After Being Parasiticized By A Monster - Chapter 41

Chapter 41: “I Think the Human Body Could Give You a Better Experience”

The storage room was kept at a constant temperature and humidity. The air was filled with a mix of chemical solutions and a faint, salty, damp scent.

Monsters in transparent containers were either curled up or stretched out. The radiation-induced deformities made the place feel surreal and otherworldly, as if they had arrived on another planet.

Cheng Ming had rushed over and hadn’t brought her notebook, nor was she in the mood to take notes.

She looked down at her hands. The skin, which had been dry to the point of cracking, was now puckered and wrinkled from being excessively soaked in water.

Regret. The current situation was defined by regret.

She forcibly tucked her hands into her sleeves. She decided to ignore it, found a suitably located shelf, and sat on the floor, hugging herself with her back against the metal panel. She swatted away a strand of fungus that was getting in her sight.

“Go find your own food,” her expression clearly said, “Don’t bother me.”

“You’re angry. Why?” Little Ming didn’t understand. “Weren’t you happy? You seemed to enjoy it during the process…”

Cheng Ming was now numb to the shockingly blunt, one might even say vulgar, language that constantly popped out of it.

Enjoyment was enjoyment—that was because its technique was quite good and it was very exploratory… Pah! That was a different matter entirely!

“Because you didn’t ask for my consent again!”

“I asked you, and you agreed, though,” it said, with an utterly shameless, innocent, and helpless tone.

Its performance was truly spectacular.

Cheng Ming was so angry she almost laughed. “You’re twisting the facts again!”

Who said it was obedient?

What a devious creature!

“But how long are you going to consider? You haven’t given a clear answer for so long…”

Little Ming sounded a little sad. The strand of fungus that had been brushed away didn’t join the foraging team but wistfully hooked onto the hem of her clothes, trembling slightly in the breeze wafting from the vent.

“I don’t know when I’ll be ready.”

Constantly seeing but unable to touch was too cruel for a parasitic organism that had just awakened to romance and tasted its first sweetness.

Cheng Ming exhaled slowly.

“Until I confirm your origin,” she said, leaving no room for negotiation, word by word. “Until I confirm that you are harmless to me.”

It started to say something, but Cheng Ming immediately guessed and interrupted, “Your subjective bias does not mean your objective existence is harmless to me.”

“…”

Little Ming was quiet for a moment.

For a brief period, the only sound was the rustling of the nutrient-absorbing hyphae prying open a sealed container to feed.

“Animals find mates during mating season through chemical signals and specific behaviors. All your reactions seem to me like a signal of acceptance,” it argued with her while simultaneously acting as a cold-blooded killer, dissecting and breaking down the live organism in the can. It sounded increasingly wronged as it spoke. “Why are you so resistant to defining our relationship…?”

Fortunately, it didn’t have a human form.

Otherwise, it would be indulging in self-pity, trying to appeal to its host’s conscience. And Cheng Ming, who had no conscience to spare for a parasite that loved to seize her body, would only splash cold water on it.

Cheng Ming pursed her lips. “Little Ming, you’re not stupid. Do you really have to pretend you don’t understand?”

Willing participation and half-hearted resistance. Indeed, for an animal in its reproductive phase, perhaps not refusing is equivalent to accepting.

However, after the first time, she had already stated her attitude: she needed it to respect her, respect her every decision, even if she didn’t fully mean it.

But perhaps driven by its animal nature, it would never learn to be content. It would only pretend to be sweet and clever on the surface, while secretly plotting every feasible way to bypass the restrictions she set.

Perhaps she shouldn’t blame it.

Humans are also constantly pulled between morality and instinct. It’s just that humans have been disciplined for a long time… and it is non-human.

“Yes, I understand,” Little Ming said softly. “I know you have many baffling rituals and inefficient standards of validation, but I don’t understand why. I just crave you… You do too, but you’re constantly restraining yourself against animal nature.”

It was unreasonably tearing at her elaborately constructed facade again.

Cheng Ming didn’t want to hear it, but she couldn’t deny it.

Because… defining the relationship meant responsibility. It meant she had to make changes for it. A person with normal moral education couldn’t comfortably enjoy its favors and intimacy, couldn’t enjoy this deformed ambiguity, without offering any guarantee in return.

