Chen Ce Bai received Qiu Yu's message just as he peeled off his vinyl gloves and stepped out of the lab.
If someone had been nearby, they would have discovered this was a biochemical laboratory completely invisible on satellite maps.
Even if someone used GPS to navigate here, from the outside, it would only appear to be another abandoned concrete shell—one of countless unfinished buildings scattered across Yu City, drawing no special attention. If anyone were curious enough to explore it, all they would find were bare cement walls and rusted scaffolding.
Biotech labs came with too many restrictions and were riddled with surveillance. Every move a researcher made was monitored by upper management.
So, Chen Ce Bai spent three years building this private lab from the ground up.
Within its walls, electromagnetic interference from the outside world was completely shut out, and no emissions leaked beyond its barriers. It was the most shielded, isolated lab in existence.
The company wasn't unaware of its existence.
They'd tried legal and technical means to breach it, even attempted to restrict his access to experimental materials under his own name.
But no matter how they tried, the lab was built—entirely under Chen Ce Bai's personal identity, outside the jurisdiction of any authority.
Chen Ce Bai's face was expressionless as he stared at the retinal projection in front of him.
It showed the genetic sequence he had just analyzed—undergoing a directed transformation incomprehensible to human understanding.
If this image had appeared in a sci-fi film, it would've made a compelling shot: his DNA seemed self-aware, systematically deleting repetitive sequences and silenced genes.
But even in sci-fi, two fundamentally different DNA strands wouldn't be able to recombine. Yet his had begun fusing and integrating at a site-specific level, displaying a recombination that was biologically impossible.
It was as if a human had suddenly grown the rugged, armored hide of a crocodile—an impossibility.
Chen Ce Bai closed his eyes for a moment.
Every result pointed to the same conclusion: he was transforming into something unknown, diseased, and unnatural.
It was at that moment he received Qiu Yu's message.
[Are you there?]
He stared at the message, unmoving.
His expression was cold, composed, his eyes behind the lenses betraying not even a flicker of emotion. But there was a trace of bitter irony in the way he looked at the tablet.
No one would have associated him with the word "disheveled."
And yet, when he saw Qiu Yu's message, he did feel disheveled—just a little.
It was the same as back then, when he stood in the shadows of the school courtyard, watching her.
No one knew that behind his calm exterior, he was calculating the probability of falling in love with her.
She was preparing to host the school's music festival, dressed like a 19th-century lady. A wide-brimmed hat tilted on her head, a deep green gown flaring around her like a bell.
Delicate gems sparkled on the black mesh veil that covered half her face, glinting cold and green in the twilight.
Her appearance was classic, elegant—yet her eyes were full of mischief, flicking upward at the corners. Her smile shimmered in her gaze, always on the verge of spilling over.
The dance floor had already been set up. The air was thick and humid like a tropical rainforest, flickering now and then with shifting lights.
Pounding electronic beats came from every direction.
People wore all kinds of costumes—Victorian gentlemen and ladies, cyberpunk rebels, oversized mascot suits, even someone dressed like a tribal dancer spinning wildly in the crowd.
The air was stuffy and stifling.
And yet, Qiu Yu remained surrounded by a kind of crisp, clean sweetness—like fruit.
She stood confidently on stage, hosting. Two boys nearby were whispering about her.
Thanks to their gossip, Chen Ce Bai learned she was the most popular girl of the year, and that her parents were executives at a Nordic monopoly.
If nothing unexpected happened, she'd likely marry Pei Xi—the boy she'd grown up with, also the child of a corporate elite.
Chen Ce Bai turned away, no longer watching her. But he didn't leave.
He stood there, wearing frameless glasses, his figure tall and upright, dressed in a clean white shirt and black trousers, completely out of place in the crowd—and quickly drawing attention.
Someone came over, half-joking, half-curious, and offered him a tray of cocktails.
His sense of smell was more sensitive than most. He immediately picked up the high alcohol content in all the drinks.
He chose one. Amid the surrounding cheers, he calmly drank most of it.
The alcohol hit him hard and fast, sending a rush to his head, blurring his vision for a moment.
But his facial muscles never twitched. Not a hint of intoxication surfaced—his control was absolute.
When intellect reaches a certain level, one enters a state of perfect rationality.
He could calculate the outcome of everything with precision.
That cocktail? Drinking it posed a 29% risk of intoxication, 2% risk of cancer;
Refusing it meant a 49% chance of confrontation, 51% chance of ridicule, and a high likelihood of physical conflict.
So, he drank it.
And maybe because the alcohol stirred something in him, he constructed an algorithmic model in his head right there and then—cross-referencing genetics, orientation, personality, background, interests, values—to calculate the probability of falling in love with Qiu Yu.
2%.
Drinking that cocktail carried nearly the same cancer risk.
Chen Ce Bai's lips curled in a cold sneer.
