Her Tentacles 48

Chapter 48: The Cemetery

Three months later.

In the season when the first snow fell in the north, the trees on the streets of Nancheng were still lush and green. It wasn’t until a cold wave moved south last night, bringing a night of rain, that the entire city, along with the lingering autumn tiger, shivered with cold, finally bringing autumn to this coastal city.

On the evening of Teachers’ Day.

The West Mountain Cemetery welcomed a hurried visitor before closing.

She was wearing a beige coat. Her light-colored long hair, which had always been meticulously styled, either with a curling iron or straightened to match her look, was now simply tied high on the back of her head with a black leather cord.

As she stepped out of the car, the first thing to touch the ground was a pair of pure black combat boots.

The woman held a bouquet of very fresh carnations in her arms. After the driver in the driver’s seat had communicated with the park management staff first, the gate, which had been halfway closed, was reluctantly opened again.

Walking along the familiar path, she reached the nineteenth row of steps, in front of a verdant cypress tree. As expected, she saw the familiar photo carved on the tombstone.

Although the management staff cleaned it regularly, today was a special day after all, so it was inevitable that some colored ribbons from other visitors who had come to see their families had drifted over. And a few rows away, the tombstones were filled with bouquets of various colors, a stark contrast to the emptiness here.

“I’m sorry, I’m late this year.”

Shu Yao bent down and brushed away the fallen ribbons with her gloved fingertips, then placed the carnations she had just bought from a flower shop on the roadside in front of the tomb. She took out a pack of wet wipes from her pocket, and after opening it, she began to carefully wipe the cold marble of the tombstone.

By the time she had finished all of this with concentration, the sun had already set, and the coldness, with the night, slowly eroded this land where many people were sleeping.

In the past, she had always chosen to come here at noon, when the yang energy was at its peak and the sunlight was at its most intense, to overcome her nervousness of crowds. But now, she could do her own thing in this cold, quiet, and special environment with considerable ease.

She thought for a moment, and then squeezed out another sentence, “Because I recently changed jobs.”

“But don’t be nervous. I went from a public institution to a civil servant. Mmm—”

“My job should be more secure than before?”

It was also because the number of work reports had increased recently that she could say these words to Mrs. Shu’s serious memorial photo. In the past, she would just stand there and look silently, not daring to speak, even if her heart was heavy.

I think it’s because too many things have happened this year, Shu Yao thought, so many that her heart can’t hold so many secrets anymore.

So her desire to confide had also become stronger. Now, she could even joke with her mother, taking advantage of the fact that she couldn’t lift the lid of her urn and come out to scold her.

“I had thought about bringing someone here for you to meet.”

“I was still thinking before, how long would we have to be together before I could have this courage. But fortunately, in the end… I didn’t have this chance to anger you.”

After saying that, she curved her lips slightly.

In her cold and stern expression, there was a hint of a self-deprecating smile.

It had been a while since the cruise trip during the summer vacation.

But now, Shu Yao couldn’t forget any of it, even though she had lost consciousness not long after getting on the helicopter—

According to Situ Jin’s recollection, it was because she had been under too much mental stress at the time, and the helicopter had almost been struck by lightning and was about to crash into the sea. Her special ability had suddenly erupted out of control, and she had managed to hard-control the group of monsters below for ten seconds. After that, she had fainted, and they had been lucky enough to escape from the thick fog.

After that, she was taken over by the medical department of the special department.

It took about a week.

She finally managed to distinguish what was real, what was the babbling of monsters, and what was the illusion that had been planted in her before. And in the process, her abilities were also slowly recorded by the medical department.

She was the first human in the special department’s records to have awakened a special ability without merging with a monster or being parasitized. In the era when Nancheng Port was invaded by jellyfish and monsters, this constitution and this ability to control monsters were highly favored by the officials.

And she had nowhere else to go.

In the one week she was at the medical department, that base had been subjected to several rounds of frontal attacks and sneak attacks by monster groups. She was the human that the beings from the abyss desperately wanted to get.

