally claimed this half of the city as its own territory. Such a fierce creature cannot tolerate any pollutants entering its realm. Moreover, the monster’s kitten was right here.
In the pouring rain, the monster coldly glanced at the fearful, retreating people, then walked towards the hotel, umbrella in hand.
Soon, the monster stopped pondering this sudden flash of memory. The monster wondered, why didn’t that man named Zhu Yan use an umbrella? The kitten said that walking in the rain without one makes it easy to catch a cold.
But on the way back, the monster suddenly felt a very sticky sensation on its hands.
It seemed like something from decades ago that remained on its hands, never washed away by the rain.
The monster stopped at the hotel entrance, stood in the heavy rain for a while, and didn’t go inside—because it wanted to use the rain to wash off the blood of pollutants from the blue umbrella.
However, after standing like this for a few minutes, the monster heard someone call out “Little Rose,” followed by the hotel doors opening, and it was embraced.
That absurd, bizarre dream ended, and the monster returned to reality.
But for some reason, the monster didn’t touch its kitten with its hands.
“It” quietly listened to her voice, as if her voice had turned into a delicacy, greedily listened to by the starving monster.
Shu Tang did not notice the mermaid’s abnormality.
It wasn’t until he returned that the monster started washing its hands under the faucet.
It was as if there was something dirty on its hands that couldn’t be washed off, expressionlessly bowing its head and repeatedly cleaning.
This action overlapped with that of Zhu Yan from decades ago, who had washed his hands under a faucet.
Decades ago, how did the once-respected great leader feel when he found out one day that he had become a “pollutant” himself?
Shu Tang had told the mermaid that its current state was called “amnesia.” Thus, the mermaid knew that the fragments it occasionally remembered were actually pieces of the details of its past life. Indeed, the mermaid did not believe that the “Zhu Yan” in its memories was itself, because this cold monster was obviously much more cold-blooded and indifferent than the living Zhu Yan and clearly no longer belonged to the realm of humans.
The past was nothing but abandoned ghosts.
Yet now, the intense self-loathing of that ghost seemed to have traveled through time and descended upon this monster.
“It” carefully washed its hands, trying to wash away that sticky feeling.
Shu Tang thought the mermaid believed its hands smelled of pollutants, so she watched for a while, then reached out, squeezed some hand soap, and began to carefully scrub the bubbles into the mermaid’s hands.
When the cold white hands emitted the scent of hand soap, Shu Tang said, “See, doesn’t it feel clean now?”
So, the creature was clearly taken aback for a moment.
“He” lowered his head and noticed that the sticky feeling on his hands was truly gone.
Shu Tang proudly showed the mermaid the label on the hand soap, telling her to buy this brand in the future, but she completely missed that the mermaid wasn’t listening to a word she said.
The creature gazed intently at the kitten.
Shu Tang hadn’t heard a response for a long time and suddenly realized that the mermaid looked a bit off today.
“He” seemed more expressionless and silent than usual.
The creature had once coldly scrutinized its own heart, thinking that its unease and sharp panic stemmed from having nothing now; but today, after recalling some fragments, the creature realized that this uneasiness might also originate from a ghost of the past. It turned out, the ghost from the past was also a desolate creature.
It’s terrifying for a drowning person to grasp a piece of driftwood tightly.
Yet, the kitten didn’t realize this, and when she grabbed the creature’s hand to clean it, the creature’s gaze became unprecedentedly fearsome.
She asked nervously, “What’s the matter?”
The creature lowered its head, lifted her chin, and kissed her without a word.
The mermaid’s cold lips touched hers, igniting her like cold vodka, turning her into a highly flammable substance.
With excellent learning ability, the beast clearly remembered every step.
Thus, the mermaid effortlessly pried open her lips.
It was a kiss that was a bit eager, almost rude.
Her breath was swallowed up, even the slightest sound was brutally blocked.
At the moment their lips and teeth met, the creature displayed an unprecedented aggression, as if it desperately wanted to devour her.
Her waist was held by the mermaid’s cold, slightly rough hands, and her legs were forced apart, clasping the mermaid’s explosively strong waist in this hanging posture, completely passively enduring the kiss.
Her breathing grew rapid, melted by the heavy breathing of the beast, gradually feeling herself being devoured in this eager kiss.
Fortunately, just before she was about to suffocate, the beast let go of her.
She gasped for air, but just as she called him “Little Rose,” the next second, the mermaid easily lifted her and held her at his waist, and the creature continued to kiss her fiercely, leaning against the wall.
She wanted to say something, but unfortunately, her words were swallowed down.
In the overlapping breaths, only the heartbeat could be heard growing louder.
Lips and tongues entwined, conquering the fort.
…
This fierce creature always hid its sharp claws, never showing its brutal and ferocious side in front of her. Even in front of her, it acted very meek and obedient.
Actually, it was merely because this ferocious beast hid its pathological paranoia and fanatical affection, not wanting the kitten to discover how greedy and hypocritical this monster was.
In front of her, the cold-blooded and brutal monster disguised itself as a human.
However, this restraint was like the tempest hidden beneath a calm sea surface, fundamentally unsustainable. Today, the moment she held the monster’s hand to wash it, the monster could no longer control its own desires and frenzy.
Like a drowning person, dragging the driftwood into the deep abyss to sink together.
…
However, by the time this extremely vicious monster realized what it had done, “he” was stunned.
The monster stopped.
Although it tried hard not to hurt her, there was still a handprint on the kitten’s waist; even her lips were bitten and swollen, looking very pitiful.
She stared at “him,” seemingly incredulous that the monster could hurt her so much.
The monster’s body froze.
Seeing the kitten’s dazed expression, the monster felt a sense of panic and unease, almost convinced that its crude and brutal nature shown today must have terrified the kitten.
The monster instinctively retracted its claws and fangs, and the previous ferocity disappeared, immediately replaced by extreme caution.
The result of such a disparity in strength was that the monster found it hard to be sure whether it had hurt her.
“He” opened his pale lips, wanting to bow his head to comfort the kitten, wanting to say it wasn’t intentional, but no sound came out.
The monster had to admit, at that moment, it truly wanted to devour her.
It was only after the kitten remained stunned for a long time and then glanced at him.
The kitten smacked her lips.
Nonchalantly, the kitten climbed down from this terrifying monster.
After taking a bath, she came out to find the monster still maintaining that posture in the same spot.
While tying her hair, the kitten complimented “him”:
“Pretty wild.”
“Really exciting.”