Zhou Nuo returned home looking utterly bewildered. After washing up, she collapsed onto her bed, but her gaze couldn't help drifting to her right hand. It was currently swiping rapidly across her phone screen.
At that moment, she was filled with an indescribable sense of strangeness. The sight of a hand browsing the news on its own was just too bizarre!
After staring blankly for a while, Zhou Nuo ventured, "Um... well... may I ask what I should call you? Otherwise, how about I call you Little Right, like in the anime?"
"Whatever you like," Little Right replied casually, then added a reminder. "By the way, you'd better not stay out working so late anymore. It's dangerous."
"Dangerous?" Zhou Nuo was stunned. A trace of confusion crossed her face, but soon she looked confident again. "How could there be any danger? Our country has always been very safe and stable!"
Little Right gave a scornful laugh. "Hah. That was in the past. Over the last few days, I've clearly sensed at least two or three strange creatures lurking around the night market where you set up your stall. They're definitely no good."
As it spoke, Little Right extended an index finger and lightly tapped the phone screen a few times, indicating that Zhou Nuo should look at what was on it.
Zhou Nuo lowered her head and looked at the phone. A news story was displayed on the screen.
Several sheep raised by a farming family had mysteriously been drained of their blood overnight, leaving them dead on the spot!
At the sight of this, Zhou Nuo's expression suddenly darkened, and an ominous premonition welled up inside her. Had anime really invaded reality? How had the world suddenly become so unfamiliar?
Suppressing her unease, Zhou Nuo asked, "Do you know what killed those sheep? And do you know what those creatures you sensed near the night market were?"
Faced with Zhou Nuo's barrage of urgent questions, Little Right merely replied irritably, "How would I know? I've only been here a few days."
"You've only been here a few days?" Zhou Nuo seized on another key point.
"Yeah. What, did you think I'd always been here?"
"So these changes only started in the last few days?" Zhou Nuo's thoughts raced. Had some mysterious force awakened?
After thinking for a while, Zhou Nuo let out a helpless sigh. She couldn't come up with any answers, so she refocused on the news story on her phone.
Suddenly, she seemed to notice an important clue, and her eyes flew wide open. Zhou Nuo spotted two small but clearly visible puncture marks on the neck of every dead sheep!
Looking at them, she murmured unconsciously, "These look like... bite marks from a vampire."
Before today, if anyone had told her that vampires existed, Zhou Nuo would have thought they were talking nonsense.
But now that she'd been parasitized by a Parasitic Beast, it seemed there was nothing in this world that was absolutely impossible.
"Hmm, they do look like it," Little Right agreed. It also thought the sheep had been bitten by a vampire.
"Should I tell the police about this?" Zhou Nuo was conflicted. Those were vampires, after all. If one of them hurt someone and created more vampires, it could become a serious problem.
But how could she get the police to believe her? Should she expose Little Right? They might cut her open and study her. And even if they didn't cut her open, who knew whether they might do the same to Little Right?
Little Right was practically part of her now. She didn't want anything to happen to it and put herself at risk.
Just as Zhou Nuo was struggling with what to do, Little Right suddenly grew alert. It warned her, "Someone like me is coming. Be careful..."
Hearing that, Zhou Nuo's heart jolted. Before she could even react, Little Right changed shape at astonishing speed. In the blink of an eye, it became a thick, fleshy whip and swept in front of her.
The next instant, a clear metallic clang rang out.
"Clang!"
Zhou Nuo stared in terror at the sharp blade of flesh less than twenty centimeters from her face. Her heart pounded wildly; she was clearly badly frightened.
The flesh blade, just like Little Right, had been blocked. It immediately retracted and twisted rapidly, turning back into a complete head in the blink of an eye.
Only then did Zhou Nuo finally get a clear look at the newcomer. He was a middle-aged man with a blank expression.
His eyes were like two bottomless, dry wells, empty and lifeless. The coldness in that gaze—so unlike anything a human's eyes should hold—made her shudder and sent her hair standing on end.
"Y-you'd better not try anything! I've already called the police." Zhou Nuo skillfully used her phone to dial 110.
The middle-aged man ignored Zhou Nuo and looked at Little Right instead. "You're strange. You've actually formed a symbiotic relationship with a human, and you've developed emotions."
"Did you come here just to say that?" Little Right watched the middle-aged man warily.
"No. I've read a lot of books, and I even learned from this human's mind that emotions can catalyze a living creature's growth in strength. But our kind has no emotions, and we cannot develop them. So I'd like to know whether emotions really can make a creature stronger."
The middle-aged man shook his head as he spoke. "Unfortunately, after I dealt with a few humans, I found that they really could unleash strength beyond their usual limits under extreme emotions. But that strength was too insignificant. I want to see whether our kind could become even stronger if we had emotions. And you happen to have them now. Would you like to study this with me?"
"You think that's likely?" Little Right replied coldly.
"Looks like you don't want to study with me. In that case, I can dissect you and find out exactly how you came to have emotions." The middle-aged man's voice was perfectly flat.
The next instant, his head twisted and transformed into several fleshy whips that lashed toward Zhou Nuo. She screamed in fright and pressed the call button with her left hand. She'd been hesitating about whether to call the police, since reporting it would drag her into the affair too, but now she had no choice.
Little Right began lashing about wildly, shielding Zhou Nuo completely. But it knew that defending wasn't a solution; sooner or later, it would slip up. It seized an opening to say, "Zhou Nuo, get outside. Get out there and make a scene. This isn't the time to worry about whether they'll cut us open."
"I-I understand." Zhou Nuo's legs were trembling, but she forced herself to get up and inch toward the door.
Just then, the call connected.
"Hello, 110 emergency services..."
Zhou Nuo didn't have time to wait for the person on the other end to finish speaking. She shouted, "Help! There's a lunatic breaking into my house and trying to kill me! I'm at No. 103 Jinfeng Village. Hurry!"