Evil As Humans

Chapter 85: Worry

Yin Ren leaned against the partition door of the bathroom stall.

Until now, he had never felt such a feeling—he ate things as small as carrion and grass roots and as big as countless evil beings, but he had never known what the word “nausea” was.

Is this a food problem?

…No, it shouldn’t be. Yin Ren carefully tasted the food he had just swallowed. The beef was fresh and of good quality. If there was anything abnormal in it, he would be able to smell it.

Is this a human problem?

The two men and the old man at the next table didn’t have any strange auras on them. Besides, they were thoroughly teased by Ge Tingting, and Huang Jin didn’t give any unusual warnings.

Before the nausea, he didn’t feel any abnormalities.

Excluding all possibilities, it could only be that his body had changed. There were reasons why mortals got sick, let alone an Evil Spirit like him.

But he couldn’t think properly.

Yin Ren was dizzy. He leaned against the partition door, trying not to let himself fall. His limbs were still soft, and that strange feeling lingered.

It could be considered pain, but not quite like it. He seemed to have grown a brand new sensory organ that was messing with his perception. Something was coursing through his blood and churning under his skin. It was a strange feeling of soreness and swelling. Yin Ren’s vision wavered as numerous faint ripples appeared in it.

Hold on. Yin Ren gritted his teeth—at least he had to maintain his human form. The dignified Ghost King couldn’t appear as a bathroom horror legend.

The voices in his ear became blurred and faint. Someone was calling his name. Yin Ren shook his head, barely managing to distinguish Zhong Chengshuo’s voice.

“Yin Ren?” Zhong Chengshuo said with confusion. “Yin Ren?”

Yin Ren struggled to open the door, then he hooked an arm around Zhong Chengshuo’s shoulder.

Zhong Chengshuo grabbed Yin Ren’s arm and supported him. Yin Ren closed his eyes and tried to reduce his weight so Zhong Chengshuo could smoothly drag him out of the bathroom stall.

“What’s wrong?” It was Lu Xiaohe’s voice.

Knowing a little bit of the inside story, Huang Jin’s tone was more shocking. “What happened all of a sudden?”

“It’s fine.” Yin Ren forcefully spat out his words. “My stomach feels uncomfortable, so I’ll leave first and go… back home…”

A human hospital couldn’t check on a 1,000-year-old evil. He just wanted to find a safe place first to gather himself up.

Zhong Chengshuo was silent for a moment. “I’ll take him home to rest. You guys continue to eat. I’ll pay when you’re done.”

Lu Xiaohe: “Are you sure you don’t want to call 120? It just so happens that 110 is coming*…”

*Clarity: In China, calling 120 is for a first-aid ambulance, while calling 110 is for the police.

“Yin Ren just had a physical examination at Shian a while ago, and there wasn’t any problem with his health.” Zhong Chengshuo held Yin Ren tightly with one hand and opened an app to call a car. “I’ll take him to the hospital if something happens. Lu Jie, if he’s not well tomorrow, I’ll ask for sick leave for him.”

Lu Xiaohe: “……”

She really didn’t believe that these two were from Sunken Society. Using gastrointestinal diseases to postpone the execution mission sounded extremely unreliable.

What was more, when Yin Ren was taken away, he tried to look in the direction of the hotpot he had just started eating and showed a regretful expression.

……

At the beginning, Zhong Chengshuo wanted to move Yin Ren into the bedroom, where the man had not once slept in the 800 years of his life.

Who would have thought Lord Ghost King’s hair was pulling at the door frame, unwilling to enter the room, muttering “There’s no smell in the room”, and was trying his best to rub against the sofa.

But he couldn’t let a sick patient… lie on the sofa. Zhong Chengshuo sent Yin Ren to his own bedroom and laid him down in the center of the double bed.

As a member of the science post, Zhong Chengshuo couldn’t feel any evil qi or Evil Force. He only knew that the green plants in the house didn’t respond, which meant Yin Ren’s Evil Force wasn’t leaking out.

But as far as physicality was concerned, Yin Ren wasn’t normal now.

It seemed Yin Ren was quite satisfied with his lover’s smell. He retracted into the blanket and wrapped himself into a perfect cocoon. But not long after, many strange limbs “flowed” down from the edge of the blanket.

They flickered in the dim light, a bit like the translucent wings on Yin Ren’s body. The miniature wings were glued to each other and covered the bedroom floor. Zhong Chengshuo took off his shoes and walked barefoot to the bed.

