At that moment, Zhou Jiao's survival instincts spiked to the max. She twisted the throttle of her motorcycle and sped toward the abandoned highway, riding like hell with the best skills she'd ever pulled off in her life.
In that split-second between life and death, her brain was working faster than ever. Clues flashed through her mind frame by frame—finally locking onto that photo posted by When Did BioTech Go Bankrupt. A homeless man, expression vacant, covered in cheap injection marks. Behind him, a haze of blue neon lights flickered, smoke swirling, dirty water pooling. A female hologram in the background twisted and posed seductively on repeat.
That was the most chaotic street in Yu City—crime, murder, and theft every hour of the day. Crammed with bars, black-market clinics, and greasy street food stalls.
Compared to the half-mad psycho chasing her, that place was filled with real chip-fried lunatics.
Zhou Jiao pulled up her map and gunned it toward that street.
Maybe all her luck had been burned fixing the damn bike, because halfway there, the motorcycle blared out a shrill alarm. The AI warned her she had one minute to stop, or the vehicle might explode.
Zhou Jiao cursed under her breath and glanced behind her. She'd maxed out the throttle, and Jiang Lian was still in sight—like her sprinting earlier had meant nothing.
What the hell was he?
Was he really going to kill her once he caught her?
She didn't dare risk it.
Grinding her teeth, her silver eyes flashed—then she disabled the speed limiter, pushing the bike to its absolute limit.
The warning alarms roared in her ears so loud they made her vision blur, but the speed surge worked. The wheels nearly lifted off the ground as she shot forward like a missile, putting serious distance between her and Jiang Lian.
At the same time, the AI's voice chimed in, cold and calm:
"Vehicle damage at 80%. Please stop and wait for insurance assistance…"
Zhou Jiao's mouth twitched.
If she stopped now, the only thing waiting for her would be a city morgue van.
She clung to consciousness with iron will, pushing past the dizziness from the speed and the sparks crackling in her vision. Because she'd hotwired the engine through a direct neural link, her brain was flashing like an overclocked circuit board.
Still, she forced herself to stay sharp, driving on the edge of blackout.
The AI kept nagging:
"Damage at 91%… please stop—"
"Damage at 95%…"
Almost there.
She blinked through the flickering light show in her vision, scanning for a safe jump point.
"Damage at 99%. You have exceeded our insurance coverage policy…"
She slapped the dashboard and cut the AI off.
"Stupid thing. I never bought insurance."
She spun the bike toward a blazing pile of trash and gunned it straight into the flames.
A move that looked like pure suicide.
Everyone on the street froze. A nearby street vendor nearly dropped his wok of pan-fried locusts.
Sure, that street was full of lunatics, but not many were this far gone.
The crowd roared to life—footsteps, jeers, whistles. Some turned on their recorders for viral clips. Others flew drones over to get a good crash shot. A few hooded punks traded glances—ready to rush in and drag Zhou Jiao to a black clinic for organ harvesting the moment she wiped out.
But they miscalculated.
Just before impact, Zhou Jiao stood up on the speeding motorcycle.
Her back was taut, body low like a drawn bowstring.
Then—she leapt.
Spinning in midair, she hit the ground in a roll, slid back with one foot braced behind her, absorbing the momentum.
She looked like a bird folding its wings, gliding low in the dust for dozens of meters.
The bike crashed into the burning trash heap and exploded—trash flying everywhere in a fiery shockwave.
The street vendor's locust pancake turned into a flaming pile of melted plastic.
Amid the chaos, Zhou Jiao staggered up, wiped the blood dripping from her nose, and darted into the crowd.
She smeared her hand across her clothes and muttered, "Honestly, I should be working for the FBI."
Out the corner of her eye, she spotted a few hooded guys tailing her—not corp goons, just local thugs, probably drawn by the blood like hyenas.
Zhou Jiao's lips curled in a cold smile.
She might not be able to take on Jiang Lian—but these bottom-feeders? Easy.
She spotted a gun rental booth, walked over to borrow a weapon.
The vendor hesitated. She was new, and he thought she might be a corporate narc.
She didn't bother explaining—just grabbed him by the collar, eyes flashing silver, and forced the payment transfer.
"Tell those idiots behind me I'm waiting in the alley," she said with a gentle smile—but her eyes were dead cold as she calmly straightened his collar.
Meanwhile, Jiang Lian had just arrived.
At first, he'd planned to kill Zhou Jiao. If she couldn't escape him, she didn't deserve to live.
But he'd been curious—how long could she last?
When she stopped to fix the bike, disappointment filled his eyes. Cold. Bored.
She didn't take his threat seriously.
She probably thought he was chasing her on a whim, and once he caught her, she could talk or kiss her way out of it. That he wouldn't really kill her.
She was very wrong.
