Jiang Yue continued walking forward and eventually spotted a living rat at the outer edge of the grove.
This was highly unusual, could someone have been laying rat poison in the grove?
She examined the corpses of the dead rats and found no signs of poisoning; their internal organs were intact, and they had not died from external injuries.
If anything had happened in this little grove recently, it was probably just that she had caught a rat for an experiment yesterday.
Jiang Yue came to a halt.
Could it be the problem with the two eyeballs?
But she had only used one rat for the experiment yesterday.
She ran out of the military academy, opened her terminal for navigation, and went to the market to buy a small yellow croaker.
She carried the fish to the park near the market. It was 5:30, and because the deep autumn weather was cold, there were very few people in the park.
She slipped deep into the woods and took the eyeballs out of the freezer box.
“Only parasitize, don’t devour immediately.”
The eyeballs obediently nodded and, obediently, extended a tendril to pierce the body of the small yellow croaker.
Unlike the big rats, the small yellow croakers could only hold out for three minutes.
After three minutes, an entire bucket of small yellow croakers was floating belly-up.
There were nineteen croakers in total, and only two had been parasitized by the eyeballs, yet all of them had mysteriously died.
Jiang Yue went back to the market and bought two buckets of small loaches. She carried the buckets back to the park, placed them a meter apart, and put the eyeballs into one of the buckets.
The other small bucket was tightly sealed, so even if the eyeballs released toxins while parasitizing, the toxins couldn’t enter this bucket.
The loaches that were parasitized didn’t survive even three minutes, and the entire bucket of loaches died mysteriously.
The most chilling part was that the bucket without the eyeballs also had all its loaches die.
The parasitized fish acted as a vector, the eyeballs, using a method Jiang Yue didn’t understand, had infected the other fish remotely.
The big mice lasted one minute longer than the small yellow croakers, and the yellow croakers held out about twenty seconds longer than the loaches.
This indicated that the stronger the organism, the longer it could endure.
Jiang Yue thought of her drowsy roommates, could the eyeballs have used her as a vector to infect them?
No, Jiang Yue slapped her forehead as her brain raced.
First, she hadn’t been infected by the eyeballs, only infected organisms could serve as vectors for transmission.
Second, when she slept, she always adjusted the freezer box to the appropriate temperature and held it in her hand. The eyeballs couldn’t have escaped, and even if they had, there was no way they could have done so without alerting her.
Could it be that her roommates were just unusually sleepy? After all, they were all flesh-and-blood humans; it was normal to experience fatigue.
No!
She had forgotten about Xiang Sui!
All this time, she had been overlooking something crucial!
If there were eyeballs inside her body, why couldn’t there be eyeballs inside someone else’s body?
Jiang Yue stomped her foot in alarm and quickly sent a communication request to Xiang Sui.
Xiang Sui didn’t answer. Jiang Yue tried five times, each second filling her with anxious dread. It wasn’t until the seventh attempt that Xiang Sui finally picked up.
Xiang Sui’s drowsy face appeared on the 3D screen, and he shouted in a low-pressure, irritated voice: “Jiang Yue, are you crazy? Sending me a communication request this early in the morning? Look at the time, it’s only 6:20!”
Jiang Yue fired back rapidly: “Where are you? I need to talk to you about something. Either you come over, or I’ll come to you!”
Xiang Sui shook his head, exasperated: “We can talk later. I want to sleep!”
Jiang Yue nearly jumped in panic: “No, Xiang Sui, are you deaf? Either you come to me now, or I’ll come to you. Hurry up and make a choice!”
Jiang Yue was rarely so blunt and forceful. Xiang Sui was taken aback; squinting, he forced his eyes open just enough to speak an address.
Jiang Yue immediately hung up, hailed a taxi, and rushed over.
Xiang Sui’s home was in the military district compound, a villa area. The taxi fare alone cost over four hundred, making Jiang Yue wince in pain.
