The Parasite and the Host

“I don’t like your mother,” Zhuo said bluntly.

He sat by the edge of the unlit high school playground, looking utterly dejected. He spoke to the student, Cheng Yu, in a voice so low that no one else in the yard could hear him.

But the moment Cheng Yu heard the words “your mother,” her entire body tensed. Knowing her own mother’s extreme, neurotic personality all too well, she asked in surprise, “Did my mom cause you trouble, Teacher Zhuo?”

“Not yet. She called Chen Jiao and told me not to buy you any more of those custom phone cases and merchandise,” Zhuo snorted, his tail-less body shifting. Before Cheng Yu could respond, he added arrogantly, “But I’ll still bring them.”

Cheng Yu: “…”

“You… you’d better not bring them,” Cheng Yu said, biting her lip. “My mom… she might come directly to the school to confront you.”

“I’m not afraid of her,” Zhuo said, crossing his arms. “I’m an adult, and I’m very strong. If she wants to fight, she’ll have to reason with my fists first.”

Zhuo’s human appearance was highly intimidating; even without his horns and tail, his sharp, aggressively handsome features made him look anything but gentle. His two-meter-plus height and massive, broad-shouldered frame meant that anyone, man or woman, would have to think twice before throwing a tantrum in front of him.

He didn’t need to worry about other humans going crazy; rather, others had to worry about his volatile mood.

Cheng Yu looked up at his shoulders in awe. “I envy you so much, Teacher. I wish I could grow as tall and strong as you.”

“Even if you grew as tall as me, your mother would still control you,” Zhuo shrugged, crushing her delusion. “She’s afraid of strong strangers, yes. But she will never be afraid of you—because she raised you from a helpless child. In her mind, she owns you.”

“That’s true too,” Cheng Yu sighed, sinking back into her usual gloom.

“My parents never cared about me,” Zhuo noted.

Cheng Yu looked at him, surprised.

Zhuo continued, “Mainly because I don’t have parents. I’m an orphan.”

Cheng Yu: “…” She didn’t know how to respond to that boast.

Zhuo leaned closer, asking her, “Do you want to be an orphan too? I can arrange it.”

Cheng Yu quickly shook her head in panic. “No! My mom’s personality is a bit strange, but she’s fine in other ways. Having parents is still better than being alone.”

“I heard you had a severe case of appendicitis,” Zhuo changed the subject. “But you didn’t have the surgery?”

“I’ll have it during winter break,” Cheng Yu scratched her head. “I went to the hospital a bit late. There was severe abdominal edema from the inflammation, so the doctor said it was too risky to operate and postponed the surgery for three months.”

“I see.” Zhuo stared at her.

He thought Cheng Yu was really, incredibly strange. Even after all that neglect, she still felt having parents was a good thing?

Zhuo knew far more about Cheng Yu’s life than she imagined, having read her file and memories. According to Chen Jiao’s recollection of the real-world event, during Cheng Yu’s critical hospitalization for the appendix, her mother had been forced to take leave to visit her. But her mother had been even more distraught and hysterical than the sick girl, crying and publicly scolding her on the ward for being “inconsiderate” and “ruining her budget” by getting sick before exams. When Chen Jiao had called to check in, she could hear the mother shrieking at the weeping girl in the background.

Even after experiencing that level of abuse, she still thinks having parents is better?

Zhuo didn’t understand the human mind, but he thought Cheng Yu must have a severe masochistic streak. “Speaking of which… back in our orphanage, there was an older sister who also had a child.”

“Huh? An older sister from your orphanage? Older than you, Teacher?”

“Yeah. But she eventually committed suicide,” Zhuo nodded.

Cheng Yu was shocked. “Suicide?!”

“Yeah. And she also killed her child before she did it,” Zhuo nodded.

Then, he calmly recounted Cheng Yu’s exact future—the two divorces, the crushing depression, the ultimate murder-suicide—simply replacing the protagonist of the story with his “orphan sister.” After finishing the grim tale, he looked at the stunned, pale face of the girl. “I don’t really understand human girls. What do you think she was thinking before she did it?”

