The Eleventh Year of Making Hate with My Lover - Chapter 24

Celine was a person of action; the moment she spoke it, she saw it through. The Si family was a clan of prominent standing with no shortage of influential connections, and by that very evening, everything had been cleanly arranged. They successfully smuggled themselves into a fresh batch of recruits destined for the Polar Logistics Department.

Because everything had progressed in such a frantic rush, the transport supervisors were still busy lecturing the lower staff as the aircraft took off, rattling on about what to watch out for in the Far North and what they were strictly forbidden from looking at. They were entirely oblivious to the fact that two highly anomalous individuals had infiltrated their ranks.

Shen Wang leaned against the window, gazing out at the hazy cloud layers shifting outside. The clouds closest to the fuselage were realistic and fluid, but the formations stretching into the distance remained a massive, blocky blur of digital mosaics looking exactly like a background layer that the simulation engine had failed to render properly.

He found the sight rather amusing, but the moment Celine came over holding a set of standardized logistical uniforms, the smile instantly died on his lips. It’s a dress again…

Celestial Calendar, Year 3085. The Cross Ice Shelf, Far North

This region was far more desolate and deathly silent than either of them had anticipated. A lead-gray sky pressed heavily down upon thousands of miles of frozen plains. Fractured ice sheets lay scattered like the skeletal remains of prehistoric behemoths, and the sharp silhouettes of distant ice hummocks felt incredibly rigid. The harsh, blinding reflection off the icy terrain made one’s eyes grow heavy and fatigued.

Shen Wang rubbed his hands over his face, the white mist of his exhaled breath instantly dissolving into the frigid air.

The quarters assigned to them were situated quite a distance from the main Research Institute. Their primary responsibility was preparing the daily three-course meals, which a designated courier would pick up at scheduled times.

Fortunately, Shen Wang had brought Yiyi along. As a spiritual instrument, Yiyi’s inherent illusion-weaving capabilities were completely unhindered by the laws of the Cocoon Domain. It was worth noting that the cat could now not only disguise its own appearance but could effortlessly alter the visual forms of others as well. Relying heavily on this tactical edge, Shen Wang successfully managed to infiltrate the secure confines of the Research Institute.

The main lobby of the entire facility featured a distinctly clinical, prison-like aesthetic—a cold, sterile white palette accented by minimal shades of pale gray. Anyone walking in blind would assume they had crossed over into heaven.

He was entirely in the dark regarding the location of Wu Que’s private office. However, given that the man was a critical research asset, heading toward the less-frequented, high-security top floors was bound to be a safe bet.

Access to the uppermost elevator bank required an authorized security clearance card. Shen Wang concealed himself within a dark alcove for a considerable amount of time before he finally spotted a researcher walking by with an identification lanyard dangling from his neck.

Muttering a silent apology in his heart, Shen Wang smoothly and expertly knocked the man unconscious.

The elevator ascended continuously until it reached the apex of the structure. Outside the doors, the corridor was so profoundly quiet that one could have heard a pin drop. Shen Wang carefully poked his head out, and with a single glance, he spotted a certain individual reclining comfortably in a lounge chair, idly soaking in the weak, temperature-deprived winter sunlight.

Wu Que appeared to be sound asleep, an open book resting over his face. One of his arms dangled loosely alongside his long, cascading hair, and his half-rolled sleeves exposed a pale, slender wrist. A thick layer of medical bandages was still wrapped tightly around his chest, but his breathing was deep and even; it seemed his recovery was progressing smoothly.

Sensing a presence in his immediate vicinity, the habitually light-sleeping Wu Que stirred slightly. He reached up, intending to lift the book from his face, but Shen Wang smoothly extended a hand, pressing down lightly to stop him.

Almost the exact millisecond their skin made contact, Wu Que recognized precisely who the intruder was. He paused perceptively, a trace of distinct surprise flitting through his frame.

“Shen Wang?” he murmured softly, his tone carrying the vulnerable, unguarded softness of someone who had just awakened.

Hearing his actual name spoken aloud, Shen Wang instinctively retracted his fingers.

Why on earth did I go out of my way to sneak all the way up here just to see him? he questioned himself. Journeying to the Far North alongside Celine could easily be justified as following the mandatory progression of the historical plot, but actively infiltrating a highly secure research facility with Yiyi’s assistance was another matter entirely. He knew perfectly well that his long-time nemesis was far too resilient to succumb to a mere gunshot wound.