Back then, he was still a normal human being, and even then, the chance of Qiu Yu falling in love with him had been close to zero.
Now that he was turning into a monster, there was even less reason for her to look at him any differently.
So, for once, he found himself a little at a loss—staring at her message, unsure how to respond.
He'd spent the entire past week forcing himself to suppress thoughts of her, resisting the urge to obsessively monitor her every move like some kind of deviant.
But now, all that restraint shattered in an instant.
The hallucination returned.
His bloodshot eyes locked onto her again, overtaken by a feverish intensity, as if mentally sketching the outline of her profile inch by inch.
His gaze—cold, calculated, and indecent—tightened silently around her like a noose around the throat.
···
Over ten minutes passed.
The gaze didn't fade—it only grew bolder.
Qiu Yu felt a wave of goosebumps ripple across her skin.
She stood up, pretending she just needed coffee.
But no matter how she moved, that invisible gaze clung to her—sticky and suffocating, as if it came from some other dimension, peering at her through layers of space.
Her scalp tingled.
With all that advanced tech, why use it to spy on me?
And then—something even more disturbing happened.
As she sipped her coffee, her throat moved slightly.
And that gaze followed—trailing her swallowing motion, like two overlapping shadows pressing together in a dark, intimate kiss.
Qiu Yu slammed the cup down.
She took a deep breath, tried to steady her nerves, and hurried back to her desk—still giving herself away with a flicker of panic.
She had no idea how to deal with what was happening.
Call the police?
—The city's law enforcement was less effective than the company's private security.
Tell her parents?
—She'd be whisked back to Northern Europe, stuck in endless daylight under round-the-clock surveillance by a hundred guards.
Tell Pei Xi?
—Same result as telling her parents.
She had only one person she could trust right now.
Chen Ce Bai.
She picked up her tablet, unlocked it, and deliberately typed slowly:
Chen Ce Bai…
Then paused, thought for a moment, and deleted it.
After a few seconds' hesitation—blushing with embarrassment—she forced herself to type:
Hubby, say something to me.
The moment she hit "send," she couldn't even bear to look.
Regardless of whether the watcher saw it, she couldn't take it—flinging the tablet aside and burying her burning cheeks in her hands. Her ears stung from the heat.
She didn't notice that, the second the message was sent, the gaze in the shadows changed—growing dark and hollow, thick with something nearly predatory.
Like a starving creature who had finally been given permission to feed.
That gaze turned molten and frigid all at once—sharp enough to burn holes straight through her back.
Qiu Yu could feel his eyes on her, but no longer had the capacity to guess what kind of emotion was behind them.
Her own embarrassment was scalding enough to set fire to her ears.
Just then, the soft chime of an incoming video call echoed through the room.
Chen Ce Bai hadn't replied—he'd just called her directly.
Qiu Yu flinched.
Her face was burning up, practically combusting from shame. Her first instinct was to hang up—but then she thought of the thing watching her, and bit down hard on her lip.
Covering one cheek with her hand, she answered the call.
Chen Ce Bai's voice came through, low and steady:
"Qiu Yu?"
Her face flushed scarlet. She couldn't bring herself to face the camera.
There was a pause.
"Did someone get into your tablet?" he asked.
Of course—she'd never called him that before. His reaction was reasonable.
Qiu Yu took a long, deep breath.
She tried to recall the perverse, invasive intensity of that gaze—anything to smother her mortification—and forced herself to act natural with Chen Ce Bai.
But she couldn't stop blushing.
The shame was overwhelming. It spread ice through her body, even as waves of heat surged across her face—only to leave her shivering harder.
She had never experienced anything like this, and it left her momentarily dazed.
It wasn't until Chen Ce Bai softly called her name again that she snapped out of it.
With a determined breath, she picked up the tablet and turned the camera toward herself.
Chen Ce Bai was using a tablet, too.
He must have just come out of the lab—midway through changing clothes. He'd set the device on a nearby table.
The camera angled upward from below—a position often called "the death angle."
But from this angle, his jawline only looked sharper. His fingers, adjusting the cuffs of his shirt, seemed impossibly long and elegant.
Once he finished with the cuffs, he picked up a mechanical wristwatch and fastened it around his wrist.
The pale veins tracing the back of his hand, the jut of his wrist bone—it all combined into a kind of unapproachable, almost dangerous beauty.
He was turned slightly away from her, not making eye contact. His voice, as always, was calm and composed:
"Qiu Yu, is something wrong?"
That steady tone stood in sharp contrast to the other gaze—the one lurking in the shadows.
It had become violent. Possessive. Frenzied.
He seemed to take her answering Chen Ce Bai's call as a challenge.
And now that hidden gaze burned into her like a brand, more intense than ever before.
Afraid that Chen Ce Bai might end the call, Qiu Yu didn't dare hesitate any longer.
She took a deep breath, clenched her jaw, and forced the words out:
"…Hubby, could you come pick me up after work?"