When Wen Zhu woke up, his body was so sore he could barely open his eyes. His consciousness usually arrived a step ahead of his physical form, but this time the disconnect felt particularly severe. His mind had already cleared itself of the white noise, yet his body remained unresponsive.
He could only keep his eyes closed, drifting aimlessly.
He seemed to have had a very long dream this time.
What did he dream about?
In the mist, there was a cold, hard face. A hand reached out, wrist snapping up as a finger pulled the trigger without mercy. The bullet struck Wen Zhu right between the eyes.
The next moment, a sudden breeze swept the mist away, revealing a face Wen Zhu knew intimately.
It was Pei Qingshan. Those moving eyes were now watching him with a cold, cruel detachment, as if staring at a loathsome parasite.
Wen Zhu vaguely recalled that he hadn’t seen Pei Qingshan since their argument half a month ago in that damned old house in Nanxin Town.
Wen Zhu was annoyed. So, he used his snake tail to strangle the dream-version of Pei Qingshan—the one with the familiar face but the stranger’s expression.
Yet, he still failed to wake up. With waning interest, he waited to see what other tricks this subconscious realm had in store.
This time, another figure appeared before him.
He tried to repeat the same tactic, but he couldn’t move a muscle.
Wen Zhu looked at the face before him and stopped, feeling a sense of trance-like disorientation.
This was bad.
How many years had this person been dead?
Fifty years?
Fifty-nine?
He’d forgotten.
Regardless, the man was dead.
A song in an unintelligible language was hummed by this man, who had died with his eyes wide open. In Wen Zhu’s memory, that was a nursery rhyme of the Talhe people.
“Does it sound good?” the man asked him gently.
“It does,” Wen Zhu nodded with a hint of nostalgia.
“Then I’ll sing it for you forever, alright?”
“Never mind.”
The man wasn’t offended. He asked with a smile, “Why?”
“Songs from dead people are bad luck.”
“…”
“There was only one of you left alive, and yet shortly after you finished singing, your whole clan was wiped out, making it a final swan song,” Wen Zhu suggested tactfully. “You should probably stop singing it, too.”
“…”
Wen Zhu’s integration into human society had been far too successful—or perhaps his talent for being acerbic was simply gifted. He had annoyed the Talhe nursery rhyme into non-existence. The dream-man unceremoniously kicked Wen Zhu out.
Thus, Wen Zhu finally opened his eyes.
The first thing he saw was a set of iron railings, completely inverted. He thought he was still dreaming until his body fully regained sensation, and he realized his head was hanging off the edge of the bed.
Likely because his snake form was too long to fit entirely on the mattress.
He managed to push himself up with difficulty, rubbing his aching neck. His fingertips brushed against a scabbed wound, sending a jolt of sharp pain through him. He rubbed the area around the wound and, as expected, felt a small, hard object embedded there.
It wasn’t an immediate problem, so he ignored it. His whole body felt parched from a fever. His golden vertical pupils scanned the surroundings, landing on a pair of furry ears visible nearby.
“Little cat, is there any water?”
The raspy voice coming from behind caused the cat-hybrid’s fur to stand on end instantly. He spun around, his pupils full of wariness.
“You… you you you…”
He was interrupted before he could finish stuttering.
“Li Zhong, go play over there.”
A man with a high brow and deep-set eyes—the first person Wen Zhu truly noticed in the room—kicked the cat-hybrid’s stool, telling him to move his backside.
This Western-looking man seemed to hold a high status in this confined room. Li Zhong sluggishly moved his stool behind “Yellow Bunny” and added slowly, “He said he wants water.”
“Water my ass. Get lost.”
Seth scrutinized this sickly “snake beauty.” His gaze swept unashamedly over Wen Zhu’s semi-naked upper body. This was a look Wen Zhu was all too familiar with.
“What’s your name?”
“Wen Bai.”
“Where were you caught?”
“In the shelter of District F.” Wen Zhu’s eyes remained wary, but at the mention of that night—when a group of armed mercenaries opened fire on the shelter’s occupants—his scalp instinctively tingled. Of course, this tingling was mostly a vivid performance for outward effect.
In truth, from the moment Wen Zhu discovered the origin of the strange scent on Zhou Sui, he had spent at least half a month finding a way to infiltrate the front-line combat zone.
Loitering around as a human yielded little result. So, Wen Zhu used his brilliant mind to recall that the recent crimes in Linjing were all committed by hybrids who had previously been rare but were now appearing in clusters. He took a calculated risk and cooperated once with a Green Anaconda.
Sure enough, in less than twenty-four hours, he was brought into the legendary “Lost Paradise.”
“Someone like you wouldn’t last long in District F anyway.” Seth chuckled. He watched with satisfaction as Wen Zhu’s expression changed drastically, and continued leisurely, “Being caught and brought to ‘Lost Paradise’ might not necessarily be a bad thing.”
“What do you mean?” Wen Zhu asked, appearing offended.
Seth’s eyes were like a lightless abyss at the bottom of the deep sea, seemingly able to pierce through anything. He stared at Wen Zhu’s sickly state and that face, then guessed, “What did you do before coming here? Did you have someone protecting you?”
He knew well how difficult life was for “freaks” in a war zone like District F, especially for someone as physically weak as Wen Zhu.
—Though he was indeed quite beautiful.
District F was a front-line battlefield. There was no concept of nations, only species.