Cheng Yu stammered for a long time, her hands trembling, before finally concluding: “If only… if only that sister had loving parents who could have guided her through her divorces.”

Zhuo: “…”

But that “sister” did have parents who guided her. They were the ones who drove her to the ledge.

“Even though my mom’s personality is weird, she would never let something so terrible happen to me,” Cheng Yu whispered, lowering her head. “Having parents is much better. At least they can help keep an eye on things when you’re struggling.”

Zhuo wanted to speak, to yell the truth at her, but he opened his mouth and froze, unable to say anything. Under the contract ring’s influence, he couldn’t reveal her future directly. He could only force a fake, stiff smile. “What you said… makes some sense.”

But in the end, the one whose personality collapses and dies is you.

“So I don’t understand,” Zhuo grumbled, lying flat across Yuan Anqing’s desk in the faculty office. “I absolutely hate how she’s in denial. She has this inexplicable, arrogant sense of superiority, as if having abusive parents puts her on a higher social plane than us orphans.”

But thinking about the tragic student’s future, Zhuo couldn’t stay angry. He just felt a profound sense of absurdity.

“Her parents themselves aren’t mature enough,” Yuan Anqing said, writing on his lesson plan. “The cycle of generational trauma is complicated.”

“Don’t make excuses for her parents, Savior,” Zhuo reached out and poked Yuan Anqing’s brow. “Don’t you think their behavior is too much?”

“What?”

“Cheng Yu has absolutely no choice but to trust those parents,” Zhuo sighed lightly. “She still thinks they’ll save her and help her in the future, but they don’t actually care about her as an individual at all. They just care about her grades.”

“Even so, you cannot arbitrarily decide to kill her parents, Zhuo,” Chen Jiao interjected from her desk, her voice cold.

“Why not?!” Zhuo was deeply dissatisfied. “You already know how this ends! It’s the most efficient solution!”

“Because she has to stand up on her own by thinking clearly and breaking the bond herself. You’re just an outside variable,” Chen Jiao frowned. “You can’t physically help her. You need to let her face her reality and think through the consequences on her own. You cannot play the role of the Savior yourself, Zhuo. You are not a Savior.”

Zhuo’s brow furrowed. “But you and Yuan Anqing are.”

“Precisely because we are Saviors, we know our limits,” Chen Jiao said. “Yuan Anqing and I can neutralize the corruption, but we are not Cheng Yu. We cannot live her life for her.”

“Don’t be angry,” Yuan Anqing reached out and gently stroked Zhuo’s head, smoothing his hair. “This matter has nothing to do with you personally. We can only do our best in this simulation and see if we can help her mind-world find a better outcome.”

“Just let me kill her parents!” Zhuo huffed.

“Zhuo, let me ask you a question,” Chen Jiao said, her tone calm as she walked over to their desks. “If one day, Yuan Anqing suddenly became cold and indifferent to you… if no matter how much you cried, begged, and threw tantrums, he refused to look at you… and if, besides that, his very presence drained your power, making you suffer agonizing neural pain every single day…”

Zhuo went rigid.

Chen Jiao continued, her eyes locking onto his. “And if I then gave you a physical weapon and a perfect chance to kill Yuan Anqing to free yourself… would you do it immediately?”

Zhuo was completely, utterly speechless. His red eyes widened in shock, his mouth opening but no sound coming out.

“Honestly, your relationship with Yuan Anqing isn’t exactly ‘healthy’ or normal,” Chen Jiao said, looking at the silent Savior. “You two are practically a symbiotic unit.”

Yuan Anqing knew she was right. His relationship with Zhuo was highly abnormal. They had become each other’s psychic stabilizers—like two people walking a tightrope over an infinite void, relying entirely on the other’s presence to move forward without falling into the “nothingness.”

This level of codependency was far deeper and more dangerous than any ordinary human romance. It was as if, from the very first day, they had bet their entire existences on each other.

If Yuan Anqing’s temperament ever changed drastically, Zhuo’s first instinct wouldn’t be to kill him to save himself; he would assume Yuan Anqing was sick and desperately try to fix him, even if it destroyed his own body. Even if someone told Zhuo, “Yuan Anqing is beyond saving; kill him to gain your freedom,” Zhuo would only assume the messenger was an enemy trying to separate them.

