EDEH Chapter 4

Sang Jue tumbled out of the rear door, rolling down the moss-covered slope beside the highway.

 

The monster disguised as Wu Ke had attacked him in a way he hadn’t expected.

 

Jason and A-Ruan were still fast asleep. There was a barrier between the driver’s seat and the rear compartment, so Old Karl couldn’t see what was happening behind.

 

The armored vehicle drove away, strong winds carrying sudden rain swept over, and the slope was covered with protruding stones everywhere. Sang Jue groaned in pain.

 

He tried to prop up his body, but before he could grab something to steady himself, he crashed into two pillars and was forced to stop.

 

To be precise, they were two straight, long legs, like pillars.

 

And Sang Jue’s forehead hit the awkward position between the two legs. As a male evil dragon, he certainly knew what he had bumped into.

 

The man had originally been dealing with moths all over the sky and hadn’t had time to pay attention to the movement behind him. By the time he killed the mother moth and turned around, it was too late. What greeted him wasn’t an attack from other monsters, but a… youth who used his butt as a slide.

 

“…”

 

Sang Jue remained motionless, wishing for the first time that he wasn’t an evil dragon anymore.

 

How nice it would be to be a chameleon—he could blend in with the surrounding environment in such embarrassing situations and pretend not to exist.

 

The dark muzzle of a gun aimed at his head: “Look up.”

 

Did he break the person…

 

Would he kill him in anger?

 

Sang Jue vaguely remembered the last scene before sliding down—this man had single-handedly pierced through the fat abdomen of a mother moth. That mother moth was large enough to fit him inside its belly.

 

He bit his lip.

 

If it was just fighting, Sang Jue wasn’t afraid of anyone, but bullets were something few creatures could face without fear.

 

The cold tone repeated again: “Get up.”

 

Rainwater hit Sang Jue’s face, his wet eyelashes stuck together. He propped up his body and met a pair of pure black eyes, slightly stunned.

 

The man looked at him without emotion, his pupils neither murky nor bright, like a quiet ocean—mostly calm, but seeming capable of stirring up huge waves when storms arose, dragging everything to the ocean floor.

 

His scent was very pleasant, very fragrant… made him want to take a bite.

 

The unhappiness of being held at gunpoint dissipated a bit.

 

“What happened to the injuries?”

 

Only then did Sang Jue feel the burning sensation on his skin under the wet clothes.

 

“I was… attacked by someone and rolled down the slope.”

 

“Someone?”

 

The man wore a black military uniform. The rain-soaked hair didn’t diminish his presence in the slightest. The tight belt and slender military boots made him appear tall—Sang Jue had to look up to meet his eyes.

 

He had a strange intuition—it was best not to lie in front of this person.

 

“I’m not very sure.” Sang Jue pressed his lips together. “Someone told me he was dead, but I saw him alive with my own eyes.”

 

The man released the safety: “What happened to the injuries?”

 

“I have scrapes all over from rolling down the slope.” Sang Jue was getting a bit angry. “He didn’t even touch me. I could have beaten him, but I didn’t expect him to suddenly sprout long, thin tentacles to ambush me, so I accidentally fell off the vehicle.”

 

The man looked at him, seemingly weighing the truthfulness of his words.

 

Sang Jue muttered: “He didn’t fight fair.”

 

The man put the gun back in its holster.

 

“Split tentacles—that’s a humanoid creature from Crack #2. Where did it go?”

 

Sang Jue said sullenly: “On a vehicle, that vehicle was heading back to the main city.”

 

The other asked coldly: “What kind of vehicle?”

 

“An armored off-road vehicle.”

 

“How many wheels?”

 

Sang Jue recalled and said: “Six wheels, but only four wheels for driving—what’s wrong?”

 

“Humanoid creatures never target individual humans. They prefer to go to areas where humans are concentrated for large-scale contamination.”

 

Sang Jue didn’t understand: “But don’t they check contamination indices when entering the city?”

