Chapter 31

Chapter 31

At 7:30 in the morning, Xie Linyuan promptly and neatly descended the stairs via the escalator. The clothes he had brought from the shelter were long discarded due to being dirty and tattered, and he was now wearing old clothes found in a wardrobe in an upstairs bedroom.

The original owner of the coffee shop was a tall and hefty man, with shirts of size XXXL. Xie Linyuan found the clothes ill-fitting, but with a belt cinched tightly around the waist, he managed to make do.

Suddenly, he stopped on the marble staircase, looking down from a height at the lobby below.

On the soft and thick Bohemian-style carpet, Yang Mo stretched out his legs carelessly, leaning lazily against the Black Knight, using its soft fur as a cushion. He nestled into the dog's side-lying body, casually stroking its head with one hand and holding a half-eaten wild apple in the other, unpeeled and possibly unwashed.

Hearing Xie Linyuan descending the stairs, the Black Knight raised its two heads resting on Yang Mo's thigh, looking at him from left to right. Yang Mo also smiled and waved the apple in his hand, saying, "This thing is so sour, terribly unpleasant to eat."

Xie Linyuan's heart plummeted heavily, even though he had anticipated Wu Yin's appearance last night, he hadn't expected it to happen so soon.

But no matter how chaotic and conflicted he felt inside, Xie Linyuan's expression remained unfazed. He paused on the stairs for two seconds with a calm demeanor, then continued to descend with his original pace, subtly commenting, "The peel is quite sour, you should eat it without the peel."

After a pause, Xie Linyuan added a subject to his sentence, "Wu Yin."

Wu Yin, with a lazy posture, curled his lips into a smile that reached his eyes. As Xie Linyuan approached closer, he raised the apple in his hand and commanded as if it were a given, "I can't peel it, you do it for me."

Standing upright, Xie Linyuan's posture was as straight as a pine tree. He looked emotionlessly at the man lying on the ground, his gaze sharp as a blade, wishing nothing more than to eliminate this audacious troublemaker at once.

Wu Yin, however, smiled gently, seemingly oblivious to the chill emanating from Xie Linyuan, even shaking the half-eaten apple in his hand, urging, "Hurry up."

After nearly ten seconds of standoff, Xie Linyuan was the first to step back. He took the apple, and his mechanical arm adjusted its structure, popping out a fruit knife from below his left wrist. He took it and peeled the cursed apple swiftly and efficiently.

The person was annoying, and even the bite marks left on the apple were an eyesore.

While Xie Linyuan was peeling the apple, Wu Yin straightened up and patted the head of the Black Knight, signaling it to go play aside. The obedient dogs stood up, shook their fur relaxedly, lifted their legs to step over the sofa, and trotted out of the small building, even pulling the door closed from outside.

Strips of apple peel fell into the trash can with uniform thickness. After peeling, Xie Linyuan handed the apple back to him, turned to grab a napkin, and sat down on the sofa to wipe the blade.

"Why did you choose to parasitize Yang Mo?" he asked. "Is my body unsuitable?"

Wu Yin crunched into the wild apple. Though still sour, it was much more palatable than before, "If I parasitized you, who would peel my apples?"

"Yang Mo could also peel apples for you," Xie Linyuan said. "And he would definitely do it better than me, cutting the apple into bite-sized pieces and serving them to you."

"Oh, so it can be done that way," Wu Yin acknowledged, "Then remember to cut it into pieces for me next time."

Xie Linyuan: "..."

He sighed in resignation, attempting to reason, "Wu Yin, from the moment I have memory, I was trained and modified to be a humanoid weapon, only learning the techniques of killing, not how to serve others."

Hearing this, Wu Yin frowned discontentedly, turning back to look at him with a voice that turned cold, issuing an undeniable command, "You wouldn't be trying to back out, would you?"

Xie Linyuan smiled, his eyes, however, were filled with indifference, "How could I?"

