Chapter 93: It seems like you are the one I fell in love with at first sight.
For the first time, a look of embarrassment appeared on An Wujiu’s usually clever face.
Shen Ti, however, enjoyed this very much. Seeing him come over to snatch the mask from his hand, he deliberately hid it behind his back.
“Give it to me.”
An Wujiu held out his hand towards him.
Shen Ti originally wanted to tease him, but seeing him like this, he couldn’t bear to, afraid that he might go too far and make An Wujiu unhappy.
So he brought the hand he had hidden behind his back forward, but when An Wujiu reached for the mask, he still didn’t let go.
An Wujiu raised an eyebrow. He didn’t want to speak initially, but he emphasized and repeated, “I haven’t glued it properly yet. Let me fix it again.”
Shen Ti was amused by his seriousness, “Alright, alright, here you go.”
He handed it over, then sat back on the bed, scratching his sleep-mussed hair, and glanced at the time displayed on the wall.
It wasn’t even six o’clock yet.
“You’re awake so early?” Shen Ti pulled one of his hands over, rubbing his fingers, his eyes inadvertently glancing at the scars on his wrist.
They had gone through three games together, and his wounds had healed, leaving only stitched scars, short horizontal lines, and one intersecting vertical line. It didn’t look frightening; in fact, on An Wujiu’s hand, it looked rather nice.
But Shen Ti didn’t voice this thought; he figured his aesthetics might not be quite normal, and saying it out loud might scare him.
Hearing the question about waking up early, An Wujiu thought to himself that he hadn’t slept at all.
But he didn’t say that, just used some excuse about being woken up by the noise of flying machines outside.
He looked over the mask, checking the parts where the glue had overflowed, and noticed Shen Ti staring at his wrist.
“It’s already healed.” An Wujiu sat down next to him, even stretching out his wrist for Shen Ti to squeeze, “Completely numb.”
Shen Ti smiled and just gently touched it, his fingers rubbing over the scars.
“Why are you still keeping my mask?” Shen Ti teased him, “You wouldn’t have fallen in love with me at first sight and kept it as a memento, would you?”
An Wujiu had been looking down at the cracked part of the mask. Hearing this, he suddenly looked up, glancing sideways at Shen Ti.
Shen Ti was charmed by this accusatory look, even though he knew he was talking nonsense, he was still happy.
“No? Then why keep my stuff? Let me think…” Shen Ti pretended to be in deep thought, “If not a secret crush… then I can only think of one possibility.”
“What possibility?” An Wujiu was intrigued.
Shen Ti said seriously, “Only a perverted killer would keep their victim’s belongings as a souvenir after killing them. You’re not that perverted, are you?”
An Wujiu sighed deeply, “Your logic is really something else.”
Though he had been pretty perverted during his transformation state.
An Wujiu, while re-gluing the mask, explained for himself, “I went back to pick it up later.”
He always spoke calmly, without much emotional fluctuation, “After the duel ended, I recovered for a while and suddenly wanted to visit the duel threshold alone. I saw your mask still there and remembered that when I was in another state, I really had the thought of killing you.”
After saying this, he glanced at Shen Ti, feeling a bit guilty, like someone who had made a mistake.
Shen Ti didn’t think much of it, “And then?”
“Then I felt very guilty because you were forced to duel as well. I thought I was crazy at that time, wanting to kill everyone. Just then, Yirou had taught me how to use the collection threshold, so I tried to collect your mask.”
Shen Ti understood in his heart that An Wujiu was such a person who would feel remorse for his malice and even despise his former kindness in extreme times.
Everyone he encountered was like this, just not as extreme and not as ashamed as An Wujiu.
“Yesterday, when you mentioned it, I suddenly remembered that the mask was still in my collection threshold.” An Wujiu continued, “I heard from Wu You that collected items can be 3D printed for a fee, as long as they are not too large. Large items cannot be collected anyway.”
“The print is quite good.”
There were 3D printing machines all over the street. An Wujiu went out in the middle of the night, walked two streets to find the best-looking one, scanned the code to pay for printing, and spent a lot of money on it. He was even hit on by a drunk man halfway, and An Wujiu, annoyed, almost broke the man’s hand.
But the glue sold in small shops along the way was really bad, always squeezing out too much. An Wujiu worked for a while, barely managing to glue the mask back together, but it didn’t look good.
He gave up, put the mask on the low table, and lay by the bed watching Shen Ti sleep for half an hour. Before dawn, he went out again.