 

“It doesn’t need to enter the city.” The man’s voice was colder than the rain. “The vehicle you mentioned is a Cheetah K7, top speed 150. This is the edge of Crack #2, five hundred kilometers from the main city.”

 

Sang Jue: “…Ah.”

 

The man threw him a roll of gauze and a bottle of medicine: “If you want to go back, quickly bandage your wounds, come help pack up. We only have forty minutes.”

 

“Oh…” The little evil dragon asked, “I’m Sang Jue. What’s your name?”

 

“Huo Yanji.”

 

Sang Jue’s injuries weren’t serious, all scrapes, but there were many of them, making treatment somewhat troublesome.

 

The faint bloodstains had all been washed clean by the rain. Sang Jue was soaked through, not understanding the point of bandaging. But he quickly discovered that these bandages were waterproof.

 

The medicine bottle contained powder. Sang Jue guessed it could be sprinkled directly on wounds.

 

He had grown up in the doctor’s laboratory since childhood. Aside from occasional needle marks from blood tests, he had almost no experience with injuries… almost none.

 

Therefore, his experience treating wounds was essentially nonexistent, and his bandaging could be called clumsy.

 

After he finished fussing with himself and pushed through the dense shrubs, he saw Huo Yanji’s handiwork—

 

Dense white moth corpses scattered everywhere—on leaves, in grass, on moss-covered stone blocks—all burned black without exception.

 

If not for this torrential rain, they wouldn’t have left even corpses behind.

 

At the edge of his vision was the end of Crack #2. The narrowest part of the edge was like a narrow abyssal eye that you’d have to crouch to slide into.

 

The widest part of the crack that Sang Jue had seen from the spacecraft was equivalent to the length of a cross-river bridge.

 

Seven or eight broken white moth nests clung to the rock walls of the crack. Along the ground lay exactly seven giant mother moth corpses, each one disemboweled.

 

The one in front of Huo Yanji was the last.

 

At this moment, he knelt on one knee before the mother moth’s corpse, using a knife to cut open the moth’s abdomen.

 

A relatively intact human shell rolled out, stopping at Huo Yanji’s feet, limbs twitching occasionally.

 

Sang Jue came up behind Huo Yanji: “Is he your friend?”

 

“No.”

 

“Then, is he dead?”

 

“Not yet.” Huo Yanji’s answer was unexpected.

 

But the next second, Huo Yanji’s gun muzzle aimed at this person. The bullet fired with only a slight “tsk” sound, deeply piercing through the target’s skull.

 

This gun must have had a silencer, making the person die as quietly as the bullet.

 

“Now he’s dead.”

 

Huo Yanji turned around, cold rainwater sliding down his sharp jawline.

 

Sang Jue wasn’t afraid of him.

 

He knew that the person lying on the ground truly hadn’t been dead just now, just no longer himself.

 

From the moment he was swallowed into the white moth’s abdomen, his personality had already perished. His body would become nutrients, merging with the mother moth. He would be unable to control his own consciousness or his new body.

 

He could no longer be called human. Until death, he would only know two things—hunting for food and endlessly contaminating other creatures.

 

Sang Jue looked away and changed the subject: “I’m sorry.”

 

“Sorry for what?”

 

Sang Jue glanced at that area: “Just, sorry… I didn’t mean to bump into you just now.”

 

He couldn’t very well say, sorry, I bumped into your balls.

 

How strange.

 

While thinking about how to apologize without making someone angry from embarrassment, Huo Yanji suddenly reached out and grabbed his chin.

 

The rough glove rubbed against his fair skin, the scrape on his neck was forced to stretch, hurting enough to make him want to bite.

 

“What are you doing…”

 

Huo Yanji took off his glove and put a band-aid on the burning spot on his face.

 

Sang Jue was stunned for a moment. Because the bandages were too big, he hadn’t treated the wound on his face.

 

“Don’t leave wounds exposed to air, otherwise any substance that touches you could cause infection.”

 

“…Got it.” Sang Jue obediently responded. He was a dragon who listened to advice.

 

The messily wrapped bandages on his neck were also unwrapped. Huo Yanji rewrapped them properly—very neat, but also very tight, somewhat painful.

