Hey! Control Yourself! - Chapter 18

Chapter 18: So Much Force

“You’re with them! I’ll kill you!” Suddenly, the boy lunged at Shen Ji with savage ferocity.

Shen Ji blocked him with a single hand. “Are you sick? Your enemy is right there, and you’re trying to kill me?”

The hunchback grabbed the boy by the back of his collar, leaving him dangling in mid-air.

Sheng Lu’s eyes fell upon the pendant around the boy’s neck. He reached out and snatched the bottle. A small amount of formalin sloshed inside, preserving the gland of a juvenile mermaid. Through the glass, it swayed within the sinister liquid against his pale palm.

Shen Ji could well imagine the scene: a young mermaid, captured, its underdeveloped gland carved out by humans in exchange for wealth. Now that mermaids were on the brink of extinction, the price of such a gland must have been driven to astronomical heights. This boy wore it like a supreme treasure; it was likely passed down by his parents, perhaps even intended as a family heirloom.

“Bastard! Give it back! It’s a relic left by my parents! You beast! You thief!”

“A human child, wearing a juvenile mermaid gland, calling it a human relic…” Sheng Lu’s gaze was mocking, his voice carrying a desolate, piercing chill.

The little boy trembled with terror. “The Great God said so! You are remnants, monsters spurned by God, the sin that brought the apocalypse! The Pope said you all deserve to die… Mermaid glands were meant to serve us humans!”

A mental energy thread pierced through his heart.

It was Shen Ji’s thread.

The boy’s pupils dilated. He looked at Shen Ji with a mix of shock, trembling, and indignant resentment. “It’s you… you’re a bad person too…” Suddenly, he began to soften. “No, don’t kill me… I have many more mermaid glands at home… I’ll give them all to you.”

A monstrous black fish dove down from the air and swallowed his entire body.

Shen Ji was startled. That was a manifestation of Sheng Lu’s mental energy. His mental power could transform into a completely autonomous physical entity; even in the era of the Gaya apocalypse where ability users were rampant, this was terrifying.

It seemed the timing of this transition was completely wrong. He was better off leaving.

“Darling, where are you going?”

Sheng Lu’s hand had been gripping his wrist since a moment ago.

“Wait, don’t touch me yet.” Whenever he touched him, things developed in unexpected directions.

A pathological amusement flashed in Sheng Lu’s eyes, and he smiled with an eerie tenderness. “Why? You just helped me vent my anger.”

Despite his body beginning to tremble, that injured hand stubbornly moved up Shen Ji’s forearm, inch by inch. The blood from his palm smeared across Shen Ji’s sleeve.

“I knew it. When you said you wanted to kill me, you were just playing a game…” Sheng Lu’s voice wavered, but he didn’t finish the sentence.

“I wasn’t… I said I’m going to kill you.” Shen Ji really wanted to shake him into lucidity.

Sheng Lu slowly leaned closer. One more inch and he would be within lethal range. Given Sheng Lu’s strength, it was impossible for him not to sense the mental thread or the killing intent within it. Yet he was so strange—would he really rather be severed by the mental thread just to hold onto him?

Had Shen Ji ever done something atrocious to the mermaids? No, he carried no mermaid organs or parts on him. He had no such fetishes. Not then, not ever.

Shen Ji looked at that hand—white as porcelain, being stained red by blood bit by bit, like a white dove’s blood staining the snow.

“Dead psycho,” Shen Ji said coldly.

“What?” Sheng Lu froze.

“Dead psycho,” Shen Ji emphasized, tightening his tone. Hmph, look at that look of disbelief. It seemed he had finally hit a sore spot. Even Sheng Lu wouldn’t be able to stand being called a dead psycho, right?

“Baby, say it again.”

“…” Shen Ji started to feel that something was wrong. No, wait.

Sheng Lu suddenly lunged at him. As if possessed by something, Shen Ji inexplicably withdrew his mental thread at that exact moment.

“You’re having another episode, aren’t you?”

Sheng Lu laughed—a laugh that was actually… somewhat sweet? No, he must have been awake too long and misread it. Sheng Lu gripped his arm tightly, pressing his face against Shen Ji’s. He closed his eyes, his voice long and trailing with mirth: “Yes… I am a dead psycho… and you must love f**king psychos the most.”

“…” Shen Ji really wanted to facepalm. He was the crazy one; if he hadn’t retracted the mental thread the moment Sheng Lu lunged, Sheng Lu would be dead.

He felt the slightly cold temperature of Sheng Lu’s face against his neck, gradually warming as they brushed together. The surrounding trees obscured the starry sky; the Shaxing members had vanished at some unknown point. The night was deathly silent.

“I really like you…” he whispered affectionately.

His long white hair had wound around Shen Ji’s waist like a snake.

“Did we know each other before this?”

Sheng Lu raised his hand, blood sliding down from his palm to his wrist. Then, he brushed aside his hair, exposing the gland at the back of his neck to Shen Ji.

“You bit this,” he said aggrievedly, his breath falling against Shen Ji’s ear.

Shen Ji narrowed his eyes in surprise, looking over the spot where the hair had been parted. He stared intently at the slightly protruding gland, at the pale skin covering the organ that emitted a unique mermaid pheromone. He looked again and again.

“There is nothing there, okay?”

No bite marks, let alone a mark of possession!

“You’re a complete lunatic with a delusional disorder,” he said, actually voicing his thoughts aloud.

“Because of my self-healing ability… it seems you’ve forgotten again. It’s truly heartbreaking…” Sheng Lu closed his eyes and bit Shen Ji’s ear.

Shen Ji tried to push him away, but because they were pressed so tightly together and Sheng Lu’s mental energy was suppressing him, trying to attack with mental power was useless. Sheng Lu couldn’t bring himself to bite hard enough to draw blood; he only ground his teeth lightly and flicked his tongue against Shen Ji’s earlobe.

It was practically flirting. Perverted.

Shen Ji reached out to push him away. But with the hair wrapped around his waist, the hands locked onto his back, and their mental energies intertwined, he had no room to maneuver.

The harder he pushed, the redder Sheng Lu’s fair face became. His eyes grew dazed, and his breathing turned into a ragged, light pant: “…So much force… I love it, darling…”

“…” Shen Ji froze. He endured, gritting his teeth. The word “pervert” was on the tip of his tongue, but he didn’t say it. He was afraid that if he did, Sheng Lu might actually die of pleasure right then and there.

Sheng Lu’s hand slid under his ribs to grab his shoulder, as if the afterglow hadn’t faded. His breath fell ambiguously against Shen Ji’s face: “Keep moving… darling.”

“Dead psycho…” Shen Ji didn’t dare move now.

Sheng Lu said urgently, “Yes… I know darling loves psychos the most… Hurry up and use your ‘treasure’ to discipline this psycho.”

Shen Ji’s mind raced, but he didn’t dare clarify what that “treasure” was supposed to mean.

“That’s right, I’m talking about the d**k.”

“…” He had still underestimated Sheng Lu’s level of perversion.