“Sea demon… So that thing is probably hidden somewhere in the ocean, right?”
“I think so too. Maybe it’s an item that fell out of the Infinite World? I suggest you dive down and search for it immediately. Don’t let someone else get it first.”
“Tsk. Even Yin Chen was injured by it. Do you really think something like that could be simple? And there’s that ‘Mother Goddess.’ Just hearing the name makes her sound evil. If another player touches it, something might happen instantly and they could die without even knowing how. You believe me?”
“Then what do you suggest?”
“Have Chi Yan send detection equipment over by air freight. I exchanged for complete vehicle-operation mastery, so I can fly a plane and bring weapons to both of you. Investigate properly before acting.”
“We don’t have time for air freight. The coordinates are too far from land. By the time you get here, everyone on this ship could be dead before your plane even arrives.”
Out on the open sea, where practically anything went, the cruise ship’s network kept dropping in and out. Everyone’s opinions came through in a noisy jumble, making Yin Chen narrow his eyes with visible impatience.
It was late at night on Chi Yan’s side. A crowd of people had gathered in the villa for a movie marathon, saying they wanted inspiration from horror films released over the past few years. Combined with several bottles of experimental extra-high-proof cocktails, everyone was far more excited than they would have been during the day.
Aside from Chi Yan herself, who remained sober, the others were hardly reliable at all, especially the Ning brothers. If the call continued much longer, those two might start fighting each other outright.
Before Yin Chen could cut off the call, Chi Yan finally managed to seize the floor. “Ignore them and listen to me. The rescue fleet has already departed, fully stocked with equipment and weapons. I’ll have Xiao Lu board one of the ships to meet you. But even at full speed, it’ll take at least two days to catch up with your cruise ship. Okay?”
“Fine. You handle the aftermath. Within two days, I can kill these two things.”
Yin Chen’s tone was calm and mild. The call was on speaker, and the strange wet gurgle-gurgle sounds in the background carried clearly through the phone.
The other end fell silent for several seconds. Chi Yan sharply and suspiciously asked, “You’re not Song Zang, are you?”
“Chi-jie! Our souls switched, waaah. Now all the dirty work and tiring work has to be done by me…”
Song Zang hurriedly raised his voice to dispel her suspicions, but his tone sounded deeply miserable.
That was because the captain was dead, killed by a casual slash from Yin Chen.
And Song Zang was currently responsible for the autopsy. As for the tool he was using… Tentacles.
Soft, springy, rich in sensory perception, sticky and wet, with exceptionally powerful functionality. They were like countless eyes that would never have a blind spot. Anything the tentacles touched could be seen by Song Zang, and every piece of information would be transmitted back into his brain instantly.
Yin Chen had made him do it. After all, if he could even grow a puppy’s tail, learning to use tentacles surely could not count as difficult.
Unable to refute that, Song Zang succeeded after only a brief attempt. Dense clusters of snow-white tentacles slid out along his spine, luxuriant and gorgeous like an angel’s wings, nearly flooding the captain’s cabin.
He truly had remarkable talent, but the consequences were absolutely miserable. Especially when Song Zang had to cut open the abdomen and retrieve the fish.
Ever since the captain had become pregnant with that ring-shaped sea fish whose head and tail were joined, his constipation had apparently lasted for a very long time. Combined with the rotten, fishy stench already filling the captain’s cabin, the rest hardly needed explaining.
At this point, Song Zang was not the only one showing signs of collapse. Even Chi Yan sounded close to losing it over the phone. She lowered her voice. “…I can’t take this anymore. Song Zang, stop talking. I don’t want to hear it. Listening to you sounds exactly like Yin Chen acting spoiled. It’s genuinely horrifying, do you know that? Yin Chen, hurry up and control him.”
“I don’t care. He’s very cute.”
Yin Chen suddenly laughed. The irritation in his chest inexplicably dispersed by several degrees. He could barely stand the idea of forcing Song Zang to restrain himself to begin with, and once someone else said it like that, he lost any desire to intervene.
“Fine, fine. You young lovers are such perverts.” Chi Yan complained helplessly. “Handle it yourselves. Just be careful with that goddess statue. And don’t casually use the captain’s bullets either. If that stone really came from outside Earth, then radiation is bound to be a concern.”
That made sense. Yin Chen’s body was not afraid of radiation, but Song Zang was still, for the moment, an Earthling born and raised here. Whether his flesh had already been infiltrated by any deliberately introduced special component was another matter entirely. In any case, anything outside the Infinite World deserved extra caution.
