After Being Parasiticized By A Monster - Chapter 59

Chapter 59: “You’re the Monster!”

Beneath the Rubble

At coordinate 33.97, 4, one kilometer outside the defense wall, the surface team was frantically searching for a way to rescue their missing teammate amidst the scorched earth and sea snake corpses.

Lu Qian kept shouting into the comms: “Yan Li? Yan Li? Can you hear me? Answer me!”

Han Xuhua and two others stood guard. “I mean, the crack was so tiny… how did she even fit? Group Leader isn’t that skinny, is she?” Han Xuhua whispered anxiously, glancing at the blocked pile of rocks.

Two technicians deployed an optical life detector. After a few seconds of intense focus, one suddenly yelled:

“Captain! There’s water!”

…

A Question of Kinship

At the same time, deep within the underground cave, the silence was terrifying, punctuated only by Cheng Ming’s loud breathing and heartbeats.

The helmet lay discarded.

A dull ache crept up her cerebral cortex—from the fall, she had likely broken or cracked some bones in her arm and ankle. She ignored it.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

Intelligent monsters are truly troublesome. It was the second time she’d made this remark, but now it was laced with disbelief and mockery, not just anxiety.

“Are you toying with me?” Her voice was shaky with emerging anger.

She had been so eager to unravel the mystery of the human-snake monster that she hadn’t considered the helmet’s recording capabilities or the pointlessness of taking it off. Little Ming had never cared about the mission, humans, or monster organizations; it had only been hunting for food.

Now, all that remained in the chamber were thin layers of liquid where the sediments had settled. Nothing was left—not even bone fragments.

Full and content, the culprit was curled up, silent and still. When Cheng Ming had pressed it repeatedly on what the creature had said, its sole reply was: “I don’t understand.”

Was it toying with her? She now suspected the fungus had signaled the sea snake first. It saw nothing but food, exposing its utterly non-human nature.

“It’s unimportant, Cheng Ming,” Little Ming finally spoke after a long pause. “Don’t worry about it. You’re not one of them.”

The flippant dismissal sounded like patient reassurance after an act of deceitful exploitation. Cheng Ming felt a chill. The feeling was back. It was inside her body, yet she couldn’t understand its thoughts.

If she couldn’t be honest with herself, who could she trust?

“Did you have to eat it? Did you have to eat it right now? Did you even consider that since it came to find me, it might have been useful?” she demanded. “Can you stop being so selfish?”

“Are you seriously championing it?” Little Ming’s tone grew irritable. “Cheng Ming, you are strange. If you claim to be human, why do you care so much about other monsters?”

“Don’t evade the question! Aren’t you a monster too! Do you have any empathy for them?” Cheng Ming’s agitation was pushing her thoughts into chaos.

If the grotesque sea snake had been hostile, she would have felt no guilt. But this wasn’t life-or-death, and the creature hadn’t attacked; it had returned the shell to her… even if its motive was unclear.

The question still haunted her: Had she just killed another “kindred spirit”?

“What connection does it have to us? I am simply following the natural law of the jungle,” Little Ming asserted. “This mentality you have—’compassion,’ is that it? Is this what your human education gave you?”

Since learning her truth—that a part of her was the “monster”—her thinking had shifted. Where did she belong? Human, or monster?

“So, do you care about its human part, or its monster part? And are you concerned as a human, or as a monster?” Little Ming asked, precisely hitting her emotional weak spot.

“Shut up! You’re the monster!”

“…I didn’t intend to confuse you,” Little Ming paused, sounding disconcertingly rational. “I am merely surprised that this makes you angry.”

These words, gentle or harsh, coupled with their shared, uneven breathing, made her feel that what linked them wasn’t just algae-fungus, but damp, dark mold—intertwining their bodies while brutally dividing their spirits, yet filling their shared life. Wet, warm, sticky, disgusting, and inescapable.

The oxygen was thin. She was gasping, dizzy. Beep beep. The helmet beside her vibrated. Lu Qian’s voice faintly drifted in, shocking Cheng Ming back to the moment.

Wrong. It was trying to confuse her.

“What did it actually say?” she asked a second time, her voice low and chilling against the stone and water.

Did it understand and commit murder to keep her from knowing?

…

The Complications of Coexistence

Ten minutes later, Cheng Ming was successfully rescued. She had responded to Lu Qian, helping the technicians on the surface pinpoint the cave’s structure and location. The team had blasted an opening and then entirely removed the ceiling using a fuel-air bomb.

She emerged onto the surface, unsteady. Han Xuhua rushed to steady her.

“You okay?” Lu Qian checked her suit. No damage, vitals stable.