But it didn’t end there. When she reached the community entrance, the guard at the gate wouldn’t let her in at all. Jiang Yue had no choice but to send another message to summon Xiang Sui.
Xiang Sui came rushing over, grumbling in a dinosaur-themed pajama.
“Jiang Yue, you better actually have a reason for finding me, or we’re not going to end well!”
Still muttering, he led Jiang Yue into his large villa. The villa was quiet. Jiang Yue asked, “Where’s your family?”
“They’re all out. They hardly come home more than a few times a year.”
No sooner had he finished speaking than Jiang Yue pinned Xiang Sui down on the sofa.
With a ripping sound, she tore a large slit through his dinosaur pajamas, exposing his firm, well-defined chest to the air.
Xiang Sui’s half-closed eyes snapped wide open.
Pinned tightly by Jiang Yue, he let out a roar like a tiger on the sofa: “Jiang Yue, what are you doing?!”
Jiang Yue pulled down the top of his pajamas. Xiang Sui, panicked, hugged his chest and tried to shrink back, shouting in a bluffing tone, “Jiang Yue, wake up! I’m an Alpha! An Alpha! I’m a straight-A! Straight-A!”
Jiang Yue, flustered and furious, shouted, “You better behave! So what if you’re straight-A!”
Xiang Sui’s pupils dilated in shock, and he kicked at Jiang Yue. She kicked back at his backside and, in one swift move, pulled down Xiang Sui’s dinosaur pajama bottoms.
Her movements were extremely rough.
Poor Xiang Sui was left wearing only a pair of blue boxer briefs. Panicked, he clutched them tightly. The towering, muscular northerner, standing nearly 1.9 meters tall, suddenly sensed trouble and began stammering, “Y-Y-You… W-W-What… what do you… want to do?”
Jiang Yue’s gray eyes fixed on Xiang Sui’s boxer briefs.
What if the eyeballs had parasitized Xiang Sui’s backside?
Though there was a difference between men and women, life took priority!
After a brief hesitation, Jiang Yue’s determined hand reached for Xiang Sui’s boxer briefs.
Xiang Sui felt utterly hopeless. It was just the two of them in the villa. He wasn’t a match for Jiang Yue, this human-shaped weapon, and no matter how loudly he screamed, no one would come to his rescue.
Might as well think of it as being bitten by a dog.
Xiang Sui shut his eyes in agony.
In the end, Jiang Yue didn’t have the courage to remove Xiang Sui’s boxer briefs. Gritting her teeth, she said, “Take them off yourself!”
Xiang Sui was even more furious: “You’re seriously making me take them off myself?!”
Jiang Yue roared, “Don’t you have hands?!”
Xiang Sui: “…”
He tore off his boxer briefs in a fit of rage, flinging them to the floor and stomping furiously. “Fine, I’m taking them off!”
Although boxer briefs were just a small piece of fabric, the difference between wearing them and not wearing them was enormous.
Jiang Yue swallowed hard and gave Xiang Sui a thorough once-over from head to toe.
Xiang Sui grew agitated again: “What the hell are you looking at? Are you picking pork at the market or what?!”
Jiang Yue didn’t back down, shouting, “We’re both Alphas! What’s wrong with taking a look? It’s not like you’re losing any meat!”
But as she looked, she noticed a small red spot on Xiang Sui’s backside.
Her expression turned serious as she asked, “Xiang Sui, do you have a red mole on your butt?”
Xiang Sui rolled his eyes so far back it felt like they’d disappear into his skull. “Who looks at their own butt?! Are you out of your mind? Waking me up this early just to check if I have a mole on my butt?!”
Jiang Yue snapped in anger: “Who said I was looking at your butt?! Don’t change the subject, does your butt have a mole or not?”
Xiang Sui thought carefully, stroking his chin. “No one’s ever told me I have a mole on my butt.”
Jiang Yue started to panic. Too anxious to hold back, she lunged and pinned Xiang Sui down, staring intently at the red spot on his backside.