Wu Yin's most feared ability was parasitism. Current intelligence indicates that parasitism requires a significant energy cost from Wu Yin himself. Now that Wu Yin has just parasitized Yang Mo, he cannot parasitize another for a short period.

Moreover, this time Wu Yin's choice of a host led Xie Linyuan to a new speculation. Observing the people Wu Yin had parasitized before - Palmer, Yang Mo, Bilal - all were healthy humans. Could it be possible that his semi-contaminated body was unsuitable for parasitism? Otherwise, there was no reason to ignore him and instead parasitize Yang Mo, who had barely any meat on his arms and had subpar bladder function.

Considering Wu Yin knew very well that he wasn't someone who would simply conform and behave, and with the highest command no longer restraining him, he could betray at any moment. If coveting the power of the Mechanical War God, it would be better to directly parasitize him rather than keeping such a cunning threat by his side, and have the naïve Yang Mo serve at his beck and call.

Thus, there were only two possibilities: the first, and most ideal, was that Wu Yin simply couldn't parasitize him.

The second possibility was that Wu Yin held a greater leverage in his hands, unknown to him.

In an instant, countless thoughts had raced through Jie Linyuan's mind. He wasn't one to sit and wait for doom. Contemplating, he retracted the blade back into his forearm and flexed his left hand fingers. Raising his eyes, he intended to continue probing, "Wu Yin, I truly appreciate everything you've done. You said your real body is missing, and I'm willing to protect you, guard your secret, and help you find your body. I will stand in front of you without hesitation whenever you need, even if it means facing death."

"However, you can see me as an invincible sword, but not as a tool for mundane chores. Wu Yin, you should understand, I don’t like being forced... I hope we can establish a mutually beneficial relationship, equal and respectful to each other."

After finishing, Jie Linyuan noticed Wu Yin had finished his apple, resting his chin on his hand, looking bored and clearly impatient, not listening to a word. Jie Linyuan, frustrated, said, "Do you have a problem? Must I serve as your personal assistant, like a slave? Why not take a step back and accept a loyal bodyguard? Isn’t that better for you? If you want servants, I can find you three, five, ten assistants, treating you like an emperor."

Wu Yin sighed, "You're really troublesome, always probing like this. Is it fun?"

Jie Linyuan's forehead vein bulged with anger, "It's you who is exploiting gratitude and forcing people against their will."

Listening to Jie Linyuan's righteous reprimand, Wu Yin licked his lips, suddenly revealing a meaningful smile. His black pupils lifted to meet Jie Linyuan’s blazing red eyes, “So you demand a willing agreement, huh?”

Only when one hits the wall will they stop, not shedding tears until seeing the coffin.

His frivolous tone made Jie Linyuan’s pupils shrink, a bad premonition striking him like a hammer, ringing alarm bells in his head.

“Do you know why you're so special, periodically falling into a polluted chaos but then recovering naturally after a while?” Wu Yin asked with a malicious smile. Jie Linyuan knew the answer wouldn't be something he'd like, but he had no choice but to brace himself for Wu Yin’s next words.

“That's because…” Wu Yin leaned forward, lightly tapping his fingertip on Jie Linyuan's chest, right above his heart, “you have a parasite inside you, just like me.”

Not caring if Jie Linyuan could handle such explosive information, he continued, “No, not exactly like me. I'm familiar with it, but it's inferior to me, an underdeveloped parasite, unable to communicate. Your unique body structure prevents it from fully parasitizing you, but it also can't leave, so it has to stay within you... Thinking about it, it's more of a ‘parasite’ than I am, relying on its host to survive, while I am independent.”

Jie Linyuan was so shocked he lost his breath, feeling a chilling numbness spread from his chest to his organs, his blood freezing, limbs growing cold. After a long while, he managed to squeeze out a voice, dry and strained, “So every time I fall into chaos…”

“It's the side effects of it attempting to parasitize you.”

The hanging sword fell, pinning Xie Linyuan firmly in place.