If she'd looked back while fixing the bike, she might've noticed the sky thick with glistening, writhing tendrils—hundreds of them, all closing in. The one wrapped around her ankle had been the least dangerous.
If she'd hesitated even a moment longer, she'd have been pulped beneath a tentacle's crushing blow.
This time, Jiang Lian had meant to kill her. And she never even noticed.
But in the next second—she launched onto the bike, revved the engine, and shot away like a bat out of hell.
A death-defying gamble.
And somehow, she'd won.
Their eyes met for a moment, through the roar of the engine.
He saw the chill in her sharp features. The sweat-dark lashes. Her face, pale like porcelain.
She looked like a camellia flower caught in cold mist. A dangerous, fragile beauty.
He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. Excitement buzzed through his spine.
When she stopped running, rage and killing intent swelled inside him.
But when she escaped—his excitement spiked. So sharp it made his skin tingle.
Worse, he felt something terrifying.
His gaze refused to leave her.
No matter how far she ran, his eyes followed, like invisible threads stretching between them.
Why?
Jiang Lian followed the trail of her scent to the blast site. He pictured her jumping from the bike—graceful, fearless.
As a human, she was already extraordinary.
But to him? Still a bug. He could crush her any time.
Then he caught a faint trace of blood.
She was injured. Two explosions in a row—even with his modifications—she'd been hurt.
That blood trail made her easier to find. In less than thirty minutes, he'd catch her again.
His face twisted with a chilling spasm.
He was caught in a strange contradiction.
On one hand, Zhou Jiao had performed incredibly. She shouldn't have escaped.
On the other—he had to know what made her different.
Why couldn't he look away?
If she really was as weak and short-lived as she seemed, how did she get under his skin?
Even now, his thirst hadn't faded. If anything, it was getting worse.
His skin ached to touch hers. To kiss her. To drink her in like he had before.
It had been less than ten minutes since she left—and he missed her so bad it made his scalp tingle.
He didn't want to kill her anymore.
He just wanted to find her. Smell her. Kiss her. Press his lips to hers and devour her.
So when he followed her scent to the source and realized it was just her clothes—stuffed onto a street punk—
Rage flooded his entire body.
The guy was one of the gang that had chased Zhou Jiao into the alley. Street scum who made a living kidnapping salarymen like her and selling their organs to black clinics.
If they got lucky, they'd score a high-grade chip or some pristine internal organs. Worst case, they'd chop off a few intact limbs.
Except this time, Zhou Jiao flipped the script.
The moment they entered the alley, she dropped from above—taser in hand.
ZAP. ZAP. Two guys hit the ground twitching.
Then came a perfect scissors-kick that snapped the third thug's neck like a rubber hose. He didn't even manage a scream before his windpipe cracked.
The others lunged, but she slipped through them like smoke—two more shots from the taser. More bodies.
As she twisted mid-air, the guy under her was turning blue.
In the end, they were all down. Frying, bleeding, or groaning.
The unlucky bastard in Zhou Jiao's clothes? Still wheezing on the ground ten minutes later.
That's when Jiang Lian showed up—and grabbed him by the collar.
"...!"
The punk had never seen Jiang Lian before, but the moment they locked eyes, terror exploded in his brain.
Not fear of police. Not fear of a rival gang.
This was primal.
Like a frog under a snake's stare. Like a gazelle caught in a lion's gaze.
He broke into a cold sweat, stammering:
"P-Please don't kill me—I'll tell you everything, anything, just—just don't kill me…"
Jiang Lian stared silently at the woman's clothes.
The punk caught on quick:
"She—she ran that way. I didn't want her clothes—she forced me! Said someone was chasing her! She's nuts, man—forced me to drink her blood, too…"
He gagged.
"Ugh—what if she's got HIV or something?!"
The moment the words left his mouth, Jiang Lian's eyes turned murderously cold.
"…Did I… say something wrong?"
Jiang Lian didn't reply. He only stared at the thug with an expression that was utterly terrifying.
The thug felt a chill surge up from the base of his spine, climbing rapidly along his back like icy fingers.
"I-I-I… I was just talking nonsense! Her blood is clean, very healthy, very tasty… She definitely doesn't have AIDS, I swear! This is my line of work—no one knows better than me—"
Before the last word left his mouth, he felt something coil around his neck.
A fatal crack echoed from his spine.
That was the last sound he ever heard.
Zhou Jiao had given him her blood.
Jiang Lian slowly stood up. His expression was eerily calm, but unstable—his facial muscles spasmed so quickly it was horrifying.
For a few seconds, small cracks appeared across his face, as if some writhing tentacles underneath were pushing outward.
He looked terrifying.
No killing intent. No anger. No visible negative emotion.
And yet, something about him was deeply, viscerally terrifying.
