Chapter 33

Chapter 33

"So you can only see with sunlight?" Although he knew he shouldn't, Jie Linyuan couldn't help but wave his hand in front of Wu Yin. As expected, there was no reaction. "Why? What's the reason?"

"I wish I knew," Wu Yin extended a hand towards the source of the voice, sounding displeased, "Help me to the bathroom."

Jie Linyuan felt this was an opportunity. He silently grasped Wu Yin's hand, pondering how to exploit this significant physical weakness.

As their palms touched, Wu Yin suddenly frowned, puzzled, "What's that sound?"

Jie Linyuan instantly became alert, scanning the surroundings but saw no polluters outside the window. It seemed impossible that Wu Yin could hear something he couldn't. But given Wu Yin's strange nature and possible special sensitivity to mutants, he asked, "…What did you hear?"

"I heard the sound of the abacus beads in your mind," Wu Yin teased him with a smile, "So loud it could be heard in the neighboring Wolf Smoke Shelter."

Jie Linyuan: "…"

Even now, at a disadvantage and unable to see anything, this man was still infuriating.

Jie Linyuan took a deep breath, trying to restrain himself but couldn't help but grip his hand tighter, coldly laughing, "Wu Yin, I could crush you with one hand right now, you know?"

"What you can crush with one hand right now is Yang Mo, not me," Wu Yin gazed into the darkness, "Not me."

"Then just wait and see," Jie Linyuan didn't care about revealing his ambition, as everyone was well aware, "You better not fall into my hands in the future."

"But I'm in your hands right now," Wu Yin chuckled, lifting their clasped hands and shaking them, "What do you plan to do with me?"

“……”

Jie Linyuan's method was to deliberately lead Wu Yin on a roundabout path, causing him to bump his knee against the corner of a table.

Wu Yin: "..."

Rubbing his painfully aching knee, he asked, "Are you really the mechanical war god Z1932? Have you been possessed by the dimwitted brain of the Black Knight?"

Jie Linyuan also felt that his method of revenge was too childish. Deciding to quit while ahead, he carried Wu Yin outside to a random spot convenient for relieving himself.

The sky was high, densely studded with stars, and the brilliant Milky Way adorned the unpolluted night sky of three years, stunningly indescribable. Jie Linyuan, hands in his pockets, stood looking up at the starry sky for a while and couldn't help but remark with a sigh, "What a pity, you can't see this."

Wu Yin, frowning, complained, "Stop being poetic, can you take care of these mosquitoes first? I’m almost getting bitten into anemia."

“……”

Jie Linyuan, unable to stand this unromantic blind man, transformed his left hand into an electric mosquito swatter and dutifully went to swat mosquitoes around Wu Yin's buttocks, "Do you attract mutant species and mosquitoes alike? Reflect on why they’re only targeting you."

"What else? Should they go bite your motor oil?"

"My mechanical parts are powered by electricity, there’s no oil inside."

"Hmm," Wu Yin nodded noncommittally, "Very eco-friendly."

“……”

Amidst the crackling sound of burning, a sudden, incongruous chuckle emerged, "...pretty small."

"What?" Wu Yin asked, lifting his head in confusion.

"I said you... oh, never mind." Jie Linyuan suddenly realized that he was in Yang Mo's body, and mocking its diminutive size, akin to a finger-sized radish, wouldn't hurt Wu Yin in the slightest.

"Small? What's small?" Wu Yin persisted, unwilling to let it go.

"What else could be small?" Jie Linyuan, feeling a headache coming on, turned away. "Forget I said anything, it's not your body anyway."

"…Are you referring to this?" Wu Yin suddenly shook his member, his tone purely curious, "Is the size of this so important? I've seen men compare sizes before. The larger ones seemed proud, while the smaller ones were ashamed. Why is that? Is there something wrong with being small?"

Jie Linyuan turned around, giving Wu Yin a surprised look. "You don't know about this?"

It was strange enough not understanding what a rogue was, but to be completely ignorant in this matter too?

"I don't know." Wu Yin, hoping to finally get some clarity today, was somewhat excited. "Can you explain?"

"If this thing is small..." Jie Linyuan wouldn't really tell him the truth. Licking his canine tooth with his tongue, he mischievously said, "It can get blocked, and as you age, you could literally die from being unable to urinate."

"Is it that bad?"

Jie Linyuan stepped closer, smiling and softening his voice, coaxing, "How big was your original body, as small as Yang Mo’s? That might be problematic. Remember to seek early treatment when we find it."

Wu Yin asked concernedly, "How should it be treated?"

Jie Linyuan's eyes brimmed with amusement, yet his tone remained serious, "It needs to be cut off. By removing the blocked tip, the opening becomes larger and everything flows smoothly again."

"So that's how it is..." Wu Yin nodded in understanding, but then his expression turned utterly cold, his tone shifting, "Jie Linyuan, do you think I'm a fool?"

"If you don't know even this, what are you if not a fool?" Jie Linyuan scoffed, showing no shame at having his lie exposed. "Knowing everything else but utterly ignorant about sexual physiology, you truly are a peculiar subject."

"Is knowing all that important?" Wu Yin asked expressionlessly.

"Of course, it's important," Jie Linyuan replied. "For humans, love and sex are often inseparable. These instincts are fundamental to human nature. Your ignorance about sex proves you've never experienced love... makes sense, how could an unknown parasitic creature understand love?"

Wu Yin didn’t quite understand, but sensed it wasn't something pleasant, so he retorted, "So, do you have it?"

"Me? I don’t, probably because I'm a monster just like you," Jie Linyuan said self-deprecatingly, his gaze falling to his left arm. "I always rage at others for not treating me as human. But when I think about it, aren’t I just a monster with a heart intermixed with metal?"

