Chapter 212: Yu Jing Evolves
Su Huan raised two fingers, glowing red, and rubbed his slightly bluish eye sockets.
The high temperature dispersed the dark circles to a certain extent, making him look less disheveled.
Even with his stamina, being drained in turns by two women for a week was a bit too much for him.
A “dong dong” knock sounded at the door.
Outside the door, two women were having a friendly morning exchange.
Su Huan’s eyelid twitched slightly, feeling like the two were switching shifts.
Yu Yue walked in holding a large cup of soy milk, while Shu Wei stood at the doorway helping to close the door, holding a stack of documents in her hands.
The fragrant soy milk emitted steaming heat from the large porcelain cup, and Yu Yue said softly, “Seeing how hard you’ve been working lately, I specially made this soy milk for you. Drink it before getting back to work.”
The secretary standing at the doorway acted as if she heard nothing, her plump thighs pressed together, her expression cold and focused.
Upon closer inspection, her eyes were a bit vacant.
(Train Conductor’s Secretary’s work state)
(Train Conductor’s Secretary on night shift)
Su Huan snorted coldly, downing the scalding soy milk in one gulp and setting the cup on the table.
“Shu Wei has been doing very well in all her recent tasks. Hu Shuo even mentioned it to me privately… Even if we don’t offer benefits yet, let’s at least arrange a dormitory for her first.”
Yu Yue said tentatively.
Having learned from the previous incidents, although she wouldn’t use her ability to probe Su Huan’s activities, how could she not hear those sounds right next to her?
Those rustling sounds scraped her heart piece by piece.
Although she had prepared for this long ago, Su Huan had not had any other women around him for such a long time.
This kept a glimmer of hope in her heart.
But ever since she ran into Lin Xi that day, she had a premonition that this day would come.
But she didn’t expect it so soon.
Thinking of that “boy” lying in her arms, whom she had personally dressed and styled his hair for, and carefully tended to every meal, now half taken away by someone else, the little chef felt endlessly aggrieved.
She had always held a simple logic.
Eat the food I made, and you’re mine!
But this wasn’t Shu Wei’s fault; the other woman was just as helpless and pitiful as she had been at the start.
It was all Su Huan’s fault, that fickle little bastard.
The little chef brooded fiercely for a whole day but couldn’t bear to do anything to Su Huan, so she came up with this method to drain him dry.
But seeing Su Huan visibly haggard, she couldn’t help but soften and want to nourish him a bit.
Only recently, with frequent DNA exchanges and growing familiarity with Su Huan, plus a touch of possessiveness at play, did Yu Yue muster the courage to make the suggestion. If it were before, she wouldn’t dare interfere with Su Huan’s decisions even if given ten times the guts.
Su Huan glanced at her in surprise and gave a noncommittal light hum.
Yu Yue’s heart immediately bubbled with joy. “Then you two carry on.”
She picked up the empty cup from the table, turned to walk out, and said as she passed the doorway, “Tonight, I’ll take you to pick a room!”
“Mm, good.”
Shu Wei came back to her senses and smiled in agreement.
Once Yu Yue was out the door, she walked over and said, “There are mainly two matters. First, Lieutenant Tong Zizhan and Second Lieutenant Gao Yuan have merit in capturing the traitor, and the order documents for each to be promoted one military rank have been drafted. Second, after a night of rescue efforts, Liu Ming died, but Zhang Qiang survived unexpectedly.”
“Ah?”
“You mean the one who took a bullet died, but the one shot full of holes was saved?”
“Yes.”
Su Huan’s mouth twitched. “Tell Lin Xia that if there’s a next time, he’ll be sent to the back kitchen to kill chickens for the rest of his life—no more touching a scalpel.”
The pencil in Shu Wei’s hand spun unconsciously once, and she keenly sensed that Su Huan seemed to have misunderstood something, so she added.
“Zhang Qiang was saved by Lin Xia.”
“Truly impressive… Later, convey my verbal commendation to Lu Xiao.”
A strange smile hung on Su Huan’s lips.
Although Shu Wei didn’t know why he was doing this, a competent secretary never questions the boss. She handed over the documents in her hand. “These are the order documents for the military rank promotions.”
Su Huan took them casually, accidentally brushing Shu Wei’s fingertip.
He thought to himself that this was bad.
Looking up, sure enough, he saw Shu Wei’s complexion drain of all color, her body swaying unsteadily.
Helplessly, he stepped forward and scooped up his secretary.
The moment she touched Su Huan, the defense line Shu Wei had desperately maintained collapsed in an instant, and her whole body turned to mush in his arms.
