Sweet to the Point of Cloying
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Jiang Lian noticed Zhou Jiao’s gaze.
In fact, he didn’t even need to deliberately search for Zhou Jiao’s gaze.
His senses would, like a shark smelling blood, desperately capture every molecule of scent she left behind.
Jiang Lian’s expression remained calm as he put on blue rubber gloves, as if the one exhausting every effort to greedily suck in Zhou Jiao’s scent was someone else.
If someone were standing behind him at this moment, they would notice that his shadow was not human-shaped at all but instead a terrifying, colossal entity, nearly filling every shadowed corner of the room.
Upon closer inspection, one might even see that the horrifying thing was writhing frantically, emitting a buzzing sound indescribable by any human tongue.
Approach her, sniff her. Approach her, sniff her. Approach her, sniff her…
“The more you suppress, the stronger the desire.” They said to him, “Don’t you know that?”
Approach her, sniff her.
Let us smell her, smell her, smell her. You clearly like her scent too. Step forward, get closer to her, talk to her, make her speak, let her release more of that wonderful pheromone.
Jiang Lian didn’t even lift his eyes. “No.”
Why not?
When you were in the elevator, you forbade us from smelling her, yet you yourself took a deep breath, as if you wished to suck every last scent molecule she left behind.
Smell her, smell her, smell her, smell her, smell her…
If someone were to get close to Jiang Lian at this moment, they would find the space around him filled with a dizzying low-frequency noise—listening for even one second longer would make the brain throb in pain, plunging into a state of delirium.
Jiang Lian had long been accustomed to such noise, his expression unchanged.
He had forgotten his own origins, remembering only that he seemed to have lived for a very, very long time, from darkness to light, then to the unfathomable depths of the ocean.
He would not die, only fall into slumber.
During slumber, he had to feed—shadows, or rather, tentacles, were his tools for feeding.
The tentacles possessed a certain degree of self-awareness, but not much. Since they had no need to seek mates or copulate, from the moment of their birth, they were assigned only one task—feeding.
They must feed.
Hunger was the fundamental drive behind their every action.
However, it was really too noisy.
Jiang Lian closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, the pupils behind his gold-rimmed glasses had been compressed into a thin line. But upon closer inspection, one would realize that it was not the vertical slit of a predatory beast, but an extremely fine tentacle.
That tentacle was expanding madly in his eyes, rapidly filling his narrow eye sockets, rolling with a terrifying killing intent.
He hadn’t expected that human’s desperate final struggle before death to affect him to such an extent.
Right now, his mind was in chaos.
On one hand, he disdained Zhou Jiao. In fact, he also disdained “Jiang Lian.” Devouring “Jiang Lian” had been purely an accident—someone had used some kind of sorcery to forcibly summon him into “Jiang Lian’s” body.
He had no interest in humans.
In his impression, humans were filthy, putrid creatures, always throwing waste paper, plastic bottles, and metal caps into the ocean, their lungs filled with disgusting black mucus.
However, on the other hand, he still approached Zhou Jiao, just as the shadow had said, making her release more pleasant pheromones. Then, he clamped down on her cervical vertebra and indulged himself in deeply inhaling her scent.
Rather than being controlled by her scent, it would be better to kill her.
His bodily fluids were highly corrosive and could dissolve all biological tissue. As long as Zhou Jiao was ensnared by his tentacles, in less than two seconds, she would turn into a pool of blood and flesh.
But what he was uncertain about was—at the very moment he restrained her with his tentacles, would he be captured by her scent, forgetting his original intent?
He didn’t want to touch such a lowly and filthy creature, nor did he want to fall into obsession with her scent.
Zhou Jiao had no idea what was going on in Jiang Lian’s mind, but having been in constant contact with danger for years, she almost instinctively sensed something in the instant Jiang Lian harbored malice toward her, and she turned her head slightly.
She met Jiang Lian’s eyes.
For a fleeting moment, their gazes locked.
Jiang Lian paused for a second before looking away first. “How much longer are you going to stand there?” His voice was icy, carrying an unmistakable disgust.
