Chapter 7: Didn’t you say you hated the name Xiao Ming?
The figure was familiar, the voice familiar.
The person she had just seen twenty minutes ago was standing in front of the balcony, arms crossed, a half-smoked cigarette held lightly between her fingers, her posture casual. Yet, Cheng Ming didn’t dare to recognize her.
She slowed her breathing, making it extremely gradual and long. Her back was slightly arched as she stared at the other person without blinking, as if she had stumbled into a large-scale horror game called “Red Light, Green Light,” where she couldn’t speak or move.
She couldn’t see her own appearance, nor was her attention focused on it, so she didn’t know that the mycelia had spread around her, forming a thick ocean, black waves surging, opening up its domain.
Just like when two beasts with strong territorial instincts meet, an extremely aggressive stance was naturally triggered.
The spreading silence was like a string stretched to its limit. Whether it was released or snapped, one side was bound to end up bloodied.
She had returned to the apartment through the ventilation ducts. It was fortunate that Wang Qi’s ability had helped her avoid the surveillance, but also unfortunate that if it weren’t for Wang Qi, she wouldn’t have been involved in all this, wouldn’t have had to worry about falling under the Security Department’s scrutiny.
Even more unfortunate, Qu Ying had been standing downstairs for an hour before this.
She had concealed it, had lied.
She had lied too.
She had ignored the request for assistance on the public channel two hours ago, guessing it was an escaped experiment from some department, or perhaps even a self-staged act… She was used to such things and couldn’t be bothered to get involved.
But then, when she had already arrived at her destination, she looked at the subsequent mission that was released, and then at the unresponsive apartment—
She frowned deeply, and finally, with a tap of her fingertip, accepted it.
Investigate suspicious fungal entities within the shoreline coordinates 32.00,9 to 32.05,10.
This was precisely the area of the collective apartment building for the Defense Center’s internal staff.
Qu Ying was in a very bad mood, visibly so.
Like any parent who discovers that their seemingly well-behaved child is actually incredibly rebellious. It was one thing for them to have their own ideas, but the most unbearable thing was their refusal to communicate, excluding their worried parent from their little world.
This made her feel not only a sense of crisis, but also anger.
The room was still the same room, yet Cheng Ming felt invisible ripples flowing, gurgling and surging towards her, threatening to drag her into the abyss.
She couldn’t see it, but her body felt it—the suppression from a top predator.
Long hair entered her field of vision, jet black, filling the bed and overflowing, like asphalt flowing onto the floor, expanding with Cheng Ming as the center point. But in the end, it stopped about two meters away.
It seemed to be blocked by something, a clear boundary forming in the center of the floor.
Qu Ying stubbed out the cigarette, of which a large portion remained, and walked towards her.
The deep shadow behind her shifted, like overlapping, misaligned color blocks in a glitched game interface. And so, following the clues, Cheng Ming finally discovered that the darkness had long been filled with tentacles crawling all over the walls, spread across the floor, and hanging from the ceiling.
It was just that this type of cephalopod creature was always the best at hiding, the best at camouflage.
“Xiao Ming, I’ve told you before, if you have a problem, you come to me—”
Cheng Ming heard her voice, low and slow. The end of the sentence rose, not seductively, but sharply.
Like the whispers of an ancient god, it could pierce through the skull and embed itself in the cranial nerves.
She slowly opened her mouth, her throat dry, unable to speak.
…No escape.
This was her only thought at the moment.
She understood the phrase “she will threaten us,” and she understood even more where the ever-present sense of pressure she felt when facing Qu Ying came from.
Was Qu Ying a mutated human contaminated by radiation, a human-monster symbiont like herself, or was she simply a mutated creature in disguise… Cheng Ming didn’t know. They had known each other for twelve years, yet she knew nothing about her.
No wonder she often disappeared off the face of the earth when she was on a mission. No wonder her work was confidential. Was this the reason for her special status?
If it were before, Cheng Ming would probably have been shocked, terrified, even on the verge of a breakdown. But she had been through a bit too much recently, so much that her mind was numb. Although it was unexpected, it felt all too reasonable.
Moreover, the transparent, strange patterns faintly flowing on those tentacles were very familiar—the holographic projection program for the stress test this morning had been programmed with her as the prototype.
“Don’t come any closer.”
Cheng Ming was still in a state of fluctuating between dazedness and shock when she suddenly heard a voice she was all too familiar with utter those four threatening words. She was stunned—
She wasn’t the one who had spoken.
The circle of mycelia occupied the territory, blocking the forcefully invading tentacles. Two deep-sea krakens had met, both eager to strangle the other.
However, the one suffering was Cheng Ming.
She wanted to shout “shut up,” but couldn’t.
Qu Ying understood in an instant, her face so cold it could have shed ice chips. “You think you’re worthy of talking to me?”
The parasitic monster, despised by both its host and its enemy, didn’t care. It firmly held onto control of the body, stating a fact to Qu Ying:
“I’m the one you’re calling.”
Although the tone was as emotionless and cold as usual, the content was as arrogant as a provocation.
The light was dim. Cheng Ming could only judge the other’s emotions through her blurred features and body language. She watched as Qu Ying’s expression went from confusion, to realization, and then to a burst of anger. Cheng Ming could hardly believe her ears—
Didn’t you say you hated the name Xiao Ming? Why are you answering to it so readily now?
The night was deep. Vague, writhing lines spread in all directions, like the legendary Kraken, its full form unseen, its terror even more indescribable.
