Could a person's tolerance for pain really reach such a level?
Yu Ning sat at the edge of the bed, unable to recall how she had made it out of the bathroom. She stared at her two hands resting on her knees, that familiar sensation of smoothing back the peeled human skin of her husband still lingering.
The sound of the bathroom lock sliding open made her shudder involuntarily. She hurriedly turned and lay down on the bed, pulling the covers up to bury herself. The moment the man stepped out, she immediately shut her eyes, feigning the illusion of being asleep.
Her ears couldn't be closed to block out sound, and Yu Ning could hear Pei Chongqing's footsteps drawing nearer. She pressed her lips flat, and at the thought that he might lie down beside her, her back began to break out in a nervous sweat.
She felt guilty for this aversion, but she truly wasn't willing to share the bed with Pei Chongqing. Those scars were too frightening—she didn't dare touch them, and she was also afraid that he might disregard the tearing wounds and risk infection to do overly intimate things with her.
Yes… that was it.
She was afraid of tearing his wounds open.
Yu Ning swallowed softly, finding herself a reasonable excuse.
Back when her grandmother was bedridden, she had tended to her with complete devotion, washing those soiled pants even in winter until her hands developed chilblains. So it wasn't that she couldn't endure such things—it was just… just that she was worried.
Yu Ning's thoughts waged war within her mind as she pretended to sleep, her feigned slumber filled with anxiety, her whole body drenched in sweat.
She had never imagined that lying in bed could be so exhausting, so agonizing.
Several seconds passed, and surprisingly, there was no sign of the bed sinking on the other side. Yu Ning hesitated, wondering whether she should open her eyes or shift her body, but she didn't quite dare.
Just then, a chill of cold air swept across her forehead, like a serpent's tongue licking at her skin. All hesitation snapped taut in an instant. Yu Ning's breath caught, and her nerves immediately tensed.
Her lips and cheeks were moistened by the man's thin kisses, and one of his hands slipped into her bedding, reaching in to caress her.
Yu Ning's mind went completely blank, and now she dared not move even more. Even as his palm sank deep between her thighs, she continued to pretend she was sound asleep.
After what felt like an eternity, the man above her finally rose and let her be.
Yu Ning held her breath, still not relaxing. Beneath her tightly shut eyelids, a faint warmth of moisture had already gathered.
She couldn't tell whether it was from holding back tears… or from being touched.
In the deathly silent bedroom, she kept even her breathing low and faint, so much so that when a hoarse, rasping "heh-heh" sound came through, her heart felt as if pricked by a needle, twitching with each pulse.
She endured under this crushing pressure until the next day. Yu Ning stared blankly at the ceiling with unfocused eyes, feeling as though she hadn't slept at all that night.
In the following days, Pei Chongqing showed no intention of sharing the bed with her. Yu Ning didn't ask either, merely offering him a token show of concern, and life went on as usual.
She had thought that given enough time, she would grow accustomed to it. But every time she spent time with Pei Chongqing, she still felt an inexplicable restlessness and unease.
In certain corners of specific scenes, she would also involuntarily zone out and drift, random thoughts popping into her head—was this place she was living in now really her home?
What she found most incomprehensible was that the kitchen cabinet actually held several bags of dog food and various kinds of canned dog meals. She didn't remember owning a dog, yet when cleaning, she would always manage to dig up all sorts of strange dog toys from every corner.
The fuzzy ball swept out from under the sofa had strong bite marks and a heavy scent, with even some fine black hairs clinging to it. Yu Ning compared them—they didn't look like hers. Her hair was longer, not this dark or this fine.
Yu Ning twisted the fuzzy ball in her hand, hesitated for a moment, then stuffed it into her pocket.
She didn't dare ask Pei Chongqing.
Or rather, she didn't really want to be around him anymore.
Yu Ning couldn't say why. Perhaps it was also because the house was perpetually filled with a rank, fishy stench. After all, she still couldn't go outside, forced to stay cooped up in that smell.
Having learned from last time, Yu Ning didn't dare open the windows, so she could only run the air circulator to keep herself breathing.
She grew more and more suffocated, often waking with a start in the middle of the night. Every time she jolted awake, Pei Chongqing would appear beside her out of nowhere, smiling at her gently and offering comfort.
