After Being Parasiticized By A Monster - Chapter 26

Chapter 26: She Killed “Herself”

It was true.

It was a member of the monster organization.

It recognized the shell.

It called her a companion.

…

Where did the monsters come from? And where did the monster organization come from?

She had once believed that “man-made monsters” like Qu Ying, who possessed what amounted to superpowers, were created by the Security Department to combat the monsters.

But what if the opposite was true?

Could these increasingly intelligent, anthropomorphic, and anti-biological mutant organisms be man-made? Could they be related to her mother’s past experiments?

…

She couldn’t think about it anymore.

All sounds receded like an ebbing tide, drifting away from her world, leaving only the flickering stars to fill her peripheral vision, like the cold, prying eyes of a beast in the darkness.

It was right not to report it to the Security Department.

If it fell into their hands, and if they discovered her through it… a bone-deep chill, as if buried under heavy snow, ran through Cheng Ming.

The internal pressure had already dropped to a level completely unsuitable for human activity. Air struggled to pass through her respiratory organs, feeling so heavy it threatened to tear her chest apart.

Her wristband vibrated incessantly. The life monitoring system repeatedly issued warnings, alerting the wearer to leave the dangerous environment.

Fine fish scales emerged from beneath her skin, tightly adhering to the exposed areas, forming a steel-like armor that balanced the internal and external pressure difference, preventing internal organ damage.

But Cheng Ming did not notice the changes on her body surface.

She only saw the monster beneath her opening and closing its mouth, repeatedly asking the same question—

“Why are you stopping me? We are clearly the same.”

We are clearly the same, both monsters in human skin…

Cheng Ming abruptly interrupted, “I am not the same as you!”

“How are you different?”

Having seen the red shell, it was even more certain and confused, not understanding why Cheng Ming would deny it.

The deep sea is a high-pressure environment.

Gradually, scales also crawled onto its skin, wrapping its neck and gills. Breathing channels split open beneath its jaw, opening and closing, as if three large mouths were simultaneously issuing the challenge.

Cheng Ming saw something even more terrifying than her own face appearing on a living corpse. Her fingers were numb, trembling even more violently.

They were fish scales.

The same fish scales she had carefully observed: round, translucent, glowing, with exquisitely clear textures…

Fish scales just like hers.

Could it even copy this?

Or, perhaps, it was not a Hydra after all.

What was it?

And what was its connection to her—no, to the fish-fungus parasitizing her?

A colossal fear, like a tsunami, swallowed her whole. She felt caught in an invisible vortex, with nowhere to hide, nowhere to escape.

Cheng Ming opened her mouth, wanting to ask more.

But at that moment, her hearing slowly returned. She heard an unusual noise, faint and indistinct, traveling through the building’s solid structure and the surrounding buried pipes.

She looked up. The safety light installed near the door was flashing. The automatic alarm system had been triggered.

Crap.

The abnormality in the Cultivation Room had alerted the Security Station—and once the Security Station confirmed the abnormal factor was non-human, they would immediately notify the Security Department.

Looking at the deep-sea monster still waiting for her answer, Cheng Ming’s decision was instantaneous—

No. It cannot live.

Absolutely not.

The thought came like a torrent, not allowing her to think further.

Up until now, her encounters with monsters had mostly been passive defense. This was perhaps the first time she felt such a strong killing intent.

Even though they had no irreconcilable conflict.

Even though the creature hadn’t harmed her, and even trusted and depended on her like a newborn infant.

She tightened her grip on its neck, seeing its clear, naive eyes. The being, curled up beneath this stolen torso, seemed to be a fragile, small creature, merely acting out of biological instinct.

That clear gaze seemed to be silently asking—

Are you really going to kill me?

My companion.

My own kind.

…

“Cheng Ming, let it go.”

The words floated up like a ghost.

She paused, opening her mouth blankly. “What?”

For a moment, she couldn’t register that the voice was coming from inside her own head.

“Let it go,” Little Ming repeated.

It was like a whisper in her soul, making it impossible to distinguish if the voice was hers or its own.

“Why?” she asked.

She looked at the twisted creature beneath her, half-rotted corpse, half-human appearance. Her vision was blurred by overlapping phantoms.

The monster inside was persuading her. The monster outside was pleading with her.

The sounds translated into words that slammed into her, threatening to bury her in sand and mire.

Are you really going to kill me? Let me go…

Aren’t we the same kind? You are clearly just like me…

Why? Cheng Ming thought.

By what right?

Just because you are all monsters?

Just because you consider me a monster too?

Her body, which had been trembling, slowly calmed down. Her face relaxed, expressionless, her features seemingly frozen into a block of ice.

She couldn’t leave any loose ends.

Killing a fish was easy. Killing a “person” wasn’t difficult either. Her joints exerted force, her tendons pulling the muscles. Snap. She broke its neck.

“I am human,” she said.

Skin and flesh tore apart, the skull fractured. As if replicating a college physiology lab, she dissected the monster with her bare hands.

She had to see what was inside.

The light in the room was a chilling, gloomy blue-green fluorescent.

The skull was hollowed out. Inside a mass of viscous, jelly-like gray-white matter, she saw a fish.

About a finger long, tail connected to head, round and translucent.

More accurately, it was a fish egg encased in a transparent membrane, not yet fully hatched.

It was still moving, struggling in the muddy cranial cavity, like a vibrant heart.

Cheng Ming dug out the sticky “heart.” It pulsed in her palm. Her hand seemed to have lost all sensation. She squeezed it numbly, and it burst like a water balloon, deflating, squeezing out viscous contents that flowed out, vividly red.

