Chapter 40: Spring Breeze Blows
Seven days later.
Gu Qing still couldn’t bring himself to say those four words: “I have to go.”
Every time he finally worked up the emotion in his heart and tried to hint at it to Lu Qianqian, she would gently nod and say “okay,” but never actually accept the hint. These past days, massage time had extended to fifteen minutes, plus five minutes of hugging time.
This hugging time referred to pure embracing, because Lu Qianqian would hold her phone and show him what looked like marketing videos, telling him that supposedly hugging someone for five minutes daily would stabilize emotions and extend life. So the two began hugging.
Sometimes Gu Qing would hold Lu Qianqian in his arms, stroking her soft, jet-black hair. Sometimes Lu Qianqian would hold Gu Qing in her arms, resting her chin on his shoulder. Sometimes Lu Qianqian would straddle him, gently embracing his shoulders.
Every time he caught Lu Qianqian’s enticing fragrance and felt the warmth of her body, the thoughts that had just formed in Gu Qing’s mind would be scattered.
At night, Gu Qing would secretly wipe tears under the covers, thinking that high school girls were truly too wicked—how could they be so wicked?
At this moment, he was wearing an apron, making sweet and sour pork for Lu Qianqian. Watching the pork frying again in the pot, Gu Qing casually fished out a piece and stuffed it in his mouth, burning himself until tears streamed down his face.
If he could endure the pain of burning his mouth full of blisters, why couldn’t he say those four words! What use was such a useless mouth!
After lunch, Gu Qing lazily leaned against the balcony to continue sunbathing while taking out his phone to check it. Generally speaking, no one would message him. He would occasionally glance at the small group chat from the fighting club, but only lurked and rarely spoke.
But recently there was indeed someone who messaged him daily—it couldn’t be anyone other than Ji Yueling. Every day when Gu Qing opened their chat records, he could see her sending various lewd photos. A few days ago they were very excessive spread shots, as if she didn’t mind showing him her glistening, tender interior, or pouring milk on her soft, white breasts. These past few days the scale had decreased—black stockings, white stockings, knee-high socks, or shots of her slender waist showing off her good figure. Yesterday was a sexy nightgown.
And her sending time was very fixed—always at 7:30 AM. It was really hard on her to wake up in the morning, first take lewd photos, then change into proper clothes to start work. However, Gu Qing hadn’t replied to a single message these days. He just silently looked, using the world’s most terrible cold violence to hurt Ji Yueling.
But Ji Yueling didn’t send anything today.
He suddenly felt a wave of dissatisfaction and malice.
When Ji Yueling sent messages daily, he turned a blind eye, but suddenly when she didn’t send one day, he inexplicably felt an itch in his heart. After hesitating for a while, he typed in the chat box, then deleted it before sending.
If he replied to her message now, wouldn’t that mean he’d taken her bait? Wasn’t she just waiting for him to ask why she didn’t send anything today?
Women really were troublesome. Gu Qing rubbed his messy hair, thought for a long time, and finally typed on the screen: “Where’s today’s fan service pic?”
The message sank like a stone into the sea—no reply.
Gu Qing waited a full five minutes. Apart from being interrupted by an advertisement popup, his phone had no reaction. He suddenly felt resentment fermenting in his heart. He was very clear that his current resentment only came from possessiveness in his heart. After all, compared to Ji Yueling not replying for five minutes, his completely ignoring Ji Yueling for seven or eight days was far more excessive behavior.
But only now did he realize what a terrible, frightening thing cold violence was.
………………………………
“I’m busy.” Ji Yueling replied to Gu Qing half an hour later.
She had thought Gu Qing would sulk and ignore her for a long time again, but unexpectedly, Gu Qing replied almost immediately asking, “Busy with what?”
“Catching a mantis.”
“Huh?”
“Recently there’s been a mantis demon roaming around the city. It’s already eaten several men. I guarded at bars all night last night but didn’t find it. After waking up I was rushing to work, no time to take photos for you.”
Gu Qing understood what she was busy with.
Ji Yueling’s position was similar to a search and combat team, considered the Alliance’s core department. The Alliance’s Erasers also belonged to this department, but because those ten S-rank Erasers’ faces were recognized by most demons, they couldn’t do search work. Positions like Ji Yueling’s were called Arbiters, specializing in hunting demons that committed crimes in the city.
In this absurd world, death was never a distant matter. Perhaps while walking on the street, a crazed demon would suddenly transform into its true form, grab your neck, and bite off your head like gnawing on a rabbit’s head. So people indulged in pleasure and loved even more frantically.
Her so-called “catching a mantis” referred to a demon called a mantis demon. Mantis demons had relatively high bloodlines—A-rank ones could transform into humans and possess intelligence. Most of the time they took the form of human women, luring men to take the bait, then killing them after sex, hence being called mantises.
Interestingly, even at A-rank, mantis demons in human female form would have sexual desire for human males.
But humans didn’t seem to understand very well why mantis demons did this. Gu Qing thought for a moment and sent Ji Yueling another string of messages.
“Mantis demons seduce men for sex then kill them. During the act, the mantis demon’s body secretes hormones when she feels pleasure. She injects these hormones into the man’s body. These hormones catalyze the man’s body into more delicious food, so the stronger, younger, more vigorous men are more likely to become her targets.”
“It’s spring now, mantis demons are in serious heat. Don’t you have the Snow Silkworm Spider Emperor’s abilities? Just release a bunch of little spiders and use spider sensing to find it.” Gu Qing formulated a plan for Ji Yueling based on known information.
