The private conversation ended.
Lu Zehou deactivated the "shielding field."
Chen Ce Bai immediately stubbed out his cigarette and threw it aside with force. He strode toward her, one hand locking around her back, pulling her into his arms.
His usually cool aura now carried a harsh trace of tobacco, and the agitation in him was unmistakable.
His fingers pressed hard into her back.
She let out a sharp gasp of pain before he loosened his grip—just a little.
He simply held her, without once meeting her eyes.
But from another angle, she could feel the fevered, nearly deranged intensity of his gaze.
Strangely enough, before she knew he was the Watcher, that greedy and twisted stare had only made her afraid.
But now, knowing it was him, the same dangerous, burning, clinging look… brought her an odd sense of safety.
That feeling of safety came from a revelation—
Ah. So he really does love me that much.
She felt… delighted.
Delighted.
Qiu Yu thought she might be a little twisted herself.
She couldn't help but wrap her arms around him in return, burying her face in the curve of his neck.
To her surprise, he was sweating. His skin there was damp and cold.
She remembered—the last time he'd sweated was when she casually joked about "overusing her neural chip."
To most people, that phrase would sound as trivial as saying you'd strained your eyes.
But he had instantly bent over her, examining her with frantic precision, ending up in a cold sweat.
So, he really had loved her all along.
She'd just never realized.
Qiu Yu took a deep breath against his neck.
Maybe it was due to his unusual genes—his sweat glands barely functioned. He hardly ever perspired. Even when he did, it was cold, scentless, like ice-chilled mineral water.
She'd never thought too deeply about it before—why his body was always so cold, why his heart rate and breathing were abnormally low, why even his bodily fluids were ice-cold.
She had simply assumed he had some kind of hereditary condition.
But once she found out he was the Watcher, everything fell into place.
Chen Ce Bai probably didn't have a genetic disorder at all.
He had likely undergone some kind of genetic modification during those seven years of "isolation training."
Biotech could easily accomplish that.
She, on the other hand, had been too blind to see it.
Qiu Yu closed her eyes and held him tighter.
She wanted to know what kind of modifications he'd received.
But if she asked directly, would he really—as Lu Zehou had warned—just lie to her again?
Would she have to lie herself to get him to tell the truth?
Her instincts screamed no—never lie to him. That would lead to something terrible.
But she needed to understand him. To unravel all the mysteries wrapped around him.
She felt lost.
What was she supposed to do?
Wasn't Chen Ce Bai supposed to be a genius whose intellect approached the human limit?
Then couldn't he teach her—tell her—how to get close to him, how to understand him, how to help him?
·
He was clearly still losing control.
Chen Ce Bai thought calmly, holding Qiu Yu in his arms.
He knew Lu Zehou wouldn't dare say much.
Lu Zehou was a smart man—and he needed something from Chen Ce Bai.
Anyone good at playing the game never shows their full hand up front.
To Lu Zehou, Chen's true identity was a trump card.
If he wanted something from Chen, he would never blow that card early—not by telling Qiu Yu that her husband was a genetically altered monster.
Chen Ce Bai was well aware that his secret hadn't been exposed.
But still, during those ten-plus minutes Qiu Yu spent talking to Lu Zehou alone, he'd felt something unfamiliar—
It had taken him several minutes to identify it: fear. Or more accurately, terror.
Not fear of being found out.
But fear of losing Qiu Yu.
In those ten minutes, he'd tasted fear for the first time—and alongside it, a wave of violent rage. He'd wanted to kill something. Anything.
Because killing often comes with fear.
Slaughtering a city. Eradicating a species. Wiping out Native Americans.
Who's to say it didn't all stem from fear?
When Chen Ce Bai looked at Lu Zehou, his gaze turned cold and murderous.
And in that moment, he did think about it—how to kill him without Qiu Yu noticing.
But then Qiu Yu turned and gave him a bright, sweet smile.
And he suppressed the killing urge, choosing instead to wait.
Chen Ce Bai had patience.
Extraordinary patience.
His work demanded it—he dealt with countless experiments, and every success was buried under a mountain of failed ones.
Without patience, he could never have pulled a coherent result out of the chaos.
It was a hunter's craft.
And he was the most skilled of hunters.
But the more he spiraled out of control, the less patience he had.
Just seeing Qiu Yu made him want to seize her wrist or neck and pull her into his arms.
Then it evolved—he wanted to kiss her, all the time, everywhere.
Even knowing it embarrassed her, he'd do it right in front of others, deliberately slipping his tongue into her mouth.
That public display of intimacy gave him a strange, shivering pleasure.
And not being able to see her lips, hear her voice, or control her movements brought him a sick, frenzied irritation.
Only when she was in his arms did that scalding, soul-burning heat within him slightly cool down.
Only slightly. It didn't go away.
His soul still felt like it was burning—from cold.
Chen Ce Bai held Qiu Yu close, pressing her head to his chest, keeping her from seeing his face.
Because right now, his expression had to be… grotesquely twisted.
He could tell from Lu Zehou's look.
The man stared at him, borderline horrified.
Lu Zehou had expected the worst-case scenario to be:
Qiu Yu starts pulling away.
Chen Ce Bai spirals into madness.
Qiu Yu can't bear to see him in pain and ends up telling him everything.
But no—he'd just spoken to Qiu Yu for a few minutes, and Chen Ce Bai had already lost it like this???
He was silent, his face stern and sharp as a blade, but his muscles spasmed briefly, as if his expression might split into several identical heads.
Lu Zehou was stunned.