Zhou Jiao hesitated for a moment. “Dr. Jiang, I suspect—”
“Whatever you suspect, you don’t need to tell me.” Jiang Lian cut her off coldly. “I’m not one of you. I work for you because I have a particular proclivity for this, and this is the only legal way to indulge it. Aside from dissection, I don’t want to have any involvement with you people.”
Zhou Jiao’s lips twitched slightly.
She knew it would be like this.
This man usually seemed sharp-minded, but the moment she spoke more than two sentences to him—no matter how mild her tone or how normal the content—he would immediately become distant and caustic, making communication nearly impossible.
Zhou Jiao really wanted to just leave him alone, but her position was half that of a police officer—Jiang Lian might be a serial killer in the making, but until he actually committed an unforgivable crime, it was her duty to protect him.
She could only swallow her frustration and attempt to reason with him. “Dr. Jiang, I know there’s some tension between us…” Though she had no idea what that tension was. “But in the face of danger, I wonder if you could set aside past grievances for a moment and listen to what I have to say—”
Jiang Lian did not respond.
He simply walked to the next corpse, lowered his head, and began categorizing the dissection.
…Fine then. Who hasn’t run into a few difficult colleagues in their career?
Zhou Jiao took a deep breath, unscrewed a bottle of mineral water, took a big gulp, then slammed it onto the table before going to help her troublesome colleague dig through the corpse’s abdomen.
At that moment, the overhead fluorescent tube suddenly emitted a faint “sizzling” sound—so subtle it seemed as if it had merely been brushed by a passing moth. Zhou Jiao did not notice anything unusual.
At the same time, she also failed to notice the shadow behind her expanding.
That shadow rippled forward like water, dissolving everything she had touched—
including the unfinished bottle of mineral water.
In no time, the shadow silently merged into her own. But the next second, it suddenly surged up, shooting out a chillingly sharp stinger, aiming directly at the back of her head—
All of this happened in the blink of an eye. Zhou Jiao was completely unaware of the danger behind her, and Jiang Lian’s expression remained unchanged.
Who would have expected that at the exact moment the stinger was about to pierce the back of Zhou Jiao’s head—she suddenly lunged forward in a flash, locking her fingers around Jiang Lian’s neck while simultaneously pressing a scalpel against his throat.
Jiang Lian stiffened.
The stinger halted midair.
Jiang Lian was extremely tall, nearly 1.9 meters, while Zhou Jiao was 20 centimeters shorter than him. Restraining him took quite a bit of effort.
Though he appeared slender and refined, his arms, shoulders, abdomen, and legs were all covered in firm, well-defined muscle, each line brimming with latent explosive power.
Zhou Jiao was worried that he would suddenly retaliate with force, so she pressed one hand against his shoulder while simultaneously leaping up, locking his cervical vertebra with a perfectly executed scissor hold. Throughout the entire process, the scalpel remained tightly pressed against his throat.
In reality, Zhou Jiao was overthinking—because the moment she wrapped around Jiang Lian, the latter completely lost the ability to think rationally.
Malice and concerns receded from him like an ebbing tide, swiftly flowing away.
Desire.
A frenzied thirst arose within him, so intense that his scalp, spine, tongue root, and even every pore trembled slightly.
He closed his eyes and swallowed a mouthful of saliva, using nearly all his willpower to stop himself from leaning forward, rubbing his nose against the edge of her scalpel—just to inhale more of her scent.
From this angle, Zhou Jiao couldn’t see Jiang Lian’s expression.
And she had no desire to see it either.
Holding the scalpel, she looked down at him from above and said indifferently:
“Put your work aside for now. There are some things I have to say—Dr. Jiang, do you think I have no temper?”
As she spoke, her voice abruptly halted—not because of any external interference, but because her heartbeat suddenly accelerated.
Thump, thump, thump.
The vibrations numbed her chest cavity.
Her fingers weakened for a moment, nearly causing her to lose grip on the scalpel.
—That bizarre bodily reaction again. Damn it, why now?
She couldn’t afford to move away from Jiang Lian. If she awkwardly climbed down from his shoulders at this moment, she might as well kiss her career goodbye!