 

Sang Jue tried to negotiate: “Can’t it be a bit looser?”

 

Huo Yanji: “No.”

 

Sang Jue: “Alright.”

 

Huo Yanji threw him a dagger: “Remove the white moths’ antennae.”

 

Female white moth antennae were whip-like, thin and long, with a curved arc, and very hard.

 

Huo Yanji himself was dismembering the mother moth’s corpse, putting the egg sacs from the mother moth’s abdominal cavity into glass containers.

 

Although this place was close to the crack, perhaps because it was at the edge, the strange sounds from the depths of the crack that Sang Jue had heard earlier had actually become somewhat fainter.

 

He asked while dissecting: “How long is Crack #2?”

 

Huo Yanji: “Three hundred and twelve kilometers.”

 

This was even more exaggerated than the length of a large city.

 

Sang Jue asked: “What’s inside?”

 

Huo Yanji: “Nothing.”

 

Sang Jue didn’t believe it: “Have you been inside?”

 

Huo Yanji: “Mm.”

 

Sang Jue stopped talking. Huo Yanji was a boring person.

 

The mother moth’s antennae weren’t easy to remove. You had to first cut through the surrounding fascia before you could pull them out forcefully.

 

After removing two, Sang Jue grasped the technique and gradually picked up speed.

 

When he finished removing all the antennae, Huo Yanji had already packed everything up and shouldered his bag, walking toward the forest on the right: “The vehicle is one kilometer away.”

 

Sang Jue hurried to follow.

 

Along the way, they encountered many monsters—giant mantises with sharp-toothed forelimbs, swarms of multi-headed snakes, centipedes covered in flowers… Without exception, they all died under Huo Yanji’s long dagger.

 

Sang Jue could sense those sounds, obscure expressions that only he could hear, along with intense desires to devour him.

 

*Eat… eat!*

 

He shivered and unconsciously quickened his pace, grabbing onto Huo Yanji’s clothing.

 

The clothing was quickly pulled back.

 

Sang Jue pressed his lips together: “If I don’t stay close to you, they’ll eat me.”

 

Huo Yanji made no sound, walking forward without looking back, appearing quite heartless.

 

Sang Jue pressed his lips together, caught up, and tentatively grabbed his clothing again.

 

One second, two seconds… ten seconds. The clothing remained in his soft palm.

 

Sang Jue’s lips curved upward, the horns on his head almost uncontrollably sprouting.

 

He wasn’t afraid of those monsters at all, but theoretical knowledge told him that human males would develop an almost tender protective instinct toward weak creatures.

 

Huo Yanji was a good-looking human with a pleasant scent. Sang Jue wanted to be protected by him.

 

They reached the edge of an open dirt road. He had thought Huo Yanji had also come in an armored vehicle, but unexpectedly it was an off-road motorcycle.

 

The motorcycle was sleek and long, presenting an overall cold black texture, with only the streamlined edges and wheels being ice blue.

 

Sang Jue was about to walk over when his shoulder suddenly felt heavy. Huo Yanji pressed down on his shoulder and yanked off a snake coiled around the motorcycle’s rearview mirror.

 

Calling it a snake might not be quite accurate.

 

What should have been the tongue was replaced by a blood-red fleshy flower. Before it could bite Huo Yanji’s arm, it followed a parabolic trajectory into the deep shrubs, disappearing after some rustling sounds.

 

Sang Jue blinked: “It’s so beautiful.”

 

It wasn’t clear whether he was talking about the bike or the snake.

 

Huo Yanji cast him a cold glance: “Get on.”

 

Sang Jue was seeing a motorcycle up close for the first time.

 

His home planet also had motorcycles, but he had never ridden one.

 

“Hold on tight.”

 

Sang Jue, like in movies he had seen before, hugged Huo Yanji’s waist tightly.

 

Huo Yanji’s waist was narrow but powerful.

 

Wind rushed past his ears. Listening to Huo Yanji’s steady, strong heartbeat, Sang Jue actually became somewhat drowsy.

