I'm Going to Hiss

As his thoughts raced, a burning sensation roared to life deep in his eyes again.

Jingxing hurriedly looked away, studying her out of the corner of his eye with some embarrassment. The Imaginary Energy surrounding this woman was frighteningly dense—if Robin's light shone as bright and clear as the moon, then the person before him was a rising sun.

She was the most "dazzling" presence he had ever seen; and.

"Mr. Security Guard..." Jingxing took half a step back, still clinging to one last hope.

But the two guards both bowed slightly to the woman in the qipao, then walked away without looking back.

Immediately afterward, everyone in the corridor avoided looking this way, as though they had agreed on it beforehand. Some took a detour, some quickened their pace, and others casually turned into different sections.

Jingxing's back pressed against the cold wall, and his heart sank little by little.

"Don't be nervous." The woman stepped closer.

"Who are you?" Jingxing asked in return, wondering how he should handle this.

"Ruan Mei," she gave her name. "Number 81 of the Genius Society."

Jingxing's eyes widened.

The good news was that she wasn't a Knight of Beauty. The bad news was that she was another member of the Genius Society. Herta had mentioned the name to him just now, even saying that if he fell into Ruan Mei's hands, he would be "taken apart and put back together with two pairs of compound eyes and three mouths." And now Ruan Mei had appeared before him just like that, out of nowhere.

"Ms. Ruan Mei." Jingxing tried to keep his voice calm. "Did you need something from me?"

She isn't going to use me as a lab rat, is she?

Ruan Mei didn't answer. She stepped closer, close enough for Jingxing to smell the cold plum blossom scent on her. Then she reached out and gently lifted his chin with her fingertips.

Ruan Mei bent down slightly and leaned in to examine his eyes. Her beautiful face was inches away, her breath almost brushing his face with a faint, barely perceptible warmth.

"Pupils constricted, heart rate elevated," she murmured. "You're afraid of me. Good—the sensory system hasn't been damaged by the modifications, and the emotional feedback is normal too."

She let go, her fingertips sliding gently down his jaw as if checking the texture of an object.

The burning pain in Jingxing's eyes continued, and a reflexive tear slid down from the corner of his eye. Ruan Mei's fingertip happened to stop there, catching the tear.

She held the tear on her fingertip and raised it before her eyes. Then she produced a thumb-sized transparent container from somewhere and flicked the teardrop into it.

"Come with me." Ruan Mei's tone was as natural as if she were clearing away used tableware.

Layer upon layer of cold sweat covered Jingxing's back. Since this woman had appeared, she hadn't threatened him with so much as a word, yet he wanted to run even more than he had when a gun was pointed at him before.

"I refuse," he heard himself say. "Whatever you want to do, I refuse."

"Refuse?" Ruan Mei tilted her head as if she had heard a word she didn't quite understand. She fell silent for a few seconds, then suddenly gave a gentle smile.

Her smile looked so tender, but Jingxing's heart leaped into his throat.

Just as she was about to say something, the great, sacred, angelic Herta Puppet appeared. "Ruan Mei. How many times have I told you not to come to my space station to collect samples?"

Ruan Mei turned around, showing no embarrassment at being caught. "Herta, if you let him cooperate with my experiments, we can make further progress on the Metaverse."

"That's not for me to decide." The Herta Puppet walked over and stood in front of Jingxing. Though she was much shorter than him, the way she stood there made Jingxing feel he could rely on her.

"Jingxing is my patient," Herta said. "Until I've cured him, no one is allowed to touch him. Not even you."

"And after you cure him?" Ruan Mei tilted her head.

"The same goes then." Herta raised her head, the warning in her tone unmistakable. "Your progress on the Metaverse is already behind Screwllum and Stephen's. Get a move on, and don't let other projects distract you."

Seeing how firm Herta was, Ruan Mei had no choice but to give ground. "All right. I won't touch him for now."

She looked past Herta at Jingxing.

"Jingxing, was it...? I'm sure we'll meet again." After saying this softly, she turned and left, soon disappearing at the end of the corridor.

Only then did Jingxing realize that his back was soaked through.

"Scared out of your wits?" The Herta Puppet turned around and looked up at him, a hint of amusement at his expense on her face. "That's the colleague I told you about."

"Many thanks, great Ms. Herta." Jingxing bowed deeply to her.

"Hmph, I like that you know what's good for you, but you can save your verbal thanks." Herta pulled a small box from her clothes and tossed it to him.

Jingxing caught it instinctively and opened it. Inside lay two nearly transparent contact lenses side by side, as thin as two pieces of condensed light, with extremely faint cyan patterns around their edges.

"Are these contact lenses?"

"That's right, they certainly look like contact lenses." Herta put her hands behind her back. "But I added a little something when I made them. Once you put them on, the pain should stop."

"This is a Curio I, a genius, spent a whole half hour making by hand. If you dare lose it, I'll throw you into Ruan Mei's laboratory."

Jingxing looked at the lenses in the box, his throat moving.

Half an hour. In just half an hour, it seemed one of the galaxy's foremost geniuses had solved the problem that had made him hurt so badly he wished he were dead.

"Put them on and try them." Herta lifted her chin.

Jingxing picked up a lens with tweezers, hesitated for a moment, then gently brought it toward his right eye.

The next second, the densely packed traces of light floating in the air instantly softened.

A cool sensation spread through his eye, and the burning pain that had tormented Jingxing for so long vanished with it.

He opened his eyes and looked at the Herta Puppet. The thread extending from the back of her neck into the depths of the starry sky was still there, so fine it was almost invisible, but it no longer hurt his eyes.

"It really doesn't hurt anymore."

"Of course not. I, a genius, made it." Herta gave a smug huff. "What else did you expect?"

Jingxing said nothing more. This was the first time since he had embarked on a Path that he could look at the world without his eyes hurting.

He turned his head and tried looking down the corridor. The warm white light on the researchers passing by was still there, as were the energy circuits beneath the spherical robots' chassis. Everything that should have been there was still there, but it had all receded into quiet background noise, no longer stabbing into his eyes like needles.

Jingxing looked around for a long time, so long that even the Herta Puppet grew impatient, folding her arms and tapping the floor repeatedly with the tip of her shoe.

"Seen enough?" she said. "If you have, let's talk about the price."

"The price?" Jingxing froze.

"Did you think you could get a Curio this genius made herself without paying a thing?" The Herta Puppet's eyes widened. "You're even more confident than I am."

"Then may I ask how much the esteemed Ms. Herta intends to charge?"

"Time is money. It took this genius thirty minutes, so thirty billion Credits isn't too much, is it?"

"Huh?!"