After ending the call, Yin Chen thought for a moment, then tossed the gun in his hand toward Song Zang. More precisely, he tossed it into the sea of tentacles.
Song Zang immediately understood. The tips of several tentacles clumsily pried open the magazine as he focused his attention on the unpleasant weapon.
“Let me take a look. Why does the inside casing of this handgun feel like stone? And the bullets are made of something strange too. Hm, there’s no gunpowder. It looks more like… how should I put it? A solid form of fluoroantimonic acid, except far more corrosive. Even tentacles coated in mucus feel prickly and itchy when they touch it.”
Fluoroantimonic acid was the strongest known acid on Earth, with an acidity roughly twenty quintillion times greater than sulfuric acid. Song Zang had once encountered something similar inside an apocalyptic game instance. That little toy could dissolve almost anything and was practically a god of destruction.
And yet the harmless-looking bullets inside this strange handgun were made from an acidic material even stronger than fluoroantimonic acid, compressed into solid form.
No wonder they had been capable of hurting Yin Chen. The injury might have been minor, but the danger posed by this object could not be ignored. Peaceful life was too precious. If something like this could easily cause catastrophic destruction on Earth, it had to be destroyed as quickly as possible.
Once the bullet composition had been examined, Song Zang also dug out the sea creature gestating inside the captain’s abdomen.
He reluctantly brushed apart the dense clusters of fish eggs covering its body, tossed the eggs to his otherwise idle tentacles to crush and examine, then moved closer and picked up the strangely shaped creature with one hand, narrowing his eyes to study it carefully.
Its skin was pure black, the scales packed tightly together and shining. Under the light, they turned into that legendary “iridescent black,” shifting with faint colors. A long, narrow fish tail had been buried deep inside its mouth. Because too much time had passed, the skin between its head and tail had already grown together, creating an abrupt yet strangely harmonious ring.
It carried a strong fishy smell. By scent, it definitely was an Earth fish, and its outer shape looked more like a sea snake. Internally, however, its physiology was simply that of an ordinary fish. The only problem was… Something was hidden beneath the scales.
Song Zang pried up one of them and immediately heard a soft pop, like an underinflated balloon being punctured by a needle. Something shot out from beneath the scale.
He twisted aside with incredible speed, then turned around and saw several tiny holes appear in the wall behind him.
Yin Chen stepped forward, took one look, and quickly reached a conclusion. “Immature fish eggs… No. They’re already mature.”
As he spoke, the eggs that had punched deeply into the wall began treating the steel-reinforced concrete as their own growth nest. The slightly rusted metal inside the wall instantly transformed into a strange semitransparent state, while the solid concrete quietly began loosening and moving.
A bad premonition rose in Song Zang’s heart. The nutrients these fish eggs absorbed were clearly not limited to human flesh or even the captain’s enormous stores of fat. They appeared capable of feeding on almost anything.
“Why do I keep feeling that these eggs are more like spores? They spread too easily, and they can grow no matter where they land. That’s really not good…”
“It isn’t good. Organisms that reproduce through spores are almost always dominant species in space.” Yin Chen seemed to think for a moment, then casually gave him a brief science lesson. “Their survival rate is high, their spread range is broad, their vitality is strong, and the risk of total extinction is low. If you give something like that enough time to evolve, it can easily become a species that no one can kill.”
Song Zang was thinking too. “Could the ‘sea demon’ the captain mentioned be these things? The curse definitely sounds pretty real… Baby, I think I can just eat them directly. What do you think?”
“That’s the best method, but you need to eat all of it. Can you do that?” Yin Chen gave him a half-smile.
“All… all of it?”
“Eat the captain’s cabin. Along with the corpse in front of you and the reinforced concrete. Eat it all.”
“…Yin Chen, you are the most perverted person in the entire world.”
“Mm.”
The corner of Yin Chen’s lips lifted slightly. He took Song Zang’s unreasonable accusation in stride and offered a more moderate solution. “Or use the bullets in your hand to dissolve this entire area directly. The condition is that we need a container resistant to acidic substances. Otherwise the ship will burn through very quickly and contaminate the ocean.”
“There’s definitely nothing like that on Earth… Wait. Use my iron pot!” Song Zang’s eyes lit up. “Baby, try it. After the body swap I almost forgot about this. You should definitely be able to take it out. I stored it in slot number three.”
…
Ten minutes later.
This commercial cruise ship, which had operated for ten years, permanently lost its captain’s cabin.
In its place, the rich, mouthwatering aroma of sweet-and-sour pork tenderloin spread madly across the upper deck. Security guards patrolling nearby repeatedly turned their heads and took greedy breaths.