“That’s how humans are with their parents,” Chen Jiao said. “If you rashly kill the child’s parents in this dream, she won’t have a better life. She will feel lost, blame herself for their deaths, and assume she was punished for her academic failures. Under the weight of that guilt, she still won’t survive.”

“I hate human logic,” Zhuo muttered. “This isn’t allowed, that isn’t allowed. How is she supposed to get better, then? Might as well just let her mutate and die.”

“Actually, what you did earlier—exposing her future under the guise of an ‘old orphan sister’ story—counts as a successful intervention,” Yuan Anqing said, continuing to stroke the back of Zhuo’s head. “Many subtle, shared experiences can change a teenager’s worldview over time. Don’t forget, personality is shaped by everything around us.”

Zhuo didn’t like the slow approach. He was an apex predator; he preferred straightforward, violent solutions. If not for Yuan Anqing’s moral boundaries, he would have already devoured the entire school and the government building.

But what Chen Jiao said had a bit of truth. If something went wrong with Yuan Anqing, Zhuo really wouldn’t know how to survive.

Yuan Anqing said softly, “You’re actually much kinder than me, Zhuo.”

“Don’t gross me out, Savior,” Zhuo clicked his tongue, his face turning pink. He didn’t want to be called kind. If he weren’t personally involved with Yuan, he wouldn’t care about some human kid’s life.

But despite his complaints, Zhuo still moved his head and rested it comfortably on Yuan Anqing’s lap.

“So, when Cheng Yu’s parents come to the school later, will you still meet with them?” Chen Jiao asked Zhuo.

Zhuo quickly sat up, accidentally hitting his head on the wooden desk, but he ignored the bump. “Of course I’ll see them! Why wouldn’t I?! They publicly slandered my professional integrity as an educator!”

Yuan Anqing quickly reached out to steady the shaking desk. He looked at Chen Jiao. “I’ll see them too. I want to see what they look like.”

Right now, the physical world before his eyes was still highly unstable. The people’s heads in the hallway were still glitching into Chen Jiao’s face. Yuan Anqing could only distinguish individuals by their clothing, their shoes, or their height. He was curious whether the parents outside the school grounds would also suffer from this faceless condition.

As it turned out, they did.

When Chen Jiao introduced Cheng Yu’s parents to them in the office, Yuan Anqing saw… two shorter, plumper versions of Chen Jiao.

Zhuo leaned close to his ear, his tail-less body tensing, and whispered, “They really look like a married couple, Savior.” In his eyes, both parents had the exact same single eyelids, small noses, thin lips, and identical jawlines. They looked like siblings.

Yuan Anqing, staring at the two plump, identical Chen Jiaos, silently nodded. “They do look like a couple.”

Cheng Yu’s parents were startled when they saw Zhuo. After all, it was rare to see a human over two meters tall in real life—especially one as aggressively muscular as the PE teacher.

“This is Teacher Zhuo,” Chen Jiao pointed at him. “If you have any questions regarding his interactions with your daughter, you can ask him now.”

Zhuo tried his best to maintain a cold, professional expression, showing no emotion. He wasn’t truly angry anymore; Yuan Anqing had just whispered to him that the parents currently looked like cloned versions of the math teacher, and Zhuo was struggling not to laugh.

But he managed to furrow his brow, looking incredibly fierce. “How could you doubt my professional ethics as an educator? I swear on my honor I have never been alone with Cheng Yu, and I have never engaged in any inappropriate behavior. You can check the school’s surveillance if you don’t believe me!”

“Or you can call the police directly!” Zhuo straightened his massive neck. “Anyway, I’m confident my record is clean!”

“Alright, alright,” Yuan Anqing quickly stepped in, pulling Zhuo’s arm back before the monster could loom over them. “It’s normal for the parents of a female student to have such protective concerns. Don’t act like you’re about to start a brawl.”

“But they can’t just slander my name!” Zhuo wailed, his eyes instantly brimming with heavy tears.