She could always smell that rank odor on him, so she found no solace in his presence. She also feared that his not-yet-healed scars might suddenly peel off, like… a molting insect.
She had dreamed of it. She dreamed of Pei Chongqing's skin cracking and sloughing off in succession, growing thin, broad wings, each step emitting a trembling "heh-heh" sound, leaving trails of foul, black viscous fluid on the ground, and then swallowing and enveloping her whole.
Every time she thought of that dream, Yu Ning felt a strong resistance to any contact with Pei Chongqing.
She hoped he would recover quickly—so completely that the scars would vanish without a trace, as if they had never existed at all.
But how could a normal person suffer wounds that split the flesh open and heal without leaving a single blemish?
Yu Ning felt that her husband… sometimes didn't seem like a normal person at all.
"Sweetheart."
Hearing the voice, Yu Ning turned her head with a start.
Pei Chongqing stood right behind her, wearing a crisp dark-green gardener's uniform, smiling at her—a striking sight, if one could ignore the scars crisscrossing his body.
"The yard, I've cleaned it."
Yu Ning gripped the mop tightly, let out a weak "mm," and walked toward the window, gazing into the distance. The overgrown weeds had indeed been cleared away, leaving a stretch of lush green—not even a single daisy in sight.
Ever since that flower-shaped monster had broken in, Yu Ning no longer dared to tend to her plants and had simply told Pei Chongqing to clear them all out in one go. But seeing the backyard now bare, Yu Ning still felt a pang of reluctance for the little garden she had so carefully nurtured in the past.
Now she couldn't go outside, and didn't dare to, so she could only shrink inside the house, her range of movement growing smaller and smaller.
Because of his injuries, Pei Chongqing couldn't go out to scavenge for resources in the short term either.
Sometimes, even though she didn't want to be around him, she also didn't want him going out like that. If he ran into a formidable monster and fought while wounded, wouldn't that be no different from walking to his death?
As long as the frozen meat and hydroponic vegetables at home were enough to eat, Yu Ning planned to keep holed up with him like this.
But… recalling her past experiences out in the wild and the wounds on his body, Yu Ning still felt she had underestimated him.
Her husband's physical prowess was clearly on par with those monsters—he just looked more decent than they did…
Catching a glimpse of her husband eating across from her, Yu Ning suddenly couldn't bring herself to use that word.
She tried hard to shake off those stray thoughts, swallowing her rice one mouthful at a time.
After the meal, Yu Ning cleared the dishes and intended to have Pei Chongqing run the hot water in the bathroom before coming down to wash them.
Lifting the soup bowl that now held only a bit of broth at the bottom, Yu Ning paused. She glanced at her own bone plate, then at Pei Chongqing's bowl, and a subtle question rose in her mind.
She had simmered a big-bone soup today, putting in two whole large marrow bones—there was no reason only one bone should remain.
Yu Ning stacked her rice bowl aside and went to check the trash can, but she truly couldn't find the other marrow bone.
She stood up, her gaze falling on the sink, and inexplicably began counting the dishes. One soup bowl, two rice bowls, three plates of dishes, one bone plate… Yu Ning paused slightly, suddenly realizing she had never prepared a bone plate for Pei Chongqing at all—and he had never asked for one.
Actually, thinking about it carefully, when he ate meat off the bone, he indeed had no habit of using a bone plate. Not yesterday, not the day before either—but the day before, he'd eaten pork ribs… She had never seen him spit out a single bone.
Realizing this, Yu Ning felt her scalp prickle.
What made her scalp prickle most was that she had never thought anything was wrong with it before, nor had she ever noticed how he handled the meat and bones during meals.
Yes, her husband was sitting right in front of her—how could she not have noticed?
Small fragments of bone swallowed together with the meat could barely be passed off as a peculiar eating habit, but how could a marrow bone that large be bitten apart and swallowed?
Yu Ning sat down restlessly, her hand naturally resting on her knee, touching something round.
She looked down but didn't reach into her pocket, knowing it was the fur ball she'd picked up from under the sofa… a dog toy.