As he was deep in his late-night brooding, he turned to find Wu Yin, who had somehow pulled up his trousers and was approaching. Wu Yin's unwashed hands from the bathroom were exploring his back.

"...What are you looking for?" As Wu Yin's hands moved lower, Jie Linyuan frowned and couldn’t help but grab his right wrist.

"How big are you?" Wu Yin asked earnestly. "Have you ever been blocked? I don't think I've ever seen you use the restroom. Have you been cut off already? Then how do you go now? Do you spit it out from your mouth?"

Jie Linyuan: "..."

Wu Yin frowned in disgust, "That's disgusting."

Jie Linyuan: "..."

"Didn’t you say you weren’t a fool, and you wouldn’t believe a single punctuation mark of what I said? What are you doing now? Where is that calculating brain of yours? Is it you who parasitized Yang Mo, or has Yang Mo parasitized you?"

Jie Linyuan, not wanting Wu Yin to touch him in private areas and unable to prove his innocence through words, could only endure being carried back to the small building under Wu Yin's pitying gaze, bearing the ignominy of being "small" and painfully bearing the naturally dark-minded individual.

Upon opening the door, he saw the Black Knight's humanoid brain struggling to control its body, preventing its canine brain from rushing out for a late-night snack. He and the Black Knight exchanged glances, both seeing exhaustion and weariness in each other's eyes.

……

The original arrangement of Jie Linyuan sleeping in the upstairs bedroom, Yang Mo on the sofa, and the Black Knight on the carpet had naturally become untenable after Wu Yin's return. Jie Linyuan voluntarily gave up the bedroom and moved downstairs to squeeze onto the sofa.

Life went on uneventfully day by day until the fourth night.

At 02:30, Wu Yin had already been asleep for six hours. The Black Knight, finding the carpet too warm, had shifted its sleeping spot to the cooler balcony, sprawled out on the marble tiles to dissipate heat. Jie Linyuan was the only one left in the living room. As a mechanical war god, electrical energy was a way for him to replenish his strength, so he didn't require much sleep.

After sunset, his time was his own to do as he pleased.

The first few days, he treasured this precious freedom. By the fourth day, bored, he lay playing the gaming console to pass the time. He even broke the Tetris record Wu Yin had taken five days to achieve, surpassing it by a full seven times, a feat Wu Yin probably couldn't surpass in his lifetime.

He was eagerly anticipating Wu Yin's expression when he saw the record in the morning…

It was bound to be priceless.

Suddenly, the quiet mountain night was disturbed by a series of chaotic footsteps, starkly out of place in the stillness. Jie Linyuan instantly hid the gaming console, extinguished the light in his left pupil, and, like a venomous snake, stealthily moved into the shadows, his arm transforming into a long knife and activating night vision.

The footsteps approached closer, not deviating from their path, stopping precisely outside the small building, clearly headed for them from the start.

A moment later, he heard a woman's voice: "Is anyone there? Is someone inside?"

Her voice was anxious, panicky, and fragile, accompanied by the faint sobs of a little girl.

"I just saw a light on, please, help us…" The woman's voice was weak but audible in the quiet night, Jie Linyuan could hear her clearly from inside, "We haven’t been bitten, please, shelter us for a day."

Soon, the little girl also spoke, her childlike voice filled with tears and pleading, "Big brother, big sister, I'm so scared, please open the door, my mom and I are good people."

Jie Linyuan wasn’t in the house at that moment. Before the pair outside had spoken, he had climbed to the rooftop through a second-floor window, agile and stealthy like a predator in the night, observing from above the woman and child calling at the gate.

Receiving no response from inside for a long time, the woman didn't give up. While calling for help, she tried to shake and damage the locked gate, attempting to lift her daughter over the outside fence to get inside and help her open the door.

Just then, the lights inside the first floor suddenly came back on. The flickering candlelight moved closer, and the door was carefully opened, revealing a gentle yet wary handsome face with silver hair cascading over his shoulders. In the moonlit and star-scarce night, he resembled another crescent moon descended to earth.

He had a pair of distinctly non-human red pupils, now slightly widened, making him look like a large, muscular but timid rabbit, "You all..."

Overjoyed, the woman quickly set her daughter down and knelt with hands clasped together: "Kind soul, please save us. My daughter and I have nowhere to go. Our shelter was destroyed by a zombie horde, her father was bitten, and I had to take her to find a shelter, but we got lost. It’s almost dawn, and it's too dangerous outside, please let us stay for just one day, and we will leave as soon as it gets dark tomorrow..."

Xie Linyuan frowned slightly, opening the door fully, looking outside at the ragged mother and daughter with hesitation and concern, "Are you...sure you haven't been bitten?"

"Really, we haven't!" As the woman began to undress to prove it, Xie Linyuan quickly blushed and stopped her, "No need!... Come in." Perhaps afraid of appearing too mild-mannered, he quickly added with a fiercer tone: "I have a gun. If you turn into the contaminated, I won’t hesitate."

……

Wu Yin woke to a soft murmur of conversation, slowly lifting his eyelids to a blur of darkness.

Tonight's moon was bright and clear, illuminating the room through wide-open curtains, casting a soft, misty glow on every piece of furniture.

The voices became clearer as Wu Yin approached the door, step by step.

He recognized Xie Linyuan’s voice, familiarly gentle and humble, with a soft smile, a manner he hadn't used since leaving the Beacon Shelter.

The moment he pushed open the bedroom door, Wu Yin also heard the crisp sound of a porcelain bowl being set on the coffee table: "This is mung bean soup I've made. You all must be tired, take your time, there’s more if it’s not enough."