“I’m fine,” Cheng Ming said, gently moving Han Xuhua’s hand, then kneading her own collarbone. “A minor fracture. I put it back in place. I’ll be fine after a rest.” (With her regeneration, it would be healed in thirty minutes, though the pain was unavoidable.)

“Group Leader, you’re so tough on yourself!” Han Xuhua hissed, glancing at her shoulder.

“What did you encounter down there?” Lu Qian peered at the half-collapsed, half-supported cave.

“I don’t know. I stabbed it, and it disappeared. It was a sea snake mutant,” Cheng Ming said, evening out her breathing.

“I saw,” Lu Qian said, looking disgusted at the burst snake eggs on the ground. “Why don’t they just dig their nests under the Defense Center?”

“They didn’t dig it,” Cheng Ming corrected instinctively, slipping into her former scientist role. “These snakes are amphibious and must come ashore to lay eggs, though they don’t incubate them. We just happened to hit their breeding season. Technically, we invaded their territory.”

They had destroyed a hard-won spawning ground. Fear of monsters was so intense that people forgot low-level mutants were much like pre-contamination animals. The long-abandoned ideal of human-nature harmony was gone. After thirty years of war, land and sea, human and mutant, were permanent opposites.

Cheng Ming’s carefully chosen words had placed her on the wrong side.

Lu Qian looked at her, her brow furrowed behind the transparent visor—a look of deep displeasure.

Cheng Ming realized her mistake. No frontline soldier would empathize with the monsters who killed their comrades.

She tapped her arm display to change the subject. “My estimate puts the danger level above Tier 2. Has anyone seen anything like it?”

Everyone gathered around. Cheng Ming started the helmet’s recording from the moment the snake’s tail grabbed her. The night-vision footage was shaky and unclear as she fell.

She watched their reactions. When the full chimera form was revealed, Han Xuhua gasped. The others were shocked. “Is that a snake? Why does it have claws? Is there any logic to this mutation?” They didn’t yet realize the “claws” were human hands and feet.

After two or three seconds, just before the human face lunged into view, a hand shot out and cut the playback.

“It’s definitely a new creature. This is critical. Yan Li, go back, switch with Xiao Meng, report this, and get some rest,” Lu Qian commanded over the public channel.

Then, she switched to a private channel: “Report it to the Biological Department.”

Cheng Ming glanced at her, said “Okay” without a change in expression.

She had planned to cut the power before the creature gave her the shell, claiming the equipment was water-damaged. Lu Qian had beaten her to it.

The Team Leader seemed to know more than she let on.

…

The Hidden Sister’s Fear

At 7:30 PM, Cheng Ming returned to the 17th-floor apartment. Unsurprisingly, Yan Rong was waiting alone in the entryway.

“Sister, you’re late today,” Yan Rong said, looking up with her delicate face. Her bright eyes were the only light in the quiet, dark living room. “Was the mission difficult?”

Cheng Ming’s heart twinged. She still felt uncomfortable having someone wait for her, but she couldn’t deny the rush of satisfaction and guilt that came from opening the door to a pair of eyes filled with genuine expectation. All of Yan Rong’s feelings were for Yan Li, the woman she impersonated.

“There was a problem. I forgot to call. I’m sorry, Rongrong,” Cheng Ming walked over and knelt naturally in front of her.

“Are you okay, Sister?” Yan Rong worriedly grabbed her hand.

“I’m fine. Not hurt,” Cheng Ming reassured her.

Yan Rong examined her wristband, confirmed no abnormal vital signs, and sighed in relief. “Did you meet a new monster? What did it look like? Was it ugly?”

“Ugly,” Cheng Ming curved her lips into a smile, pulled out her phone, and opened a few cropped images she’d saved before uploading the video to the Biological Department. “Want to see?”

She had scrubbed the footage clean of anything compromising. She chose a few grotesquely comical close-ups to try and amuse her sister.

But Yan Rong immediately flinched. “A snake?”

Cheng Ming froze, quickly closing the screen. “Are you afraid?” She had memorized Yan Li’s memories of Yan Rong but didn’t recall a fear of snakes.

Yan Rong looked at the phone, then at Cheng Ming, shaking her head. She pulled her closer.

“Sister,” she said, leaning up. Cheng Ming instinctively embraced her to keep her from falling.

Yan Rong wrapped her arms around Cheng Ming, leaning quietly on her shoulder. The moment was silent and intimate. A faint scent of hair drifted to Cheng Ming’s nose. She realized the pose was overly affectionate, but Little Ming remained silent.

Yan Rong burrowed hard into her shoulder, her eyelashes lowered.

Sister, it’s not me who’s afraid of snakes, is it?