Chapter 32

And he would have known nothing about it. Su Lin would have been no more than an insignificant detail in a routine report delivered to him, and he probably would not have cared at all about the infiltration and execution of a human spy.

Su Lin would have been reduced to lifeless chunks of flesh right under his nose.

Just imagining the scene made Medises feel as though his nerves had been steeped in acid. The Zerg, who had endured countless assassinations and battles over the years without ever being shaken, now felt an unbearable stab of pain in his heart.

It was precisely because of that overwhelming fear at what might have happened that Medises could not remain calm in front of Su Lin.

"Just now, I thought that perhaps I should just kill you myself." Medises stared fixedly at the young man before him. By the time he realized it, the cold words had already left his mouth.

"At least that way, you could die more easily."

Then I could swallow you whole, one bite at a time.

That way, perhaps I could finally possess you completely.

Su Lin's eyelashes fluttered.

He knew nothing of the complicated thoughts running through the Zerg's mind, much less that he had come within a hair's breadth of becoming the Zerg's dinner.

He merely felt an instinctive chill down his back, and for some reason the hairs on his body began to stand on end.

"I... I didn't want things to turn out like this either."

Su Lin deliberately gave a somewhat vague answer.

At the same time, he began frantically racking his brains.

He did not know whether Medises had already determined the source of the other part of the Zerg genes in his body. During the bloodline examination, his senior had looked through a mass of complicated data, so it would have been perfectly normal for him to discover the Zerg mother genes. No, calm down. Judging by his senior's reaction, he probably had not realized it yet. In any case, Su Lin had to calm down first and do his best to bluff his way through the questioning...

If he had a choice, Su Lin would never have wanted the Zerg to know that part of him was a Zerg mother.

Not even if that Zerg was He Zisen, the "powerful backer" he had relied on years ago.

Years of survival experience made Su Lin instinctively want to keep that secret hidden.

Fortunately, perhaps heaven had seen how unlucky he truly was and, for once, had taken his side.

Just as Su Lin was wavering in alarm, unsure how to deal with Medises, the silver-haired Zerg came to his own conclusion.

"It was Xue Yao, wasn't it?"

As he mentioned that human's name, Medises's sharp teeth scraped lightly against one another, and he involuntarily secreted a little venom. It was a physiological instinct of the Zerg when they spoke of someone they loathed and hated intensely.

"He arranged for you to become like this, didn't he? Hah. Half human, half Zerg. Did he think we wouldn't find out?"

"Huh?"

Su Lin froze.

"And you actually let him meddle with your life." Medises raised a hand and gripped Su Lin's chin, his expression grim. "Should I say you're such a good student of his? Or that you're just too stupid?"

Wait...

Su Lin blinked, feeling a little dizzy from thinking too hard.

What did this have to do with Professor Xue Yao? No, wait, how did Medises know about Professor Xue Yao? Professor Xue was the adviser Su Lin had met at Xingchuan University.

Of course, Su Lin had long known that Professor Xue, as the foremost researcher of the Zerg in the entire human Galactic Alliance system, had always been a thorn in the Zerg's side. But how did Medises know that an insignificant nobody like him could become Professor Xue's student?

Were Zerg undercover agents really that capable? Had they even infiltrated Xingchuan University in the First Star Sector, and even Professor Xue Yao's laboratory?

"... After all, in your human world, only a madman like him would do something so utterly deranged. Like tricking a stupid, naive student into becoming a half-human, half-Zerg monster, just to carry out a mission he was certain to die on, and then turn him into experimental data."

Medises did not notice Su Lin's momentary bewilderment. He merely spoke in a sharp, mocking voice.

In that moment, he seemed to return to years ago.

While carrying out his final mission, he had been lying low when, by a strange twist of fate, he saw that young man walking toward him.

Compared with when they had parted, Su Lin had grown a little taller, and his features had become even more beautiful and alluring. The person who had once smiled gently only at him was now using that very same expression to seduce the tall man at his side.

In human eyes, this man, who was only in his thirties, was a genius through and through. He had cracked many of the Zerg's biological weapons, and through dissection, he had revealed the Zerg's physiological data to the Galactic Alliance, making those fragile primates realize that the Zerg were carbon-based life-forms too, beings that could be killed, dissected, and studied.

In the eyes of the Zerg, he was an assassination target who represented a generous bounty and eligibility for promotion.

On the empire's assassination list, Xue Yao ranked among the top five.

Medises had once studied the human Xue Yao's background very carefully. He knew even better than ordinary humans what Xue Yao represented: a completely cold and ruthless madman who would stop at nothing for experimental data.

He was even more mechanical, more crazed, and more inhuman than the Zerg, who were known for their cold-blooded ruthlessness.

Yet during that mission, Medises had seen Xue Yao take the initiative to ask the young man at his side a seemingly baffling question.

"You work hard... very hard."

A trace of confusion flashed through Xue Yao's glass-bead-like eyes.

"But I can tell you don't like this research. Why are you working so hard?"

Su Lin had seemed a little surprised that his adviser would ask about something completely unrelated to academics.