Zhou Jiao let out a heavy exhale and tightened her legs around Jiang Lian’s neck, pressing down forcefully. Then, in a cold voice, she demanded:
“I asked you a question.”
Jiang Lian remained silent.
“Jiang,” Zhou Jiao said, her tone growing sharper. “I know you don’t like me, and I don’t care whether you do or not. I only hope that you, as an adult, can distinguish between what’s urgent and what’s not—there’s a high-level mutant species possibly mixed in among these corpses—”
Before she could finish speaking, Zhou Jiao’s expression suddenly changed.
Her hand trembled, nearly spilling blood all over.
—Jiang Lian had turned his head.
Behind the lenses of his glasses, his gaze was still filled with disdain for her.
Yet his lips brushed against her fingers.
A moment later, his Adam’s apple moved slightly, as if savoring the fleeting touch of that kiss on her fingers.
Zhou Jiao: “…………”
If you don’t want to talk, then just don’t talk. There’s no need to go this far, is there?!
A flicker of restrained anger surfaced in Zhou Jiao’s eyes.
“Jiang Lian, I’m not joking with you! You’ve been parasitized by a high-level mutant before. Don’t tell me you don’t understand how dangerous they are—”
“High-level mutant?” Jiang Lian repeated, enunciating each word.
His expression appeared calm and focused, but in reality, he hadn’t processed a single word Zhou Jiao was saying.
His mind had already been completely drowned out by the buzzing of the tentacles.
If someone were to use a scanning device to examine his body at this moment, they would find that inside him, there were no human bones or organs—only something horrifying, grotesque, an unspeakable abomination defying the laws of nature.
Those things writhed within him, resonating with the shadows behind him, emitting a chilling low-frequency hum:
Smell her. Smell her. Smell her.
Now. Capture her… so she can never escape our senses… Stare at her stare at her stare at her—sniff sniff sniff sniff sniff—
But soon, the voices were forcibly silenced—
The main consciousness refused to let them covet her.
“Yes,” Zhou Jiao’s expression was grave. “A high-level mutant species. If it’s a mammal, that’s still manageable. What I’m afraid of is that it originates from the abyssal zone or even the hadal zone… We know too little about the ocean.”
Compared to the ocean’s 4.5 billion years of history, humanity’s 6 million years were nothing more than a drop in the sea.
What if, in the depths of the ocean, there were creatures that had grown abnormally massive, like the arthropods of the Carboniferous period? Or species that, like orcas, had developed social structures, even language and culture—how would they respond then?
After all, they hadn’t even fully understood the mutant species of the shallow seas yet.
Jiang Lian thought—she smelled even better when she was agitated.
A scent almost cloyingly sweet.
He took a deep breath of her scent, his usually cold and austere face showing a rare moment of dazed intoxication, red veins creeping into his eyes.
Did he really have to touch such a lowly creature?
To be honest, he didn’t even understand why he was so resistant to getting close to her.
Humans were indeed filthy and repulsive, but she was clearly an exception—at least in scent.
He had no kin, no morality, no sense of shame. There was absolutely no reason for him to hesitate this long.
However, as his body secreted an excessive amount of saliva because of her, every time he swallowed, he could hear Jiang Lian’s original self chuckling in delight, as if saying:
—So you’re just like this, after all.
Gods, higher-dimensional beings—nothing more than a monster that couldn’t even resist the basest instincts of humans and beasts alike.
“Go ahead, smell her.” That human’s voice carried a faint smile, mild in tone yet full of mockery. “I’m curious too… what she smells like, inside and out.”
Jiang Lian’s expression froze into something stiff and twisted.
It was hard to tell whether it was from the violent craving inside him, the human’s provocation, or something else entirely.
But one thing was certain—he would never share Zhou Jiao with that human. Not even a single molecule of her scent.
The tentacles inside Jiang Lian thrashed furiously, but on the surface, his face remained utterly unreadable. After a long pause, he finally spat out two words:
“Get lost.”
The human’s voice vanished.
Jiang Lian closed his eyes briefly, about to tell Zhou Jiao to get down—only to meet her gaze, filled with shock and anger.
