You Think You Deserve to Like Her?
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The tentacles failed to erase Zhou Jiao’s urge to escape and instead became even colder, more violent, and more restless.
They continuously shrank the distance between themselves and Zhou Jiao. The fleshy tentacles wriggled and contracted, stretching and retracting. With each contraction, expansion, and undulation, the thin membrane on their surface scattered phosphorescent blue light spots like noctiluca, vast and beautiful yet eerily terrifying, washing over her brain with an overwhelming and terrifying force.
…She wouldn’t be able to maintain her rationality for much longer.
She had to enter a deep coma as soon as possible.
But first, she needed to confirm the company’s stance and ensure her own safety.
She bit down hard on the tip of her tongue. The intense pain briefly snapped her into clarity, allowing her to continue sending messages to the company:
【But all of this is based on the premise that I request you to store the following items in the ‘High-Tech Safe Deposit Box’ under my name.】
“High-Tech” was another monopoly company headquartered in Northern Europe, known for its neutrality, mild stance, and high credibility. Its most famous business was its bank safe deposit service.
They did not ask for their clients’ nationality, political stance, or identity information. As long as the client paid, they could store items in their safe deposit boxes—whatever they could physically bring in, even a nuclear bomb, and High-Tech would not ask a single question.
【The items are: 100,000 New Yen, a military-grade mask, a scent suppressant, and optical camouflage clothing.】
The 100,000 yen was optional—it didn’t matter whether they gave it or not. The crucial items were the last three.
The military-grade mask, as the name suggested, was a military-use nano-level disguise mask. Once worn, it would quickly cover the face and adjust its appearance according to the user’s settings. It could even alter head circumference, neck length, ear size, and other features using specialized camouflage materials.
In an era where plastic surgery was so efficient and convenient, only top-tier agents trained by corporations would require this kind of disguise mask.
The scent suppressant—she needed a drug that could mask scents. Otherwise, merely altering her appearance would be useless.
The optical camouflage clothing—its principle was similar to the “mask,” both relying on special nano-level materials to achieve invisibility.
As long as she could obtain these three items, she was confident she could carve a path to survival from this death trap.
…Time trickled away, second by second. Her rationality gradually thinned like a fragile thread, as if it could snap at any moment under the terrifying buzzing noises.
Zhou Jiao was holding on purely by sheer willpower, waiting for the company’s reply.
It felt like an entire century had passed before she finally saw the company’s message pop up:
【No problem.】
…Fuck.
She muttered a curse under her breath.
She had finally received the words she had been waiting for.
Now, she could enter deep coma mode with peace of mind.
Although Jiang Lian had not appeared in front of Zhou Jiao, he had been watching her the entire time.
The tentacles were his eyes.
Thousands upon thousands of tentacles were thousands upon thousands of eyes.
Like countless pairs of the latest model of electronic prosthetic eyes, they recorded her facial expressions down to every millisecond with pinpoint precision and no blind spots.
A slight furrow of her brows, an unconscious press of her lips—each of these tiny actions would be converted into 10,000 frames at 10,000Hz. In other words, the simple act of furrowing her brows and pressing her lips together was broken down into 10,000 images, projected into his eyes within a single second.
Under the gaze of tens of thousands of eyes, she would be unable to conceal any microexpression.
…And he would be able to savor each and every one of her microexpressions at an excruciatingly slow pace.
She had initially thought that, under such intense surveillance, he would soon lose interest in her.
After all, no matter how obsessed someone was with something, watching it from morning until night, scrutinizing every single detail, every single angle, every single minuscule change—eventually, they would experience a physiological sense of fatigue and disgust.
Yet, under this very surveillance, his desire for her only grew stronger.
This level of monitoring was far from enough to satisfy his extreme sense of possession over her.
He wanted to take his surveillance of her a step further.
But this was already the most rigorous, precise, and comprehensive surveillance possible.
…Perhaps, the issue was not the surveillance itself.
Rather, she was simply too far away from him.
But she was right there, within his tentacles, like a white camellia blooming in the cold, damp soil—fresh, fragile, insignificant.
The tentacles were a part of him.
They watched her in his place, protected her, confined her.
But it wasn’t enough.
Not enough.
Not enough!
What exactly had to be done to take things a step further?
Jiang Lian shut his eyes forcefully.