Yuan Anqing and Chen Jiao: “…”

He was getting entirely too good at crying on command.

“Teacher Yuan, please take Teacher Zhuo out of the office for a moment to calm down,” Chen Jiao sighed helplessly, then turned to face the stunned parents. “Now, Ms. Yu, let’s talk about your daughter’s dormitory arrangements. Your information regarding the gifts came from the dorm supervisor, correct?”

Cheng Yu’s parents were flustered, still reeling from the shock of the giant PE teacher bursting into tears.

Chen Jiao continued, “I asked Cheng Yu’s homeroom teacher from her first year. Back then, you used personal connections to squeeze her into a senior dormitory, didn’t you? That is not good for her social development.”

“The seniors have their own established social circles. They won’t necessarily help Cheng Yu just because they share a room,” Chen Jiao handed cups of hot tea to the parents. “This isolation won’t positively affect her academic performance.”

Chen Jiao felt exhausted; she had heard the parents’ defensive excuses too many times. But before she could continue, Zhuo couldn’t hold back his mouth. He lifted his head from Yuan Anqing’s shoulder, glaring at the mother. “And what else is she supposed to do during her study breaks? She needs a release!”

“She’s in her sophomore year. She has no time for releases,” the mother snapped.

“You probably said the exact same thing during her freshman year,” Zhuo’s tone was too provocative, dripping with disdain. The mother’s face instantly darkened.

Yuan Anqing tugged at Zhuo’s sleeve, lowering his voice. “Zhuo, I promised you could defend yourself, but you cannot actively provoke them.”

“I’m not provoking! I’m just asking a logical question!” Zhuo retorted. “I didn’t curse at her. Does asking a question count as a threat?”

“…No, but…” Yuan Anqing wanted to say that Zhuo’s massive size and aggressive tone made even his questions sound like physical threats, rendering the parents completely unreceptive to advice.

But before Yuan Anqing could finish, Cheng Yu’s mother stood up, slamming her hand on the desk. “What good does it do you if my daughter’s grades drop, Teacher Zhuo?! Fine! You bring this up now. Today, I must get to the bottom of why you are grooming my daughter with gifts!”

The situation instantly spiraled out of control.

Zhuo began to argue with the couple alone, completely bypassing the Saviors. He tried to reason loudly, but the parents only kept repeating, “What is your ulterior motive with our daughter?!”

Finally, when Zhuo’s temper snapped and he growled, “She will end up dying at your hands anyway!” the father lost his mind and threw a physical punch at Zhuo’s face.

They probably thought Zhuo’s tears and verbal back-and-forth meant he was physically weak. But the second the father’s fist connected with Zhuo’s cheek, Zhuo’s eyes went pure red. He almost beat the man to death in immediate retaliation.

Zhuo’s monstrous attacks were entirely egalitarian. Unlike human gangsters who made up complex rules to justify their violence, Zhuo would go for the kill against anyone who physically provoked him—man, woman, or child.

So when Cheng Yu’s mother shrieked, tried to protect her husband, and lunged to slap Zhuo, she instantly became his next target.

Chen Jiao’s mouth twitched as she watched the room dissolve into a bloodbath. She looked at Yuan Anqing, who was calmly sipping his tea. “Your boyfriend… he even hits women.”

“He also eats women,” Yuan Anqing added. “If not for my moral influence causing him to develop a sense of boundaries, you yourself would have been on his menu on day one.”

“Fair point,” Chen Jiao found the logic oddly comforting. “After he’s finished beating them to death, will you use your golden gaze to erase their memories?”

“Mm.” Yuan Anqing covered his forehead and let out a long, weary sigh.

Across the room, Zhuo had beaten the parents bloody. As he raised his massive fist to deliver the final blow, sticky red blood splattered across the office floor and walls. “You don’t understand human language! You are far more monstrous than I am! Pah!”

Yuan Anqing stepped forward, catching Zhuo’s wrist before he could crush the father’s skull. “Alright, Zhuo. No more impulsive actions.”

“But if you reverse the time, they won’t learn their lesson!” Zhuo complained, his chest heaving.

