After Being Parasiticized By A Monster - Chapter 61

Chapter 61: “I Didn’t Want to Do This.”

The Untested Ingredient

“Sister, wait a minute—”

Cheng Ming lifted the lid of the ceramic tureen, a plume of steam escaping, and looked up, puzzled.

Yan Rong sat formally in her wheelchair, watching her. “Sister, don’t drink it too fast. Taste it and see if I need to adjust the recipe tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Cheng Ming smiled and took a careful sip.

It was creamy and sweet. She tasted red bean paste, sweet fermented glutinous rice (jiuniang), and small crushed fragments that seemed to be nuts and lotus seeds.

“What else is in it?” she asked.

“That’s a secret,” Yan Rong replied, her eyes curving sweetly. “If you like it, you can only get it from me.”

Under Yan Rong’s watchful gaze, Cheng Ming drank the entire bowl.

“It tastes great, but maybe a little less sugar next time,” she finally offered her feedback. Before handing the tureen back, she inverted it to prove she hadn’t dumped the contents. “Is that good, Rongrong?”

…

Yan Rong rolled out with the tureen and slid into the kitchen. The cabinets were lowered for her accessibility. She pushed the tureen onto the counter but paused, her hand lingering on the ceramic’s exterior pattern for a long moment.

After about ten minutes, she changed direction and headed toward the bedroom.

…

The Inevitable Confrontation

Finally rid of Yan Rong, Cheng Ming made her bed and sat against the pillows, feeling off-kilter.

“Your body temperature is higher,” Little Ming noted. “Are you running a fever?”

She touched her cheek; her face was flushed, and the hyphae, cool and comfortable, rested against her skin.

“Alcohol…” Cheng Ming felt slightly dizzy and pinpointed the reason. “There was jiuniang (fermented rice) in the soup.” Lacking the enzyme to break down alcohol, the buildup of acetaldehyde caused facial flushing.

But that wasn’t all. As Little Ming began scholarly searches, Cheng Ming quickly pressed the screen, threw the phone aside, and turned toward the door.

Yan Rong had returned, silently hovering just outside the threshold like a persistent ghost.

The door had opened at some point without a sound. The hyphae she’d been idly using to manipulate her phone retracted to their normal length just before she turned.

“Rongrong…” Cheng Ming took a deep breath. “Is there something else?”

Yan Rong looked at her, only defrosting from her statue-like state when she heard the question. She rolled slowly in. “Sister, do you feel uncomfortable anywhere?”

She wasn’t seeking an answer; she was looking for a breach to confirm her preexisting conclusion.

“A little,” Cheng Ming teased, smiling. “You put too much of the fermented rice in.” Since she didn’t know Yan Li’s tolerance, this was a safe bet.

There were still a few meters between them. Yan Rong smiled, slowly closing the distance, maintaining eye contact.

Cheng Ming’s facial contours remained steady, but her expression shifted subtly from relaxed warmth to cold reserve.

“Rongrong…” she finally called out, her voice a soft sigh.

Bang!

With a tremendous crash, Yan Rong’s wheelchair was flipped. Before she could hit the floor, a tide of black filaments swiftly gathered, weaving into a net that enveloped her, imprisoning her in a cage of densely packed hyphae.

The force wasn’t massive, but it was enough to immobilize her, stripping her of any ability to resist. Trapped amidst the debris of her wheelchair and the non-human power, she was a butterfly caught in a spider’s web.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t want to do this,” the unknown entity said, using her sister’s face and voice, as the non-human filaments grew from her head and approached.

“I really wanted to be your sister and take care of you… You would have been happy not knowing the truth. Why couldn’t you keep up the act?”

She spoke as if arguing with another version of herself. Why seek the truth? What was the point?

Yan Rong looked up, giving her answer with a pale face and a contained, fierce smile. “False peace built on a relative’s corpse is not happiness.”

As Cheng Ming moved closer, Yan Rong suddenly struggled, reaching for something on the side of the overturned wheelchair. Click. A barely audible sound, like a compressed spring snapping loose. A dark blur flew toward Cheng Ming.

A network of hyphae blocked the first syringe. Cheng Ming recoiled, avoiding a second small vial that shattered on the floor. Yellow-brown liquid splashed, touching the nearby hyphae. The filaments instantly shriveled as if burned.

The patch of hyphae immediately triggered a self-destruct sequence, breaking off and retracting from the danger zone. It was a blank spot left on the floor, littered with dead tissue.

An expression of profound frustration crossed Yan Rong’s face. She clenched the blue-lit control panel beneath the storage bag on the wheelchair frame, her lips tightly compressed in anger and humiliation.