He had to get her to finish work quickly—couldn’t delay his shameful training plan.
“How do I release little spiders? What’s spider sensing?” Ji Yueling began asking him.
“…” Gu Qing’s eye twitched slightly.
But this seemed to be his fault. Last time he had only unlocked Ji Yueling’s abilities, but because Ji Yueling hadn’t truly reached S-rank yet, she hadn’t awakened the Snow Silkworm Spider Demon’s memories. Now it was like the skills were there, but she didn’t know how to use them.
“Where are you now?”
“At the Alliance waiting for a meeting to analyze where to stake out tonight.”
“Need help?” Gu Qing suddenly asked her.
“Didn’t you find me annoying? Why are you suddenly reaching out… Spring’s here, are you in heat too?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Gu Qing replied perfunctorily.
………………………………
Half an hour later, Ji Yueling’s sports car arrived downstairs at Gu Qing’s building.
Because Gu Qing promised her she could handle that mantis demon alone tonight, Ji Yueling skipped her team’s meeting and gave up on formulating battle plans. In the past she would have thought she was crazy, but these words came from Gu Qing’s mouth—when he spoke, Ji Yueling inexplicably believed.
She didn’t know why her trust in Gu Qing had inexplicably reached this level.
Gu Qing got in the passenger seat, but seemed somewhat distracted.
“Where to?” Ji Yueling asked him.
“Somewhere with no people. The fewer people the better anyway.” Gu Qing said this but still seemed a bit dazed. Ji Yueling followed his command and drove to the mountaintop they’d gone to that night. Few people came there anyway. An hour later, Ji Yueling arrived there. The sun was blazing now, and the grass on the mountaintop swayed in the wind.
Many pear trees were planted on the mountain. At this moment pear blossoms were flying everywhere across the hills, like a heavy snowfall.
“Little spiders are an ability of the Snow Silkworm Spider Emperor. You can understand it as the Snow Silkworm Spider Emperor’s unique reproduction method, but now you’re hosted in a human body, so let me think… Try holding the thought of creating life and manufacture some little spiders. These little spiders will share vision with you and act according to your thoughts.”
After getting out of the car, Gu Qing sat in front of it, looking toward Ji Yueling who was also leaning against the door. Because she had to continue staking out tonight, Ji Yueling wasn’t wearing the Alliance uniform, but rather a black sweater and loose jeans, with her hair in a neat ponytail. She looked as gentle as the girl next door, except her eyes were too cold.
Ji Yueling did as he said, trying to extend her hand. Dots of light condensed in her palm. After a little while, an extremely small jade-white spider emerged from those light points, clinging to her finger.
In an instant, Ji Yueling discovered her vision had changed. Everything before her eyes remained the same, but she could also perceive the spider’s perspective—a very wondrous feeling.
But even more wondrous was that this was something she knew nothing about, yet Gu Qing seemed to understand it completely.
So she looked at Gu Qing in confusion, but didn’t ask proactively this time. Fortunately, Gu Qing quickly explained: “Because your ability hasn’t broken through to S-rank yet and was directly upgraded by my ‘Emperor’ language, it only unlocked permissions but you don’t know how to use them yourself. When you reach S-rank, those undiscovered abilities will naturally appear in your memory.”
“This is a little spider. With your current energy level, generating ten or so shouldn’t be a problem. Just place one in each bar you need to investigate.”
“But just seeing… what’s the use? Mantis demons hide as humans and are hard to distinguish.”
This was why mantis demons were troublesome. Last night Ji Yueling had staked out all night, seeing over ten couples preparing to get rooms, but she could only use her energy to probe them when getting extremely close. This was a relatively simple demon identification method, but required getting very close. Just seeing wouldn’t help at all.
“This is where that sensing ability comes in. You can understand it as a subtle sixth sense. When encountering danger or sensing something unusual, it will alert you. But you haven’t awakened this ability yet… Here, give me a gun.”
Ji Yueling took out a handgun and handed it to Gu Qing—still a revolver, plus a box of bullets. Gu Qing unhurriedly loaded the revolver with bullets, then moved away from Ji Yueling. Ji Yueling was about to say something, ask what he wanted to do, but Gu Qing suddenly raised his hand and pulled the trigger.
In that instant, Ji Yueling suddenly felt her forehead turn cold.
In a flash she felt all her body hair stand on end. The bullet had already flown from the barrel, spinning at high speed, and everything before her became incredibly slow. Faced with danger, a person’s first instinct was naturally to dodge. She tilted her head, and the bullet grazed past her cheek.
This surprised even herself—previously as an A-rank, she didn’t have the ability to dodge bullets at this distance.
But the next instant, the second gunshot rang out.
Gu Qing fired six consecutive shots until his tiger’s mouth ached from the recoil. Ji Yueling was now in complete panic, fine sweat beading on her forehead. She relied almost perfectly on instinct to dodge these six bullets, but was now frightened speechless, looking at Gu Qing with eyes full of fear.
“Mm, this is sensing. It activates when encountering dangerous moments. You felt it too, right? That strange feeling that suddenly appeared in your head. Next, as long as you slowly learn to adapt to this feeling, you can control the little spiders to self-destruct when sensing demon scent, then you can lock onto the location.”
Gu Qing spun the revolver in his hand and tossed it back to Ji Yueling, but unfortunately Ji Yueling was still in shock and couldn’t catch it.