The bedroom was dim. These limbs “rose” higher to his ankles. They felt like warm jelly to the touch.

Zhong Chengshuo mixed a bag of warm rehydration fluids with salt and sugar. He stared at the cup in his hand for a while, not sure if this thing was useful for an Evil Spirit.

“Want water?” Zhong Chengshuo sat down beside the bed with the cup stretched towards the blanket.

“No…” Yin Ren replied in a daze, his head covered by the blanket. The translucent wings swayed towards Zhong Chengshuo’s ankle, almost covering his knees.

Zhong Chengshuo touched the wings, which gently rubbed against his palm.

“Sick?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Yin Ren replied in a muffled voice.

“The police gave feedback. Those two men are regular customers of the shop, and the old man is also clean. They had a few quarrels over support issues, so this wasn’t the first time the police had to deal with them.”

“…It’s not them.” Yin Ren huffed. “I don’t know the details… I haven’t encountered such a situation before.”

Zhong Chengshuo was still holding the cup of rehydration solution as he sat by the bedside, at a loss.

Yin Ren’s warm limbs swept across his insteps and flowed around his calves. They surrounded Zhong Chengshuo warmly, neither lightly nor heavily, coming close to a hug.

This was the only way for Yin Ren to express his “no problem”.

The strange dizziness was still there. Yin Ren simply let go of part of his control and allowed the non-human limbs to be exposed a little to relax himself.

His body was undergoing some sort of metamorphosis.

Unlike the previous times, Yin Ren didn’t feel ominous about this change; only pure strangeness.

Yin Ren’s power wasn’t out of control. Although his thinking was chaotic, he was generally sober—some time ago, whether it was adapting his Evil Force or practicing controlling his powers, he had no issues.

To be precise, he was now more than a little bit stronger than when he first entered Shian, so this shouldn’t have happened.

It could be considered an unprecedented situation. Yin Ren couldn’t find the reason…

But he was surprisingly calm.

Wrapped in the familiar smell, Yin Ren closed his eyes with peace of mind. He could hold on while he was in the Archive, so there wasn’t a reason why he couldn’t do it this time. Someone was beside him, within reach.

Strange changes, strange feelings. The mix wasn’t as bad as he thought it would be.

Drowsiness, soreness, and tingling. They circulated back and forth, entangling Yin Ren’s body endlessly. Yin Ren grabbed Zhong Chengshuo and shrank deeper into the blanket.

“Take your temperature and ask for sick leave tomorrow. Remember to keep your fever under control.” Zhong Chengshuo remained frozen at the bedside for a moment before he handed over a thermometer. “Get a good rest for the day.”

Yin Ren’s wings politely closed around the thermometer for a while, leaving a distinct 43 degrees Celsius.

Zhong Chengshuo: “……”

Zhong Chengshuo patted the semi-liquid wings on his hand. “…Lower it.”

Finally, Zhong Chengshuo concluded that Lord Ghost King’s temperature control ability wasn’t as good as that of a hot water cup. He sent the photo of the thermometer reading close to 38 degrees into the work group chat and said that Yin Ren had taken antipyretics to lower his fever.

[Final Fruit: I’ll also take a half-day off tomorrow.]

[Final Fruit: I’ll go to work in the morning and come back in the afternoon to take care of Yin Ren.]

[Milky Way: Okay, I’ll let the others know.]

[Milky Way: Take good care of yourself. Your health comes first. Don’t stress too much about it.]

Truly, there was no rush. After all, this was an execution mission specifically for them. Even if Yin Ren asked for half a year of sick leave, it would be enthusiastically waiting for his return.

Zhong Chengshuo sighed and walked out of the bedroom with light steps. After a while, he came back with a mop.

“I’ll clean up the room,” he explained to the wriggling wings. “It might be good for you to keep the room clean and airy—do you have the strength to move those wings?”

“Uh-huh.”

Zhong Chengshuo turned on the air filter in the room while telling Yin Ren to “lift your feet”, then he dragged the mop around the entire bedroom.

Where King Yama passed with the mop in his hand, Yin Ren’s wings parted like waves, which was quite amazing to watch.

Late at night.

It wasn’t like Zhong Chengshuo didn’t think about sleeping next to Yin Ren to help take care of the sick.

