Jiang Lian was aware of Zhou Jiao's gaze.
In fact, he didn't need to actively seek it out—his senses would react on their own, like a shark drawn to the scent of blood, hungrily capturing every trace molecule of her presence in the air.
He remained expressionless as he pulled on a pair of blue rubber gloves, as if the person greedily inhaling Zhou Jiao's scent wasn't him at all.
But if someone were standing behind him at that moment, they would notice something horrifying—his shadow was not human. It had morphed into a monstrous, colossal entity, bulging and pulsing, filling every corner of the room where light could not reach.
If one looked closer, they would see that the grotesque thing was squirming frantically, emitting a low, inhuman buzzing that no human tongue could replicate.
Get closer to her. Smell her. Closer. Smell her. Closer. Smell her...
"The more you suppress it, the stronger the craving," they told him.
"Don't you know that?"
Smell her. Let us smell her. You love her scent too. Just step forward, talk to her. Make her speak—release more of that delicious pheromone...
Jiang Lian didn't even raise his eyes. "No."
Why not?
You wouldn't let us smell her in the elevator, but you took a deep breath yourself—so deep you seemed ready to drain every molecule of her scent from the air...
Smell her smell her smell her...
If anyone got close to Jiang Lian at that moment, they would be overwhelmed by a dizzying low-frequency noise. Prolonged exposure would send the brain into a state of delirium, even pain. Jiang Lian, however, was long accustomed to this cacophony. His face remained calm.
He had long forgotten where he came from, only that he had existed for an eternity—emerging from darkness into light, then sinking into fathomless oceanic depths.
He could not die. Only sleep.
But even in slumber, he had to feed. The shadows—his tendrils—were his feeding tools.
They possessed a sliver of independent will, but not much. They had no need to mate or reproduce. From birth, their singular task had been:
Feed.
Hunger was the source of all their action.
But the noise… it was too loud.
Jiang Lian closed his eyes. When he opened them again, his pupils had narrowed into fine slits. But upon closer inspection, they were not the vertical slits of a predator—they were tendrils. One had sprouted, writhing violently within his narrow eye socket, coiling with murderous intent.
He hadn't expected that human's last desperate resistance to leave such an impact on him.
His mind was a mess.
On the one hand, he held Zhou Jiao in contempt. He even despised Jiang Lian—the human he had devoured. His possession of Jiang Lian's body had been an accident—someone had used a forbidden ritual to forcibly anchor him into Jiang Lian's flesh.
He had no interest in humans.
To him, they were filthy, reeking creatures who dumped paper waste, plastic bottles, and metal caps into the sea. Their organs were full of revolting black mucus.
And yet...
He approached Zhou Jiao. Just like the shadows urged him. Provoked her to speak, to emit more of that intoxicating pheromone. Then he could clamp her by the neck and indulge himself—breathe her in.
Better to kill her than let her scent enslave him.
His bodily fluids were highly corrosive—capable of dissolving all biological tissue. If Zhou Jiao were caught in his tendrils, she would be reduced to a pile of unrecognizable meat within two seconds.
But he wasn't sure—if he grabbed her, would her scent overwhelm him? Would he forget his purpose?
He didn't want to touch such a lowly, foul creature—didn't want to become obsessed with her stench.
Zhou Jiao didn't know his thoughts, but her instincts were honed by years of surviving danger. The instant Jiang Lian felt a surge of hostility toward her, she sensed it. She turned.
Their eyes met.
Jiang Lian paused—then looked away first. "How long are you planning to just stand there?" he said coldly, voice dripping with undisguised disgust.
Zhou Jiao hesitated. "Dr. Jiang, I suspect—"
"Whatever you suspect, don't tell me," Jiang Lian interrupted icily. "I'm not one of your people. I only work with you because I have a... certain inclination, and this is the only legal outlet. Aside from dissection, I want no involvement with you."
Zhou Jiao's lips twitched.
She should've seen this coming.
This man usually seemed clever enough, but no matter how normal or polite she was, he became cold and difficult the moment they exchanged words.
She'd love to ditch him.
But her role was half-cop, and Jiang Lian—though a pre-crime-level serial killer—had not committed an actual crime yet. Until then, she had to protect him.
Resigned, she sighed and tried again, diplomatically: "Dr. Jiang, I know there's… friction between us," even though she had no idea why, "but given the threat we're facing, could you set aside personal grievances for just a moment and listen?"
Jiang Lian didn't respond.
He walked to the next corpse and began methodically dissecting it.
...Fine. Everyone's had a nightmare colleague.
