Her Tentacles 9

Chapter 9: The Rooftop

Wu Li stared intently at the person outside the door.

Beneath the overused human shell, the whites of his eyes were webbed with terrifying red veins, bulging outward under the influence of his intense emotions.

He didn’t understand.

How was this weak creature, thoroughly marked with the predator’s scent and branded just the same, still alive?

The thought of the “brand”—

The monster inside Wu Li was once again plunged into hysterical madness. As its rage intensified, its bones and organs emitted the sound of being crushed under an unbearable load. The flesh under its already shorter arm withered away a little more.

It was going to die.

Even without looking, it knew that the patch of purple from the injected toxin had spread further.

Over the past two days, the monster had tried to abandon this shell, but as soon as it extracted one of its long limbs, it discovered that its once flawless and tough exoskeleton was now also stained with a speck of that demonic purple. As if sensing its thoughts, the color suddenly expanded in the next moment, accompanied by the sizzling sound of its hard limb dissolving.

In a thousandth of a second, it watched as one of its long limbs was corroded, broke, and detached.

By the time it reacted, it had already retreated back into this human shell. Only when it was covered by this flesh and blood did the pain disappear. It finally understood that this shell was both a barrier against the predator’s lethal toxin and a cage from which it could not escape.

When the master of the cage reappeared, its time of death would arrive.

It was really going to die.

The monster had never been so clearly aware of this fact.

But why, why was its prey still safe and sound!

…

The office in front of her seemed on the verge of transforming into a spider demon’s lair. Shu Yao instinctively took two more steps back.

“Teacher Shu?”

Just then, Chen Le, who was at the end of the hallway, walked over and waved at her. “Morning, why aren’t you going in?”

She turned around, her hand clenching tightly, trying her best to keep her voice natural. “I think the homeroom teacher from the business department said he had something to discuss with us. Shall we go together?”

Chen Le happened to be the teacher for the business English oral class.

She didn’t think much of it. “Sure.”

Before she could enthusiastically approach, Shu Yao had already started walking.

The bad news was, after walking down two hallways, they ran into the homeroom teacher from the business department, who looked at Shu Yao in confusion and asked who had told her that. The good news was, Director Zhou had a reception for visiting leaders that morning, and when he saw Shu Yao, with her excellent image and temperament, he singled her out to accompany him for the morning.

Shu Yao had never felt so honored to be playing the role of a pretty vase.

A vase was great. A vase could stay with the reception crowd all day, enveloped in the awe-inspiring righteousness of the leaders.

At eleven-thirty.

Just after taking a group photo on the first floor of the library, while Director Zhou and the others were chatting with the leaders about the specialty dishes in the school staff canteen, Shu Yao stepped aside and took out her phone to check her messages.

She had sent a message the night before, before bed, asking Lin Ran if she had returned to Nancheng.

The reply had come at two in the morning, saying she had arrived.

And she had sent another message just a little while ago.

“My surgeries are fully booked this afternoon. I should be able to leave the hospital around seven. See you tonight?”

When chatting through a screen, she wasn’t like Shu Yao, who would use lots of cute animal emojis to lighten the mood. Her typing seemed rather cold, but Shu Yao scrolled through their chat history and found that she always replied as soon as she was done with her work, even if Shu Yao was just asking if she had brought an umbrella on a rainy day.

Every message was answered. Shu Yao liked that feeling.

Thinking of the weekly staff meeting that usually lasted until six on Monday afternoons, a smile appeared in her eyes, and her fingertips danced lightly on the screen:

“Yes, let’s meet!”

“You’re always the one picking me up. Tonight, let me pick you up instead! [cat_peeking.jpg]”

…

At five-forty.

The usually talkative Director Zhou announced, uncharacteristically, that the meeting was over. Before putting away her pen and paper, Shu Yao glanced at what she had written:

1. Go home and change into a new outfit.

2. Bring a bouquet of flowers? (Seasonal flower options: Endless Summer hydrangeas? Hibiscus? Peonies? Lilies?)

3. It takes thirteen subway stops to get from home to Nanshan Hospital, need to allow twenty minutes for travel time…

It seemed she had unconsciously written a date plan.

She guiltily closed her notebook and walked out with her colleagues. As she swiped her card and went through the subway turnstile, she happened to look back and saw a figure in a hoodie, one shoulder higher than the other, walking toward her.

To her astonishment, he deliberately curled his lips at her.

As if brazenly declaring to her—

Yes, you’re being watched.

A jolt of electricity shot up her spine to her brain. Shu Yao’s scalp tingled, and she felt as if she had been plunged into an ice cave. She even forgot to move for a moment, frozen in place, while Wu Li also intentionally stayed outside the turnstile, watching her from a distance.