Yin Chen liked the dish quite a lot. He finished the entire pot himself. Using a human body to taste “human” food clearly deprived him of many nuances he could normally sense, yet made the food’s own flavor feel purer and richer.
Song Zang, on the other hand, had almost no appetite. He crouched silently to one side, hugging his tentacles as he examined the captain’s personal belongings that they had removed in advance.
The beautifully carved stone goddess statue had a material structure almost identical to the strange substance inside the handgun. They were clearly from the same source.
If the “sea demons” were extraterrestrial visitors constantly reproducing, then the “Mother Goddess” in the captain’s mouth was probably this woman depicted with elegant veils and graceful features.
At first glance, she looked naturally and perfectly beautiful. Her facial proportions were ideal, and it was impossible to find even the slightest flaw. Yet Song Zang instinctively felt uncomfortable looking at her.
Experience gained from countless Infinite Game instances had already taught him one thing: anything humans called a god was almost always among the filthiest, most evil, and most terrifying anomalous beings around.
This thing could be far more dangerous than the sea demon. Perhaps the stone statue itself was made from some powerful acidic material; if it were smashed open, it might be able to kill half a city’s population.
Song Zang carefully flipped through a hardbound book among the captain’s belongings that appeared to be a copy of the Bible, searching for clues. As he turned the pages, the neat printed text gradually disappeared and was replaced by black fountain-pen handwriting.
At first the writing remained neat. But as the dates advanced, it became increasingly chaotic, warped, twisted, and erratic. Eventually not a single straight, complete line of writing remained, clearly reflecting the writer’s steadily deteriorating mental state.
What normal person keeps a diary? Clearly, this captain had not simply been recording the pleasant details of life at sea. He had also been documenting and observing his own daily mental condition.
“July 1. Clear. We seized three shiploads of antiques smuggled by pirates. Old Li took the gold and left the striking stone beauty and the gun to me. There were also two plump ostrich eggs. Heh, what a rarity. I forgot to take my medicine for the past two days. In the daytime I have nothing to do but stare at the sea, and I keep wanting to jump in. I also want to hack that motherless bastard Old Li straight through with a blade and drag him down with me when I die. But today I want to eat ostrich eggs. Hahaha. Damn you, Old Li. How could these possibly be ostrich eggs?”
“July 3. Cloudy. I ate both giant bird eggs raw. They were fresh and delicious, especially eaten with the bread the French guys brought. So satisfying. But those definitely weren’t ostrich eggs. I don’t know what they were. I’ll investigate online when I get signal.”
“July 15. Clear. I got bird eggs again. Today doesn’t seem to be Mid-Autumn Festival, but I can’t remember the lunar calendar. Forget it. I’ll treat it like a holiday. A lonely traveler like me doesn’t care about that stuff anyway. I want to go back to my office in the city, but I want bird eggs even more. Today’s eggs taste like dead fish. Still pretty delicious.”
“August 31. Heavy rain. Severe constipation. My wife slapped me and called me a pig who does nothing but eat eggs all day. Right. That damn thing isn’t a bird egg at all. It’s a sea-turtle egg. Old Li lied to me.”
“September 10. Light rain. Fought with my wife again. My wife was right about everything. I shouldn’t have talked back. I’m really an idiot. I need to treat this relationship devoutly.”
“September 11. Clear. I think I’m going insane. Seriously insane. Reading my own diary scares me to death. Do I fucking have a wife? Fuck. I haven’t developed hysteria, have I?! I don’t dare tell my liaison. I really want to go ashore and secretly get checked. Recently I can’t even shit…”
“October 5. Cloudy. My wife is the god destined for me. My stomach hurts terribly. If I just talk with my wife, I feel better. She treats me even better than my mother did. She told me the truth. She taught me how to protect myself. I shouldn’t have randomly eaten those terrifying sea-turtle eggs. I made a huge mistake… but she’ll protect me. Is she some fairy descended from heaven? How did I deserve her? That bastard Old Li. Is he trying to steal my wife?”
“February 13. Heavy rain. Happy Spring Festival. I offered the first human sacrifice to Mother Goddess, and my stomach finally stopped hurting. I ate so many of the sea demons’ offspring before. I should confess my sins to Mother Goddess day and night. Mother Goddess is merciful! She brings new life to all things, reverses every form of unbalanced energy, and all her people will eventually become equal and harmonious, flourishing together across this magnificent sea. Ah, her Eden…”
By the time they reached this point, the handwriting had gradually become impossible to read, like a child’s scribbles running short of brushstrokes until the page became a chaotic mess.
