"Chongqing…"
There was no response from outside the door for a long time—so quiet that the drop of a needle could be heard.
Yu Ning pressed her hand against the door panel and caught the faint sound of dripping water. She couldn't help but step forward, leaning in to listen closely.
Just as she tilted her ear, the electronic translator's voice finally sounded from outside the door: "Home… dirty… stinks… I'm… cleaning."
The voice was even fainter and hoarser than before, with obvious distortion from the translator. Yu Ning frowned slightly, knowing that he always wore the translator around his neck. If it had become this distorted, he must have been attacked at a vital point by the monster.
"Are you okay? Are you badly hurt? That monster… is it gone?" Yu Ning sniffled, her heart aching terribly. "Open the door. We'll clean up the mess together, and I'll help you bandage your wounds."
Another stretch of dead silence from outside the door, but the viscous sound of liquid grew more pronounced, now accompanied by heavy, labored breathing.
Yu Ning's heart tightened further. Her hand unconsciously gripped the doorknob, and she twisted it again: "Chongqing?"
"No… can't…" He refused decisively.
Beyond the unseen door, Pei Chongqing lowered his head, clutching the translator—now reduced to just its body—tightly against his neck. His neck still had a gap that hadn't fully self-repaired, and blood seeped through the device and between his fingers, dripping down his arm to pool into a puddle of gore on the floor.
Pei Chongqing ignored the pain, vibrating his throat in the air to produce sound: "It ran away… I need to… clean… clean… clean…"
Yu Ning could tell he was avoiding the question: "Are you badly injured?"
Pei Chongqing didn't answer again. She pounded on the door urgently. "Open the door. Let me help you bandage it. You can't handle this alone, do you hear me? Open the door."
With the vibrations and breathing, pieces of loosely stitched skin fell off one after another, plopping into the pool of blood.
The sound was especially distinct in the gaps between her knocking. Yu Ning froze, stopping her pounding. Before she could identify the source of the sound, a thick, putrid stench hit her in the face, churning her stomach.
She covered her nose and mouth, suppressing the urge to vomit, but dry heaves still escaped through the cracks between her fingers.
Pei Chongqing's hand, which had been picking up the fallen skin, paused. He swallowed silently: "You… rest…"
He stepped back and left, drawing as much of the toxic, discharged blood from the floor back into his body as possible, leaving no trace behind.
Yu Ning didn't hear his footsteps. She pounded on the door for a good while without any response before realizing he had already left. She slid down along the door and squatted, taking a deep breath—only to catch that rotting stench again. This time she truly couldn't hold it back, and she vomited clear saliva directly onto the floor.
Dragging her weakened body, Yu Ning returned to the sofa in the master bedroom's sitting area to catch her breath. Gazing at the shattered dark cocoon fragments on the bed, she shuddered and couldn't help but rub the goosebumps rising on her arms.
Compared to when she first woke up, Yu Ning was much calmer now, her mind clearer, able to piece together the fragmented memories. But she still couldn't figure out where that thing on the bed had come from.
The moment she opened the door, she saw Pei Chongqing, but her view was quickly obscured by something unknown that wrapped around her body. She noticed those things were attacking from behind Pei Chongqing, but how could he have those tangled tentacles on him?
Yu Ning pressed her lips together, guessing those were probably cocoons the monster had spawned to swallow her whole. Since it had been driven away but not completely destroyed, they still remained on the bed.
As for the bloodstains in the bathroom, the stench outside the door…
Yu Ning was utterly baffled. But she was certain that Pei Chongqing must have been seriously injured, and as for Yu Wan… she still hadn't seen her at all, and had no idea how she was doing.
There were so many things she wanted to ask Pei Chongqing when he came over that Yu Ning didn't dare fall asleep even though her head was splitting and her chest was tight and breathless. She had also tried opening the door herself, but that door was unusually sturdy and hard—she'd only managed two strong ramming attempts before she couldn't take it anymore.
As for leaving through some other place, Yu Ning didn't even dare think about it. She definitely didn't dare go near the window again.
She steadied her thoughts, wrapped up the shattered cocoons on the bed with a bedsheet, dragged them to the wall, and laid out spare bedding. Then she went to the bathroom, turned on the showerhead, and washed away the filthy water as best she could.