"Xie Linyuan, I can help you suppress it, and only I can help you. Otherwise, it will parasitize you sooner or later," Wu Yin, holding all the aces, or rather, exploiting the vast difference in information from the start, was fighting a battle he could not lose. "You might not fear death, but do you fear your consciousness being replaced by an unknown entity, controlling your body, continuing to 'live' in your name?"

Just imagining that scenario made Xie Linyuan's scalp tingle, his lips moved imperceptibly, finding himself unable to utter the word "no."

He was so filled with hatred that he nearly crushed his teeth. It was a lock on his heart more condemning than the highest order; his Achilles' heel was firmly in Wu Yin's grasp, to be kneaded and shaped at will, leaving him utterly powerless.

Willingly? More than willingly, if what Wu Yin said was true, the day Wu Yin lost interest in him, he feared he might even beg Wu Yin not to abandon him.

The key point was, despite how outrageous Wu Yin's claims were, they all made sense, and Xie Linyuan subconsciously believed about eighty percent of them.

"Could it be that the source of the calamity...is not a viral infection but a parasite? Are the contaminated and the mutants all people parasitized by unknown entities?" Xie Linyuan urgently asked, "Are you related to this? How many of your...kind are there? Who created you, and for what purpose? What role do you play in this global disaster?"

"Stop asking. Haven't I told you? I was forcibly separated from my body, losing part of my memory," Wu Yin blinked innocently, "I don't remember anything you're asking about, or perhaps I never knew in the first place."

What should be remembered is forgotten, and what should be forgotten is clear... But Xie Linyuan, currently overwhelmed with his own problems, couldn't care less about these broader issues.

"Can you only...suppress it, not eliminate it?" he noticed his voice was too stiff and quickly coughed to soften his tone.

Wu Yin looked at him steadily, then smiled even more brightly, "Xie Linyuan, perform well, and maybe, when I'm in a good mood one day—?"

Neither confirming nor denying, he dangled a Schrödinger's carrot in front of him, waiting for him to jump into the pit like a big, dumb donkey.

Furious to the point of nearly developing pulmonary cysts, Xie Linyuan found Wu Yin adding insult to injury at this moment, "By the way, Xie Linyuan, with your prowess, the mighty mechanical war god, to be injured by the contaminated...it couldn't have been intentional, could it?"

Xie Linyuan closed his eyes in agony.

It was indeed intentional.

After observing multiple cases among his batch number where subjects would issue self-destruct commands after becoming contaminated and then regain consciousness, and since the mechanical half was destroyed and no longer of any use, those subjects were all deemed defective and exiled to the lower zone of the North Camp.

After repeatedly confirming the outcomes were acceptable, he resolutely decided to take the risk and deliberately allowed himself to be bitten by the contaminated. Unexpectedly, his case was too unique; being one of the most successful experimental subjects of the mechanical war god, usually disguising his personality as very kind, and well-liked, the research team couldn't bear to dispose of him directly, so they locked him up for observation despite objections.

And then, unexpectedly...he actually did regain consciousness.

Xie Linyuan originally thought the core key developed specifically for him was the retribution for his cleverness, only to realize a greater retribution awaited him here...

Whose fault is it? He can only blame his own stupidity!

"Xie Linyuan?" Seeing him lost in thought, Wu Yin couldn't resist tugging at his clothes.

"Yes," Jie Linyuan replied gently, turning his face to answer, "Is there something you need?"

Wu Yin brightened up, asking cheerfully, "I'm hungry, is there anything to eat? It looks like there are beans and something I don't recognize in the kitchen."

"That's lily," Jie Linyuan said as he walked to the kitchen, neatly rolling up his sleeves in front of the stove. Wu Yin leaned in, curiously asking, "How do you eat it?"

"Cook it with the beans."

"Is it tasty?"

"I quite like it."

"When can I have some?"

"The stove heats slowly, so we can't add too much wood. It will probably take about an hour and a half."

"That long..."

……