 

Huo Yanji’s broad back blocked most of the wind and rain coming from ahead, so much so that Sang Jue behind him slept soundly against his back, occasionally adjusting the direction of his cheek to avoid neck pain.

 

The night was thick, the rain cold, only the body pressed against his back was burning hot, getting hotter and hotter.

 

More than three hours passed silently like this.

 

In the distance, several bright white beams illuminated the rain curtain in the night—searchlights from the main city’s border watchtowers.

 

The speeding motorcycle passed over hundreds of tents stationed outside the city, heading straight for the city gates.

 

What the high city walls blocked weren’t just monsters, but countless survivors wanting to enter the main city.

 

Not every safe zone was as secure as the main city. There were also many wanderers who had once lived in city ruins, tired of the freedom they had once most desired, willing to return to the constraints of order.

 

But becoming a resident of the main city required multiple layers of genetic, background, and even psychological screening. So the waiting people camped outside, hoping for the day when stable life would arrive.

 

This was why Huo Yanji said that humanoid creature didn’t need to enter the city at all.

 

These people camping outside the city were enough for it to feed on.

 

Huo Yanji stopped and turned off the engine. A team of supervisors approached. They immediately saw the youth lying on Huo Yanji’s back and were all startled, but didn’t dare look too much.

 

The leading blonde man stepped forward: “Report, sir! We haven’t detected the vehicle you described yet!”

 

Huo Yanji made an “mm” sound and looked back: “Sang Jue.”

 

“Mm?”

 

Sang Jue made a vague breathy sound, then was lifted off the bike by a pair of warm leather gloves.

 

“You have a fever.”

 

“Do I have a fever…”

 

“Yes, and you drooled too.”

 

“That must be because you smell so good.” Sang Jue answered groggily, only able to stand steady by leaning on Huo Yanji.

 

The blonde man listened to their conversation in astonishment. Who was this little thing, saying such presumptuous words, yet the commander wasn’t angry at all.

 

“Cold…” Sang Jue spoke deliriously, “Also hot…”

 

Countless gazes turned toward them.

 

No one didn’t recognize Huo Yanji—the youngest general in the human army, and also the highest executive officer of all human supervisors. The most common rumor about him was that he was decisive in killing and showed no mercy.

 

Everyone who saw this scene—mercenaries queuing to enter the city, residents undergoing contamination index testing after going out, and patrolling soldiers—all involuntarily paused in their actions.

 

Rainwater soaked Huo Yanji’s and the youth’s clothes. Probably from the cold, the delicate and beautiful youth seemed to be acting spoiled, constantly trying to burrow into Huo Yanji’s embrace. Not only did Huo Yanji not give him a burst of bullets, but he actually indulged the youth’s presumption to some extent.

 

In fact, Sang Jue was already delirious from fever and had no idea what he was doing. He only felt that the person in front of him smelled very good and had a comfortable body temperature.

 

He wanted to snuggle.

 

Huo Yanji said to the blonde man: “Terrell, take him to the hospital.”

 

Terrell was somewhat delighted, not expecting the executive officer to actually remember his name. Perhaps he wasn’t far from promotion!

 

However, before his smile could rise, the youth clinging to Huo Yanji avoided his hand and muttered: “Don’t want him, too smelly.”

 

The commander actually asked back: “Why smelly?”

 

The not-quite-conscious Sang Jue couldn’t explain the obvious: “Just smelly, especially smelly… I don’t like him, don’t give me to him.”

 

Huo Yanji was about to say something when his eyes suddenly moved. In the distance, a Cheetah K17 armored off-road vehicle was approaching on the city gate road, splashing mud everywhere.

 

It lined up far behind the convoy entering the city, with the elderly man in the driver’s seat gripping the steering wheel tightly, looking somewhat panicked.

 

Huo Yanji’s timing was perfect—he had returned to the city gate just before that humanoid creature arrived.

 

The supervisor team was about to go over when the vehicle suddenly shook. The iron sheets of the rear compartment bulged out one after another. The compartment that could once withstand beetle impacts was directly deformed by some unknown creature inside!