Though she was still in a crowd, this time Shu Yao felt an indescribable fear. She stood there for a long time before suddenly rushing toward the escalator.

The sound of footsteps behind her quickened and slowed.

Just as they were about to catch up to her, they would suddenly stop.

He was leisurely enjoying the pleasure of toying with her.

Just then, a subway train arrived. Shu Yao rushed in with the crowd. When she looked back again, she saw him standing by the door, on the other side of the glass partition next to the seats, the opening of his hood facing her eerily.

“!”

As her light-colored hair trembled along with her, she took out her phone, not daring to blink, found her friends list, and sent a message: “What do I do if I’m being followed by a creepy male colleague?”

Situ Jin called her the next second.

Her friend’s concerned voice came through her Bluetooth earpiece. “Are you safe right now? Are you okay? Where’s that girlfriend of yours? Nowhere to be found at a critical moment?”

Hearing her friend’s voice at a time like this, Shu Yao’s eyes reddened. She blinked hard to avoid losing track of Wu Li’s movements, her voice slightly choked. “She—she should be in surgery right now…”

Situ Jin snorted. “Completely useless.” Then she quickly asked, “Where are you now? It’s so noisy, are you on the subway? Try to find a police officer when you get off, see if they can stop him or if someone can escort you home. I’m contacting a private security team right now—”

“Don’t be afraid. I’ll send you a message every five minutes. Keep me updated on your location, and tell me if anything happens.”

…

Under Situ Jin’s guidance, Shu Yao finally regained her senses and fought against her trembling instincts.

Perhaps her terrified appearance was convincing enough. Before she left the subway station, Wu Li, who had been following closely, was indeed stopped by the transit police for questioning. In that short time, Shu Yao summoned the spirit of her university 800-meter runs and sprinted home in one breath.

The moment she entered her residential complex, got on the elevator, opened her door, and double-locked it—

Knock, knock.

A knock on the door.

The back of Shu Yao, pressed against the door, vibrated with the knock, startling her so much that she crouched down, covering her head, her eyes squeezed shut. Her thoughts were in a chaotic jumble: Wasn’t he just stopped at the subway station? How did he get past the community gate? And how did he get here in such a short time…

Knock-knock-knock! Knock-knock-knock!

The knocking grew heavier, menacing, pounding on her heart.

With trembling hands, Shu Yao clutched her phone, wondering how long the fireproof and burglar-proof steel door she had bought during renovations would hold. She looked down, trying to unlock her phone to call the police, but the noise outside suddenly stopped.

One second, two seconds, three seconds.

An extreme silence spread.

In the empty apartment, there was only the sound of her own desperate heartbeat, which felt like it wanted to escape from her chest, up her throat.

She held her breath, waiting for nearly half a minute, but heard no further sound from outside. Her experience reading horror stories told her that in this situation, she just had to be more patient than the other person. She must not be foolish enough to open the door or look through the peephole.

A full minute passed.

The door was not knocked on again.

Just as Shu Yao was about to suffocate from holding her breath, the same knocking sound came from a different place—

Above her.

It was the door to the rooftop.

She belatedly remembered that when she and Situ Jin were busy in the small garden last night, she had… not closed that door when they came down.

…

On the rooftop.

The monster’s nostrils flared. It stood by the half-open door, sniffing the fear in the air, an emotion it found delicious.

It had spent the morning using the human brain to think, and had managed to come up with an answer. It must be because this prey held a secret it hadn’t discovered. She must be some kind of powerful tonic it didn’t know about, which was why that thing had kept her around for so long without eating her!

If it could just devour her first, maybe, just maybe it could…

Buzz.

A strange vibration sounded behind it.

The open-air garden was filled with the fragrance of flowers. At this height of thirty-five floors, the surroundings should have been a vast, unobstructed expanse, close to the sky. Besides itself, no one else should have been able to reach here.

But it soon heard the sound of a phone’s keypad being touched again.

It turned its body slowly, its gaze heavy—

In the afterglow of the sunset, which burned through the clouds, on the rooftop that divided the skyline.

A flowing white coat and seaweed-like black hair billowed in the wind within its field of vision.

The woman, who had finished her surgery early and had taken the time to come and reap her prey, hadn’t even changed her clothes. She now stood at the edge of the rooftop, one hand in her pocket, the other holding a phone. She glanced at the SOS emergency message from the contact “Shu Yao,” which included a distress location. And the mature prey she had just tracked down happened to be at the same location.

A moment later.

Her dark eyes narrowed slightly, her red lips hooked into a smile.

Though she said nothing, a message from a higher-dimensional being invaded “Wu Li’s” brain:

【Thank you for walking into my trap.】

【Any last words?】