If it weren’t for the fact that the existing instruments couldn’t analyze how special her constitution was, and had only discovered that her cell activity was extremely high, Shu Yao might have had to stay in the medical department for the rest of her life, unable to move a single step.

She only had two paths before her:

Join the special department and become an enemy of the monsters.

Join the monsters and become an enemy of all mankind.

No matter which one she chose, she was destined to be far away from her former life, and would never be able to return to the beautiful Baiquan, to walk in the campus with its different scenery in the four seasons.

…

Shu Yao was still human after all. She knew that she actually only had one choice.

However, on the day she joined the special department.

She thought of Lin Ran again, and of the ending of the cruise trip. The octopus, who was also a monster, was besieged by other deep-sea giant beasts, just to help them, who were humans, escape.

Later, she couldn’t find out the ending of that accident. And these monsters that had appeared in Nancheng showed extreme disgust for the word [Monarch Slayer]. Not only did they keep their mouths shut, but even if they were asked, they would only say similar answers in unison:

【She deserves to die.】

【She died a long time ago.】

【With the relentless pursuit of the ‘Martyrs,’ she can’t survive.】

Will that be her ending too?

Shu Yao thought, especially every time she entered the special department’s territory, when other colleagues cast strange glances at her, and when the documents and orders from above were repeatedly revised, fearing that she would turn to the side of the monsters, and also fearing that she would use her abilities to go astray, she felt the situation of that big octopus at that time even more deeply.

She just wanted to have a relationship.

How did it end up like this?

But she couldn’t even question the person who had turned her into this. Because she didn’t even know if the other person was alive or dead now.

In every dream that took her back to that cruise ship, on every sleepless night, Shu Yao tried to find a culprit whom she could hate and who could bear all this misfortune.

In the end.

She thought, it must be that the song from “Titanic” was too unlucky.

I will never listen to that song on a ship again. Oh no, I will never take a ship again.

The sound of an umbrella opening suddenly sounded above her head.

It caught the rain that was falling with the night.

Shu Yao came back to her senses, turned her head to see a young man holding a red umbrella, standing by her side. Noticing that she had been staring at this umbrella for too long, the other person touched his nose and explained in a low voice:

“This umbrella has the best quality—”

“Or does the team leader have the habit of throwing away all her ex’s things?”

She did not speak.

Under her cold gaze, the young man who had been standing with the umbrella showed a tearful expression. Just as his tears were about to fall and he was about to lose control of his emotions, and his entire upper body was about to turn into a mackerel in his combat suit, Shu Yao, who didn’t want to smell the salty fish, timely called a halt:

“What is it?”

“Oh,” the young man sniffed. “A new mission has been sent over.”

Shu Yao stood up, nodded, and even took the umbrella from his hand, took a step forward, and asked, “Where?”

“Let me see…” The person who picked up the phone read out the street name on it. “Xiangshan South Road, Sheraton.”

The sole of Shu Yao’s boot made a slight rubbing sound on the stone steps.

She stopped her steps.

The mackerel keenly sensed that the atmosphere was not right. “Is—is this place very dangerous?”

The long-unheard place name made the person who had already composed herself fall back into the past. It was as if even her breath was once again stained with the fishy smell of the sea waves. She remembered the blind date that Situ Jin had forced her to go on.

Later, Shu Yao had accidentally flipped through the special department’s files and found that the Sheraton had been closed for half a month after that period, because on the thirteenth floor, where she had once been, there had been a case of a missing guest—

Now, she knew the truth of this so-called disappearance completely.

And, the floor where the blind date was held was actually not on the thirteenth floor.

It was she who had broken into the monster’s gathering from the very beginning. Then, by a strange twist of fate, because she was holding that overly beautiful bottle, she was taken away by Lin Ran, who had come to the monster’s field to hunt.

Shu Yao subconsciously moved her right shoulder. It was as if the mole that had been particularly favored by the tentacles and had been repeatedly marked had also become a little itchy.

However, on her face, she just answered very calmly, “Dangerous or not, don’t we have to go anyway?”