“Just dropped by to see if you were dead yet,” Shen Wang replied smoothly, reaching down to pull the book off the man’s face.

It was a noticeably aged volume of foreign poetry, the language dense and archaic. He could only roughly decipher two lines written across the page: We shall meet across different echoes of time, only to part ways once more.

“You seem quite leisurely,” Shen Wang remarked, lightly shaking the book. “I was under the impression that this project of yours was frantically busy, considering they dragged a critically wounded patient all the way back out here the moment you could breathe.”

“How do you know I’m not just stealing a moment of peace out of a hellish schedule?” Wu Que adjusted his posture, shifting his weight as he reached out to retrieve the book of poetry. “Since you’ve already gone to the trouble of breaking in, how about I take you to a fascinating place?”

Shen Wang arched an eyebrow slightly. “There’s nothing out there but endless snow. Furthermore, it isn’t exactly convenient for me to be seen wandering around your headquarters.”

“Who said anything about walking out of the building?”

Wu Que propped himself up into a sitting position, closing the distance between them as he tilted his head to look at Shen Wang. With the theatrical flourish of a magician executing a trick, he snapped his fingers. Instantly, a pair of translucent, pointed, aquatic ears manifested from the sides of his head, nearly brushing against Shen Wang’s cheek.

“Are you planning to…” Shen Wang’s gaze lowered.

Half of the man’s original true-form features had surfaced across his skin. From Shen Wang’s perspective, looking down as the other man tilted his face upward, those striking blue-and-pink irises were completely saturated with his own reflection. Symmetric, gill-like slits opened and closed rhythmically beneath Wu Que’s eyes, the crystalline structures within catching and refracting the light beautifully.

During a moment when his consciousness had been thoroughly compromised, Shen Wang remembered meticulously tracing and kissing those exact markings…

Silently, Shen Wang shifted his gaze away.

Wu Que stood up, a translucent, umbrella-like mantle materializing across his shoulders and draping downward like a fine veil. He looped his arms around Shen Wang’s waist from behind, anchoring him tightly as he leapt directly off the eighth-floor balcony. “Yiyi, be a dear and maintain my disguise on the chair for a bit.”

Out on the terrace, Yiyi hopped onto the vacant lounge chair, letting out a compliant, docile meow.

Amidst the roaring rush of their rapid descent, Wu Que’s uninhibited, ecstatic laughter echoed through the freezing air. “Taking the stairs can never compare to the efficiency of throwing oneself off a building!” The expansive mantle behind him snapped and billowed fiercely against the wind currents like a high-velocity glider.

Biting back the freezing wind, Shen Wang let out a sharp sneeze. For some bizarre reason, his mind involuntarily conjured an image of himself dangling precariously from the tentacles of a colossal, floating jellyfish, slowly drifting downward like a living parachute.

Wu Que precisely circumvented the Research Institute’s external surveillance array, landing flawlessly on the snow-covered ground. The landscape was a vast, blinding expanse of white, but a short distance away, a distinctly conspicuous, stealthy figure could be seen trudging toward the military encampment.

“Is that the little Specter?” Wu Que noted, narrowing his eyes slightly.

The individual forging ahead was indeed Celine. She was stumbling blindly through the deep snowdrifts, thoroughly bewildered as to how her “elder sister” had managed to vanish into thin air in the blink of an eye. Right now, she was single-mindedly intent on stealing a glimpse of her fiancé, Mr. He.

The parameters of this Polar Project were shrouded in absolute secrecy; the news media had only vaguely reported the discovery of a mysterious, unclassified biological specimen undergoing active evaluation. Yet, an ominous, unshakable premonition had taken root in her chest a suffocating feeling that she might never see Mr. He returns alive.

“Achoo!—” Celine rubbed her nose, shivering violently. She hadn’t bundled up nearly enough; the cold was biting.

Suddenly, a small, compacted snowball struck her squarely in the back. Spinning around, she found her “sister” standing a few paces away, arms crossed over her chest with a thoroughly deadpan expression. It was honestly bizarre ever since that incident at the estate, her sister had maintained this cold, rigid countenance, looking for all the world as if the entire universe owed her a massive fortune. Furthermore, she seemed to have developed a violent hatred for wearing dresses.

Standing beside her, her “brother-in-law” was idly tossing a fresh snowball between his palms. She rarely encountered him under normal circumstances; he was an enigmatic figure who usually appeared detached and entirely devoid of warmth. Yet, whenever he was in her sister’s presence, he displayed a streak of almost childlike playfulness.