The color was particularly hallucinatory in the dim light.

The corpse on the floor was a mess, only the face barely intact, stained with brain fluid or bl00d droplets, staring wide-eyed, mouth agape, dead with resentment.

It was a face exactly like hers.

A strange feeling suddenly welled up.

She had killed “herself.”

Unable to distinguish between fear and excitement, the calcium ion concentration in her body surged. Her muscles spasmed uncontrollably. Her cardiac muscle contraction stretched beyond normal limits. An unprecedented nausea, accompanied by churning in her stomach, rose to her throat.

The sudden burst was followed by extreme exhaustion.

She collapsed onto the cold, wet floor, panting heavily. Puffs of white mist blew away the nearest algae-fungus. Her consciousness was hazy. She vaguely saw her reflection on the glass wall.

Dark hair fluttered, obstructing her view. The algae-fungus in the water and the fish-fungus outside the water revealed their full forms. The faint blue fluorescence converged and scattered, contrasting beautifully.

A dreamlike and fantastic sight.

Wrapped in the derived forms that didn’t belong to her, she belatedly realized that Little Ming had still helped her.

“Cheng Ming… Cheng Ming…”

Little Ming was calling her. Its voice sounded muffled, as if coming from behind a glass shield, and was anxious and urgent.

But she couldn’t hear clearly. She frowned, confused and uncomfortable. She wanted to move, but her body no longer belonged to her. Her fingers were twitching, as if the dead monster had embedded itself under her skin, crawling into her bl00d vessels.

The outer layer of the fish-monster was not just the egg membrane, but also the Hydra planula larva. It had parasitized the cavity of the newly formed bud.

She had been stung by its poison.

Or perhaps, more than just the poison.

BOOM—

The metal airlock door was forced open from the outside. Sparks flew.

A blinding white light shone in. Against the light, the figure in a protective suit who strode in looked like an insurmountable mountain.

Cheng Ming strained to turn her gaze. A flamethrower was instantly aimed at her, but she was too weak to utter a single word.

She wanted to say, don’t turn on the lights.

Do you know how hard she worked to cultivate this algae-fungus?

Fortunately, the muzzle quickly moved away.

The woman leading the group sternly shouted, “We have a casualty!”

…

“We’re late. What a shame.”

Cheng Ming, the living person unexpectedly found, was carried away first and put into a medical vehicle.

The remaining five members of the small team each performed their duties. The technician collected the abnormal data from the Cultivation Room over the past hour, and two others patrolled as a security measure.

Team Leader Yan Li stood by the corpse, which was unrecognizable due to the melting of its torso, watching the girl squatting at her feet, meticulously turning the corpse over and over.

“Han Xuhua,” wearing disposable gloves, scooped up the most crucial mass of flesh and mud from the brain, confirmed it was completely unsalvageable, and sighed sadly, “So pitiful… How could anyone be so violent.”

Her emotions were too rich. As she spoke, tears seemed about to fall.

“…” Team Leader Yan stared blankly, unsure what to say.

Hearing such a delicate voice coming from the appearance of the outspoken Han Xuhua created a strong sense of dissonance.

This was her first time working with this person, and the personality was entirely unexpected.

“That researcher girl who was just carried away—” Having finished grieving for the precious experimental material, “Han Xuhua” looked up. “She has a bit of a problem.”

Anyone would think there was a problem with someone who, like a fortune-teller, didn’t go back to her apartment late at night but stayed at her post, coincidentally running into a monster, and based on the evidence at the scene, engaged in a desperate fight and ultimately defeated the monster…

But when spoken by this person, the meaning was different.

Yan Li immediately became serious. “What did you notice?”

The helmet was soundproof. They communicated on a private channel, so there was no worry of being overheard.

The latter tilted her head, thinking. “I don’t know, just a feeling.”

She just felt… like her own kind.

She tossed the fish egg into a sealed, opaque bag, took off her gloves, and her gaze fell on her increasingly visible scaly skin in the negative pressure environment. She gave a profound smile. “Don’t send her to the hospital yet. Let me try something.”

What an unexpected surprise.

She rarely had a chance to get some fresh air and certainly didn’t want to miss out on any potential “toy.”

Yan Li frowned. “She’s from the institute. We haven’t obtained the authority for examination yet—”

“It’s fine,” she interrupted enthusiastically, completely ignoring the rules, and winked at Yan Li with her left eye. “Just a little secret. You won’t tell anyone, will you, Team Leader Yan Li?”

…

Consciousness felt trapped in a black box. She couldn’t tell how much time had passed, alternating between dimness and brief flashes of light.

The light overhead blinded her. Cheng Ming painfully pried open her eyelids, slowly realizing she was in a medical pod, fitted with a breathing apparatus.

Was this a hospital?

It didn’t feel quite right…

Her head was very dizzy, her body was burning. Most importantly, she felt like the top of her skull had been hollowed out, causing intense pain.

“Little Ming?” she vaguely called out in her mind, wanting to know what had happened.

The world was silent. No sound.

“Little Ming?”

She called out softly again, terrified, but still received no response.

Struggling to widen her eyes, she saw a figure in a white coat, wearing medical latex gloves, holding a bloody fish egg that pulsed like a heart.

It made her own heart pound wildly.

In the figure’s other hand was a scalpel. It seemed to be trying to chisel open her skull and insert this foreign object into her brain.

The figure had a reassuring aura. The eyes, uncovered by the mask, were gentle like water, slightly curved, watching her with a full, soft smile.

If only the gore in her hands hadn’t ruined all the aesthetic beauty.

It was Cheng Ran.