But Song Zang and Yin Chen had already more or less understood what had happened. The captain did not seem to be a born villain, but an ordinary person with a psychological illness whose mind had been steadily eroded and who had been repeatedly exploited by an evil force.
The “striking stone woman,” the “wife,” and the “Mother Goddess” mentioned in the diary were all actually the goddess statue sitting on the table.
“The sea demon and the Mother Goddess should be enemies. Both want to use humans to strengthen themselves. On the surface the Mother Goddess appears to have the upper hand, but the sea demons continue reproducing in the dark anyway?”
Song Zang frowned as he spoke. “The deities in some instances that compete for incense offerings also like this sort of method. First destroy a person’s sanity, then spread belief. Very dirty tricks.”
Yin Chen analyzed it calmly. “Their true bodies definitely aren’t on Earth. Otherwise I would detect them, and Chi Yan would too. They don’t have enough power here, so they can only use indirect, hidden methods to transmit a tiny amount of energy and consciousness. They hide here in forms familiar to humans and use those forms as a medium for communication.”
“Then this becomes easy.”
Now growing more skilled with the tentacles, Song Zang rolled the stone statue up and tossed it straight into the iron pot without hesitation, turning it into a fragrant pot of creamy seafood soup.
Yin Chen drank that too. Under Song Zang’s teasing stare, he finished it completely and acted entirely justified about it.
As long as the true bodies themselves had not descended onto Earth, cleaning up everything left behind would be easy for current game players. They only needed Chi Yan to post an announcement in one of the channels and ask people to help trace the provenance of the antiques smuggled by pirates that year. Add a small points reward, and players from all over the world would rush to handle it. Everyone had their own methods.
As for the actual true bodies… Yin Chen very much wanted to deal with them himself. For him, leaving Earth to kill a few filthy things was nothing more than a business trip. But there was one problem: they were still in a soul-swapped state.
Yin Chen would never allow Song Zang to face these things alone. Even if Song Zang had already begun learning to control the special features of this body, that still would not do.
Some mysterious force had clearly interfered with both of their bodies and souls at the same time and, for some reason whose intentions were neither clearly good nor evil, allowed them to experience the world through each other’s eyes without suffering any real harm.
“Actually, I’m very glad I got an opportunity like this. I’ve told you before that I wanted to understand everything about you. But if all I had was your description, I could never have truly understood this feeling.”
The night was calm and windless. After cleaning up the captain’s cabin, the two of them lay on the open deck beneath the stars.
After a long silence, Song Zang suddenly spoke.
“I finally understand how difficult things are for you. I know what the world looks like to you, and I also know… exactly how much you like me. Not only emotionally, but physically too. Yin Chen, I feel so damn good I could die.”
“…Hm? What feels so good?” Yin Chen did not quite understand. He was enjoying the flavor of sweet wine through a human tongue and liked it very much. There was even a faint tipsiness in his expression.
“Just thinking about your tentacles wanting to wrap tightly around me even when you’re asleep, sticking all over me, unconsciously wanting to swallow me, almost needing to kill me just to suppress that urge… feels so damn good.”
Song Zang’s face turned faintly red. He snatched the wine glass from Yin Chen and took a huge gulp himself, then abruptly shifted and straddled Yin Chen’s reclining chair. The snow-white tail he had intentionally kept swayed behind him before he leaned down and kissed Yin Chen hard.
The sweet, low-alcohol wine had been mixed by Yin Chen with some extra vodka. Their heated, urgent breathing became the strongest possible catalyst.
Wet tongues tangled with the flavor of alcohol. Their voices turned dark, hoarse, and confused, like indistinct whispers inside a dream.
“This is what severe addiction looks like, baby. You’re never getting away from me in this lifetime. Even if your heart starts getting tired of me, your body still has to stay tangled with mine until the very end. Mm. That’s genuinely reassuring…”
“Where exactly does all this insecurity come from?” Yin Chen was bitten hard at the corner of the lip. The scent of blood and the sharper-than-usual sting made his breathing suddenly turn uneven.
Right. Humans still needed to breathe. He had unconsciously ignored that instinct until the alcohol clouded his brain and the kiss left a strange tingling numbness across his lips.
“Childhood shadows follow you for life, you know? I lost almost everything I ever cared about. I almost never managed to keep anything. In the end, I was always left alone with nothing.”
Song Zang spoke softly, his fingertips sliding beneath the hem of Yin Chen’s shirt and down along his waist. “This way of thinking isn’t healthy. I know that clearly. The probability of you losing me has always been greater than the probability of me losing you. There’s no reason for me to think too much… but I still can’t help it. Sometimes in the middle of the night, my mind wanders into all kinds of nonsense.”
