After Being Parasitized by a Monster 26

Chapter 26: She killed “herself.”

Of course.

It was a member of the monster organization.

It recognized this seashell.

It called her a companion.

…

Where did the monsters come from? And how did the monster organization come to be?

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

But, was it possible that it was the other way around?

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

…

She couldn’t think about it anymore.

All the sounds were like a receding tide, bustling and moving away from her world, leaving only those flickering stars filling her peripheral vision, like the cold, prying pupils of a monster in the dark.

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

If it fell into the hands of this department, if they used it to find her… Cheng Ming felt as if she were buried in a heavy snow, shivering with cold.

The pressure in the room had already dropped to a level completely unsuitable for human activity. The air struggled to pass through her respiratory organs, so heavy that it felt like it would tear her chest apart.

Her bracelet vibrated continuously, and the life monitoring system issued multiple warnings, reminding the wearer to stay away from the dangerous environment.

Fine fish scales drilled out from under her skin, clinging to her exposed skin, forming a steel armor to balance the pressure difference between the inside and the outside, preventing organ damage.

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

She only saw the monster’s mouth opening and closing, repeatedly asking a 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 we different?”

Having seen the red seashell, it was even more certain, and also more confused, not understanding why Cheng Ming denied it.

The deep sea was a high-pressure environment.

Gradually, its skin also grew scales, covering its neck and cheeks. A respiratory passage opened under its jaw, opening and closing, as if three large mouths were questioning her at the same time.

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

Those were fish scales.

She had observed them carefully. They were round, translucent, and glowing, with exquisite and clear textures…

The same fish scales as hers.

Could it even replicate this?

Or was it really not a hydra.

What was it?

And what was its relationship with her—no, with the Fish-Fungus that had parasitized her?

A huge fear, like a tsunami, engulfed her. She seemed to be trapped in an invisible vortex, with no way to escape, no way to break free.

Cheng Ming opened her mouth, wanting to ask more.

But at this moment, her hearing slowly returned, and she heard some unusual noises, faint and indistinct, coming in along the solid structure of the building or the pipes buried around it.

She looked up. The safety signal light near the door was flashing, and the automatic alarm device had been triggered.

Damn it.

The abnormality in the incubation room had alerted the security station—and once the security station confirmed that the abnormal factor was not man-made, it would directly notify the Security Department.

Looking at the deep-sea monster that was still waiting for her answer, Cheng Ming made a decision almost instantly—

No, I can’t let it live.

Absolutely not.

This thought came so fiercely that it did not allow her to think much.

She had always been on the defensive when encountering monsters. This was almost the first time she had such a strong desire to kill.

Even though they had no life-and-death conflict.

Even though the other party had not harmed her, and had even trusted and relied on her like a newborn baby.

She twisted its neck and saw its ignorant and clear eyes. Huddled under this stolen torso, it seemed to be a weak and small creature, just following its biological instincts.

That clear gaze seemed to be silently questioning—

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 was stunned for a moment, and opened her mouth in a daze, “What?”

For a moment, she couldn’t even react that this was a voice coming from her own mind.

“Let it go,” Xiao Ming repeated.

It was like it was whispering in her soul, and she couldn’t tell if the voice came from it or from herself.

“Why?” she asked.

She looked at the twisted creature under her, half-rotten corpse, half-human appearance, and overlapping phantoms appeared before her eyes.

The monster inside her was persuading her, and the monster outside was accusing her.

Her hearing turned into vision, and one word after another was thrown at her, trying to bury her in the sand and mud.

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

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

Why? Cheng Ming thought.

On what grounds?

Just because you are all monsters?

Just because you also treat me as a monster?

Her body had been trembling, but now it slowly calmed down. Her face relaxed, and she was expressionless, her facial features as if they had frozen into a piece of ice.

She couldn’t leave any hidden dangers.

Killing a fish was easy, and killing a “person” was not difficult either. She exerted force on the joint, and the aponeurosis drove the muscles. Crack. She twisted its neck.

“I am human,” she said.

The flesh was torn, and the skull was shattered. As if recreating a physiology class from university, she dissected this monster with her bare hands.

She wanted to see what it was.

The room was filled with a blue, gloomy light.

This brain had been eaten away. In a mass of sticky, jelly-like grayish-white gelatinous substance, she saw a fish.

It was about a finger long, with its head and tail connected, round and translucent.

To be precise, it was a fish egg that had not yet fully hatched, wrapped in a transparent membrane.

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

Cheng Ming dug out this sticky “heart,” and it twitched in her palm. Her hand seemed to have no sense of touch. She squeezed it numbly, and it became a broken water balloon, deflated, and squeezed out the sticky contents, which flowed out, bright red.

The color was particularly psychedelic in the weak light.

The corpse on the ground was a mess. Only the face was barely intact, stained with brain fluid or blood spots, its eyes wide open, its mouth agape, dying with a grievance.

It was a face exactly like hers.

She suddenly had a strange feeling.

She had killed “herself.”