Even if the process was indeed pleasurable.

She rested her chin on her knees and was silent for a moment. “Little Ming, do you want to be human?”

The question was a bit strange.

It asked cautiously, “If I’m not human, can I then…?”

“Don’t even think about it!” Cheng Ming was truly amused and irritated. “No cheek. Answer properly.”

“Fine,” it said. “I want to.”

“Why?”

“To be closer to you.”

All its thoughts and motivations revolved around her.

This caused Cheng Ming, who had intended to lecture it on how to act like a human, to fall momentarily silent.

Words that would sound greasy and insincere coming from a human were spoken with complete sincerity by a monster.

She stared across the room at the giant culture tank, where a mass of thick, rotten flesh and unrecognizably deformed experimental animal remains floated, pale and bloated. Her distorted reflection was warped and faded within it.

The glass reflected the fungal threads spreading out behind her, like overlapping double shadows. That unseen other shadow embraced and entwined her through life and death, from vitality to decay, from the beginning of all things to the end of the world.

“When you act like this…” Cheng Ming controlled her expression and spoke slowly. “It only makes me suspect that your ultimate goal is still to kill and replace me.”

It wasn’t impossible.

Perhaps at that moment, its desire to draw pleasure from her and give her pleasure was genuine.

But what about the future?

Sometimes it was terrifyingly similar to her, and sometimes utterly opposite.

Humans fear the alien, and they fear an alien that resembles them even more. Her deep-seated fear never truly subsided when facing it.

“…” Little Ming asked. “Then how should I answer?”

Unanswerable.

Cheng Ming opened her arms and stretched out, resting her elbow on her forehead and lightly threading her fingers through the thick, soft fungal hair.

Until she figured out its origin, she couldn’t be at peace.

The threads hooked onto her fingers. Flesh wrapped bone, hyphae wrapped skin, as if trying to constrict deeper into her.

It was also restless.

“If I were human, would you still be so defensive of me?” Little Ming asked again.

Cheng Ming didn’t speak.

Because she suddenly realized that her answer would not conform to normal logic.

She would be even more defensive.

She thought.

…

The Return and the Breakthrough

The morning of March 26th.

Cheng Ming arrived at the designated pick-up location on time.

A column of soldiers was neatly lined up next to the armored vehicle, fully equipped and ready, like a row of straight poplars in the wind. It was, she had to admit, a pleasing sight, especially the team leader.

Even the fully protective gear couldn’t conceal the underlying sense of strength in the muscles beneath.

“This body is okay, this one’s not bad either…” Little Ming muttered to itself in her head, using a tone like someone selecting cabbage at a supermarket.

Finally, its gaze followed hers to Team Leader Yan, and it sighed regretfully, mumbling, “Ah, actually, Yan Li is still the best.”

“What are you planning?” Cheng Ming grew alert, hearing the change in tone. “You are not allowed to arbitrarily parasitize anyone!”

“I think the human body could give you a better experience…” Little Ming said.

That was the conclusion it came to after thinking all night?

What kind of utterly deranged logic was that?!

Cheng Ming’s mind exploded: “I don’t need it!”

Before she could argue further, Yan Li was right in front of her.

“This one,” she indicated the vehicle, standing as straight and still as a parade ground marker. She reached out and shook Cheng Ming’s hand.

“Apologies for delaying you for a few days, and thank you for your cooperation.”

Out of the confined space, the other party was extremely courteous, polite, and respectful, as if the person who had nearly forced her to death four days ago wasn’t her.

Cheng Ming had been on edge from last night until today, wondering why she had suddenly been released and fearing that a big trap was waiting for her.

But inquiries to her colleagues confirmed there was no emergency experiment requiring her immediate return.

So, what exactly was the reason?

“No problem,” Cheng Ming replied politely.

“I heard there’s an unwritten rule in the Investigation Department: minor doubts can be ignored in the face of a great contribution,” she said softly as she passed Yan Li. “Team Leader Yan, were your actions a violation of regulations? Or, did someone issue an order to you?”