That was the problem.
Although Su Huan hadn’t truly hurt her, the prolonged violence had caused Shu Wei’s body to develop a special stress response to him.
Something like uncontrollable muscle spasms…
Accompanied by some reactions that made one’s face flush and heart race.
Su Huan picked her up by the waist and placed her on the bed nearby.
After a long while, the secretary finally recovered, her face still bearing the afterglow of a blush, her whole body limply sprawled there.
Su Huan tugged over a nearby blanket and covered the woman like a gentle lover.
“No need to push yourself.”
That cold and handsome face softened considerably, as if he were a different person.
The woman’s state at this moment was more alluring and fragile than ever.
She stared blankly at Su Huan before her, and in her eyes, besides fear and shame, there was also a trace of something indefinable.
Outside the blanket, her ten plump toes clenched one by one according to her emotions.
Suddenly, a general energy fluctuation swept past the front of the train from the rear carriages.
Su Huan narrowed his eyes, and “General Energy Perception” instantly unfolded, covering the entire train.
……
Twenty minutes earlier.
Carriage 10B, now converted into Yu Jing’s mechanical laboratory material, finished product, and semi-finished product storage room.
A woman wearing a loose overcoat stood quietly outside the door.
The glasses on the bridge of her nose were too heavy, causing her to push them up from time to time.
Just as she pushed them up for the third time, the door in front of her opened.
From her angle, she could see a pair of slender jade feet wrapped in a bodysuit, with curves as beautiful as freshly tempered blades.
Lifting her head, she met Yu Jing’s slightly upturned phoenix eyes.
Compared to her usual indifference, today there was much more excitement.
Wan Xing nodded, her slender chin dipping into the wide collar.
“Inside.”
Yu Jing led Wan Xing into the room.
Cold blue light illuminated the three-meter-high space. Layers of exoskeletons hung on racks on both sides of the carriage, and various parts were fixed on the central control panel. Thanks to special shock-absorbing design, even if the train jolted in the wind and waves, nothing would fall to the ground.
The two passed through the narrow aisle toward the innermost part.
A faint fruity fragrance wafted from ahead, and they stopped in a relatively spacious control area.
The room was four meters square, with tools hanging on both sides.
The most striking was the central control panel, with edges raised forty centimeters, filled with a large amount of bright yellow liquid like grease, gently swaying with the jolts.
And a humanoid figure was immersed within it.
The face was charred black, with a silver iris flower emblazoned on the exoskeleton.
It was Zhao Kuo, who had long been dead.
The corpse had somehow been brought onto the train by the two women.
Wan Xing pocketed her hands, bent down to look at the corpse in the liquid, her nose tip almost touching the bright yellow liquid.
Her tone carried faint doubt. “Why not dismantle this exoskeleton?”
“Flesh and blood alone has no meaning. Only combining with machinery achieves this body’s peak state.”
“It wasted so many of my potions.”
“Xing Zi, how can you say that? We’re best friends.”
Yu Jing’s phoenix eyes narrowed into a curved arc, and she reached out to hug Wan Xing.
“We’ve only known each other two months… Here!”
Wan Xing pulled out three tubes of reagent from her loose clothing, thwarting the other’s further intentions, her eyes revealing scrutiny behind the glasses.
“What kind of look is that? Like you’re looking at some pervert.”
Yu Jing muttered discontentedly.
“It’s the look for a loser underdog.”
Wan Xing was merciless, placing the reagents in her hand and backing up several steps until she reached the wall.
Yu Jing’s eyes swept regretfully over Wan Xing’s body hidden in the loose clothing before turning her gaze to the reagents in her hand.
“These aren’t from the storeroom, right?”
“Of course not. All potions in the storeroom are registered; unauthorized use would alert him immediately. Didn’t you say you didn’t want to tell him?”
“If I told him, he definitely wouldn’t let me try this breakthrough path…”
Yu Jing sighed slightly.
Wan Xing pushed up her glasses, her tone carrying a hint of warning. “He’s repeatedly forbidden breakthroughs in the flesh-and-blood direction, yet you still go against him.”
Yu Jing glanced at the corpse on the control panel, her phoenix eyes gradually lifting, turning cold and resolute.
“Only by breaking through to Tier 1 can I catch up to his pace.”
“Tch, still a loser.”
Wan Xing muttered softly, hiding her worry behind her glasses.
“You don’t understand. I just want to follow behind him to see what a broader world looks like. Only he can achieve that, and only the train he controls can reach the endpoint I imagine.”