Zhou Jiao sighed, twisted open a bottle of water, took a long gulp, and slammed it down. Then she walked over to help dig through the cadaver's guts.
Above them, the fluorescent lights began emitting a faint buzzing noise, like a moth brushing past. Zhou Jiao didn't notice.
Nor did she notice the shadow behind her expanding.
It flowed like water in her direction, silently dissolving anything she had touched—tools, gloves, even the half-finished water bottle.
In seconds, it slipped into her own shadow. The next moment, a sharp stinger shot up silently from the darkness, aiming straight for the back of her skull—
All of this happened in the blink of an eye.
Zhou Jiao never noticed the danger behind her. Jiang Lian's expression never changed.
Then—
Just before the stinger pierced her skull, Zhou Jiao lunged forward, lightning-quick. She grabbed Jiang Lian by the neck and pressed a scalpel to his throat.
Jiang Lian froze.
So did the stinger.
He was nearly 1.9 meters tall—Zhou Jiao was twenty centimeters shorter. It took effort to restrain him. He only looked lean and scholarly—his body was packed with powerful, well-defined muscle. Every inch of him bristled with violent strength.
Worried he might fight back, Zhou Jiao pressed one hand to his shoulder and launched into a textbook scissor lock, legs tightening around his neck. The scalpel never left his throat.
But she needn't have worried.
The moment she touched Jiang Lian, he lost the ability to think rationally.
His malice, his restraint—they all receded like a tide.
Desire.
Insatiable desire surged through him—so fierce it made his scalp, his spine, even his tongue and every sweat gland tremble.
He closed his eyes and swallowed hard, barely resisting the urge to tilt forward and rub his nose against her blade—just to smell her more deeply.
From her angle, Zhou Jiao couldn't see his face.
And she didn't want to.
Scalpel steady, she looked down at him and said coolly:
"Put the knife down for a second. I have something I need to say—Dr. Jiang, do you think I don't have a temper?"
Then she paused—not because of Jiang Lian, but because her heartbeat suddenly spiked. Thump-thump-thump—hard enough to make her chest ache.
Her grip weakened. She nearly dropped the scalpel.
That strange physical reaction—again. Damn it, why now?
She couldn't let go. If she climbed down now in embarrassment, she'd never be able to work again.
Zhou Jiao exhaled sharply, tightened her legs around Jiang Lian's neck, and snapped:
"I asked you a question."
Jiang Lian said nothing.
"Listen, I know you don't like me," Zhou Jiao growled, "and I don't care if you do. I just need you to act like a damn adult. These corpses—there might be a high-level mutant hidden among them—"
Before she could finish, her expression shifted. Her hand trembled. Nearly sliced his throat open.
Jiang Lian had turned his head—and with a look of barely concealed disdain, brushed his lips lightly across her fingers.
Then his Adam's apple bobbed.
As if savoring the fleeting taste of her skin.
Zhou Jiao: "..."
What the hell?! If you don't want to talk, just don't! Why do that?!
Her eyes blazed. "Jiang Lian, this isn't a joke. You were parasitized by a high-tier variant—I know you understand how dangerous they are—"
"High-tier variant?" Jiang Lian repeated slowly.
He looked calm, focused—but he hadn't heard a single word she'd said. His thoughts were drowning in the tendrils' maddening hum.
If someone scanned his body now, they'd find no human bones or organs inside—but something grotesque, monstrous, utterly alien.
Those things churned within him, harmonizing with the shadow behind him, pulsing a hypnotic, sickening rhythm:
Smell her. Smell her. Smell her.
Now. Capture her. Never let her leave our senses. Stare at her. Stare. Sniff. Sniff. Sniff...
But then—those voices were silenced.
The core being did not allow them to covet her.
"Yes," Zhou Jiao said grimly. "A high-tier variant. If it's a mammal, that's one thing. But I'm afraid it may come from the Abyssal Zone—or even the Hadal Zone… We know far too little about the ocean."
Compared to the ocean's 4.5-billion-year history, humanity's five million years were barely a blink.
What if something down there had evolved like the giant arthropods of the Carboniferous period—massive and ancient—or like orcas, forming complex social rules, even language and culture? What then?
After all, they still hadn't figured out the mutated species in the shallow zones.
Jiang Lian thought to himself: she smelled even better when she got emotional.
A cloying sweetness.
He drew in a deep breath of her scent. His cold, composed face softened into a dazed intoxication, red veins creeping into the whites of his eyes.
Did he really have to touch such a lowly creature?