“This kind of physical lesson isn’t worth them learning. If they remember this, they’ll call the police, and the police will arrest you,” Yuan Anqing said. He reached out and placed his hand on the mother’s head.

Instantly, the golden light in his eyes flared. The bloody wounds on the parents’ faces rapidly closed, the shattered bones aligned, and the blood on the walls vanished into thin air.

Time in the office rewound to the moment they had first entered.

Cheng Yu’s parents sat primly before Chen Jiao’s desk once more, while Yuan Anqing comforted the “crying” Zhuo.

“Huh?!” Yuan Anqing suddenly stared at the desks, stunned.

There were now… three identical Chen Jiaos in the room?

“What’s wrong?” Zhuo looked at him, confused. Clearly, in the monster’s eyes, the room looked perfectly normal.

“Three Chen Jiaos. Completely identical,” Yuan Anqing lowered his voice, his golden eyes narrowing. “They even sound the same.”

Both Cheng Yu’s mother and father had completely lost their distinct physical features, turning into exact copies of the math teacher.

“Are you being affected by the time reversal?” Zhuo asked. “Is your mind-world collapsing?”

“I… I don’t know.” Yuan Anqing felt a profound sense of unease. “I am certain my mind is stable. There is no active illusion affecting me.”

Zhuo was even more confused, but he knew one thing: “If you think there’s no outside illusion, you should trust your own intuition.” Yuan Anqing possessed the strongest mental power in the world; no anomaly could impose a fake reality on him.

Yuan Anqing watched the three Chen Jiaos argue with each other. For a moment, a terrifying realization dawned on him. “If my perception is absolute… then what if what I’m seeing is the actual reality of this place?”

“What reality?”

“Like… Chen Jiao is watching coldly as Chen Jiao kills Chen Jiao,” Yuan Anqing explained.

His words were convoluted, but Zhuo understood immediately. “You mean… in Chen Jiao’s mind-world, there are no other people at all? It’s only Chen Jiao’s own memories colliding with her?”

Yuan Anqing looked out the office window. He stared at the pine bushes in the courtyard. He willed the time reversal to start again.

Chen Jiao herself was unaffected by the time loop, so she looked at Yuan Anqing in irritation. “Are you playing around with your powers, Mr. Savior?”

“I am not playing,” Yuan Anqing looked out the window again.

Sure enough, the pine trees were gone. In their place stood a dozen identical copies of Chen Jiao, standing in the garden staring back at the window.

Yuan Anqing: “…”

He pressed his temples, trying to clear his mind of the cosmic horror.

When he looked up at the sky, the clouds were gone. The sky was densely covered with thousands of unblinking, dark eyes, all observing the world of Chen Jiaos below.

Zhuo and Chen Jiao still didn’t notice any of this; they just looked at Yuan Anqing’s pale face with concern.

“Chen Jiao,” Yuan Anqing said, his voice hollow. “Your world only has yourself in it. Those plants, those students, those parents… they are all you. You are everyone. You occupy every single ecological niche of this universe.”

Chen Jiao didn’t understand the words, but she felt something heavy and cold lightly tap her heart.

She looked again at the woman playing Cheng Yu’s mother. For a fleeting instant, Chen Jiao felt she saw through her—no, she felt she became her.

Born as the second child in a poor family, with an older sister and a younger brother. Almost no one noticed her. She finally had the advantage of being excellent at math, but her family made her attend a cheap vocational school to save money for her untalented brother’s tuition. Then graduation, job assignment, forced marriage.

Looking back, her sister and brother both fared better than she did. Everyone looked at her with pity.

“She was so good at math, such a pity.”
“If not for her family…”
“I thought she’d be the most successful of the siblings…”
“The husband she married is useless, always loafing around.”

Why?! Why had she been sacrificed?!

When she opened her eyes again, her teenage daughter was holding an acceptance letter to a key high school, smiling at her. That proud feeling was so familiar; she had smiled like that too, once thinking her own future was full of hope.

She suddenly felt she still had a future—that heaven had given her a second chance through her daughter.

