You're Really That Desperate

The campus was in an uproar.

Wu Hen was enjoying himself, too. He'd finally managed to show off!

He headed toward Yu Yu, only to find a huge crowd of students surging toward him, as if they were mobbing a superstar.

For some reason, though, the girls were all delicate and frail, and the hulking high school boys shoved them to the back of the crowd. In the end, Wu Hen was surrounded by a bunch of athletes and even lifted right off the ground...

The adoring crowd carried Wu Hen along, and he lay stiff as a board.

The scene was supposed to be lively and celebratory, but they'd turned it into a Black people carrying a coffin procession. Wu Hen honestly wished he were dead.

He hadn't yet slain every girl in the school, but he'd already won the hearts of all the men. Especially after a few musclebound guys insisted on serving as his bed warmers, Wu Hen started to think Xiao Yi's suggestion might not be such a bad idea after all...

Humanity would be doomed sooner or later by you perverts. I might as well take care of it myself!

At last, he found his little sister and hurried to comfort her softly.

The moment the battle-hardened young girl dropped her fiery resolve, she turned into a sniveling mess. No one but her was allowed to steal a hug from her big brother, and men were especially forbidden!

"Sir, what are your orders?" A female Order Maintenance Personnel member came over, her eyes already filled with awe.

She'd never imagined a high school senior like Wu Hen could be so capable. If he hadn't stepped up, the campus she was guarding would have become a parasite paradise!

"To be safe, hand out deworming medicine to every student," Wu Hen said.

"Understood!" The woman nodded.

The Order Maintenance Personnel began disinfecting and clearing pests throughout the campus.

The process wasn't complicated, but the school didn't have nearly enough toilets. The dead eggs and larvae inside everyone had to come out somehow.

And that meant either vomiting from the mouth or vomiting from the butt.

Before long, the whole campus was making their eyes water...

"Brother Hen, what about Yang Qin?" Wang Rui hurried over to ask Wu Hen what he thought.

"What, you want to take advantage while she's still warm? ...Of course we burn her," Wu Hen said irritably.

"That's harsh, isn't it? We were classmates, after all," Wang Rui said.

"Burn her. Who knows if any Golden Insects are still inside her?" Wu Hen waved a hand.

"Okay."

After resting for a while, Wu Hen found the smell throughout the campus unbearable.

He and Yu Yu didn't plan to stay any longer, so they promptly slipped into the air-raid shelter, intending to return to their safehouse.

As soon as they headed toward the back hill, the Virtual Pupil Membrane brought more good news.

Ming Yi: "Wu Hen, handsome boy, thanks for the important information. We've eliminated the Insect-Eyed Mother Tree in Flower Valley!"

Wu Hen: "It was nothing, nothing. It was a paid service, after all."

Ming Yi: "Oh, but we've only met a few times..."

Wu Hen: "??? I meant you gave me Yuan You. What did you think I meant?"

Ming Yi: "With all the credit you've earned, how could we reward you with just one Yuan You?"

Wu Hen: "Fine, I'll go wash up..."

Ming Yi: "Didn't you say before that you didn't like using other people's accounts? We'll talk more when you get to the Nuwa Divine Terminal."

Wu Hen: "Actually, it's not that bad, hehe."

Wu Hen hadn't expected to gain an Aunt just because he'd woken up in someone else's body.

Ming Yi: "Oh, by the way, when we killed the Insect-Eyed Mother Tree, we found your female classmate's bones inside the tree eye... In other words, she'd already melted away the first time you two lay in the Soul Flowers in Flower Valley."

Wu Hen: "What do you mean?"

Ming Yi: "Her body in the Desolate Dust is dead, and the soul that returned to the homeland was controlled by the Mother Insect. Now that the Insect-Eyed Mother Tree and Golden Insects have been wiped out, if she's still alive in the homeland, then she should still be a living person..."

Wu Hen: "Oh, too late. We already burned her."

Ming Yi: "That's fine, when I get back to the homeland... Ming Yi!! I told you not to chat! Don't you know every message like that costs a Yuan You fragment? Do you think my Yuan You grows on trees?!"

The words on the screen seemed to carry a burst of fury. Wu Hen felt as if the message had been relayed by two different people.

It was probably speech converted to text, then automatically sent by the Virtual Pupil Membrane's AI.

Just as Wu Hen thought the connection on the other end was about to cut off, another message appeared a few steps later.

Ming Yi: "(???-)?"

For some reason, Ming Yi's lively, vibrant, and charming face surfaced in Wu Hen's mind, and the corners of his mouth lifted.

In fact, from the moment he'd entered the Otherworld Desolate Dust until the world declared it was about to collapse, Wu Hen's nerves had been taut. It was rare to meet someone with such an optimistic outlook. Talking with her made him relax without even realizing it...

"Don't!!!"

"No, I really don't know anything!"

"Have you all gone mad? I'm Yang Qin! I just came out of some Evil Soil..."

"Even if you're going to burn me alive, don't pour industrial-oil-mixed cooking oil on me!"

Suddenly, heart-wrenching screams came from the distance. Wu Hen recognized the voice all too well.

Wu Hen was stunned.

Yang Qin was still alive??

But ever since they'd pulled the Golden Silk Mask off her face, she'd been no different from an ancient corpse.

Could it be that these adult Golden Silk Face Worms were merely parasites, and didn't eat away all the organs and tissue in their host's body?

"Brother, what's wrong?" Yu Yu asked.