Her peripheral vision scanned Yan Li’s face. Unfortunately, she wasn’t a psychological expert and couldn’t discern the other party’s thoughts through micro-expressions.

However, even though Yan Li’s expression was unreadable, her goal wasn’t actually to figure it out.

Cheng Ming gave a slight, unreadable smile and boarded the car, leaving the gaze of the person behind her silently fixed on her retreating figure.

“Are you scaring her?” Little Ming figured it out. “You’re so naughty…”

A monster who had just suggested using another person’s body as a toy called her naughty?

Cheng Ming zipped up her protective suit, sitting down in the car with a deadpan expression. “You have no self-awareness.”

…

Red Rock Bay

The incident at the end of March was concluded as a normal experimental error.

The new inclusion of algae-fungus toxins, by altering the water environment, caused a stress reaction in the seabed organisms. This combined with a residual risk left by a previous Animal Group experiment before their arrival… a series of coincidences, in short.

Now, all facilities and equipment had been inspected and debugged, and the experiment could steadily proceed.

Although Cheng Ming found the explanation extremely far-fetched, instinctively knowing it wasn’t that simple… she had no time to investigate, nor did she need to delve deeper.

Perhaps as a means of atonement, or perhaps simply anticipating the benefits it would receive after she completed the project, Little Ming began to proactively help her with her experimental tasks during this period.

Its learning ability often surprised, even terrified, her.

It rarely disturbed her when she was focused. Simply by observing, it had grasped most of the professional subject matter. It didn’t seem like it was learning from scratch, but rather re-acquiring inherent knowledge through interaction with her.

“Are you sure you haven’t been reading my brain?” Cheng Ming was very suspicious.

“Can I?” Little Ming asked. “I want to—”

“You don’t,” she interrupted immediately.

Two people working as one was not an exaggeration; it became a literal description. Consequently, Cheng Ming’s progress was consistently much faster than others.

Whenever they held meetings to summarize progress, Song Manqing’s eyes constantly shifted between the astonishment of “Do you ever sleep?” and the suspicion of “Are you secretly overworking behind our backs?”

But she had to admit that this “internal competition” was very effective.

In the later stages, reports of results were sent back to the institute in batches. The reviewers on both sides couldn’t help but contact them, warning them not to tamper with data just to meet deadlines.

For the final data collection, the project team finally moved out of the dark underwater experimental zone and gathered in the atrium on the first floor, a space specifically reserved for large-scale experiments.

Everyone stood together, clad in their strict protective suits, facing a fully enclosed glass cage.

The azure light was reflected by the shimmering water. Shadows of aquatic life occasionally flitted across the glass, and the light and shadow shifted on their bodies.

Behind the glass was a miniature ocean. The system was artificially constructed, but the water samples were collected directly from different depths of the sea area, brought back by bionic probes.

The report was already comprehensive, but the findings were highly specialized. They needed to conduct one last visualization experiment to present a straightforward “product” for senior management review.

The water was clear. The gene-knockout model organisms they introduced swam lively under the sun, a picture of thriving vitality.

They were using oxygen-sensitive mutants. If the water’s oxygen content dropped below the normal value by more than 3%, this type of fish wouldn’t survive for even two hours.

But now, they had survived for 24 hours.

While the result was anticipated, seeing the immediate effect with their own eyes, as they gathered in front of the large screen, watching the lines of numbers jump, everyone’s eyes sparkled with excitement.

“Effective, effective…” The person in front punched the air.

“Yay!” One girl literally jumped up, hugging the person next to her.

A groundbreaking subject, a groundbreaking development. All the nights they had stayed up were worth it.

Ms. Song Manqing, though she didn’t jump, also happily put her arm around the person next to her.

Cheng Ming, the one being hugged: “…”

She paused, not quite used to the sudden display of intimacy, but out of politeness, she patted the other person’s elbow as encouragement.

Song Manqing, the one being patted: “…”

She casually released her arm, maintaining a noble and aloof expression as she reached up to adjust her glasses. She clearly forgot she was wearing a protective suit, creating a loud rustling sound from the polyvinyl chloride material.

And so, the entire area was filled with joyous atmosphere, except for their corner, where the air was palpably awkward.