Against an “old monster” like Qu Ying, who had served in the Security Department for over ten years, the newborn Fish-Fungus was indeed as naive as an infant.
The mycelia retreated step by step, snapping, disintegrating, being devoured. The tentacles closed in, like layers of seawater pressing down.
Cheng Ming could barely breathe.
To make matters worse, the parasite was in some kind of frenzy, controlling her limbs, making it impossible for her to back down, leaving her with no way out.
If you’re going to fight, can’t you just leave her out of it… A mouthful of blood rose in Cheng Ming’s throat. Scales were forced to appear under her skin to resist the pressure, which was nothing short of torture for her already weakened body.
A tentacle wrapped around a strand of hair. Qu Ying walked to the bedside, her gaze like a tangible ice pick, and leaned forward.
The bitter scent, mixed with a hint of cool mint, grew stronger.
Cheng Ming was suddenly a little grateful that it was night and she hadn’t had a chance to turn on the lights—the thick tentacles extending from the back of the other’s neck, like an army of transparent insects, were truly terrifying.
The pair of eyes that opened in the chaos were no less impressive than the CGI of any giant beast boss in a disaster movie. The tragedy was, she was seeing it live.
Thump, thump. Cheng Ming could almost hear the sound of blood rushing through the chambers of her heart… Her eardrums vibrated, her cerebrospinal fluid pressure spiked, and tears seeped from the corners of her eyes. In that instant, she regained feeling in her limbs and found that she could move.
—The parasite had fled in the heat of the moment, retreating back inside.
The decision was made without her consent, yet she had to bear the consequences.
Like suddenly breaking through the surface of a viscous liquid pool, Cheng Ming gritted her teeth and, in the nick of time, snapped out of a near-death daze, shouting urgently:
“Sister Yingying!”
…
Damn that Fish-Fungus monster!
She had almost been implicated and punished along with it. Having escaped death, Cheng Ming fell back onto the bed, gasping for breath, and cursed the shameless parasite countless times in her mind.
Qu Ying, thoroughly disgusted, had finally calmed down. Although she was furious, there was nothing she could do. She couldn’t very well split Cheng Ming open and dig around inside her.
She had retracted her terrifying side before the lights came on, returning to her human form and sitting on the edge of the bed. Her four fingers had been tapping on the edge of the bed for many rounds.
The mycelia were broken into strands, scattered messily on the white bedsheet between them, like the unique blood left behind by a wounded monster.
Qu Ying suppressed her disgust and carefully examined the samples. Finally, she frowned and made a final decision:
“Alright, come with me. We’ll go back to the department and see if we can dig it out.”
She was a woman of action. She stood up, her voice unusually cold and resolute.
It didn’t have to be reported, but she couldn’t tolerate Cheng Ming keeping such a huge hidden danger.
Cheng Ming leaned against the headboard, breathing heavily to ease her discomfort, and closed her eyes to clear her thoughts.
“Sister Yingying, can you guarantee that I’ll still have my freedom and be able to work normally at the institute?” she asked.
She didn’t know the specific situation of the department she mentioned, and she knew it couldn’t be disclosed to an outsider like her.
But as a frontline scientific researcher, although her authority was not yet great, she had a relatively accurate assessment of the current level of technology, and an even more precise judgment of her own physical condition than anyone else.
Unless the parasite was willing to abandon her and find a new host, it was impossible to separate them painlessly with human means.
The case of Wang Qi was a clear example—she had roughly learned the story from Qu Ying. Wang Qi had been killed long ago, her living brain manipulated by an intelligent monster with shapeshifting abilities, which was a different kind of parasitism. The Security Department had discovered this, but because they didn’t know the other’s motives and weren’t confident they could save the hostage, they had only marked her specially and were secretly tracking and observing her.
“Sister Yingying, you know I can’t leave. I have to stay here.” Cheng Ming opened her eyes and looked at Qu Ying, saying each word clearly, “I must stay at the research institute.”
She raised her right hand, pulled on the thin silver chain around her neck, and drew out a red seashell from her chest, holding it lightly in her palm.
The light in the dead of night was pale and cold.
It was as if she were holding a small, somewhat faded heart. A casual smile still hung on her lips, but as she looked up at her, her translucent pupils were moist again, reflecting the light into shimmering, shattered stars.
“…”
Qu Ying stared at the ornament, its edges worn smooth, for a long time, and finally conceded.
She took a deep breath. “Can you suppress it?”
“I’m figuring it out,” Cheng Ming nodded.
Listening to the two of them discuss how to deal with it, the Fish-Fungus inside her was now well-behaved, remaining silent, as if it didn’t exist.
Qu Ying pressed her forehead and paced back and forth, somewhat agitated. She was clearly not satisfied with this outcome, but there was nothing she could do.
“Sister Yingying, you have to accept that little kids have to grow up,” Cheng Ming “thoughtfully” comforted her.
She stopped pacing, let out a short, derisive laugh, and agreed, “Grown up, with wings of their own.”
Qu Ying watched her slowly tuck the seashell back into her chest, her eyes narrowing as she suddenly realized something—
“How exactly did you get infected?”
Cheng Ming’s hand paused, and she looked up. “Sister Yingying…”
Qu Ying sensed something and said, one word at a time, “Tell. The. Truth.”
Her eyebrows pressed down, and the arc of her originally slender, willow-leaf eyes narrowed, the pressure instantly becoming palpable.
…Alright.
Cheng Ming was helpless. Meeting her sharp gaze, her expression was calm. “I did a little experiment.”