“What are you smiling about?” she had asked the girl coldly. “What rank will that grade get you in a key school? It’s nothing to be proud of.”

She had to seize this second chance. Her daughter could not fail like she did.

Chen Jiao took a deep, shuddering breath and looked at the man playing Cheng Yu’s father.

In that instant, she was pulled into his consciousness.

She became a small, weak man—a man who could never meet the cultural standard of ‘manliness.’ He was only 165 cm tall, overweight, and physically weak. Except for his own doting parents, no one thought much of him. This invisible social pressure constantly eroded his self-esteem. While other men flaunted their achievements, he was always the wallflower, the clown. To gain respect, he had to become a ‘successful businessman.’ He tried, but he never had the luck, so he muddled through life. He married not out of love, but because it was time. He didn’t know how he had survived.

As for his daughter, of course he cared about her, but he didn’t know how to interact with her, so he continued to hide behind his failed business dealings.

Chen Jiao withdrew her consciousness, her face pale. She was quiet for a long time.

The mother-avatar kept chattering: “Ms. Chen, our Cheng Yu’s math grades have dropped too much. Has she not been paying attention in class?”

“It’s okay. High school math is inherently difficult,” Chen Jiao said, her voice soft and trembling.

“But her class ranking has fallen!” the mother said anxiously.

“Ms. Yu… this is not Cheng Yu’s problem,” Chen Jiao looked up, her empty eyes meeting the mother’s. At that moment, Yuan Anqing felt his reality-bending power bounce back. The memory reversal he controlled was now firmly seized by Chen Jiao’s own Awakening mind.

“She is just your daughter…” Chen Jiao stared hard at the mother. “Can you actually see yourself in her? Can you really?”

“If you can see her, then why are you being so cruel to yourself?”

Personality is shaped by environment, and the environment is shaped by those who inhabit it. Countless ‘you’s make up ‘me,’ and countless ‘me’s also make up ‘you.’

“You can see it,” Chen Jiao said seriously. “Both of you can see.”

They could see their child’s suffering. They just refused to look, because they had projected their own failed desires onto ‘another self.’ A younger, more hopeful self.

In the end, the children who remained trapped in the school became hosts. They could not expel the parental parasites, and the parasites could not give them the love they wanted. So the children withered, with no outlet for their grief, forced to digest the trauma themselves.

The most vicious, most terrifying revenge they could think of to punish the parasites… was to kill the parasites’ only hope: themselves.

And now, both the parasite and the host were Chen Jiao herself.

“This entire world evolved from you!” Yuan Anqing realized. “It truly existed once, but now, this world only has you left.”

Every blade of grass, every living student, was a fragment of Chen Jiao.

Yuan Anqing saw a thick, black mist of resentment beginning to emerge from Chen Jiao’s body. He shouted, “Zhuo!”

Zhuo stepped forward instantly, his massive arms pinning Chen Jiao’s shoulders. “What are you doing?!”

“I want to kill the unclean them!” Chen Jiao shrieked, her voice warping. “I want to kill the unclean me!”

Chen Jiao’s eyes turned pitch-black—the exact same empty blackness Yuan Anqing had seen during his Awakening. But now, her blackness was no longer dead; it was restless, frantic, wanting to devour her own mind-palace, to purge all the filth of her past.

“Calm down! You’re being influenced by the Savior remains!” Yuan Anqing walked over and grabbed the black threads of resentment wrapping around her. “Your decision to destroy yourself is flawed!”

“If they are all me,” Chen Jiao lifted her head, staring intently at him with her empty eyes, “then why did I manifest such an imperfect, miserable world to begin with?!”

Yuan Anqing couldn’t answer.

“And what about you, Yuan Anqing? Is your world of Earth also a fake, comfortable prison?” Chen Jiao asked.

Yuan Anqing shook his head. “You and I are in the same situation. But I don’t think my world is fake. My feelings for Zhuo are real.”

“What’s the point of such a world endlessly progressing if it’s just a loop?” Chen Jiao pressed, her mind dissolving.

“What if… one day you remember everything?” Yuan Anqing asked.