Yin Ren had no opinion on it, but Zhong Chengshuo had been thinking about it for a long time. Firstly, he didn’t know how to take care of an Evil Spirit, and secondly, he felt that it was a bit weird to use his boyfriend’s limb as a mattress. In the end, he couldn’t make up his mind.

Those wings felt good to touch, so he couldn’t help but imagine what it was like to hug them.

That night, the two switched sleeping positions. In order to detect abnormalities, Zhong Chengshuo decided to sleep on the sofa.

Nothing happened overnight.

The next day, as soon as Zhong Chengshuo opened his eyes, he saw a few wings dragging a bunch of ice-cold grapes as they retreated lightly into the bedroom.

Oh, it seems his appetite has recovered a little.

“There’s breakfast on the table,” Zhong Chengshuo said as he tidied up his collar. “I made millet porridge, which is easy to digest.”

A string of glued wings fluttered out of the door in a line, shook at Zhong Chengshuo, and then shrank back in line. Zhong Chengshuo stared at the narrow gap in the door for a while, fascinated. He wanted to make it bigger.

“Yin Ren, can you get me a small pack of cleansing wipes? It’s on the bedside table.”

The weird limbs moved, and after a while, a string of wings protruded out again. The deformed wings held the cleansing wipes as they bounced closely.

Zhong Chengshuo put the pack of mint cleansing wipes into his pocket and quickly grabbed the leading wing—unlike the huge monster wings on the Evil Spirit’s body, these small wings were about the size of a raven and were warm and soft to the touch.

It was warmly placed in Zhong Chengshuo’s hands, slightly bent to one side. Zhong Chengshuo could feel Yin Ren’s faint doubts.

Zhong Chengshuo took a deep breath, imitating Yin Ren’s style of sipping on cream, and pressed his lips to the edge of the wing.

The wing instantly got hotter by a few degrees and quickly retracted into the bedroom.

“I’m going to work. See you in the afternoon.” Zhong Chengshuo touched his warm lips. “Contact me if you’re feeling uncomfortable.”

……

Huang Jin packed up his room.

He didn’t have much luggage, so everything fit in a small suitcase. The spirit weapon to deal with the electronic anklet was also ready, just waiting for him to activate it.

He only needed a carving knife and a little cash to start over wherever he was about to go… No, with the current police surveillance and security capabilities, he may not be able to start over unless he escaped abroad.

At least hide himself until the next unlucky mission!

Although he didn’t know what the next mission was, looking at Lu Xiaohe’s sporadic thinking, the difficulty of the next mission was A-level and above.

Huang Jin didn’t think he was a good person, and he didn’t love life that much. Even so, he didn’t think he was that guilty…

He was the one whose head was gouged out by monsters in the Archive and it was him who was attacked by the Evil Force. For such a mission, Shian had the nerve to classify it as a C-level, so he didn’t even want to know what the hell an A-level was.

What was more, there were two monsters with an unknown purpose on the team.

Huang Jin applied to Lu Xiaohe for a transfer. Unfortunately, since he wasn’t an official employee, he had to obey orders and fight wherever he was directed. Otherwise, he could only go back to jail obediently.

Huang Jin looked around his dorm and let out a long exhale.

A real man would never stop doing nothing.

Huang Jin hid the suitcase and ran to Ding Lizi’s ward, ready to bid her a simple farewell.

Now that the terrible guitar was taken out by a Shian personnel, Ding Lizi was completely rid of the integration with the object. However, there was a huge scar left on her chest and she was still recovering from treatment.

Ding Lizi’s hearing was exceptionally keen. She clearly remembered the footsteps of her friend. As soon as Huang Jin entered, her tornado of thoughts began to turn frantically. “Mr. Nice Guy”, “I kind of like him”, “I want to stay together for a while”, “I haven’t sung that song for him yet“…

Huang Jin: “……”

For a moment, he only felt that he was an evil being that was being purified.

Ding Lizi was oblivious. “Mr. Huang, what’s up? Did you want to learn guitar?”

Huang Jin: “…No. I just came to see you.”

After a while, a gloomy, squatting mushroom appeared outside the ward.

Trouble. Huang Jin was reluctant to leave.

But Unit 9 is terrible…

But Ding Lizi trusts me so much…

But Unit 9 is terrible…

But Ding Lizi has no one to rely on here and would return to those fearful days…

Huang Jing squatted outside the corridor with his hand in his hair as he stared at the seams of the floor tiles with a drawn, long face.

“What are you doing?” A voice came from close by.