"Forget it. Let's go take a look. Cha Cha's had a rough time too..." Wu Hen said.

At another spot near the foot of the hill, Wu Hen saw Wang Rui and several classmates surrounding Yang Qin in a corner and repeatedly dousing her with oil.

They'd all seen how terrifying Yang Qin had been as a centipede woman, so none of them felt any sympathy for her, even though her face was now streaked with blood.

"Enough. She was probably just being controlled." Wu Hen waved a hand, signaling the others to leave Yang Qin alone.

"Waaah... Is that you, Wu Hen? Wu Hen, I'm so glad you're here. I've been worried about you ever since you dropped out. Our classmates seem to have gone crazy. They're trying to burn me alive, but I really didn't do anything..." Yang Qin sobbed, pleading with Wu Hen, who seemed more levelheaded than the others.

"Lord Wu Hen, don't take pity on her! She used to trick people by acting all sweet and innocent. I knew she had a belly full of wickedness!" said Tian Jiabao, a top student who'd never liked Yang Qin.

"Exactly. She's still pretending. Once she's set on fire, all the bugs inside her will definitely come crawling out," said Luo Yuying, the class beauty, insisting they couldn't afford to be softhearted.

"That's enough. If you really wanted to burn her, you'd have done it already. I just got word from the people above: Yang Qin's body in the Desolate Dust died a long time ago. She was only controlled by a high-level Golden Insect parasite. She's still alive, and she's still herself," Wu Hen explained.

"But the White-Eyed Half-Humans and Silver-Eyed Half-Humans had their bodies turned into insects..." Tian Jiabao said.

"It's different. The Golden Insect is an adult. It can control anyone it crawls onto. The power behind all those fungal threads comes from that Golden Silk Mask Worm," Wu Hen explained.

"She's really alive. Just take the deworming medicine like the rest of us and pass the extra eggs," Yu Yu signed.

Her sense of smell had returned, and at close range she could tell whether someone had turned into an Insect-Eyed Half-Human.

In fact, the Golden Silk Face Worm could have turned Yang Qin completely into a half-human. But it had intended to lie low among humans. To avoid detection by people with sharp noses, it hadn't seriously eroded Yang Qin's body, ensuring that her breath still smelled human.

That was why Yu Yu hadn't noticed anything wrong with Yang Qin at first.

"Thank you, thank you, Wu Hen... You're just like that big brother I met in the Desolate Dust. You're a wonderful person I can trust!" Yang Qin was crying so hard her nose was running. She realized that acting like a considerate, sweet little sister really did come in handy.

Hearing Yang Qin say that,

Wu Hen could more or less conclude that there was nothing wrong with her.

She had no idea the man who'd traveled alongside her in the Desolate Dust was him. That also proved that the Yang Qin who'd woken up in the Soul Flower was the Insect-Eyed Half-Human.

Put simply, Yang Qin was a victim too.

She'd lain in the Soul Flower in Flower Valley with him.

Because he had the Black Miracle inside him, the Golden Insect couldn't parasitize him.

Yang Qin hadn't been so lucky. She'd been dissolved right then and there... and her body in the homeland had been parasitized and controlled!

This Desolate Dust...

It was still enough to make your skin crawl and your blood run cold if you thought about it too much.

Wu Hen felt that if he hadn't been exceptionally clever and quick-witted, with a little help from Xiao Yi, he would have died countless times in the Desolate Dust!

"Everyone, get some rest. From now on, we'll help each other through the Desolate Dust..." Wu Hen said.

"Aw, don't talk about helping each other. You take the lead, brother, and I'll be your pet who picks up the loot!" Wang Rui said with a grin.

My brother's so awesome that, by extension, I'm awesome too.

What's wrong with being a dog??

"Wang Rui, don't underestimate your own great intelligence," Wu Hen said, patting him on the shoulder.

"You're the only one who thinks so highly of me, hehe." Wang Rui smiled, then lowered his head and said quietly, "How far did things go between you and Yang Qin in the Desolate Dust?"

"Nothing really happened between us. What are you getting at?" Wu Hen replied coolly.

"Well, when Yang Qin wore the Golden Silk Mask, didn't she kind of look like the Queen of Golden Extinction? She had way more poise than usual..." Wang Rui rubbed his hands together.

Wu Hen suddenly felt as though his ears had been contaminated. He even had to cover his thoughts to keep himself from imagining that utterly vile scene!

"You really are that desperate. Get lost!" Wu Hen shoved the pervert away.

Wang Rui looked deeply aggrieved.

He'd told him in confidence because he considered him a brother.

Not everyone had an elf-like younger sister as outstanding as the one by Wu Hen's side, or had had beautiful housekeepers like those he'd had before. Of course Wu Hen was picky about women...

After passing through the air-raid shelter, Wu Hen and Yu Yu returned to the Tropical Pavilion.

The moment they entered the Tropical Pavilion, Yu Yu furrowed her brow.

She looked around, like a rag doll cat that had caught the scent of a mouse, her beautiful, elfin eyes turning from side to side.

"I didn't expect you to smell it after all. I thought I'd hidden it elegantly," Wu Hen said, rubbing his nose.

Sure enough, a little jade foot came down on Wu Hen's foot, and it hurt like hell!

Yu Yu glared at Wu Hen in annoyance, then signed to tell him there was probably something in the Tropical Pavilion.

"Something nasty in here?" Wu Hen asked in surprise.

Recommended: the new book by the great urban-fiction author Lao Shi.