Chen Jiao froze. Zhuo’s grip on her shoulders loosened.

“One day you’ll remember that you are Cheng Yu, you are Cheng Yu’s mother, you are her father, and you are every single child you have ever taught. You are also every famous person you’ve only read about in history books,” Yuan Anqing said, the cosmic truth of the Savior system finally aligning in his mind. “At some point, you’ll remember that you are the grass, and the sheep that eats the grass; you are the lion that preys on the sheep, and the hyena that competes with the lion for territory.”

Yuan Anqing gently pressed his temple. “You created civilization, and you plundered and destroyed civilization.”

“Only by being everything can you be worthy of the title Savior…” As he spoke, Yuan Anqing silently looked at his own palm.

“What about this person standing before me, then?” Chen Jiao asked, pointing her skeletal finger at Zhuo. “What about this individual?”

“You can try countless times to save her, but her story has already ended in the physical world,” Yuan Anqing said. “You can rewind time in your mind a million times and try to save her from her mother.”

“But you know very well that you’re only saving yourself,” Yuan Anqing said calmly. “Just as her existence is part of your self-perfection. Because she is you.”

“I don’t like this philosophy,” Zhuo looked at Yuan Anqing, his tail-less body tensing. “Do you mean that one day you’ll suddenly become a collective of everyone and stop liking me?”

“Not a collective of everyone. But everyone will eventually belong to my ‘I,'” Yuan Anqing explained.

Chen Jiao wanted to violently attack Yuan Anqing’s mind, but Zhuo held her back with a vice-like grip. “Don’t hit him, old lady! I still have questions!”

“But if all those memories crowd together into your head, will you forget me?” Zhuo looked at Yuan Anqing, his red eyes wide and pitiful.

“I…” Yuan Anqing didn’t know how to answer. He hadn’t reached that advanced state of Awakening yet, and he didn’t know what he would become.

“I don’t think so,” a strange, gentle voice suddenly echoed. The voice was neither male nor female, sounding incredibly ancient.

Then, a translucent, faceless humanoid being appeared among them in the faculty office.

“It’s him,” Yuan Anqing pointed at the translucent form. “When you fell into the dream after eating the Savior meat, Zhuo, he led me in to save you.”

The translucent being waved cheerfully. “Hello, everyone.”

“He says I dream of him every night,” Yuan Anqing added.

“That’s right. Still do. Every night, you chat with me for a while before having other dreams, Yuan Anqing. You just don’t remember when you wake up.”

Zhuo became instantly alert, growling protectively at the translucent figure. “Get away from him!”

“It’s not that I’m idle and want to chat with your Savior every night, little monster. Your Savior’s soul attracted me,” the being said.

Chen Jiao, who had been on the verge of a violent, apocalyptic rage, looked at the translucent man, then at Zhuo who had her pinned. “Your relationships are incredibly complicated.”

“They’re not complicated,” the translucent figure approached Chen Jiao’s desk. “I am closely connected to all of you.”

“I am the Previous Savior.”

“Previous?” Chen Jiao asked.

“Yes. Not the two who became meat cups, nor Zhuo’s biological progenitors,” the translucent figure looked at Zhuo.

Zhuo tensed up even more, his scales flaring. It wasn’t that he thought Yuan Anqing had an ambiguous relationship with this faceless guy; he believed Yuan Anqing couldn’t possibly like someone without a face. He was tense purely because he sensed the absolute, divine threat from this being. “I don’t care which generation you are! You’re supposed to be dead!”

“I am indeed dead, just not fully decayed yet,” the translucent figure smiled. “Don’t mind me for now.”

He looked at Zhuo. “I can assure you, little monster: no matter what your Savior becomes, no matter how many souls he integrates, he will still be your Savior. And he will still love you.”

Zhuo’s body instantly relaxed, his tail-less hips twitching. A wide, joyful smile reappeared on his face. “Really?! That’s great!” He suddenly decided this faceless entity was his new best friend.

Chen Jiao, who had been on the verge of destroying her own mind-world, silently covered her face in second-hand embarrassment.

What a completely brainwashed, love-struck display, she thought.