He Has Completely Turned into a Monster Now
///
The private conversation ended.
Lu Zehou turned off the “shielding force field.”
Chen Cebai immediately extinguished the cigarette in his hand, throwing it aside heavily. He strode toward her, one hand pressing against her back as he pulled her into his embrace.
His cold scent was tinged with the sharp bitterness of tobacco, making him seem more irritable than ever.
His fingers pressed down hard on her back.
She let out a cry of pain, and only then did he loosen his grip slightly.
Chen Cebai simply held her, never meeting her gaze.
Yet from another angle, she could feel his nearly deranged gaze.
It was strange—when she didn’t know he was the watcher, that greedy and twisted gaze made her feel nothing but fear.
But after knowing he was the watcher, when she once again sensed that dangerous, intense, and clinging gaze, she instead felt a bizarre sense of security.
That sense of security came from a kind of surprise—”Ah, so he loves me this much.”
She actually felt… surprised.
Qiu Yu felt like she might be a bit twisted.
She couldn’t help but hug him back, burying her face against the side of his neck.
To her surprise, Chen Cebai was sweating—a patch of cold dampness on his neck.
In her memory, the last time he had sweated was when she had casually mentioned that she was “overusing her chip.”
To most people who didn’t understand the truth about chips, this statement was no different from saying “overusing one’s eyes.”
Yet at that time, he had immediately leaned over, pressed her down, checked her for a long time, and in the end, broke out in a cold sweat.
So, he had really fallen in love with her a long time ago.
It was just that she had never noticed.
Qiu Yu took a deep breath against his neck.
Perhaps because his genes were different from ordinary people’s, his sweat glands were not well-developed, and he almost never sweated. Even when he did, it was cold, odorless, like ice-chilled purified water.
Before, she had never thought deeply about why his body temperature was always so cold, why his heart rate and breathing frequency were far lower than normal, or even why his bodily fluids were freezing cold.
She had simply assumed he had a hereditary genetic disease.
It wasn’t until she realized he was the watcher that she finally pieced all the clues together.
Chen Cebai very likely didn’t have a hereditary genetic disease at all. Instead, during those seven years of “closed training,” he had undergone some kind of genetic modification.
This was something completely within the realm of biotechnology, yet her mind had been stuck in a loop, never once considering the possibility.
Qiu Yu closed her eyes and tightened her embrace around Chen Cebai.
She wanted to know exactly what kind of modifications he had undergone.
If she asked him directly, would he really brush her off with another lie, just as Lu Zehou had said?
Could she really only use lies to force him to tell the truth?
Her intuition told her—she must never lie to him. That would trigger something terrifying.
But she really wanted to unravel the countless mysteries surrounding him.
Qiu Yu felt lost, not knowing what to do.
Wasn’t Chen Cebai a genius with intelligence approaching the human limit?
Then could he teach her? Tell her—how exactly could she get closer to him, understand him, and help him?
It was obvious—he was still losing control.
Holding Qiu Yu, Chen Cebai thought calmly.
He knew that Lu Zehou wouldn’t dare say anything to Qiu Yu.
Lu Zehou was a smart person, and he also needed something from him.
Anyone who was skilled in calculations wouldn’t reveal their trump card right from the start.
For Lu Zehou, his true identity was his trump card.
If Lu Zehou wanted something from him, he would never immediately tell Qiu Yu that her husband was a genetically mutated monster.
Chen Cebai was very certain that his secret wouldn’t be exposed. Yet during those ten-plus minutes when Qiu Yu and Lu Zehou were talking alone, he still felt—
For the first time, he felt an unfamiliar emotion. It took him a few minutes to recognize it—fear. Or rather, terror.
He wasn’t afraid of revealing his true self. He was afraid of losing Qiu Yu.
In those ten-plus minutes, not only did he rarely experience the taste of fear, but his violent urges also surged—he had a strong urge to kill something.
Killing had always been the byproduct of fear.
—Massacring a city, exterminating a species of large beasts, the genocide of Native Americans.
It was hard to say these weren’t driven by fear.
