Hey! Control Yourself! - Chapter 25

Chapter 25: Such a Waste

To prevent a repeat of the previous incident, Shen Ji spent the next few afternoons taking him for a swim in the pond in front of the cave. The pond was tucked away under the shade of the trees; at a glance, it looked cold and eerie, but fortunately, the water was crystal clear.

Shen Ji sat beneath a tree, watching the mermaid’s long, silvery-white hair drift through the water, sending ripples of light splashing everywhere. A gentle breeze brushed against his face, and over time, his eyelids grew heavy as he gradually drifted toward sleep. Over the past few nights, his sleep quality had plummeted due to Sheng Lu’s constant entanglements.

In his drowse, he heard an anxious voice: “Shen Ji, Shen Ji… help me…”

Shen Ji opened his eyes to see Sheng Lu’s long hair entangled in a mass of strange underwater branches. He couldn’t swim upward and couldn’t turn around to untangle himself, so he could only tilt his head back and call out.

Shen Ji stepped forward and waded into the pond. The icy water bit at his calves as he approached the cluster of strange wild aquatic plants. He discovered that the things were clinging tightly to the mermaid’s hair—withered, branch-like shapes that acted like leeches, stuck to his shoulders and hungrily sucking his blood.

“What are these things?” Shen Ji frowned.

“I don’t know. They move.”

“I’ll have to cut the hair.” Shen Ji drew a strand of mental thread from his fingertips.

“Is it necessary?” A mermaid’s hair is a symbol of beauty; losing it was unacceptable to them. This sentiment was quite pronounced among the Gaya people as well.

“Hair can grow back.” Shen Ji didn’t stop, wrapping the mental threads around the hair.

“If I have short hair, you definitely won’t love me anymore.”

“How could that be?”

“It won’t?” Sheng Lu was immobilized, his eyes struggling to look back at the Enigma behind him.

“Of course not. I never loved you to begin with.”

“…”

With a swift motion, Shen Ji used the mental threads to sever the withered branches along with the hair, letting strands drift away in the water.

The parts attached to the hair were gone, but the remaining sections of the plants were still buried deep in the skin of the mermaid’s shoulders and the nape of his neck. Shen Ji frowned; even with their bodies severed, these segments were still alive and showed signs of becoming even more active, sucking the host’s blood ravenously as if in retaliation.

Shen Ji used his mental threads to pierce through the skin, threading through one of the branches inside the body to pry it out. The moment it was extracted, one end of the thing sprayed droplets of Sheng Lu’s blood and skin tissue.

It was brutal—essentially a mutually assured destruction.

Sheng Lu gripped his hand tightly in pain, cold sweat pouring down as he trembled. “Shen Ji, it hurts so much.”

Shen Ji understood now. This plant lurked in the water year-round, waiting for an opportunity. Once an animal or human approached, it would latch on. Even if its body was cut, the parts that entered the body would survive, parasitizing the host until they completely took over the new body.

The price of extraction was agony—a level of pain far beyond human endurance, forcing the host to accept them and greatly increasing the chance of successful parasitism. He had seen Sheng Lu’s pain tolerance; the man hadn’t even flinched when his hands were pierced by the mental energy cocoon. To see him defeated by this tiny parasitic plant showed just how horrific the pain was.

“If I don’t pull them all out, you’ll turn into a withered corpse immediately.” Shen Ji held him close as the mental threads extracted two more parasites near the heart.

“Ah!” Sheng Lu began to struggle violently, his face turning a complete shade of ashen-green. “Let me go, Shen Ji! It hurts… it hurts!”

Shen Ji held him down. In the struggle, the mermaid’s tail sent wild sprays of water into the air, and the rocks at the edge of the pond scraped his skin, drawing beads of blood.

“I beg you… Shen Ji, let me go… I won’t do it anymore!” Sheng Lu’s eyes were clouded with terror, and he began to scream.

The mermaid’s strength was immense. Shen Ji barely managed to pin down the struggling body with one hand while controlling the mental threads with the other, deciding to finish it in one go.

A dozen mental threads pierced the mermaid’s skin, finding the most difficult angles to extract every remaining piece of the parasitic plants. As blood blossomed in the water, Sheng Lu stopped struggling; his body went completely limp in Shen Ji’s arms.

Shen Ji carried him ashore. By then, Sheng Lu had fainted. He lit the remains of last night’s bonfire and took off his clothes to dry. By this time, Sheng Lu’s hair was slowly growing back, and the small wounds on his body had already healed.

Shen Ji looked at the pale mermaid. Despite his god-tier self-healing, he was actually quite afraid of pain. The current Sheng Lu might be a bit pathological, but he would cry out in pain, struggle, and feel fear—he was nothing like the cold-blooded Great Demon of ten years later.

Just what did you go through to become the person you are ten years from now?

Shen Ji felt he had no reason to dwell on such thoughts.

Sheng Lu slept for the entire day, and Shen Ji finally managed to get a good night’s sleep himself—a blessing in disguise, one might say.