Jiang Lian couldn't explain how he felt.
It was a new sensation.
Unlike the previous tingling, this was a sour, stabbing ache—like a thousand needles prickling his heart, leaving him so agitated that even killing couldn't bring relief.
Unconsciously, frenzied tentacles burst out of his body, filling the cramped alleyway with a suffocating, cold aura.
This rarely happened—he only lost control over his appendages when emotions became too extreme.
But ever since he tasted Zhou Jiao's saliva, he'd been in a constant state of emotional volatility.
Just like now.
She had fed that man her blood and dressed him in her clothes—all to trick Jiang Lian and prove her worth to him.
It worked.
She fooled him.
He should be pleased.
And yet, his eyes glowed faintly red. His chest burned like a wildfire, and murderous intent boiled within him.
He did not like her proving herself this way.
She was his.
Every drop of blood, every piece of flesh, every breath—his.
She used this trick to escape him, and that upset him even more than her fragile, helpless state.
Why?
What was this maddening feeling?
How could he find the answer?
Jiang Lian's face grew darker and more twisted. He didn't retract the tentacles; instead, he followed Zhou Jiao's scent into the night.
But soon, his expression turned even more frightening.
Zhou Jiao had played the same trick again—scattering her clothing all over.
To confuse his sense of smell, she'd even swapped clothes with a professional escort, one who saw over a hundred clients a day, male and female, her entire body drenched in the scent of strangers.
Imagining Zhou Jiao wearing that kind of clothing made Jiang Lian's expression flicker wildly, bordering on insanity.
He didn't want to continue this game.
He wanted to end it.
But the power to stop it was no longer in his hands.
He couldn't find Zhou Jiao.
Couldn't reach her.
Every time he tracked her scent, all he found was a discarded piece of clothing or a bloodstained item.
She was ruthless with herself—spilling her own blood like it meant nothing, doing whatever it took to win.
As time passed, Jiang Lian's expression shifted from cold and violent to twisted and manic, then to something far more terrifying—fear.
Zhou Jiao was only human.
Even with his tentacles inside her, she was still just a human being.
If this went on, she would die.
"…You think bleeding will kill you?" he muttered to himself, each word laced with a chilling edge. "You won't die. You can't die."
At this point, he had completely forgotten that this was a hunt.
Zhou Jiao must not die.
He had to find her.
Now.
But he couldn't.
No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't find her.
Again and again, he came close—
Once, he caught her scent from a hundred meters away. It was the closest he'd gotten in days. The tentacles in his body shrieked with joy, making him dizzy with ecstasy—
But when he arrived, it was just another piece of her clothing.
Three days passed.
She kept using the same trick, again and again.
He could smell her—but never see her.
What drove him even crazier was that her scent was now mixed with countless strangers'.
Layer upon layer of frustration mounted, and Jiang Lian's face contorted into something monstrous.
A small-time thug spotted him standing there, gripping a piece of clothing, and thought he'd found an easy mark.
He swaggered over, clapping a hand on Jiang Lian's shoulder.
"Hey, what're you standing here for? Wanna come with me to a real fun place?"
And then—
He witnessed the most horrifying scene of his life.
Jiang Lian's body remained still, but his head rotated 180 degrees, twisting in a way no human neck should ever bend, turning to look at him.
Half of his face was cold and strikingly handsome, with razor-sharp features;
The other half twitched and spasmed, with something squirming madly beneath the skin, threatening to tear free at any moment.
"…What the fuck are you?!" the thug gasped, stumbling back and instinctively reaching for the gun at his waist.
Sensing the threat, Jiang Lian's twisted face split open, and a hideous tentacle lashed out, snapping the thug's neck in an instant.
He collapsed in a heap, foaming at the mouth.
But Jiang Lian didn't stop.
He no longer bothered to maintain a human appearance.
He stood in place, letting a flood of tentacles spill from his body—spreading like rot and mold, corrupting the walls, devouring neon lights, filling the air with a mind-piercing, low-frequency hum.
"Zhou Jiao. Zhou Jiao. Zhou Jiao. Zhou Jiao. Zhou Jiao. Zhou Jiao. Zhou Jiao…"
He had accepted that she was small and fragile.
"Zhou Jiao. Zhou Jiao. Zhou Jiao. Zhou Jiao. Zhou Jiao. Zhou Jiao. Zhou JiaoZhouJiaoZhouJiaoZhouJiao…"
He had accepted that a mere human could reduce him to this wretched state.
"ZhouJiaoZhouJiaoZhouJiaoZhouJiaoZhouJiaoZhouJiaoZhouJiaoZhouJiaoZhouJiaoZhouJiao…"
He didn't want her to run anymore.
Three days had passed.
The game was over.
Come back to him.
He had to see her. Now.