Her Tentacles 90

Chapter 90: Freedom

Lin Jingshu felt as if her consciousness had been trapped in a dark and heavy jar.

Until one day, the seal of the jar that was holding her loosened, and her memories finally pushed forward from the scene of the coastal highway outside Nancheng—

She saw herself, who had merged with a monster.

The monster had devoured her memories, and then had changed its disguise, and had reappeared by the side of her ex-girlfriend, Shu Yao.

They worked together, and also met by chance during their vacation.

The monster possessed her past, and thus also possessed her bad nature. Unconsciously, it would always show a predatory desire for the ex-girlfriend it could not forget, wanting to take back the person who had never loved her.

Although [Styx] had found many high-sounding reasons for this behavior, such as thinking that Shu Yao, with her human body, could derive such a unique ability without being parasitized by a low-level species or a [Martyr], and must be a good sacrifice for the [Lighthouse]’s descent.

But now, Lin Jingshu, who had read this part of the past, understood that it was because [Styx] had been infected by her seven emotions and six desires, and just wanted to tie Shu Yao to her side in a way that was closer to eternity.

Good news.

Shu Yao’s new girlfriend was a monster just like her. With the difference in their human identities eliminated, they seemed to be on the same starting line again.

How could the timid Shu Yao, who only wanted to live a normal and stable life, accept a monster?

Bad news.

The [Monarch Slayer] had avoided her many designs, and had been slow to reveal her true face in front of Shu Yao.

Several times, on the verge of revealing her tail, Shu Yao had, with her most skilled self-deception, made up a reason for the [Monarch Slayer].

It seemed that she would rather believe that she was crazy than to doubt her new girlfriend.

Even worse news was—

Even though the cruise ship had been destroyed, and that hateful big octopus had revealed her ugly, menacing true form, when she met Shu Yao again, she had somehow found that octopus that should have died in the vast sea again.

And she was as intimate with her as ever.

So bad.

How could Shu Yao’s taste in people be getting worse and worse?

Not only in people, but also in choosing monsters. Mu Qing had clearly done much better than she had before, and should have completely met Shu Yao’s standards for making friends and choosing a partner. She had no bad habits and put all her attention on her.

Isn’t this the object of Shu Yao’s dreams?

Why was that big octopus making her so unforgettable?

…

After breaking free from the shackles of consciousness and feeling the powerful influence of the [Lighthouse] disappear, Lin Jingshu immediately began to fight with [Styx] for control, and in turn, controlled the other.

And then.

She had rushed to the community where Shu Yao was at the first opportunity.

Her ex-girlfriend, who had become colder and more powerful, exuded a charm that made her heart flutter even more, and her long-lost desire to conquer once again roared in her body. She really wanted to know if she, with her unique methods, could snatch that person from that monster’s side.

However, all she faced was an empty building.

On the flat top of the tall building, there were traces of a building that looked as if it had been bitten off by a giant. Anyone who saw it would be stunned.

She had some guesses and associations about this.

For example.

Was Shu Yao eaten by that overly hungry octopus, along with her house?

Or.

Was she enslaved by that group of guys from the special department to the point of being unbearable, so she ran away with her house?

With this inexplicable regret, she used [Styx]’s powerful hallucinatory ability to let the remaining [Martyrs] who had been left in Nancheng and on the shore to start a fight with the humans. Because she had new power and had become a new human, she should be the new master of this world.

[Styx], in order to let the will of the [Lighthouse] descend, had once even infiltrated the special department and had obtained a lot of useful information for her. Now, these were the basis for her deployment of troops.

And seeing the drone that the humans had sent to observe the scene and act as their eyes, her remarks were just a greeting on a whim.

What Lin Jingshu had not expected was.

Her words had attracted Shu Yao, who should have left this city long ago.

And she also carried a very powerful, extremely deterrent aura.

Unfortunately—

Her disappearance just happened to confirm Lin Jingshu’s one percent bad guess, which was the direction she thought was most impossible.

Their disappearance was actually related to the fall of the [Lighthouse].

“Why that expression?”