She couldn’t tell if it was fear or excitement. The calcium ion concentration in her body surged, her muscles spasmed uncontrollably, and her heart muscle contracted and stretched beyond its normal limits. An unprecedented feeling of nausea, accompanied by the churning of her stomach, rose to her throat.

After the sudden outburst was a strong exhaustion.

She fell to the damp and cold ground and panted heavily. The white mist blew the nearest algaefungus away. Her consciousness was drowsy, and she vaguely saw her reflection in the glass wall.

The dark silk danced, blocking her vision. The algaefungus in the water and the Fish-Fungus outside the water revealed their full forms. The faint blue fluorescence intertwined and was scattered, complementing each other.

A dreamlike, beautiful scene.

She was wrapped in those derivatives that did not belong to her, and belatedly realized that Xiao Ming had still helped her.

“Cheng Ming… Cheng Ming…”

Xiao Ming was calling her, as if the sound was coming from behind a glass cover, hazy, and its tone was a little panicked and hurried.

But she couldn’t hear clearly. She frowned in a daze and discomfort, and wanted to move, but her body no longer belonged to her. Her fingers were twitching, as if the dead monster had embedded itself in her fingertips along her skin and crawled into her blood vessels.

The outer layer of the fish monster was not just an egg membrane, but also the larva of a hydra. It had parasitized the cavity of the newborn bud.

She had been stung by the poisonous stingers.

Or maybe it was more than just poisonous stingers.

Boom—

The metal airtight door was forcibly broken open from the outside, and a shower of sparks flew.

A blazing white light shone in from afar. Against the light, the figure that strode in, wearing a protective suit, was like an insurmountable mountain.

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

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

Do you know how hard she had worked to take care of these algaefungus?

Fortunately, the muzzle was quickly moved away.

The leading woman shouted in a low voice, “There’s an injured person!”

…

“We’re late, what a pity.”

Cheng Ming, the unexpectedly discovered living person, was first transported away and sent to a medical vehicle.

The remaining five members of the small team each had their own duties. The technician collected the abnormal data of the incubation room within an hour, and two people patrolled and stood guard.

Team leader Yan Li stood by the corpse, whose torso had rotted beyond recognition, and stared at the girl squatting at her feet, who was rummaging through the corpse.

“Han Xuhua” was wearing disposable gloves. She picked up the most crucial mass of flesh from the brain and, after confirming that it was completely beyond saving, sighed sadly, “How pitiful… how can you be so violent.”

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

“…” Team Leader Yan looked on with a blank expression, not knowing what to say.

Using Han Xuhua’s carefree appearance to say such delicate words was really too incongruous.

This was the first time she had teamed up with this person, and her personality was completely unexpected.

“The researcher lady who was just carried away—” After finally mourning for the rare experimental material, “Han Xuhua” looked up and said, “There’s something wrong with her.”

Like a prophet, she had stayed at her post late at night instead of returning to her apartment, and had run into a monster. From the traces at the scene, it seemed that she had fought a desperate battle and finally defeated the monster… any normal person would think there was something wrong.

But for this person to say it, the meaning was different.

Yan Li immediately became serious, “What did you see?”

The helmets were soundproof, and they were communicating on a private channel, so there was no need to worry about being heard by others.

The latter tilted her head and thought for a moment, “I don’t know, it’s a feeling.”

It always felt… like she was one of her own kind.

She threw the fish egg into a sealed, opaque bag, took off her gloves, and her gaze fell on her own scaly skin, which was becoming more and more obvious in the negative pressure environment. She revealed a deep smile, “Don’t send her to the hospital yet. Let me try.”

What an unexpected surprise.

She rarely got to come out for a breath of fresh air, so of course she wouldn’t let go of any possible “toy.”

Yan Li frowned, “She’s from the research institute. We haven’t gotten the authority to interrogate her yet—”

“It’s fine,” she interrupted enthusiastically, with no sense of rules, and winked at the former. “We’ll do it secretly. You won’t tell anyone, right, Team Leader Yan?”

…

Her consciousness was as if it were locked in a black box. She couldn’t tell how much time had passed, and it was intermittently dark and then bright.

The light above her head was dazzling. Cheng Ming struggled to open her eyelids and belatedly realized that she was in a medical pod, with a respiratory device on.

Was she in a hospital?

It didn’t feel right…

Her head was very dizzy, and her body was very hot. Most importantly, she felt as if a piece of her skull had been dug out, and it was extremely painful.

“Xiao Ming?” she called out in her mind in a daze, wanting to ask what had happened.

The world was dead silent, with no sound.

“Xiao Ming?”

She called out again in a panic, but still got no response.

Struggling to open her eyes, she saw a figure in a white lab coat, wearing medical latex gloves, holding a blood-red fish egg that was beating like a heart.

It made her own heart pound wildly.

The other’s other hand was holding a scalpel, and it seemed to be trying to chisel open her skull and stuff this foreign object into her brain.

This figure had a reassuring temperament, and the eyes that were not covered by the mask were as gentle as water, slightly curved, and filled with a smile as they watched her.

If it weren’t for the blood in her hand that had destroyed all the beauty.

It was Cheng Ran.