 

A man and woman rolled out from the rear door, supporting themselves on the ground as they moved backward in panic: “There’s a monster inside! A monster!!”

 

It was Jason and A-Ruan who had asked for a ride earlier.

 

Hearing this, the crowd scattered like startled birds.

 

Seeing Huo Yanji striding over, the couple seemed even more terrified than facing the monster, afraid that Huo Yanji might kill them without warning. Jason instinctively protected A-Ruan: “It didn’t wound us, we weren’t infected!!”

 

The atmosphere seemed to freeze, and everyone shivered.

 

They fell silent, but the monster in the rear compartment wasn’t quiet. It forcibly broke through the vehicle’s skin, its long tentacles reaching toward the nearest human. The man was scared out of his wits, his brain unable to think, his limbs frozen in place.

 

Damn it.

 

Wasn’t the main city supposed to be safe… hm?

 

“Ha!” The man looked at the scene before him in shock, breathing heavily.

 

The long tentacle was suddenly intercepted, not by Huo Yanji, not by any supervisor, nor by a powerful Deviant soldier, but by a youth who looked delicate and beautiful, very suitable for keeping in a golden house.

 

Slender fingers grabbed that tentacle, and the slippery tentacle truly couldn’t move, unable to pull free no matter what.

 

Sang Jue remembered this smell.

 

It was the one that made him roll down the slope… and bump into, bump into someone’s balls.

 

He pulled hard—the humanoid monster inside the compartment let out a strange scream. After continuous squeezing and tearing, it was actually pulled out by Sang Jue from the small hole in the iron compartment, no longer in human form or monster shape.

 

Half its body had turned into thick liquid, forced out of the compartment.

 

Sang Jue not only tore off its tentacles but even stepped on the liquid trying to escape, kneading it like dough into lumps of paste.

 

They scattered on the ground, writhing toward each other, trying to coalesce again.

 

“That’s for… not fighting fair.”

 

Having gotten revenge, Sang Jue, whose eyes weren’t even fully open, followed the fragrant scent and swayed toward Huo Yanji.

 

“I didn’t lie to you, I really could beat it…”

 

The soldiers snapped out of their shock and were about to stop Sang Jue, but saw Huo Yanji raise his hand in signal: “Mm, come here.”

 

They had to let him pass. Sang Jue directly burrowed into Huo Yanji’s embrace: “A-Ruan… A-Ruan was infected.”

 

He heard the sounds belonging to contaminants from A-Ruan… but strangely, why didn’t that humanoid tentacle make any sound? And it had no desire to devour him.

 

The scene was too quiet. Jason easily heard Sang Jue’s accusation.

 

He snapped out of his shock and frantically refuted: “You’re talking nonsense! You’re lying, we weren’t infected! We weren’t infected!!”

 

But excitement was meaningless. Anyone with eyes could see that A-Ruan was already on the edge of losing consciousness, her body convulsing strangely, her eye whites almost covering her black pupils, and the skin on her face was rapidly liquefying.

 

Jason held his lover regardless, shouting loudly to prove to the surrounding people, but what came was only a “bang” and the accustomed eyes of those around.

 

The bullet passed through A-Ruan’s skull, and the young life stopped at this moment.

 

Blood splattered on Jason’s face. He was dumbfounded, seemingly scared silly.

 

Soldiers came forward to pull his arm. Jason seemed to come to his senses then, roaring through tears: “She still had reason! She was still alive! You killed her, your consciences have been eaten by dogs, why don’t you go die!!”

 

Sang Jue thought groggily that humans were really too irrational, always shackled by emotions.

 

“I will definitely make you pay! You must pay!!”

 

The hoarse curses gradually faded away, and the youth in front seemed even more cold-hearted than Huo Yanji.

 

The groggy Sang Jue’s voice was somewhat soft, but emotionless.

 

He said: “I noticed something was wrong with her the moment I saw her… so when they asked me for food, I didn’t give any… She was going to die, very wasteful.”

 

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