Yu Jing downed one tube of reagent, pouring the remaining two onto the control panel.
After a moment of silence, Wan Xing said, “In this era, perhaps he is the best Train Conductor, and you are the most suitable passenger for him.”
The bright liquid in the control panel began to turn turbid. Yu Jing placed her hands on the panel, her eyes silently turning a uniform crimson, like crystalline rubies, demonic and beautiful.
“…Both mad and crazy.”
As the words fell, a general energy fluctuation centered on Yu Jing swept outward, the invisible energy piercing through layers of decks and spreading into the flood.
Wan Xing couldn’t help taking a step forward but hesitated and withdrew after a moment.
Now at the critical moment of evolution, her intervention wouldn’t change anything; it all depended on Yu Jing herself.
At this moment, Yu Jing had fallen into a blood-red world.
The completely different sensations of flesh and blood and metal filled her senses.
As if presenting her with a multiple-choice question.
Her genes had also reached the transformation node.
Lv3 “General Energy Erosion” had covered every corner of the corpse.
Although Yu Jing herself remained calm, everything on the control panel was undergoing drastic mutation.
Large patches of Zhao Kuo’s charred skin sloughed off, polluting the liquid even more turbidly.
The exoskeleton crazily proliferated like real bones, covering the face and forming a metal bone mask.
The next moment, Zhao Kuo, dead for so long, suddenly sat up from the control panel.
His whole body seemed paralyzed for years, with limbs extremely uncoordinated.
Moreover, the exoskeleton on his body flowed like liquid, repeatedly shifting over him and tugging at his limbs.
With a “clang,” Zhao Kuo fell to the ground.
Then he struggled to stand, accompanied by a clear mechanical sound as the joints locked, standing rigidly on the ground. The changes continued.
‘Feels like a sign of success.’
Wan Xing breathed a sigh of relief inwardly, suddenly noticing an extra person in the room.
Sensing that oppressive aura, she didn’t even dare turn her head, cautiously activating the camera on her glasses to look.
‘Damn, we’re screwed.’
The worst scenario had happened.
The Train Conductor had appeared at some point beside the control panel, his complexion ashen as if water could be wrung from it.
Strands of jet-black messy hair, each seeming to contain endless killing intent.
Though mainly directed at Yu Jing ahead, even the bit spilling onto Wan Xing made her feel like she was sitting on pins and needles.
She quietly edged her feet toward the doorway.
“Where do you think you’re running off to?”
Su Huan’s sinister voice came.
Wan Xing helplessly buried her face in her clothes, awaiting judgment.
In this tense yet calm eerie state, another five minutes passed.
Su Huan kept monitoring Yu Jing’s state with “General Energy Perception,” his brows tightly furrowed.
Not the “Iron-Blood Symbiosis” evolution path, somewhat like those taboo players, but Yu Jing’s own flesh and blood hadn’t changed much; the real mutation was on Zhao Kuo’s body.
This evolution direction completely exceeded Su Huan’s knowledge; even the data exchanged from Deep Blue Data didn’t cover it.
Evolution was such that even slight factor changes led to vastly different results.
Zhao Kuo’s changes finally stopped. His whole body had fully fused with the exoskeleton, looking like a mechanical version of Liang Kuan.
Most of his body was covered in metal, with only the right half of his chest exposing flesh-like skin, and even under that skin hid a bunch of mechanical components. A eerie blue glow leaked from under the metal mask.
Like a war machine.
“Eh?”
Su Huan raised his brows in surprise.
The war machine before him gave off a feeling similar to when Zhao Kuo was alive.
He didn’t believe in nonsense like resurrection from the dead.
Even if resurrected, with the Train Conductor’s accumulation lately, he could easily send it back.
He just hadn’t expected this thing to retain Tier 2 combat power!
A Tier 1 Evolver controlling a Tier 2 mechanical puppet?
What kind of path was this?
Su Huan’s gaze turned to Yu Jing before him. Under the black bodysuit, her originally tall figure had become even slimmer.
Visually, she could reach 1.7 meters, grown three centimeters taller.
A woman’s upper body is slightly shorter than a man’s, making her legs appear longer; with smooth lines, the same height would seem even taller.
Even more striking were Yu Jing’s eyes, fully turned into translucent rubies, slightly rotating with flowing light and colors.
After three breaths, the red receded, turning into normal black eyes.
Looking at Su Huan smirking coldly before her, Yu Jing furrowed her brows, then smiled sweetly and innocently, somewhat resembling Yu Yue’s usual state.
“How about… hearing my excuse first?”