The two of them truly deserve one another, Celine thought with a small sigh.

Leaning down, Celine scooped up a handful of loose snow, compacted it, and hurled it right back. Wu Que tilted his head smoothly to the side, dodging the projectile with effortless grace causing the snowball to strike Shen Wang dead center across his face.

Shen Wang: “…”

Celine: “…”

Sister, I swear on my life I didn’t mean to do that…

Wu Que clutched his stomach, bursting into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. Once he had finally spent his amusement, he reached out, using his fingertips to gently brush away the residual fine snow clinging to Shen Wang’s features.

Shen Wang lightly spat out the stray ice particles clinging to his lips. “What did you throw a snowball at her for in the first place?”

Wiping a stray flake from Shen Wang’s brow and eyelashes, Wu Que smiled darkly, his tone dropping into a chilling whisper. “Pelting her with a bit of snow is nothing. I haven’t even gotten around to slaughtering her yet.”

She is a Specter, after all, he reminded himself. Once the Cocoon Domain concludes, she must be systematically purged.

Celine stuck her tongue out, thinking to herself: Good grief, why must they flaunt their affection right in front of my face? I need to go find my own Mr. He right this instant.

Another snowball landed directly along her forward path. Celine snapped in mock irritation, “Is there absolutely no end to this?!”

Wu Que simply pointed toward a direction further down the line, his lips silently forming the words: You are~ walking~ the wrong~ way~

“Dammit!” Celine huffed, sharply wrapping her wool scarf tighter around her neck before turning on her heel and sprinting off in the correct direction.

A short distance away, across the heavily reinforced defensive perimeter, patrol units were conducting their routine rounds. He Di was currently kneeling in the snow, meticulously inspecting a signal receiver embedded deep within the permafrost layer. The acoustic wave telemetry captured over the past few days had exhibited a series of deeply anomalous fluctuations. He snapped a high-resolution photograph of the data, preparing to transmit it back to Professor Wu for analysis.

A sudden commotion erupted from the security line behind him. It appeared the sentries had intercepted an intruder. Clad in heavy, frost-rimed cryogenic power armor, two soldiers were firmly escorting a distinctly petite figure toward him.

“Reporting to the Commander! We have apprehended a highly suspicious individual within the restricted zone. We strongly suspect her of being an espionage operative attempting to compromise classified project intelligence.”

Celine’s hands were pinned firmly behind her back, her fair complexion flushed a violent, icy red from the exposure. She sniffled quietly, wanting desperately to call out his name but retaining enough sense to know that doing so would ruin everything in an instant.

He Di’s eyes widened in profound shock, followed immediately by a sharp furrow of his brows. His gaze demanded a silent explanation: How on earth did you get out here?

Celine’s eyes darted away guiltily. Yet, seeing him standing before her completely unharmed allowed a massive weight to lift from her chest. No matter what consequences awaited her, she was determined to remain by his side even if it meant being locked away in a military cell as a suspected spy.

She had been plagued by a reoccurring, suffocating nightmare: a catastrophic avalanche, a collapsing glacier, and Mr. He perishing beneath the ice.

“Escort her back to the command center. I will conduct the interrogation personally,” He Di instructed with a heavy sigh, a trace of helpless resignation filtering through his hard, military features.

On the other side of the ridge, Shen Wang was guided toward a fractured, yawning opening in the ice shelf. A colossal ice mountain loomed a short distance away, its towering peaks serving as the primary excavation site for the research expedition.

Following the direction of his gaze, Wu Que explained quietly, “During the previous excavation cycle, the team unearthed a biological specimen preserved deep within the ice. Initial laboratory diagnostics revealed the presence of an extraordinary, volatile energy capable of fundamentally altering genetic structures.”

Shen Wang required no further elaboration to comprehend the gravity of those words; this very site marked the precise historical genesis of human genetic evolution and the awakening of anomalous powers.

Yet, a fundamental question remained. “Why did you bring me all the way out here?”

Wu Que crouched down, his fingers lightly trailing through the fractured ice shards floating upon the water’s surface. He tilted his head upward, a deeply cunning, mischievous smile playing across his lips. “Would you like to take a look at what lies beneath the ice?”

The moment the words left his lips, he plunged headfirst into the dark, broken waters of the glacial fissure.

“……” This is a polar glacier we’re talking about, Shen Wang thought blankly.

He remained standing rigid on the rocky edge; his eyes locked firmly onto the dark ripple where the man had vanished.