Humans and supernatural “abominations” were mixed together; the entire place was a war zone.
Somewhere there was a garrison for a national army—or perhaps armies from multiple countries. The area centered around the military was called the Human Base. The regions claimed by high-level abominations as their own were the notorious Abomination Kingdoms.
But the hybrids caught between the two—humans called them hybrids, while abominations usually called them “freaks”—had always lived in a state of displacement.
That was until “Lost Paradise” was born. Initially, the owner of Lost Paradise had gathered these people under the pretense of giving hybrids a home—much like the nonsensical flyer Seth had seen.
Some fools actually believed it, walking in with their flyers and never coming out.
Others, like Seth, were violently detained by well-armed mercenaries.
Seth had been here for a month, asking around.
Some said they soaked the freaks in formalin to make specimens for curiosity seekers. Others said these freaks became playthings for the elite and the high-level abominations—after all, creatures that met the aesthetic standards of both races were rare.
Hybrids were different from abominations. They were “half-finished products” parasitized by low-level abominations but not completely consumed. They were essentially a fusion of waste with waste. A very small number might gain a powerful enhancement like Zhang E (the crocodile).
Most simply had their appearance and habits altered, while their combat power and survival abilities remained low.
Like the anxious “snake beauty” before him.
Wen Zhu’s expression finally shifted from confusion to wariness, and eventually to terror.
He lowered his golden vertical pupils, looking as if the man’s words had triggered some horrific and humiliating memory. His partially recovered body trembled slightly.
“Do you know what kind of place ‘Lost Paradise’ is?” Seth had seen many beauties; someone with a face like this and no ability to protect themselves was usually the easiest to acquire on the market. “It’s a place where things with perverse, sadistic desires buy toys. Does that sound familiar?”
Seth hooked his finger under Wen Zhu’s chin, his thumb grinding harshly against the man’s pale lips. “But before that happens, you’ll be worked over a few times by that brown bear over there—quite a mood-killing pairing, honestly—that leech, or perhaps that group of brutal mercenaries outside.”
Hearing this, Wen Zhu looked up with a mix of horror and rage, glaring at Seth. “You!”
This intense display of emotion only served to make Seth more excited. He curled his lips into a smile and even went so far as to “politely” tuck a stray hair behind Wen Zhu’s ear. “Whether you want to follow me or not—the choice is yours.”
A year ago, acting like a proper gentleman while recruiting a few beauties to play games with was indeed one of Seth’s few hobbies. He loved the feeling of control.
He looked at Wen Zhu’s downcast gaze. The dim light fell on his thin face like a sharp, curved blade.
Seth finally felt a hint of that effortless confidence he once had while commanding the Atlantic.
Wen Zhu’s pale face finally seemed to take on a flush of anger from the humiliation. Seth decided that was enough and threw an outer coat to him with feigned grace. “Put it on.”
Seth walked slowly and steadily. If one didn’t look closely, it was hard to tell that he had difficulty putting weight on one of his legs.
After he had walked away, Wen Zhu stared at the clothes in his hands. He wrinkled his nose in distaste. Between the nausea of being naked and the nausea of the texture, he ultimately chose the latter.
There were about five or six hybrids in this cramped cell. Wen Zhu observed them silently for two days. He realized that “Brother Seth” was likely the leader of this group. Aside from the kind “Yellow Bunny” and Wen Zhu—who was now the de facto mistress—no one else dared to approach him.
Every day, mercenaries would pass food through the iron bars. The rations weren’t terrible; it seemed they needed these hybrids to maintain a baseline of health without being too energetic.
Wen Zhu didn’t make any sudden moves. Lost Paradise wouldn’t go to such lengths to capture these hybrids just to keep them well-fed.
On the fourth night, Wen Zhu estimated it was close to the early hours of the morning when the guards outside the corridor suddenly vanished.
Not long after, several large, muscular mercenaries violently broke open the cell door. Black batons crackled with electricity in the darkness, flashing with a light that made one’s scalp tingle. The sudden noise turned the entire cell into a scene of terror and tension.
There were countless cells along this corridor, and many people were jolted awake. However, the three mercenaries with electric batons clearly only had their eyes on Wen Zhu’s cell.
“What are you doing?” Seth’s expression was dark as his eyes locked onto the mercenaries who had just broken in.
A mangled corpse, still warm and leaking viscous blood, was thrown heavily inside by a man with a buzz cut.
“AH!!!”
Screams erupted, with “Yellow Bunny’s” being the most ear-piercing.
In the chaos, even Wen Zhu spared her a glance—Can a rabbit’s scream really be that terrifying?
But the focus clearly wasn’t there. Someone recognized the body, whose skin and flesh had been torn open. Li Zhong trembled in the corner. “Liu Yang! It’s Liu Yang!”
It turned out the “brown bear” was named Liu Yang.
“You recognize him? That makes things easier.” The buzz-cut man sneered, his eyes fixed deathly on Seth. “Do you know why he’s dead?”
Seth, of course, recognized this mercenary as the one whose ear he had bitten off when he was first captured. He cursed his bad luck inwardly.
“Not talking?” The buzz-cut man kicked Seth’s injured right leg. He listened with satisfaction to the scream and asked again, “Do you know why he died?”
“I don’t know!” Seth propped himself up on one leg, kneeling on the floor, glaring at the man through gritted teeth.