Huang Jin turned around and found that Zhong Chengshuo’s thoughts were only 15 centimeters away from him. At some point, this person had quietly squatted beside him, as if there were pads growing under his feet.

Huang Jin staggered in fright and woefully landed on his ass.

“You… What are you doing?” Comrade Huang Jin swallowed.

“I’m looking for you for two things.” Zhong Chengshuo spoke in a low voice. “First, there was an accident in the Archive. Yin Ren didn’t have time to erase your memory, so you know what to do.”

Huang Jing huffed dryly.

After leaving the Archive, his memory modification could no longer be blamed on the enemy. Under Shian’s eyes, the two of them wouldn’t mess around. Zhong Chengshuo came to warn him, but he wasn’t surprised at all.

“And the second thing?” Huang Jin’s inner escape tank had risen substantially.

Zhong Chengshuo: “How are you feeling now?”

“…What?”

“Ding Lizi is your girlfriend. She’s injured. How are you feeling now?”

Huang Jin abruptly stood up with a light blush on his face. “We’re not even dating yet!”

“Almost.”

“No, that’s not the point… Forget it, why are you even asking?” Thinking of the strength behind this person, Huang Jin slowly squatted down again.

“Want to know.”

Okay. Huang Jin knew that asking was tantamount to not asking. He could only sigh fiercely. “Worried, but what else can I do? This matter is beyond my ability. I can’t help her.”

“Then, in your opinion, what does ‘worry’ feel like?”

Huang Jin turned to Zhong Chengshuo with a little trepidation and saw the flow of thoughts on that person’s surface was a little slower. He could tell that Zhong Chengshuo was really curious.

“You… Haven’t you worried about your parents?”

“They’re adults, and they have their own arrangements for their lives,” Zhong Chengshuo replied. “My thoughts can’t change reality.”

Huang Jin: “……”

He moved half a step to the side, a little further away from Zhong Chengshuo. As a result, Zhong Chengshuo shamelessly moved half a step with him. Two good young men had morphed into two crabs moving sideways down the corridor.

“I can’t explain it to you.” Finding that he couldn’t refuse this person politely, he could only respond weakly like so. “If you really have doubts in this regard, you can find a psychiatrist in Shian.”

“If they ask questions of this caliber, they’ll think I’m crazy.”

In Huang Jin’s eyes, Zhong Chengshuo’s flow of thoughts was normal. Taking a closer look, compared to other people around him, the edge of this person’s thoughts was a little fuzzy, as if they diffused into the air.

“Yin Ren fell ill last night, and I feel a tightness in my chest and heaviness in my stomach. Is this ‘worry’?” Zhong Chengshuo asked seriously. “I know I can’t help him when I go home, but I still want to. Is this also a sign of ‘worry’?”

“It sounds like it,” Huang Jin replied cautiously.

As expected of King Yama, his way of thinking was quite distorted.

It was a bit strange to say that after he woke up, Shian asked him to make a visual impression sheet of his team members, saying that it was to check the degree of consciousness recovery. Huang Jing thought about it and honestly wrote down his impression of Zhong Chengshuo.

[Terrible.]

But he couldn’t tell what was terrible. Perhaps he had been wandering around the fringes of the metaphysics for too long and had seen too many villains of all kinds. He just felt that something was wrong with Zhong Chengshuo, and he instinctively didn’t want to get close to this person.

Although Zhong Chengshuo never thought of anything out of the ordinary…

“I may like Yin Ren more than I thought.” A conspicuous thought floated from Zhong Chengshuo’s thinking; the runes were extremely neat.

Huang Jin: “?”

“Unpredictable or incapable of doing anything.” His thoughts were still moving in a regular manner but were coupled with some “like” and “worry”. “I see. No wonder Yin Ren was worried about me. It’s because of this mission.”

“He really likes me very much. I’m a little happy.”

Huang Jin: “……?” Did he just see something incredible just now?

“Thank you.” With his thoughts racing, Zhong Chengshuo sincerely thanked him.

“You’re welcome,” Huang Jin replied stiffly. He turned his head mechanically and stopped looking at Zhong Chengshuo.

As a result, when he turned his head, he saw Ge Tingting’s puzzled face—the little girl saw them squatting like two mushrooms and decisively joined the team squatting in the corridor. With Ge Tingting on the left and Zhong Chengshuo on the right, Huang Jin was sandwiched between them.

