Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Whether that was praise or sarcasm, I accepted it with perfect composure.

When I got back to the apartment and stepped out of the elevator, I saw a familiar figure standing outside my door.

It was the woman with the thick bangs.

In the spirit of friendliness, I greeted her warmly. “Ma’am, have you eaten?”

Just like the first time we met, she didn’t say a word. Her mouth, however, kept splitting wider and wider, flinging thick drool everywhere. “Hss… hss…”

I was just about to express some concern when two lines of bullet comments zipped through the air.

[Long Live Lord Ke] Streamer, watch out! This woman is hrrkzzzss!

[Milk Boiled Loli] How are you still standing there, streamer?! Hurry up and grrkthmp-bee-aow!

???

Faced with subtitles full of gibberish, I was completely lost.

By now, the woman’s mouth had split so wide it looked like her jaw was about to dislocate. I quickly supported that creaking chin of hers and, with one firm push, helped her close it.

“I know you’re deaf and mute. If you can’t talk, then let’s not force it. No rush, okay?”

With that, while the elevator was still open, I shoved her right in. “Ma’am, we’ll chat next time!”

The elevator doors closed, and only then did I let out a breath of relief.

Back in my room, I tried communicating with the other side. “Just now… were you talking to me?”

[It’s Weige Ya] Yes! You were driving us crazy!

[Milk Boiled Loli] That woman is dangerous! She’s actually the fmm lddr in the instance!

Line after line of garbled text made my head spin, but with the context, I finally understood this time.

The subtitles had some kind of censoring function.

For now, all I could do was sigh helplessly. “Stop going blah-blah-blah. Anything involving the instance plot turns into gibberish.”

“Also, I’m not a player.”

The air fell silent.

Before long, the dead-still bullet comments erupted like a tidal wave.

[Long Live Lord Ke] Are you kidding me? If a human in a monster instance isn’t a player, what else could they be, an NPC?!

[Milk Boiled Loli] Wake up, streamer! This isn’t a female-targeted novel!

[Open with One Punch] My piss is yellow. Let me spray her awake!

“…”

While I was being forcibly educated by the viewers in the livestream room, elsewhere, the woman who had been shut in the elevator had already left the staff apartment building.

On the road, she passed a slow-moving patient.

The instant they brushed shoulders, the patient vanished. For a split second, their hands and feet flashed deep inside that wide-open throat.

Compared to before, the only difference in the woman was that her belly had swollen a little.

After that, she continued forward.

She passed the children’s apartment building, the rehabilitation center, and the security office before arriving at the administration building in the very center.

On the brightly lit top floor, Pei Yu had a pair of gold-rimmed glasses perched on his nose and was looking down at a newspaper. Beside him, an old-fashioned gramophone turned with a soft rustle, giving the room an air of elegance and worldly charm.

The woman entered the room, and her lower half immediately coiled onto the floor as if it had lost all support, leaving only her upper body still upright.

Yet Pei Yu, at this moment, was nothing like his usual gentle self. His long, narrow eyes seemed to hold ghostly flames, flickering in and out, dim and eerie. “I’ve told you many times. You are not allowed to eat your colleagues.”

“Hss… hss! Hss hss!”

The woman straightened her upper body, as though conveying some kind of anger.

Her gaze shifted toward a bookshelf not far away. There, a “rose” was being carefully protected under a glass bottle, visibly on the verge of withering.

Wary of something, she lowered her voice a great deal.

“Hss… hss! Hss, hss hss hss.”

The man’s expression eased slightly. “You’re saying that’s just a China rose?”

“No. It’s a rose.”

After being refuted, the woman became like a wet, slimy slug clinging to the aquarium. Before she could hiss again, the man removed his glasses, and his entire aura changed instantly.

“Why must she be assimilated?”

“I think she’s quite charming as she is.”

“You won’t accept that? Then go back.”

Unwilling to give in, the thing opposite him melted completely into a slug.

Through that translucent membrane, the human figure it had swallowed earlier could be seen clearly. It-no, perhaps “They”-clearly possessed intelligence and seemed to be brewing an attack.

In the end, however, They retreated in hesitation.

That twisted torso crawled into the aquarium and slowly sank into it, never emerging again.

Only after the other party had completely disappeared did Pei Yu stand. He carefully took down that “rose,” then opened the door behind the bookshelf and walked down a long flight of stairs.

On either side of the narrow staircase was seawater that was both dazzlingly colorful and pitch-black.

Ever since he had come to this place, time had grown very long and very slow. He had nearly grown so weary of it that he wanted to leave. Yet this rose had added a little color to this place.

Now, as he lowered his head and looked at that vivid, flaunting blossom, he again recalled the tender, pitying feeling that had swayed in him for that single instant back then.

Just like the owner of this flower, it was red.

“Life is so precious,” he murmured softly, using that strange seawater to carefully moisten the soil inside the bottle.

“You mustn’t wither…”