“……”
It was then that he realized—he had accidentally said “get lost” out loud.
Zhou Jiao was completely baffled.
She was emotionally detached, not emotionless, let alone incapable of getting angry.
This man had given her the cold shoulder again and again, offending her without regard for time or place. The anger in her heart had long reached a breaking point—she wanted nothing more than to slap him twice across the face.
Strangely, before she could act on that impulse, an intense heartbeat pounded through her chest. A numbing sensation shot up from deep within her spine, making her limbs weak—just for an instant, she nearly lost her grip on the scalpel.
Zhou Jiao pressed her lips together tightly and looked at her fingers.
She knew her own grip strength. There was no way she could fail to hold onto a scalpel—she had snapped bones with bone-cutting pliers before. If she had stacked those bones up, they could easily reach Jiang Lian’s height.
So… what the hell was going on?
Why did her body always react so strangely whenever she encountered him?
She had never been in a romantic relationship, and her physical contact with the opposite sex could be counted on one hand. But that didn’t mean she was completely ignorant of relationships between men and women.
Accelerated heartbeat, difficulty breathing, increased blood pressure… coupled with dilated pupils, contraction of the ciliary muscles toward the periphery, and an increase in blinking frequency.
Zhou Jiao took a deep breath.
From any angle, it seemed as if she had developed some kind of unspeakable interest in Jiang Lian.
At this point, Zhou Jiao really wanted to throw the scalpel away.
She leaned back and jumped off him, panting slightly as she took three large steps backward, wanting to put as much distance between them as possible—until she could figure out what exactly this bizarre reaction was, she didn’t want to get near him again.
But she didn’t get her wish.
Jiang Lian reached out and pulled her back.
Perhaps due to her abnormal heart rate, she didn’t even see how Jiang Lian moved. It was as if he had grown a third hand out of nowhere, yanking her firmly in front of him.
Zhou Jiao’s pupils dilated slightly as she instinctively tried to struggle.
In the next moment, two fingers lifted her chin.
Jiang Lian leaned down and pressed his lips against hers.
A shiver ran through Zhou Jiao’s body uncontrollably—Jiang Lian’s lips were cold and sticky, like a deep-sea bottom-dwelling creature, chilling and slick.
Yet, just like before, her heart didn’t reject this cold, damp sensation. On the contrary, it beat even faster, pounding so intensely that her eardrums roared.
What the hell was wrong with her?
Zhou Jiao wondered, feeling even her temples trembling and pulsating wildly.
Jiang Lian’s reaction was even stronger than hers.
He clung to her lips uncontrollably, motionless as he inhaled deeply, taking in the scent of her mouth.
This was the scent—cloyingly sweet, like overripe fruit, intoxicating the longer he inhaled it.
Unfortunately, that fragrance was blocked by two rows of teeth. He could only press heavily, firmly against her lips, rubbing against them over and over, trying to squeeze out more of that intoxicating aroma.
Even Zhou Jiao herself couldn’t believe it—the one who broke the stalemate first was actually her.
She opened her mouth and bit Jiang Lian’s lower lip.
It was like pressing a switch.
Jiang Lian immediately tightened his grip on her jaw, not allowing her to tilt her head even a fraction, and his tongue—like the probing tendrils of a deep-sea predator—flashed in, forceful and swift, slipping between her teeth.
In that brief instant, all sounds and colors vanished.
It was as if he had returned to the darkness of the deep sea, where the only thing he could hear was the viscous sound of fishtails stirring the water.
A long while passed before Jiang Lian finally came back to his senses. His expression was indifferent as his Adam’s apple rolled downward in a deliberate swallow.
It was just as he had smelled.
Sickeningly sweet.
…To the point of making his scalp tingle.
Jiang Lian stared at Zhou Jiao, swallowing a few more times, his breathing gradually becoming erratic.
Originally, he had only wanted to take a shallow whiff of her scent, to prove to himself that he wasn’t incapable of resisting human and beastly instincts.
Yet, with just one taste, he had lost control.
By the time he snapped back to reality, a rift had already split open behind him—
A mass of purple-black tentacles surged forward, lunging toward Zhou Jiao—