He didn’t mention these things because he thought they were pointless.
Shen Ti leaned on him, “Why don’t you print the handcuffs you collected?”
An Wujiu was stunned for a moment, just about to ask why print the handcuffs, but before he could, he suddenly understood, and the words got stuck in his throat.
Seeing his reaction, Shen Ti found it amusing, wrapping his hands around An Wujiu’s neck, kissing the back of his head, and silently expressing his gratitude.
In this world, perhaps only a fool like An Wujiu would try to protect him from the unease caused by his oddities.
“Is this okay?” An Wujiu scraped off the old glue, fixed it with the new one, and handed it to him for inspection.
Shen Ti nodded, “Yes, give it to me. I’ll wear it in the next game.”
“Why?” An Wujiu thought it was a bit wasteful.
Shen Ti put on the mask An Wujiu had repaired and said seriously, “I want to stay loyal to you.”
An Wujiu laughed, but seeing him wear it, a scene from their first meeting flashed in his mind.
He said he was a loner, without companions, but from the very beginning, he had been helping him.
An Wujiu still remembered that when Yang Ming was humiliating him, it was Shen Ti who flicked a champagne bottle cap at his back to make him stop. It was also Shen Ti who deliberately acted like the champagne tasted awful and purposely dropped it, giving An Wujiu, who had no supplies, a little something to sustain himself.
Even during their duel, Shen Ti’s moves were all probing, never fatal.
Thinking about this…
“Shen Ti,” An Wujiu turned his face, “it seems like you were the one who fell in love at first sight.”
Shen Ti had just taken off the mask and was holding it when An Wujiu’s sudden remark left him momentarily stunned.
But he didn’t stay stunned for long and went along with it.
“So what if I did?” Shen Ti raised an eyebrow, “Didn’t you want to kill me at first, but ended up falling into my hands?”
An Wujiu never expected this guy to be so shameless, but that wasn’t his point.
“It wasn’t that I wanted to kill you; it was just a momentary consideration.” An Wujiu clarified seriously.
“Alright, alright.” Shen Ti found him adorable and pulled him into his arms, forcing An Wujiu to sleep with him for another two hours.
An Wujiu didn’t plan to struggle, letting him hold him. Shen Ti’s arm wrapped around his waist, his hands still wearing those gloves that covered his patterns. For some reason, An Wujiu had the impulse to remove his own hand from Shen Ti’s embrace and take off the glove on Shen Ti’s left hand.
The hidden blue patterns covered his entire hand, slightly raised, like vines wrapping around his skin.
An Wujiu’s fingers traced the patterns downward, wrapping his hand around Shen Ti’s, interlocking their fingers.
He knew Shen Ti was not yet asleep, and indeed, Shen Ti wasn’t. With his eyes closed, he felt An Wujiu gently intertwine their fingers and then pull his hand to his chest.
No one had ever treated Shen Ti this way.
In his memory, there were no parents, no teachers, no friends—anyone who could have formed an emotional connection with him simply didn’t exist. He had no emotions and had worked hard to mimic them from scratch.
All he had was An Wujiu.
Yang Erci brought Zhong Yirou and Noah back to her place, and that night, she had a nightmare, full of supernatural elements—evil spirits, altars, tentacled monsters, and lingering sea fog.
She attributed these to the aftereffects of the Altar, as they contradicted her materialist worldview.
Waking up from the nightmare at four in the morning, Yang Erci made herself a cup of hot tea. The studio now housed Zhong Yirou, who refused to sleep in the master bedroom and had given up the guest room for Noah, choosing instead to sleep on the sofa bed in the studio, leaving the door open.
Yang Erci wanted to check some information but, thinking better of it, carried her tea into the studio. Moving quietly, she placed the cup on the desk and noticed Zhong Yirou had kicked off her thin blanket. Bending down, she picked up the blanket and covered her again.
Zhong Yirou, while stunning when made up, looked like a seventeen or eighteen-year-old girl when bare-faced.
Yang Erci returned to her workstation and sat down, browsing through some documents and checking her emails.
One caught her attention; it was about her father.
[I’ve helped you investigate your father’s disappearance. There are no records in the archives. I suspect he knew something and was secretly dealt with.
I’ve found a list of people who were laid off, several of whom have disappeared, just like your father. This can’t be a simple case of layoffs.]
This email was from a researcher friend of hers. The contents confirmed her suspicions but didn’t provide much actionable information.