Ten seconds… twenty seconds… fifty seconds…

Shen Wang pressed his lips together, his feet shifting instinctively to dive in after him. Suddenly, a broad, flattened tentacle breached the water’s surface, wrapping with absolute precision around his frame and dragging him cleanly beneath the freezing waves.

Yet, the agonizing, bone-chilling cold he had anticipated never came. In fact, the freezing water failed to make contact with a single thread of his clothing.

Wu Que had already reverted fully to his massive true form, though he had intentionally restricted his dimensions to roughly twice the height of an ordinary human. He functioned exactly like a transparent, pressurized diving submersible, securely anchoring Shen Wang within the fluid core of his body.

His physical structure was stunningly crystalline and translucent. The outermost layer was densely populated by a multitude of shifting, blue-and-pink eyes, while the middle layer consisted of a highly concentrated hydrogel matrix. Shen Wang rested safely at the absolute center of this mass, Wu Que’s voice echoing directly inside his mind as if reverberating through the ceiling of a room: “Not bad, is it? I’ve granted you the absolute best viewing seat in the house.”

“…It honestly feels like I’ve been swallowed whole and am currently sitting inside your stomach,” Shen Wang remarked, lightly patting the smooth, jelly-like texture of the inner wall. “I certainly hope your digestive fluids don’t decide to dissolve me into proteins.” Since his forced cohabitation with Wu Que, he had taken the time to thoroughly study the biological anatomy and care requirements of various cnidarian entities.

“What kind of primitive, low-tier organism do you take me for?” one of Wu Que’s tentacles extended directly in front of his face, curls tightening in a gesture that looked suspiciously like flipping him off. “Furthermore, stop blindly touching things.”

Shen Wang fell silent. From the moment he had first entered the man’s mental landscape and witnessed his true form, he had been fully aware that Wu Que was not human. In fact, he wasn’t reminiscent of any known terrestrial organism on the planet; he resembled something originating from a significantly higher dimension.

It was truly bizarre. Had the authorities at HQ genuinely failed to perceive his true nature? Given the ruthless, predatory track record of the high-ranking brass, if they had ever caught wind of this, they would have locked him away in a secure facility to be systematically dissected.

Wu Que’s form contracted rapidly, pulsing as he descended into the black abyss at immense speed. Sealed within the core, Shen Wang couldn’t help but lightly tap the top of the dome if that structure could even be classified as a head. “Slow down a fraction; I’m getting a bout of motion sickness.”

Wu Que: “……”

Descending an untraceable number of meters into the deep, the surrounding environment quickly transitioned into pitch-black darkness. At this extreme depth, only a microscopic fraction of specialized organisms could survive. Wu Que’s massive form cast a faint, ethereal blue-and-pink luminescence against the crushing blackness, appearing exactly like a stray grain of stardust plunging into a deep ocean trench.

Even though the immense pressure of the deep sea was entirely absorbed by Wu Que’s outer mantle, Shen Wang still experienced a brief wave of physical disorientation. Allowing himself a moment to adjust, he opened his eyes and offered an earnest, heartfelt compliment. “Remarkable. Honestly, you are the one who truly deserves to be the subject of a massive scientific research project.”

Wu Que muttered a faint, garbled response internally. Shen Wang couldn’t quite catch the syllables, but as his gaze drifted downward, a massive field of luminous ice coral fields breached his vision they had officially reached the absolute bottom.

The seabed was bathed in a pristine, snow-white radiance reflected from the glowing coral structures. The light dimly illuminated a sprawling expanse of ancient, collapsed masonry and broken pillars they were standing amidst the ruins of an ancient civilization.

However, because this specific location was merely a copied landscape generated by the limitations of the Cocoon Domain, the architectural details of the ruins appeared heavily blurred and indistinct, offering only a vague, ghostly outline of its original configuration.

Wu Que navigated through the submerged wreckage with absolute familiarity, as if he were taking a casual stroll through his own estate. His long, flattened tentacles reached out, methodically searching for something hidden amidst the debris.

“What exactly are you looking for?” Shen Wang asked.

He watched intently as Wu Que glided into a secluded sector heavily enclosed by dense coral formations. Resting at the very center of the cleared space was a bizarre object a dead starfish, pinned firmly to the seabed floor.

Shen Wang stared at the arrangement, studying it intensely until a sudden, deeply unsettling realization began to crystallize in his mind.

Why on earth… does this setup look exactly like a burial grave?