The wheelchair couldn’t have had this function in Yan Li’s memory; it had been an unrecorded modification by Yan Rong herself.

“Impressive,” Cheng Ming tilted her head with interest, examining the girl who was supposedly housebound. She had assumed Yan Rong was a dependent, but her skills were unexpected.

Cheng Ming used the hyphae to carefully search Yan Rong for any other hidden weapons or buttons, then tightened the black strands, securing her hands and feet.

As Yan Rong glared, Cheng Ming calmly stepped closer, knelt as she always did, and spoke to her at eye level:

“I could have killed you, or, easier, possessed you. That would have eliminated you as a threat and still let me impersonate Yan Li. I didn’t. Why do you think that is?”

She drew a single filament, touched it to Yan Rong’s ear—a gesture that was part threat, part tease.

Yan Rong averted her gaze, her face pale, and scoffed. “Because you’re kind?”

Stripped of her sweet facade, her expressions were far more vivid.

“That works,” Cheng Ming chuckled. “But I took her identity and promised her that I would take care of you.”

Yan Rong turned back, her smile gone.

“What are you?” she asked.

“It seems you understand the technology. Can you look up my information?” Cheng Ming raised her hand, adjusting her features back to her original appearance. In Yan Rong’s wide eyes, she introduced herself: “Employee ID 7086, formerly of the Institute of Biology’s Mycology Group, promoted to Associate Researcher in June, presumed lost in the tsunami in July…”

She looked at Yan Rong’s bound hands, deciding the seemingly harmless sister was still capable of surprises. She tugged on the torn sleeve of Yan Rong’s shirt, swaying it slightly as a gesture of goodwill.

“My name is Cheng Ming.”

“Your sister saved me during an incident at the Institute on December 12th last year. You can look it up—oh, no, that security clearance is probably high. Anyway, I’m grateful to her and I don’t want to hurt you.”

She laid out a mixture of truth and deception.

Yan Rong was skeptical: “Your method of showing gratitude is to kill her and impersonate her?”

“Wrong. I didn’t kill her,” Cheng Ming said seriously. “I regret that I couldn’t save her, but I have to admit I was lucky that she was dying, which gave me a chance to replace her.”

As Yan Rong’s breathing quickened, Cheng Ming softened her voice. “Do you think her death was natural?” She paused to rephrase. “Well, yes, she was unfortunately caught in the tsunami… but the July 8th incident probably wasn’t entirely natural.” This was her core suspicion from her time as Yan Li.

“July… 8th?” Yan Rong repeated, her brain seemingly overloaded.

“Did she talk about any of this? Do you know… that the monsters in the ocean might have formed an organization?”

“I am not one of those ocean monsters. I, too, lost someone very important and need to use your sister’s identity to find the truth.” Cheng Ming pressed her advantage. “Are you content with your sister’s death remaining a mystery?”

Yan Rong looked down, her scattered hair obscuring her eyes as she sank into thought.

A moment later, she looked up: “Cheng Ran?”

Cheng Ming froze.

Yan Rong spoke again, word-for-word: “The very important person you lost—was that First-Class Researcher Cheng Ran, who disappeared six years ago? Are you her experiment?”

Cheng Ming inhaled sharply. How did this girl, who never left the house, know more than Group Leader Yan?

“I guessed right, then,” Yan Rong said, nodding thoughtfully. “I just picked a researcher I vaguely remembered who shared your last name to trick you.”

“Alright,” Cheng Ming said. Seeing the girl’s precocious demeanor, she instinctively assumed Yan Li’s role and reached out to pet her head. “Now that you know all my secrets, can you put aside your excessive caution and work with me?”

She hadn’t warned the hyphae, and Yan Rong hadn’t reacted fast enough. Cheng Ming’s slender fingers sank into her soft, short hair.

“I think—” Yan Rong pressed her pale lips together. She looked at the domineering figure standing in the fragments and then at her weak, bound self. “Shouldn’t you let me go first?”

Was this a request for cooperation or a threat, given the unequal power dynamic?

As soon as she spoke, the hyphae instantly vanished.

Yan Rong, no longer supported, slumped hard onto the floor. The impact, combined with the earlier shock, caused her to curl up in pain.

Cheng Ming was stunned for a second. She rushed forward to help, but as she touched Yan Rong, the girl shivered violently, tears welling up. “Wait, wait, Sis—” she choked out the word. “Sister, help me…”

Cheng Ming looked down to see a syringe stuck in Yan Rong’s thigh, the needle embedded and shaking with her tremor. Yan Rong looked up fearfully as Cheng Ming reached for it. “It’s a neurotoxin. One drop could kill…”

Cheng Ming’s hand shook, nearly pushing the needle further in.