Pressed against the coffee table, Xiang Sui let out a scream like a slaughtered pig: “Holy crap, Jiang Yue, calm down! We’re both Alphas, an AA romance will never end well!”
Jiang Yue: “…”
Sometimes, she couldn’t help but marvel at how convoluted Xiang Sui’s thought process was, like a winding mountain road.
She couldn’t hold back and shouted, “Are you crazy? Me having an AA romance with you?! Do you even look at yourself before talking?!”
Xiang Sui twisted on the coffee table, his voice shaking: “No, Jiang Yue, don’t you think the way we’re positioned right now is… a huge problem?”
Jiang Yue suddenly realized the truth.
Right now, she was fully dressed, pinning Xiang Sui on the coffee table, one hand holding his arms behind his back, the other pressing down on his tailbone.
Xiang Sui, completely naked, was pressed against the table, his well-developed glutes fully exposed to her.
Damn…
Jiang Yue felt a pang of guilt, but her mouth had to keep up the act: “Xiang Sui, why are you always so perverted? I’m only suspecting that you’ve been parasitized by the mutated eyeballs. Your constitution is so good, your metabolism so fast, there’s no reason the blastozyme should affect you this deeply.”
Xiang Sui let out a sigh of relief. “Why didn’t you say so earlier! What do you mean I’m being perverted? So it’s all my fault, and you’re completely innocent?”
Jiang Yue, cheeks flushed, scolded him: “Even if I were into AA romances, I’d go for someone like Xi Boyu. My taste hasn’t degenerated that far!”
While berating him, she carefully examined the red spot, and upon closer inspection, she noticed something was off.
The color and texture of the spot didn’t match a normal mole; instead of a red mole, it looked more like a tiny red blister embedded in the flesh.
Jiang Yue raised a finger and pressed on it.
Xiang Sui, lying on the coffee table, grumbled: “This feels way too weird. We’re supposed to be doing something serious, and yet I feel… violated by you.”
Jiang Yue patted his back. “Doesn’t the texture feel different here?”
Xiang Sui: “Different how?”
Jiang Yue: “It’s… especially springy.”
Xiang Sui, furious: “You damn well are teasing me!”
Jiang Yue explained, “It’s not that I imagined it, everywhere else feels normal, but the texture of this red spot is extremely strange. It feels… like an eyeball is growing inside.”
Visibly, goosebumps rose all over Xiang Sui’s body, enough to make someone with trypophobia faint on the spot.
Trembling, Xiang Sui reached out to touch it.
Just as Jiang Yue had said, that area felt different from the rest, like… like an eyeball was growing inside.
Xiang Sui snapped back to reality, his face pale as he looked at Jiang Yue. “How did you find out…? Don’t tell me you… on your butt too…”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I didn’t, I don’t,” Jiang Yue said, deadpan, spinning a story.
“You know my hearing is sharp. I noticed your heartbeat and breathing slowing down more and more, exactly like symptoms of blastozyme overexposure. It’s been a week since we left the base; even with slow recovery, it shouldn’t be this slow.”
“Xiang Sui, you’ve been way too careless. Didn’t you notice anything unusual?”
Xiang Sui said a bit sheepishly, “I didn’t really think about it. Back in the pit, my spiritual power merged with my brother’s, so I figured the exhaustion was normal.”
Jiang Yue hadn’t considered that possibility.
Growing anxious again, Xiang Sui ran a hand over his backside. “I’ll contact my brother first to see if any of them got parasitized too. After that, I’ll reach out to the base so they can run a full check on both of us.”
Jiang Yue kept her head lowered, silent.
Xiang Sui nudged her, curious: “Why aren’t you saying anything? Scared stupid?”
Jiang Yue closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, her gaze was filled with a deep, weary gravity.
She asked softly, almost hauntingly: “Xiang Sui… do you have any strawberry jam at home?”
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Sam Williams On TYMIMA Chapter 152