Yu Ning froze, a conjecture surfacing in her mind. Could Pei Chongqing have secretly gotten a dog without telling her?
A dog.
Yu Ning's brow twitched, feeling as if her brain had been pricked by a needle, and a dull, unbearable ache spread through her heart. The pain made her bend over involuntarily to press her hand against it, and her eyes gradually misted over.
Yu Ning couldn't understand why she felt so sad. At that moment, Pei Chongqing came down from upstairs, telling her in a slow, deliberate tone through the Translator that the hot water had been filled.
Seeing him, Yu Ning composed herself and forced a faint smile. "Okay."
She was about to leave when he suddenly reached out and wrapped his arm around hers.
His broad palm carried no warmth at all—only an icy touch.
Yu Ning's heart jolted. She looked up at him slowly, and he gave a slight smile, lowering his head to say to her, "Can… we, together?"
The voice came through the Translator, his lips parting and closing, and the cool, crisp breath still coiled around her face like a serpent's forked tongue.
Yu Ning instinctively resisted. "Don't…"
She swallowed and explained softly, "Your wound can't touch water."
The smile on Pei Chongqing's face gradually faded.
"I want, to be, with you."
He was stubborn.
Yu Ning held her ground. "That won't work either."
"Don't you want your wound to heal completely?"
At those words, the force of his grip on her arm loosened slightly.
Yu Ning thought he was going to let her go, but unexpectedly, he raised the corners of his lips again, lowering his head with certainty. "Tonight, I want, to do it, with you."
Yu Ning was stunned, her eyes wide open, her retinas struggling to bear the sight of his scar-covered face.
The corners of his lips were slightly cracked, curving like a crescent moon, and the Translator's crackling voice was clear and blunt: "Wife, I miss you so much."
A warm place.
Yu Ning stood before the bathroom, slowly unbuttoning her shirt, her mind still lingering on what Pei Chongqing had said to her.
She didn't really want to do it, mainly because she didn't want to touch the scars on his body, but hearing him say it like that, she felt… she wasn't actually that resistant anymore.
Five days had passed, so he wouldn't have that peeling skin issue again like last time. And when she'd wiped his body yesterday, hadn't it been fine?
Yu Ning looked at her flushed face and red ears in the mirror, feeling utterly ridiculous.
How could she be thinking like this?
After rinsing off in the shower, Yu Ning quickly slipped into the bath to calm herself down. She closed her eyes and was just enjoying the moment when she suddenly heard an urgent phone ringtone.
A phone ringtone?
Yu Ning opened her eyes and frantically searched for the source of the sound, spotting a phone lying conspicuously on the small table nearby.
She was stunned, unable to understand why there was a phone here; even more baffling was how a call could come through when there was clearly no network signal.
She was too frightened to touch it, hastily grabbing the bath towel hanging nearby and wrapping it halfway around herself as she scrambled out of the tub, retreating to the corner of the wall. But that iPhone ringtone was like a death knell, vibrating painfully against her eardrums.
Yu Ning had a timid nature and was scared to tears. Just as she was about to call out Pei Chongqing's name, the phone stopped ringing abruptly, as if it had anticipated her.
Her sobbing breaths mingled with the sound of air circulation, and besides that, Yu Ning could hear the flow of her own blood.
She wiped the tears from her face and looked back at the small table beside the bathtub.
The phone still lay there, but it made no further sound.
Yu Ning stood rooted by the wall until her legs ached before she finally dared to move. One step, two steps—after confirming the phone wouldn't suddenly transform and eat her, she dashed over in a quick sprint and grabbed the doorknob—
"Buzz."
The phone suddenly vibrated again.
Yu Ning stumbled backward in fright, the bath towel wrapped around her nearly slipping off.
She clutched the towel tightly to her chest and heard a "ding" as the phone screen lit up again, apparently receiving a text message.
Yu Ning pressed herself against the wall, taking deep breaths, then exhaling heavily. Perhaps the scare had riled up her temper, because she actually mustered some courage to approach, thinking she'd just pick it up and toss it into the bathtub to soak it to ruin.
The moment she picked up the phone, the text message displayed on the screen made her hand freeze mid-air—
【Your husband is a monster. Why do you keep deceiving yourself?】