“Then eat me. You won’t have to spend the rest of your life worrying that you’ll lose me, and you won’t have to keep tormenting yourself over it, silly.” Yin Chen blinked without stopping the hand that kept taking liberties with him. His seemingly casual tone sounded more like a sudden provocation.
“…What a giant pervert. So annoying.”
These harmless provocations only became fuel feeding the sparks. The half-raised recliner was pressed down until it collapsed, and no one cared. Only the deepening kisses grew fiercer and more urgent. Yin Chen had already lost the ability to focus on the body-swap problem. Song Zang wanted it, Yin Chen wanted it too, and both of them were nearly incapable of enduring any longer.
At exactly that moment, a familiar blue screen popped into existence in front of them both.
【Congratulations, players! You have achieved the special hidden achievement: A Thousand Years of Cultivation to Share a Pillow!】
【You have obtained the hidden permanent item: Swap Rings! (Note: Please check the ring-shaped accessories on your person. The item reward has been randomly assigned to one of your wearable belongings.)】
The heated atmosphere vanished instantly. Song Zang sat up abruptly and stared at the ring on his hand. “What does that mean? A thousand years… No way. Have we really shared a bed for a thousand years?”
“…If you include time inside instances, yes.” Yin Chen pulled him back with faint dissatisfaction, making Song Zang fall into his arms again. “So it was the system’s doing. But it’s already been a thousand years and you’re still afraid of losing me, Song Zang? Isn’t that a little wrong?”
“Forget that. Let me first figure out how to switch us back. Yin Chen, wait for me. Neither of us is sleeping tonight.” Song Zang rubbed the ring and interlocked his fingers with Yin Chen’s.
Ten seconds after they clasped hands, white light suddenly flashed. Song Zang’s field of vision abruptly changed direction. He saw the deep night sky glittering with stars, the faint flush still remaining on Yin Chen’s face, and the fluffy dog tail that was still swaying behind him.
It worked. They had switched back. The two of them stared at each other, both looking somewhat dazed.
Song Zang reacted faster. He stretched lazily and reacquainted himself with the structure of his own bones and muscles. Then his lips slowly curved upward with obvious bad intentions. “Baby, you’re not allowed to put the tail away.”
“…”
Yin Chen said nothing. He simply picked up the man sprawled carelessly across the recliner and strode toward the cabin.
Song Zang expertly raised a hand and held his throat. His fingertips rested over the fresh, living pulse of Yin Chen’s neck and slid gently with each beat as he made a threatening little squeeze. “Did you hear me? You’re not allowed to retract it. I want to look at it, and you have to look at it too. Let’s shower first. There’ll be mirrors. You’ll get to see exactly how much you like being… Mm!”
Everything worse that Song Zang might have said was kissed back into his mouth.
“Save your energy for something useful. Stop talking nonsense.” Yin Chen’s voice was slightly hoarse, sounding like a dark warning.
But the fluffy tail he had deliberately left behind was still standing very high. As water kept soaking it, the fur became a blurred silhouette inside the hot steam. It tensed until it could tense no further, then went weak enough to be caught in a hand. With only a slight tug, Yin Chen could pull Song Zang’s entire body back into his arms.
This was simply the consequence of the two of them enjoying themselves for several days straight. There was no need to repeat the shameless things they said to each other. Every shameless thing that could be done had already been done.
As for the captain’s cabin that had disappeared, the security guards who had been tricked back into their rooms to sleep, the Chi family’s ship speeding over to handle the aftermath, Clerk No. 1 whom Lu Xing You had hauled onto the speedboat with him, and all those tourists happily singing and embracing without realizing they were surrounded by danger…
They could leave all of that behind for the moment.
Tomorrow’s problems could be handed to tomorrow. Song Zang suddenly understood this and felt no particular anxiety.
After all, he and Yin Chen had wandered between mortal danger and death for so long, yet they had still found cracks of time in different worlds where they could embrace and sleep beside each other. And somehow, like that, they had truly accumulated a thousand years of sleeping side by side.
It was such an unreasonable yet undeniably real number that hearing it made Song Zang want to laugh, and it made him very happy. But he was greedy. This was nowhere near enough. He wanted much, much more.
How many more thousand-year stretches would there be in their future?
Song Zang did not know, so he decided that starting today, he would put it into practice.
He would enjoy every kiss, every shared glance, every embrace, and treasure every night in which they still had each other.
Even if Yin Chen asked him to be gentler, that would not do.
Hehe.