When he woke up, Sheng Lu started acting a bit strange. The mermaid, who had previously been incredibly clingy, had suddenly become quite “proper.” He didn’t pester him, didn’t try to seduce him, and didn’t spout any more smutty nonsense.

Shen Ji suspected he hadn’t cleared the parasites properly and that Sheng Lu was still being affected. He pulled Sheng Lu into his arms, searching and feeling all over his shoulders and back. The skin was smooth and delicate, the bones and muscles seemed normal; he couldn’t find a single thing out of place.

“No… don’t, Shen Ji…” The mermaid turned red from his touch—the kind of red that spread from his face all the way down his neck.

Shen Ji froze on the spot. This characterization was completely wrong. Sheng Lu could blush, but that was usually a flush brought on by his pathological arousal, not this completely normal, shy blush.

“Are you… shy?” Shen Ji’s expression turned solemn. In the past, the subject of such a question would never have been a deviant like Sheng Lu.

However, Sheng Lu didn’t answer. He didn’t answer! Instead, he lowered his head.

Things were serious. He had to be parasitized. It wasn’t on his upper body, so it was likely hidden on the tail, which Shen Ji hadn’t checked carefully earlier.

Shen Ji began to search the tail. His warm hands moved anxiously over the densely packed, delicate scales, looking for anything suspicious. He observed closely, sometimes lifting the heavy, armor-like scales to look for parasitic entry points.

Out of Shen Ji’s sight, Sheng Lu silently let out a smile, secretly clutching the young man’s clothes. He closed his eyes, breathing carefully and deeply, completely immersed in this long, gentle, and meticulous treatment. His soul was swaying in enjoyment.

He was restrained yet greedy; having reached this peak of sinking pleasure, he didn’t dare make a single suspicious sound, fearing he would startle the completely oblivious perpetrator and blow his cover, which would surely provoke the young Enigma.

Despite being over a hundred years old without ever having sex, he was still quite the old fox in certain areas.

Shen Ji was extremely focused. He finally felt a suspicious spot where the scales were overly soft yet resilient—as if it were a natural site for a parasite. He lifted the scales gently and felt that the depths beneath were slightly moist, entirely different from the inner layers of the other scales.

Shen Ji thought that if there was blood, this place was likely parasitized. But as his finger gently probed the area, Sheng Lu suddenly shuddered.

Everywhere else was cold, but this spot was incredibly warm.

This detail finally caused Shen Ji to realize what was happening, but by then, the situation had progressed to a completely wrong state. He saw the mermaid trembling in his arms, hands clutching his shoulders tightly, eyes glazed, lips a vivid red, and tail swaying gently as it rubbed against his arm.

Shen Ji stood up abruptly, and the entire fish tumbled onto the bulrushes.

Sheng Lu twitched his brow. “You could have at least given me a moment to buffer.”

By nightfall, Shen Ji was still silent, the bonfire casting shadows over his expressionless face. Sheng Lu sat across from him, holding up his hands. “Baby, I’m the one who lost out here. I was lying in your arms without moving a single finger.”

Shen Ji’s dark eyes stared at him through the firelight, devoid of emotion. Under that gaze, Sheng Lu felt a chill run down his spine. “So scary…”

“But… it felt so good…” A pathological smile immediately followed.

“…You’re sleeping by yourself tonight.” Shen Ji lowered his gaze.

“Oh? Sleeping by myself?” Sheng Lu let out an incredibly annoying laugh. “Little friend, are you afraid you won’t be able to control yourself and fck me tonight?”

Shen Ji looked up. “I actually just fcked you once in my head.”

Sheng Lu’s smile froze. “Wh… what?” This zero-frame-startup response even made a genuine deviant like Sheng Lu lose his confidence.

“I thought about you while I took care of it,” Shen Ji said bluntly.

After being played by the deviant Sheng Lu just now, he had run out and handled things himself once. Heh. Seduced by a mermaid and forced to put out his own fire. Because he had a Great Demon within his body to sustain, his energy and time were limited; Shen Ji didn’t have much sexual drive or fantasy. Even during his restless teenage years, he had far fewer troubles in that department compared to his peers.

The fact that Sheng Lu’s trick had succeeded was partly due to that, combined with his genuine concern at the time. After realizing he’d been played, he felt a spark of annoyance, but that anger was soon crushed by a surge of impulsive desire.

Sheng Lu froze where he sat. After a brief moment of shock, his pomegranate-red eyes began to sparkle with an oscillating, excited light, as if saying: Then you should give me the real deal.

Shen Ji practically read his mind and cut him off before he could speak: “Not happening. I’ve lost interest.”

Sheng Lu dithered for a moment, an expression of regret and pity crossing his face. “Ah~ then you were just being far too wasteful just now.”

It took Shen Ji two seconds to realize what he meant by “wasteful.” He covered his head, losing all strength and means in the face of a true deviant.