Keeping busy helped clear her mind, and besides, the household cleaning was something she had to do anyway.
After finishing the cleanup, Yu Ning was exhausted and parched. Just as she turned back to the master bedroom, she noticed a plate of food had been placed in front of the door at some point. She walked closer and looked carefully—there was bread, fried eggs, grilled bacon, and milk. A very standard breakfast. Except the eggs and bacon were a bit burnt, crumbled into a mess.
There was no one else here—it was absolutely her husband, who wasn't good at cooking, who had fried and grilled this. Yu Ning's expression softened, and a sourness welled up at the corners of her eyes.
She sat right at the doorway and ate, going nowhere else. Tasting the bitterness of the burnt food, her heart ached even more.
For the third time, she knocked on the door and called out to Pei Chongqing, but still received no response.
The prolonged confinement and solitude made Yu Ning very anxious. She worried that Pei Chongqing had met with misfortune, and once again tried to force the door open. Perhaps because of the commotion, this time she finally got a response again.
Calling it a response, it was actually a note written by Pei Chongqing.
He told her to rest well and not do such things again. Everything at home was fine—she just needed to recuperate in the bedroom for a couple more days. He also told her he wasn't injured, and that it was his fault the house had been invaded and thrown into chaos.
Yu Ning had never imagined he would take the blame upon himself and apologize to her proactively, when clearly she was the one who had let the wolf in.
Pei Chongqing's handwriting wasn't neat, still crooked like earthworms, but at least it was highly legible. Seeing the note, Yu Ning felt much more at ease, yet tears streamed down uncontrollably.
She choked back sobs and asked, "Is the Translator broken?"
From outside the door came a very low response—a hoarse growl hummed from deep in his throat.
Yu Ning's tears fell even harder, and she cried out her apologies to him. Pei Chongqing didn't leave. He silently kept her company and wrote another note.
But this note was stained by a large patch of blood dripping from him, and he couldn't bring himself to hand it over, so he could only leave first.
Yu Ning hadn't slept all day, staring at the door from morning to night, to the point that by seven or eight in the evening, her body was utterly spent.
She had no idea how Pei Chongqing managed to open the door and deliver meals silently without her noticing. She desperately wanted to go out and see his injuries and condition, but he never gave her the chance to leave.
Yu Ning waited and waited, until she could no longer stay awake, before she finally listened to him and went to bed to rest.
Besides her husband, she was also thinking about Yu Wan. But a vague, troubling suspicion lingered at the bottom of her heart, and she dared not ask.
That night, Yu Ning's thoughts were restless, and she did not sleep peacefully. She cried until her eyelids were swollen, with half-dried tear tracks streaking across her cheeks.
She did not notice that a faint soul-spirit had squeezed through the crack in the door. It was the size of a thumb, and unmistakably took the form of Yu Wan—but she could neither see it nor touch it. While she slept soundly, Yu Wan crept closer, licking her tear stains and sleeping alongside her.
Seeing Yu Ning so heartbroken, Yu Wan also felt a twinge of regret over its own impulsiveness. It had not expected that the venomous vine, even after being driven off, would still have that much strength left—it had flung its skin-shell so violently that the flesh was torn open, beyond repair.
Yu Wan let out a sigh, and through the shared soul consciousness, it saw Pei Chongqing in the bathroom, stitching up his wounds.
Under normal circumstances, those injuries should have healed on their own in no time, with no need for mending. But the loss of half his heart had stripped away more than half of his ability to maintain his form.
A spirit body is formless; when diminished, it merely becomes faint and tiny, just like itself. As long as the inner core was not annihilated or devoured, given time, it could still recover. But a human skin-shell has a shelf life. If it suffers severe trauma in a short span and is not repaired, it will decay into rotting flesh like any ordinary shell. Unless the Spirit Lord is willing to sacrifice its own soul-spirit, continuously injecting energy to sustain the form.
Yu Wan thought… its Spirit Lord seemed to already be doing exactly that. It could sense the soul-spirit draining away.
Yu Wan's fondness for Yu Ning came from the Spirit Lord's influence, but it was also its own subjective inclination toward closeness. Yet it could not bring itself to expend energy the way its Spirit Lord did, merely to repair those shattered bits of flesh and maintain a human form.