When Chen Cebai coldly and fiercely locked his gaze onto Lu Zehou, in that instant, he had indeed been thinking—how to kill him while avoiding Qiu Yu’s detection.
But then, Qiu Yu turned back and gave him a bright smile, her expression sweet.
So he suppressed the murderous intent surging inside him and continued to wait.
Chen Cebai was not lacking in patience.
One could even say—his patience was excellent.
His work required conducting countless experiments, and experiments were inevitably filled with failures.
Without patience, he wouldn’t have been able to extract a single correct result from a pile of seemingly chaotic mistakes.
It was a profession that required a hunter’s instinct.
And he was the person with the strongest hunting spirit.
But as his loss of control deepened, his patience began to erode.
The moment he saw Qiu Yu, he wanted to grab her wrist or the back of her neck and pull her into his arms.
Later, it developed into kissing her anytime, anywhere.
Even though he knew she would be embarrassed, he still deliberately extended the tip of his tongue into her mouth in front of others.
Demonstrating their intimate relationship to outsiders brought him a kind of eerie pleasure.
Likewise, being unable to hear Qiu Yu’s voice, unable to see the shape of her lips, and losing control over her also gave him an eerie sense of violent agitation.
Only when he pulled her into his embrace did that almost boiling sensation in his soul slightly cool down.
However, it only cooled—it did not disappear.
His soul was still being burned by low temperatures.
Chen Cebai pressed Qiu Yu’s head against him, preventing her from seeing his face.
Because at this moment, his expression must have been extremely distorted.
He only needed to look at Lu Zehou’s expression to know.
Lu Zehou was staring at Chen Cebai, his gaze almost tinged with fear.
He had thought that the worst-case scenario would be Qiu Yu briefly distancing herself from Chen Cebai, causing him to descend into madness—then, unable to bear his suffering, Qiu Yu would immediately reveal the truth.
He never expected that just after speaking privately with Qiu Yu for a few moments, Chen Cebai would lose control to this extent???
—He was holding Qiu Yu in silence, his brows and features sharp and cold, yet the muscles on his face twitched violently, as if, for an instant, several identical heads had split from his own.
Lu Zehou was shocked.
Judging from himself, he had assumed that no matter how much a researcher lost control, they would not immediately turn into a lunatic—at the very least, they would retain some basic rationality.
What’s more, Chen Cebai was not only a researcher but also the pinnacle of human intelligence.
Yet Chen Cebai shattered his preconceived notions about high-IQ individuals.
Fortunately, that facial spasm only lasted a few dozen seconds.
A moment later, Chen Cebai closed his eyes briefly, then returned to normal. He wrapped an arm around Qiu Yu’s shoulders and prepared to leave.
Before leaving, he cast a cold glance at Lu Zehou but said nothing.
Lu Zehou, however, understood his meaning—You better not have said anything, or I will kill you.
Lu Zehou shrugged, not particularly concerned about Chen Cebai’s threat. After all, once he completely lost control, the company would inevitably come after him.
By then, it was uncertain whether Chen Cebai could even escape the company’s pursuit, let alone find time to hunt him down.
Chen Cebai took Qiu Yu home.
He sat in the driver’s seat, noticing that Qiu Yu was deep in thought, but he didn’t ask her about it.
Because just moments ago—he had mutated again.
From the very first time he mutated, he had a vague premonition that all these changes seemed to be preparing him to hunt Qiu Yu.
Enhanced sense of smell, surveillance instincts, sharp teeth, the endlessly replicating adhesive substance.
A terrifyingly inflated protective instinct.
—Every change was related to her.
With that, all his questions finally had an answer.
His sense of smell was indeed naturally sharp, but still within a normal range. It was impossible for him to catch the scent of her humid, heated sweat from over a dozen kilometers away.
The enhancement of his sense of smell stemmed from a love that grew stronger by the day.
For three years, he had been suppressing his impure desires, not wanting to defile her.
But she was his wife, after all. No matter how much he suppressed himself, there would always be moments of closeness.