He didn't understand why he resisted getting close to her.
Yes, humans were filthy and polluted—but she was clearly an exception. At least… her scent was.
He had no kin, no morals, no sense of shame. There was no reason for him to hesitate this long.
And yet, with every swallow of saliva her scent provoked, he heard a soft, mocking laugh—Jiang Lian's laugh—like an echo trapped in his skull.
—So this is all you are.
Gods, higher-dimensional beings... In the end, what were they but monsters that couldn't even conquer their own instincts?
"Go on," that human voice said inside him, gentle but dripping with malice. "Smell her. I want to know too… what she smells like—inside and out."
Jiang Lian's expression turned stiff, almost twisted.
Whether it was the unbearable hunger, that voice's provocation, or something else entirely, he couldn't say.
But there was one thing he knew for certain.
He would never share Zhou Jiao with that human—not even a single molecule of her scent.
Inside him, the shadow tendrils churned with violence. But his face revealed nothing. After a long moment, he spat out a single word:
"Leave."
The voice vanished.
Jiang Lian closed his eyes, about to tell Zhou Jiao to step down—only to find her staring back at him with a mixture of shock and fury.
"…?"
Only then did he realize—he'd said that word aloud.
Zhou Jiao was baffled.
She wasn't emotionless—just emotionally reserved. But she definitely had a temper. This man had pushed her again and again, showing her that same frosty disdain in every situation, and now she was filled with anger, ready to slap him across the face—twice.
Strangely, before she could act, a sudden, violent heartbeat slammed into her ribcage. A wave of numbness surged from the base of her spine, making her arms and legs go weak. For a second, she nearly dropped the scalpel.
Zhou Jiao pursed her lips, glancing down at her fingers.
She knew her grip strength. There was no way she could fail to hold a scalpel—she'd snapped so many bones with bone cutters she could stack them into a Jiang Lian-sized pile.
So what was happening?
Why did her body react so strangely every time she got near him?
She'd never been in a relationship, and close physical contact with men was rare—but that didn't mean she was clueless about the biology of attraction.
Racing heart, shortness of breath, elevated blood pressure… pupils dilating, blinking frequency increasing…
Zhou Jiao inhaled slowly.
From any perspective, it looked like she'd developed… some indescribable interest in Jiang Lian.
At that realization, Zhou Jiao truly felt like hurling the scalpel.
She leaned back, jumped off him, and took three big steps away, breathing heavily. She needed distance—until she figured out what the hell was going on.
She didn't get far.
Jiang Lian reached out and yanked her back.
Whether it was her erratic heartbeat or some distortion in perception, she didn't even register his movement—like a third arm had suddenly materialized and dragged her forward.
Zhou Jiao's pupils dilated. She instinctively tried to resist.
But the next second, two fingers tilted her chin upward.
Jiang Lian lowered his head—and pressed his lips to hers.
Zhou Jiao shivered involuntarily. His lips were cold and slick—like a deep-sea bottom feeder, clammy and unsettling.
And yet… just like before, her heart didn't reject the sensation. It thudded even harder, pounding so loud it echoed in her ears.
What was happening to her?
Even her temples were trembling—pulse thrumming out of control.
Jiang Lian's reaction was even more intense.
He couldn't stop himself from staying close, inhaling her breath through their parted lips.
That scent again—sickeningly sweet, like overripe fruit. Just breathing it in made him feel drunk.
But her scent was blocked by her teeth. So he pressed harder, mashing his lips against hers, trying to force more of that sweetness out from between them.
Zhou Jiao herself couldn't believe it—she was the one who broke the deadlock.
She opened her mouth—and bit down on his lower lip.
It was like flipping a switch.
Jiang Lian immediately clamped her chin, not letting her move an inch. Then, like a deep-sea predator striking, his tongue darted forward—swift, invasive, unstoppable—forcing its way between her teeth.
In that moment, all sound and color vanished.
He was back in the abyss, hearing only the thick churn of tails slicing through black water.
It took a long time before Jiang Lian came back to himself. His face returned to its cold, detached mask. His Adam's apple dipped sharply in a visible swallow.
Just like what he'd smelled—
Syrupy sweetness.
…So sweet it made his scalp tingle.
Jiang Lian stared at Zhou Jiao, swallowed again, and again, breath gradually becoming ragged.
All he'd wanted was a quick whiff—to prove he could resist instinct and desire.
But the moment he tasted her, he lost control.
When he snapped back to awareness, a rift had already opened behind him—dark-purple tendrils surging toward Zhou Jiao with lethal intent—