Perhaps it was simply too weak—after all, it was nothing more than a small fragment split off from the Spirit Lord, easily stripped of its independent will.
Sharing the soul consciousness with its Spirit Lord, entrusted to stay by Yu Ning's side under watch, Yu Wan had also been steeped in the love and affection Yu Ning spoke of.
It remembered Yu Ning saying that a person's true love had nothing to do with appearance.
Yu Wan had never tasted the flavor of romantic love, but it could still understand those words. When Spirit Lords devoured and absorbed each other's spiritual power, did they not also disregard origin, essence, or weakness?
It did not understand what its Spirit Lord was holding on to. It could not comprehend it. But still, it wanted to return to its original skin-shell, to be seen by Yu Ning, to be embraced by Yu Ning.
A human embrace was an inconceivable warmth. It had felt it firsthand through that dog's flesh, and it wanted to experience it once more.
But now, it could not even lick the taste of Yu Ning's tears.
Unable to taste them only made Yu Wan more curious. It wondered whether these things she called "tears" were still salty and bitter, and whether even a single drop had ever been shed for it. Humans wept for the ones and things they cared about—so was it, in the end, one of the ones she cared for?
Drip.
A drop of water from the faucet fell into the dirty basin, spiraling down the drain.
Pei Chongqing hunched his broad back, squeezing his form into the small square mirror of the bathroom. Using his soul-spirit as thread and his elongated, pitch-black fingertips as a needle, he slowly and carefully stitched from the crown of his forehead down to the corner of his eye.
This was the final piece, and the most critical one. He stitched it with care, only withdrawing from the washbasin after tying the knot at the end and pulling the thread through. Then he took a moment to examine himself.
The infusion of Soul-spirit had allowed his split Skin-shell to gradually knit back together, preventing it from festering to the point of falling off—yet it had not restored him to his former scarless state.
His face, which had once been flawless with no visible pores, was now pulled this way and that by the sutured scars, pieced together into three slightly misaligned sections of Skin-shell.
Gazing at a reflection so different from what he had once been, Pei Chongqing felt a surge of indignation. He longed to smash the mirror with his fist, but reason reined in his impulse.
The fury he could not vent from the depths of his heart made his entire body tremble uncontrollably, straining his veins and blood vessels. The freshly stitched flesh and skin began to loosen faintly again—he sensed it clearly, and in shock and unease, he released the tension.
He stared into the mirror for a long time before gradually accepting his altered appearance. He knew this was the best form he could maintain; any more rage would only make things worse.
After the suturing, at least he still looked human enough to be recognized.
Compared to his original appearance, Yu Ning should be more accepting of this.
Pei Chongqing tugged at the corner of his mouth, vividly recalling how terrified Yu Ning had been when they first met. Back then, he could not understand human emotions; he only found her tear-swollen face and soft sobs strangely captivating.
He had frightened her thirty-six times, and made her cry and choke on her sobs thirty-six times as well. That was his one-sided pursuit and possession, nothing like what humans defined as "love"—in fact, far removed from it.
It was only after observing her, persistently changing his form and appearance to draw near her, and spending days by her side, that Pei Chongqing came to understand that what he had done was "fear"—enough to destroy any relationship.
Pei Chongqing knew he must never reveal his True Form and frighten his wife again. No matter how broken and tattered this Skin-shell was… it was still better than what he originally looked like.
He kept adding weight to the scale of what he called "courage" in his heart, yet standing before the bedroom door, he remained hesitant, unable to bring himself to turn the lock.
He did not need Yu Wan's surveillance to know—just from delivering meals a few times—how hard Yu Ning had cried last night. She had wept almost without cease since waking in the day.
She would cry herself to exhaustion, lose her vitality, and even develop the human ailment called "high fever." So he could not simply leave her be.
But he still could not fathom how a human would react. Could his wife accept his current appearance? Would she not be frightened away, not slam the door in terror at the first sight of him?
Pei Chongqing could not measure it, dared not gamble. He gripped the door handle, silent for a long time. Just as he was about to turn back, a woman's soft, tearful voice suddenly came from within the bedroom: "Chongqing… I really want to see you."
"You're outside the door, aren't you? Can you open it? I really, really want to see you…"
Pei Chongqing stopped.
His hesitation, at this moment, began to waver—for the sake of his wife's crying.