He had assumed—like many—that no matter how emotionally unhinged a researcher got, they'd still retain a shred of rationality.
Especially one like Chen Ce Bai, the pinnacle of human intellect.
But Chen Ce Bai shattered all his expectations.
Fortunately, the spasms lasted only a few dozen seconds.
After a moment, Chen Ce Bai closed his eyes, forced himself to normalize, and slung an arm around Qiu Yu's shoulders. He was ready to leave.
Just before exiting, he gave Lu Zehou a cold, indifferent glance.
He said nothing.
But Lu Zehou understood perfectly:
You better not have told her anything. Or I will kill you.
Lu Zehou shrugged, unfazed by the threat.
Sooner or later, Chen Ce Bai would completely lose control, and then the company would come for him.
By that point, Chen Ce Bai might be too busy running for his life to bother with revenge.
·
Chen Ce Bai took Qiu Yu home.
He slid into the driver's seat, catching a glimpse of Qiu Yu's troubled expression—but he didn't ask.
Because just now, he had mutated again.
When the changes first began, he'd already had a vague premonition: every single mutation seemed to be preparing him for one thing—hunting Qiu Yu.
Heightened sense of smell. Surveillance instincts. Fangs. That endlessly replicating sticky substance.
An overwhelming, terrifying urge to protect.
—Every single change had something to do with her.
With that realization, all his questions suddenly had answers.
Yes, he'd always had a keen sense of smell—but still within human limits. There was no way he could have detected the heat-slick scent of her sweat from over ten kilometers away.
His amplified olfactory abilities had clearly stemmed from one thing: a love that grew more intense by the day.
For three years, he had suppressed his filthy, hungering desires. He didn't want to defile her.
But she was his wife. No matter how much he restrained himself, there were always moments of closeness.
A fleeting touch. The way she would suddenly throw herself into his arms. Her playful teasing. Her kisses. The clothes she left lying around.
The steam clinging to her skin after a shower. Her towel. Her cup. Her toothbrush. The damp imprint of her lips on a glass of water.
The strands of hair that strayed across his neck when they slept in the same bed.
She was everywhere.
And yet he couldn't allow himself to indulge—to lean close and drink her scent in deeply.
He feared his filthy, bizarre behavior would frighten her.
So, his sense of smell magnified hundreds of times over.
Even dozens of kilometers away, he could pick up the scent of her blood like a starving shark.
The surveillance? Same root cause.
He wanted to see her. All the time. Never stop seeing her.
But in the real world, staring at her constantly wasn't realistic—it would be rude, disrespectful, and it would expose the obsessive madness in his gaze.
For three years, he'd suppressed the instinct to watch her. It had become a habit.
Even now, he was still suppressing it.
He couldn't see his own eyes, but he knew—just knew—that if he looked at her, his gaze would be like a searing hook, clawing at her for flesh.
He could never let her see such a monstrous look in his eyes.
And so, he gained the ability to see her without ever turning toward her.
Like surveillance. Like obsession turned into a function.
As for the fangs and the endlessly replicating sticky matter—it was obvious those existed for one purpose: to seize her, to keep her.
The change that had just occurred was no exception.
—He saw another dimension.
In this dimension, the world no longer revolved around time. Time was like the progress bar of a video—something to be dragged back and forth, something you could skip around at will.
And his vision had changed.
Imagine this: in theory, a "zero-dimensional" object is a dot. No size. No length. No space.
But step into the first dimension, and that "dot" becomes a line. It gains length. And the amount of information increases exponentially.
Enter the second dimension, and the line becomes a surface.
With each higher dimension, the volume of information explodes. If a one-dimensional creature could perceive two-dimensional space, it would be utterly terrified by the sheer flood of information.
The amount of information Chen Ce Bai was now perceiving made that look like child's play.
Time was no longer a variable. Space no longer offered barriers. Movement, energy, all unfolded around him like threads of silk.
Details multiplied, layered, and collided.
He glanced down at his own hand—and saw not only skin, bones, and blood, but also the squirming, parasitic sticky substance embedded in his bloodstream like microscopic larvae.
Chen Ce Bai curled his lip with a faint, emotionless smirk.
Perfect.
He was now, truly, a monster.
Maybe his long silence finally drew Qiu Yu's attention—she reached over and took his hand, tilting her head to look at him. "What's wrong?"
To his new eyes, her palm unfolded like a biological specimen, laid bare in layers and cross-sections—brimming with the kind of detail only a high-powered microscope could reveal.
Chen Ce Bai stared at her hand for a moment, then gently gripped her wrist and raised it to his lips.
He kissed it.
The sensation of kissing her down to her very flesh and bone made his entire body tingle. It was a full-body jolt, from scalp to spine.
Maybe it was because he now knew—knew with certainty—she would never escape him.
As a higher-dimensional being, he could find her at any time, with terrifying ease.
Chen Ce Bai closed his eyes, pressing his lips against the back of her hand. His breathing grew heavier.
He knew these thoughts were filthy, despicable, and obscene.
But even just imagining it sent a shivering wave of pleasure down his spine.
She would always be his.
And that realization made him feel giddy. Wildly, irrepressibly joyful.
As the thought burned through him, Chen Ce Bai rewound the timeline—back to the moment Qiu Yu and Lu Zehou had spoken in private.
This act wouldn't alter the past. Going back in time was like scrolling back on a video—you could rewatch it, but not change it.
He held Qiu Yu's hand in his own, face expressionless, as he listened to her entire conversation with Lu Zehou.
When it ended, he was silent for a long time.
Then he let out a cold, sharp laugh.