This time, Zhou Jiao had not fooled him, and yet, that same hollow and irritable feeling—one that only surfaced when she had deceived him—emerged once more.
As a being from another dimension, each of his tentacles possessed the ability to think independently and to engage in collective thought. When necessary, they could even function like a computer array to perform joint calculations.
This ability allowed his brain to operate at an utterly terrifying speed.
And yet, despite possessing intelligence that completely surpassed that of humans, he was still incapable of distinguishing emotions that a human brain could recognize with ease.
Amidst his irritation, Jiang Lian suddenly saw Zhou Jiao smile at him.
—That familiar, provocative, malicious smile.
What was she trying to do?
His gaze turned cold and vigilant, his pupils constricting into a thin slit.
What trick was she trying to pull this time?
He would not fall for it again.
But Zhou Jiao merely closed her eyes.
Before long, her body temperature dropped, her breathing slowed, and her blood pressure decreased slightly—she appeared to have entered a sleep-like state.
Jiang Lian, however, did not lower his guard. His vertical pupils, cold-blooded like those of a reptile, remained fixed on her without the slightest movement.
He knew her vile nature all too well—this was highly likely just another trick to fool him.
At the same time, Zhou Jiao’s muscles gradually relaxed, her body temperature and blood pressure dropped lower and lower, and for some unknown reason, her blood oxygen level had fallen to an extremely dangerous number.
Jiang Lian stared at Zhou Jiao, and a chilling suspicion suddenly surfaced in his heart.
For a few seconds, it was as if he had returned to the rooftop, watching her bright and passionate smile—while an icy, bone-chilling fear crept over him.
…Impossible.
He calmly reasoned—she was not the kind of person who would commit suicide.
Even as he thought this, he moved at the fastest speed possible, returning to the nest he had built for Zhou Jiao.
If the company’s people could observe this nest, they would discover that it was located at the very top of the Biotech Building.
There was no other reason for this.
It was simply the safest place in the entire city.
Biotech Building.
Employees and experts came and went.
The higher-ups had specifically halted an experimental project and cleared out a laboratory to synthesize Zhou Jiao’s scent.
Every year, all employees underwent company-funded medical checkups. This was both a benefit of working for a corporate giant—and the price of being one of its employees.
—During the checkups, the company collected their biological information, and important employees even had to leave tissue samples behind.
This was a prerequisite for working at a corporate giant. If one was unwilling, they could simply resign.
Back in the era of big data, platform algorithms had already taken control of everything. You could casually mention to a friend, “My eyes feel a bit strained, I think my prescription has worsened again,” and the next day, shopping platforms would start pushing advertisements for eyeglass frames, prescription lenses, and eye drops. Every lifestyle app, intentionally or not, would tell you where the nearest optical store was, and even reading platforms would start recommending articles about eye care.
Under such circumstances, people had long since lost their sense of privacy.
The company wanted biological information and tissue samples?
Then take them.
—After all, I’m not an important person. Only big figures need to protect their privacy.
Zhou Jiao had once held this mindset as well, which was why the company had obtained her tissue samples effortlessly and synthesized her scent.
Given Jiang Lian’s level of obsession with Zhou Jiao, all they needed to do was spray this scent into the air, and he would lose all rationality, allowing them to manipulate him however they pleased.
However, this was only one version of the plan. They also intended to create a higher-concentration variant and, if necessary, even develop a biochemical weapon based on it.
The “Bionic Zhou Jiao” that Zhou Jiao had imagined did not exist.
The company had no interest in playing a game of “real vs. fake Zhou Jiao” to test whether the monster could tell the difference. They only wanted to control Jiang Lian as quickly and efficiently as possible.
If the scent spray alone wasn’t enough to control Jiang Lian, then they would use artificial rainfall to fill the entire city with Zhou Jiao’s scent.
They refused to believe that, under such circumstances, Jiang Lian wouldn’t lose control.
As long as he lost control, the company would be able to take advantage of the situation.
In fact, Zhou Jiao had no real need to request a scent suppressant from the company. Once the entire city was saturated with pheromones at a concentration hundreds of times higher than hers, Jiang Lian wouldn’t be able to distinguish where she was at all.
Inside the building, the laboratory was filled with an atmosphere of harmony and joy.
The researchers high-fived each other, celebrating the success of the experiment, happily sharing slices of organic meat pizza.
However, not far from them—less than two floors away, the rooftop had long since been overrun by an undetectable mass of dense, cold, and sticky purple-black tentacles.