Shu Yao, who had arrived nearby in an unmanned vehicle, fully armed with all kinds of combat weapons, stepped alone under the thick, opaque curtains. Seeing the old acquaintance standing in front of her, she asked calmly:

“Weren’t you just asking about me? I thought you really wanted to see me.”

Even though she had seen her great change after joining the special department from the memory fragments of [Styx], it wasn’t until she herself stood in front of her that Lin Jingshu had to admit.

She had really changed a lot.

Her coldness was no longer a disguise for her fear of talking to others, or her fear of being the focus of attention. It was the most relaxed state that she, who was powerful enough, showed at will, because she no longer wanted to care about the thoughts of others.

Such a Shu Yao, it was already difficult to associate her with the image of her taking the subway and bus, crossing half of Nancheng, just to make her girlfriend a breakfast.

Lin Jingshu looked straight at her, and after a moment, she finally smiled again. “Of course I really want to see you.”

But she could no longer tell if her feelings for Shu Yao now were out of love, out of unwillingness, or out of resentment.

Although they were both ordinary people before, and had both encountered the unfortunate event of having a monster by their side, why was she the only one who was eaten by a monster in the end?

And later, she had also become a monster like Shu Yao’s girlfriend. Why did Shu Yao choose not her?

Thinking this, she said again, “But you always seem to like to bring others to see me. Are you so afraid of being alone with me?”

Was she afraid of her, or was she afraid of being attracted to her again?

In her unspoken subtext, Shu Yao frowned.

A moment later.

She slowly moved her left hand and raised it in front of Lin Jingshu.

Under her combat glove, a small octopus, which was wrapped around her wrist and had tried its best to flatten itself into a pancake, was pressed tightly against her skin.

“Are you asking her?”

“After all, the monster in your body is too good at running away. And I’m too lazy to track down prey. I brought her just to ensure that everything ends here.”

Shu Yao said with a blank expression, and then she raised the gun, which was specially used by the special department to deal with [Parasites] and had now been newly upgraded. “Don’t worry. Your opponent is only me.”

“The death toll in this area has already exceeded a hundred. So my mission is to directly kill the high-risk target [Styx], which has caused the deaths of the masses.”

…

But.

The first shot Shu Yao fired missed.

It wasn’t because she was affected by [Styx]’s illusion and couldn’t tell if the person in front of her was real or illusory. It was simply because… her marksmanship was too bad.

It’s really embarrassing to miss the opponent after saying something like that!

Her expression became even more solemn.

But Lin Jingshu seemed to have seen some hope in her extremely crooked shot just now. At this moment, she hung upside down from the intertwined gray-black sky curtain and looked at her with her hands in her pockets:

“You talk so tough, but it turns out you’re just bluffing.”

“Yaoyao, do you really have the heart to kill me?”

Shu Yao: “…”

On the one hand, she felt so annoyed. On the other hand, she was glad that when Guan Tong’s identity was replaced, the [Styx] that had been lurking in the special department didn’t have the time to check the shooting scores of every member.

【Yaoyao, calm down.】

Lin Ran, who was listening to her pulse, spoke at this moment, her gentle voice transmitting into her mind. 【She’s right here. Even if you miss a couple of times now, you’ll eventually hit her, right?】

Although Lin Ran really wanted to help—

Whether it was to freeze the person who was jumping up and down with the help of the illusion, and turn her into a fixed target, or to simply extend her tentacles, mimic a transparent color, and at the most critical moment, wrap around the target and send her to Shu Yao’s gun muzzle.

These were all easy things to do.

But Lin Ran knew Shu Yao’s determination.

This was the past she was determined to solve, a past that did not need her charity and pity, nor her help to end.

So all she could do was to accompany her.

Shu Yao’s expression gradually became calmer.

Every breath she exhaled became slower. At the same time, her gaze, which was aimed at Lin Jingshu’s forehead, became more and more focused, as if the target in front of her was not an old friend with whom she had had a long and complicated love-hate relationship.

But just a target she needed to aim at.

Seven rings.