Yang Erci received the list, knowing she couldn’t find these people within the short forty hours, but if they appeared in the Altar…
The list included five people: three white, one black, and one Asian, the youngest seemingly around her age.
She scrolled further, finding another important, unread email. Opening it, she saw it contained only an attachment—an enhanced image she had requested from a friend in the tech department.
This was the scan of the metal endoskeleton Zhong Yirou had done for An Wujiu.
Seeing the blurry code, she instinctively felt something was off. Such full-body skeletal replacement technology was within the capabilities of only a few labs she knew of.
Sha Wen’s prosthetics research department was one of them.
The image loaded, revealing clear codes and patterns on the skeleton. Enlarging it, Yang Erci finally saw the details.
[Evoorg00021, CV]
At the far right of the code was a small sun-shaped symbol, similar to the ones frequently seen in the Altar.
Yang Erci had a vague sense that she had discovered something.
An Wujiu’s memory must be faulty; he couldn’t be an ordinary student who had never participated in any experiments. Even without discussing the technical difficulty of implanting these metal skeletons, just purchasing such high-tech prosthetics would be beyond a student’s financial capability, especially since he also had a bedridden, seriously ill mother to support.
The CV in the code was an abbreviation for Sha Wen Corporation, but the sun symbol at the end wasn’t Sha Wen’s logo. As a core researcher in Sha Wen’s biological department, she had never known about the production of these metal endoskeletons. Judging by An Wujiu’s condition, these skeletons were highly advanced, fully capable of replacing human bones, even surpassing the performance of natural bones.
What did Evoorg represent?
It wasn’t an English word. Could it be from a minor language?
Nowadays, very few people use minor languages.
Yang Erci frowned, temporarily setting these thoughts aside to handle the remaining emails. As she read, she suddenly realized something.
If you separate Evo and org, the latter might make you think of many words, such as “organization” or “organism.”
Evo…
Evolve.
Evolution?
Evolved organism, evolved being…
In the early morning, the white neon lights outside the window suddenly flashed before Yang Erci’s eyes.
She felt a chill down her spine.
Could it be that An Wujiu was an evolved experimental subject whose memory had been tampered with?
Was he placed in the Altar to be tested?
She calmed herself and backed up the data, planning to tell An Wujiu during the day.
Knowing this information left Yang Erci without any desire to sleep. She sat at her workstation, staring blankly at a small chip on the tabletop.
She seemed to be getting closer to the truth she had been seeking, but the deeper she dug, the more she uncovered.
What she discovered was far more than she had ever imagined.
Perhaps because things had finally settled down and the matters he wanted to resolve were resolved, An Wujiu slept soundly in Shen Ti’s arms. He thought he had slept for a long time, but when he woke up, he found it had only been three hours.
Shen Ti was washing up, and An Wujiu got out of bed to join him.
They seemed like the most ordinary of couples, worrying only about mundane work and life issues, not about whether they would survive the next thirty hours.
An Wujiu received a message from Yang Erci, requesting a face-to-face meeting.
“She sounds very serious; it might be something urgent.”
“When is she not serious?” Shen Ti joked.
With nothing much to pack, the two left the room. An Wujiu planned to find a staff member to explain their departure. Unexpectedly, as soon as they stepped out of the elevator and walked to the club’s dance hall on the first floor, they saw a so-called “guest” making a scene. He was alone, but causing a big enough commotion to draw everyone’s attention.
The man appeared to be about the same age as them, tall and skinny, seemingly not very strong, yet he kicked a girl to the ground and kept hurling insults at her with extremely nasty language.
An Wujiu glanced at the girl. The lights here were not blue during the day, making it easier to see. Her face was not masked this time, but An Wujiu still recognized her by her figure—she was one of the leading girls from the group last night.
“Sorry, sir. These girls undergo brainwashing before each service. Maybe she recovered in the middle and accidentally offended you. We sincerely apologize. How about we compensate you with a bottle of wine?”
The staff couldn’t stop the abusive guest.
Just as he was about to punch the girl who had struggled to her feet, An Wujiu grabbed his wrist.
“Stop hitting her.”
The man was startled by his strength and tried to resist, but his swinging arm couldn’t budge, gripped tightly by An Wujiu as if in a shackle.
His anger flared up instantly. “What the hell are you interfering for? Who do you think you are?”
But he couldn’t push An Wujiu away, feeling his wrist ache more and more, as if his bones were about to be crushed.
An Wujiu looked at him coldly and said flatly, “What if I insist on interfering?”
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