Accidental touches. The times she suddenly threw herself into his arms. Her coquettishness, the way she deliberately acted sweet and playful when speaking to him. Her kisses. The clothes she carelessly tossed everywhere.
The steam after she finished bathing. Her towel, her cup, her toothbrush. The wet imprint left by her lips when she drank water.
The strands of hair that “crossed the boundary” when they shared the same bed and pillow.
She was everywhere.
Yet he could not allow himself to take in her scent deeply.
He was afraid that his filthy and bizarre behavior would frighten her.
And so, his sense of smell was magnified hundreds of times over.
Even from dozens of kilometers away, he could, like a ravenous shark, instantly pick up the scent of her blood.
His surveillance of her also stemmed from the same desire. He wanted to see her—to watch her, always.
In reality, he could not keep his eyes on her at all times. That would be impolite, disrespectful to her, and would expose his deranged, restrained obsession.
After three years, suppressing the urge to stare at her had already become a habit.
Even now, he was still suppressing it.
Though he could not see his own gaze, he knew that the moment he looked at her, his eyes would be like searing hooks, wanting to tear a piece of flesh from her body.
He could not allow her to sense such a terrifying gaze.
And so, he gained the ability to watch her without looking directly at her.
An ability akin to surveillance.
As for his sharp teeth and the infinitely replicating adhesive substance, it was obvious that they existed for the purpose of better controlling her.
Just now, the sudden change he experienced was also because of her.
—He saw another dimension.
In that dimension, the world no longer changed based on time. Time was more like a video progress bar—one that could be dragged back and forth at will, allowing him to return to any moment as he pleased.
The scene before his eyes had also changed.
To give an analogy, people define “zero-dimensional” as a “point.” A point is just a point—it has no size, no length, no space.
But upon entering the “one-dimensional” world, a point suddenly becomes a “line,” gaining length in an instant, with an exponential increase in information.
Upon entering the “two-dimensional” world, the point transforms into a “plane.”
With each ascension to a higher dimension, the amount of information explodes. If a lifeform in the “one-dimensional” world were to encounter the information volume of the “two-dimensional” world, it would be terrifying to them.
The amount of information Chen Cebai was facing was even more overwhelming, even more terrifying, than what a one-dimensional being would experience when confronted with a two-dimensional world.
Time was no longer a variable. Space no longer posed an obstacle. The movement of matter and the transmission of energy unfolded in layers. Every detail fragmented, overlapped, crisscrossed.
He lowered his head and looked at his palm—not only did he see his skin, bones, and blood, but he also saw the writhing adhesive substance within his blood, squirming like impurities.
Chen Cebai tugged at the corner of his mouth emotionlessly.
Very well.
He had now completely turned into a monster.
Perhaps his prolonged silence caught Qiu Yu’s attention. She reached out to hold his hand, tilted her head, and looked at him. “What’s wrong?”
Her palm, too, was unfolded and displayed before his eyes, revealing an overwhelming level of detail—details that could only be observed through a biological microscope.
Chen Cebai stared at her hand for a moment, then grasped her wrist, brought it to his lips, and kissed it.
The sensation of kissing her down to her very flesh and bones sent a numbing current through his entire body, from his scalp to his spine, as if he had been electrocuted.
Perhaps it was because he knew—she would never be able to escape him again.
As a higher-dimensional being, he could capture her with extreme ease.
Chen Cebai closed his eyes, his lips pressed against the back of Qiu Yu’s hand, his breathing gradually growing heavy.
He knew that this thought was filthy, despicable, and depraved.
But merely thinking about it sent a tremor of pleasure coursing through his entire body.
She would always belong to him.
The realization filled him with an uncontrollable ecstasy.
With this thought, Chen Cebai rewound the timeline to the moment when Qiu Yu and Lu Zehou had their private conversation.
This action did not alter any established facts. Rewinding time was merely equivalent to returning from point B to point A and rewatching something that had already happened.
Chen Cebai held Qiu Yu’s hand, listening to the conversation between Qiu Yu and Lu Zehou with an expressionless face.
After a long while, he let out a cold laugh.