The special bullet grazed the other’s shoulder. The strong corrosion took effect, but it was quickly wrapped up by the gray-black gauze, layer by layer, like a natural gauze, separating the corroded flesh and blood in her body from the other parts.

And then.

The bullet narrowly passed by Lin Jingshu’s neck.

Facing her firm and unwavering will, when Lin Jingshu met her gaze again, she understood that her determination was real.

She really wanted to kill her—

Why?

When did she become so ruthless?

The instinctive illusion of the [Styx] jellyfish was activated. Originally, it was just a small-scale construction of those architectural images, or the creation of an illusion to obstruct the woman’s path. Now, they were all taken back, and in their place was a mirror maze that the entire area had been transformed into.

As if she had suddenly been shrunk and thrown into a kaleidoscope.

In the reflection of countless fine mirror fragments, Shu Yao saw her own figure, and also the many past events that had been locked deep in her memory.

Inside was Lin Jingshu.

And Situ Jin.

In every mirror, their past together was being played.

She belatedly remembered that in fact, she and Situ Jin had been the best of friends at first. It was only later that Lin Jingshu had joined, and her rebellious nature had attracted her more, so she had gradually turned her attention to the other.

…

In the spring, they had learned to ride a bike together, and it had ended with her being too trusting, sitting on the back of Lin Jingshu’s bike, and being brought along to crash into a stone and fall. In the summer, she had secretly slipped out of the house and gone to the skating rink. Because she had trusted Lin Jingshu again, she had been swung out by the other, and her head had hit the ground with a thump, and she had been stunned…

They would argue over whether a five-mao red bean popsicle or a green bean popsicle was more delicious, until Situ Jin had waved her hand and had treated each of them to a Cornetto, and they had made up again. And after they had gone to different high schools, they would try their best to skip the evening self-study on weekends and sit in a random restaurant outside, chatting and passing the time.

Shu Yao’s childhood and school days.

Most of her memories were related to this person.

Her expression was a little dazed as she stood in this memory maze constructed of a thousand mirrors. Even the gun in her hand drooped slightly, and the muzzle seemed to be slowly pointing downwards as if it had lost its spirit.

Even though she knew that she still had another invincible monster on her—

But the person hidden behind this countless memory maze was still secretly accumulating power, wanting to wrap her gray-black long curtain around her.

Until they kept getting closer.

Closer.

As if they had returned to that dance floor on the cruise ship.

Just as Lin Jingshu was only a mirror’s distance away from her, Shu Yao raised her hand again, from her shoulder, to her elbow, to her wrist, and kept a level distance with her gaze.

Her light-colored eyes had at some point returned to their clarity.

Bang.

This shot was fired.

It shattered the mirror closest to her, and shattered the memories that were being played on it!

The extremely penetrating bullet corroded the mirror surface, and also burned through the two thin layers of long gauze that the person had hastily brought down, unable to react in time.

In the end.

The bullet hit Lin Jingshu’s forehead.

Along with the sound of the mirror shattering.

Crack.

As if it were a coincidence, or as if it were destined.

The mirror that Shu Yao had broken was just replaying the summer vacation of her first year of junior high, the day she had been locked at home by Mrs. Shu to do her homework because she had no key and no pocket money.

Situ Jin in the hallway outside was complaining about the hot weather and urging the person next to her to hurry up.

This time, the scene came to an abrupt end here.

The bullet that Shu Yao had fired just happened to break that door—

As the [Styx]’s body was hit, the illusion also made a cracking sound of being overwhelmed. It seemed that the wind from other streets had blown into this crack in the illusion.

And it also blew onto the thirteen-year-old her in her memory.

A thin layer of ash in her heart was also blown away by this wind.

She finally didn’t have to be the princess who was trapped in a tall building, waiting for a knight and a prince to come and save her.

The cage that had imprisoned her was shattered by her own hands.

The partner who had briefly brought freedom to her world, whom she had mistakenly pursued for a long time, and who had later borne bitter fruit, was now forever left in the summer of that year.

And she stepped out of the door and felt the real wind of freedom.

From now on, the sky was high and the sea was wide.

No one, no door could trap her anymore. There was nowhere she could not go.