By the time Jiang Lian arrived, they were writhing as if they had gone mad, contracting and expanding, emitting low-frequency sound waves of rage, agitation, and frenzy—practically on the verge of hysteria.
Unlike Jiang Lian, they didn’t know how to control their emotions. Unlike Jiang Lian, they didn’t analyze Zhou Jiao’s personality.
They only knew one thing—Zhou Jiao didn’t seem to be waking up.
No matter how furiously they called her name, no matter how much energy they poured into her body, no matter how they imitated a pacemaker to send rhythmic electrical pulses to her heart, they couldn’t wake her up.
…Could she be dead?
She can’t die.
She can’t die.
She can’t die.
A bone-chilling low-frequency hum exploded over the city. For a brief moment, every person inside the building froze, their expressions going blank, as if they had just witnessed the imminent collapse of a massive iceberg. Those with weaker resistance experienced blackouts, their vision darkening as they lost consciousness on the spot.
The tentacles were so consumed by terror that they momentarily forgot the supreme status of their main body and tried to command him:
“Make her wake up.”
“Make her wake up.”
“Make her wake up.”
Jiang Lian, utterly irritated by the noise, spat out two ice-cold words:
“Shut up.”
“We are you.”
“Our thoughts are your thoughts.”
“She is yours. You must make her wake up.”
“Make her wake up…”
It wasn’t the first time Jiang Lian had found the tentacles noisy, but it was the first time he was so agitated that he wanted to kill them all.
He had never harbored such a cold-blooded, violent thought before.
Before this, he had only ever crushed the consciousness of a few tentacles.
Stripping a tentacle of its consciousness and killing it were two completely different things.
If a tentacle died, he would be injured too.
It would be no different from self-harm.
…Was it because of Zhou Jiao that he was having such a mad thought?
Jiang Lian didn’t know.
He only knew that the moment he saw Zhou Jiao unconscious and unresponsive, he was completely engulfed by a sense of panic.
He could kill her, but he couldn’t wake her up.
Many times, she had nearly died at his hands.
She was so fragile, so weak, that with just a little more force, her throat bone would let out a crisp snapping sound.
In front of her, he had always stood above, towering over her, holding absolute power over her life and death, leisurely savoring her scent, consuming her at his will.
Beyond that, he had also implanted the concept of “supremacy” into her mind.
He told her that he was an existence beyond human comprehension—unspeakable, indescribable, supreme.
He disregarded her, rejected her, looked down on her. Even when he was drawn to her, he still considered her an inferior, insignificant, and fragile creature, unworthy of his attention or concern.
She wasn’t even worthy of making him feel irritated.
Yet now, when she had fallen into a deep coma, he was unable to wake this small and fragile creature.
…He couldn’t wake her up.
He could kill her, but he couldn’t make her open her eyes.
Time seemed to freeze. Fury, agitation, and panic crashed through his mind in chaotic waves.
No matter how much he didn’t want to admit it, he had to face the reality—
—Right now, he was absolutely terrified.
He was afraid she wouldn’t wake up.
Jiang Lian’s common sense system told him that rather than calling this a deep coma, it would be more accurate to say that she had entered a vegetative state.
She had truly turned into a white camellia.
—A fragile, insignificant white camellia, about to wither in his hands.
Jiang Lian shut his eyes tightly.
A long time passed before he finally realized something—
The rage, the fear, the panic, even the metaphor of the white camellia—these were all human emotions.
Unknowingly, he seemed to be turning into a filthy human being.
At that moment, he heard a voice echo in his mind.
Jiang Lian’s own voice resurfaced.
—He was so overwhelmed with fear that he had lost control over that human.
“It’s the chip.” That human voice said.
Perhaps because they were in the process of merging, that human’s voice no longer carried the effortless ease it once had.
“She used a chip to put herself into a deep coma.” That human voice said coldly. “Take her to the company, idiot. If you delay any longer, she’ll develop cortical syndrome and become a real vegetable. Only an idiot like you would push someone you like to this point.”
That human voice paused briefly, then spoke again, this time laced with an unmistakable, mocking malice:
“If you don’t know how to like her, you can let me do it.”
Jiang Lian’s expression turned dark and unreadable. He even forgot to refute the notion of liking her. His mind was consumed by only one thought—
—You think you deserve to like her?