“Is there any business to discuss?” The AI synthetic voice had been adjusted and now sounded much more natural than before. “Xiaohe Jie said that she’ll explain the mission when Yin Ren returns. This mission seems very important?”

“I don’t know.” Huang Jin’s eyes went blank. “I don’t know anything.”

Forget it. He didn’t read his horoscope when he went out today, so he would try to escape another day.

The three members of Unit 9 squatted quietly in the corridor with varying degrees of “worry” on their faces.

……

Yin Ren’s sense of taste was recovering.

When he discovered this, he almost burst into tears. The grapes in the morning still tasted a bit like rubber balls, but now the rum ice cream was truly pure ice cream.

He scooped out a large scoop of ice cream and savored it.

It was sweet and cold, with a faint aroma of rum, no different from the last time he ate it.

The symptoms of dizziness and limb numbness had improved, but it was hard to say whether the symptoms had eased or he had adapted. In this state, stretching limbs was still easier than maintaining his human shape—if he had to say it, it was probably the difference between sleeping and taking off his socks.

But since Zhong Chengshuo knew his identity, Yin Ren decided to be as comfortable as possible.

He was lying in Zhong Chengshuo’s bedroom, surrounded by his pleasant smell. Yin Ren couldn’t help stretching his limbs and extending a part of his body into the living room. His wings flapped comfortably as the afternoon sun shone on his body.

It was a bit too quiet.

Yin Ren turned on the tablet, selected a biology documentary that he had rarely watched in the past, and turned the sound to the max. On the screen was a snake that was molting. The translucent snake shed its skin, revealing bright, fascinating scales.

‘Snakes seem to be quite delicious,’ Yin Ren thought.

However, he had seen too many animals wandering deep in the forest, so it was a bit boring. Yin Ren fast forwarded, trying to find some fresh highlights so he would have something to talk to Zhong Chengshuo about.

Yin Ren leaned softly against the head of the bed, holding the tablet with one hand, ice cream in the other, and a spoon in another. The ends of his long hair had become translucent materials similar to his wings, merging into a pile of wings.

Having seen enough of the delicious but inedible snake, he cut to a section on frogs.

“…Metamorphosis refers to a series of significant changes in the morphological structure and living habits of animals during post-embryonic development…”

A solemn female voice came from the speakers.

“…Juveniles differ greatly from adults…”

Yin Ren’s motion of sending the spoon to his mouth slowed by half a beat.

He grabbed the spoon and looked at his hand. The awkward feeling of growing too much still remained in his body, and he could still see shallow ripples between his palm lines.

Something was wrong with his body, but it had nothing to do with external factors.

There was something wrong with his body, but there was no obvious sign that it was getting out of control. It just became a little strange.

Could this be some kind of “growth”?

However, as far as Yin Ren’s experience was concerned, after the birth of an Evil Spirit, there would only be an increase in power, but essentially no more fundamental changes. Perhaps he was being paranoid, but Lord Ghost King wasn’t an insect or an amphibian.

Forget it. Yin Ren scooped a spoonful of semi-melted ice cream and clicked to the next topic.

The sound of a doorknob turning came from the door, and the familiar smell drifted closer. Yin Ren’s spirit was lifted, and he snapped the tablet down.

“You’re back—!”

The translucent wings on the ground swished and swelled as shallowness and depth overlapped in the shadows. Yin Ren propped up his body, which had returned to its normal human appearance.

He casually pulled on some pajamas, put them on his shoulders, and slid into the living room with surging wings. Most of the remaining body was still camouflaged on the carpet in the bedroom.

“How’s it going? Is there any explanation on the execution mission?” Yin Ren asked as he put half of the ice cream back in the freezer.

“Lu Xiaohe said to wait for you to return to work first.” Zhong Chengshuo looked away from Yin Ren’s unbuttoned pajamas. “How are you doing? Are you feeling better?”

“Much better!”

In the corner of the bedroom, by the edge of the closet, there was a trace of opaque darkness on one of the wings. The strand of black swam around in the translucent wings, fluttering like an aquatic plant.

It was incomparably black and pure, like dull midnight. Along with the wing, there was a touch more obscurity that radiated a peculiar sense of oppression.

“Then we’ll go to work normally tomorrow.”

The conversation continued in the living room.

“Okay,” Yin Ren said solemnly.

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Kinky Thoughts:

That scene of them in the corridor squatting like mushrooms is so cute.