Chapter 434: Acting

Lu Yu didn't speak.

His teeth bit down on his lower lip.

He bit hard.

The white lip flesh was torn by the tips of his teeth, blood beads seeped from the crack, slid down his chin, dripped onto the collar of the patient gown, and spread a small dark red stain.

Su Ming didn't stop him.

He had seen too many people in the interrogation room bite their tongues, bite their lips, or slam their heads against the table. Those were performances, a last-ditch effort after failed pressure.

But Lu Yu wasn't performing.

The teenager's body curled up. The restraining strap held his waist, limiting his movement, so he buried his face in his knees, thrust his hands into his hair, and his ten fingers gripped so hard that the hair roots pulled at his scalp.

His whole body shrank into a ball.

Like something trapped in a corner, even lacking the strength to grind its teeth.

The voice squeezed out of his throat shattered into fragments.

"You're right."

Su Ming's brow twitched.

"It's all my fault."

Lu Yu's voice was hoarse to the point of almost smoking; each word he uttered made his trachea tremble.

"There's something inside my body..."

Su Ming didn't urge him. He leaned back in the chair, arms crossed, and waited.

"It's been there for a long time."

Lu Yu's forehead pressed against his knees, his voice muffled inside the patient gown, intermittent.

"I don't know what it is. It stays inside my body, normally motionless and silent. But it's hungry."

"Hungry?"

"Yes." Lu Yu swallowed, his Adam's apple rolling up and down twice, "Whenever... that kind of thing appears around us—you call it Weird—it becomes agitated. I can feel it churning in my brain, like a worm gnawing at my nerves."

Su Ming's pupils constricted slightly.

Parasitic type.

It's different from Jiang Yuan. Jiang Yuan's Shadow Ghost was subdued by his will, with control always remaining with the person.

The one Lu Yu described is closer to a one-sided habitation and consumption.

"Qinghuai Community." Su Ming said, "That A-level Strange Tale."

Lu Yu's body shuddered.

"You swallowed it."

"I didn't swallow it." Lu Yu jerked his head up, his eye sockets reddened, blood threads thick enough to almost cover his pupils, "It—it moved on its own!"

"That day, after school I was heading home, just reached the building entrance when the air felt off. The hallway lights all went out, and from every door crack something was seeping out. Those residents seemed off...... their faces were squeezed into a line in the door gaps, mouths split to their ears."

Lu Yu's fingernails dug into his scalp, leaving white marks.

"I wanted to run."

"But I couldn't get away."

"It woke up."

"It was burrowing out from my spine."

"My entire control over myself... just vanished like that."

His breathing became so rapid he was almost hyperventilating, his chest heaved violently, and the heart rate line on the monitor jumped like seismic waves.

"When I woke up again, the community was empty."

"Over six hundred people. All gone."

"Even that Strange Tale was gone."

"Only I remained."

"Lying in the green belt. Covered in blood."

"My clothes were torn to shreds."

Lu Yu's voice grew more fragmented.

"I don't know whether those people were killed by it or by the Strange Tale. I remember nothing. Forty minutes of memory are a blank."

Su Ming stared at him.

The teenager's tears mixed with the blood on his lip, streaming down, past his chin, dripping onto the blanket. His nose tip was red, his eyelashes clumped together, his whole face wrote a primitive, inescapable fear.

It wasn't fear of Su Ming.

It was fear of that thing inside his own body.

"So you ran." Su Ming's tone had little fluctuation, but its sharpness dropped a notch.

"I have nowhere to go." Lu Yu shook his head, "My parents are missing; I don't know if they were taken by it that night... I dare not think about it. Later I saw the recruitment notice for Qiu Ce Yuan."

He lifted his head, eyes red, looking at Su Ming.

"I think you people here... have a way."

"A way to help me seal it, or kill it, or whatever—just so it doesn't move again."

"I want to live normally."

"Like a person."

When he said that, the ward fell silent for a few seconds.

The monitor's ticking sound was especially piercing.

Su Ming didn't respond. His gaze shifted from Lu Yu's face to the electrocardiogram on the wall.

The waveform is disordered.

Heart rate is slightly elevated.

But —

The skin conductance response showed no typical deception pattern.

Su Ming had received systematic training at the Investigation Bureau. He had interrogated Oddity Controllers, interrogated Gospel Church believers, and interrogated juvenile offenders younger than Lu Yu who were full of lies.

People who lie under pressure show specific physiological feedback: asynchronous microexpressions, abnormal pupil constriction, and a directional gaze shift when answering.

On Lu Yu, all these indicators are clean.

The chaos is real, the fear is real, the pain is real.

With a sixteen-year-old's mental level...... it's unlikely to control all micro-reactions flawlessly under this intensity of questioning.

Unless he is a freakishly talented liar.

But Su Ming is not willing to bet on that probability for now.

"If what you say is true, then B09......"

Lu Yu's voice became lower.

"Those classmates, Teacher Fang, Instructor......"

His fingers loosened from his hair, dangling on the blanket, joints trembling.

"It's my fault."

Su Ming furrowed his brow.

"If I hadn't been there, the Weird Domain wouldn't have revived. Teacher Fang wouldn't have mutated. They wouldn't have died."

Lu Yu gripped the corner of the blanket, his joints turning white.

"I shouldn't have signed up. I shouldn't have gotten close to anyone."

"Every time it moves, someone dies beside me."

"I am a disaster star."

When the last four words were squeezed out of his throat, the boy's vocal cords were already trembling. His whole body was like a wire repeatedly bent to its limit, about to snap the next second.

"I've even tried suicide."

Su Ming's fingers paused.

"It's useless. The wound will grow back on its own. Ridiculously fast—just as your test report says."

Lu Yu lowered his head, tears splashing onto the back of his hand.

"Besides, if I died, it might escape and cause even greater harm."

"I don't know what to do."

"I really don't know what to do."

Only the boy's repressed, broken sobs and the steady electronic beep of the monitor remained in the ward.

Su Ming sat in the chair, motionless.

The prepared second interrogation plan, third psychological pressure tactics, and backup intimidation measures all lost their leverage.

It was like punching cotton.

No.

Worse than punching cotton.

Cotton doesn't cry.

Su Ming stared at the boy curled up on the hospital bed. Sixteen years old. Over a hundred stitches on his back wound. To save a classmate he'd only known a few days, he used his spine to block the A Rank Monster's rule strike.

His body houses something that can devour even an A-level Weirdness, which could seize his consciousness at any moment.

He can't run, can't die.

He can only bear it alone.

Su Ming's throat moved.

Many images flickered alternately in his mind.

In his previous life, the apocalypse descended. He scavenged trash in the ruins for food, was chased and beaten by neighbors, and almost was eaten alive.

In this life, the Blood Moon Weird Domain. Captain Lei Yu used his life to block that strike for him, smiling and saying "Live on" before he died.

In a lifetime, there are always some things that can't be tallied.

For example, someone willing to die for you.

What can you give in return?

Su Ming closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, he placed the fruit tray from his lap onto the cabinet and pulled the chair forward half a step.

"Lu Yu."

The boy didn't lift his head.

"Look at me."

Lu Yu slowly raised his face. Tears, blood, and mucus smeared his face, a miserable sight.

Su Ming looked into his eyes.

For a long time.

Then, the oppressive interrogation pressure that had weighed on the whole ward since the conversation began—icy enough to make one breathless—receded bit by bit.

It didn't disappear.

It was actively withdrawn by Su Ming.

"The thing inside your body, the Investigation Bureau will find a way."

Lu Yu's eyelashes twitched.

Su Ming's speech pace was neither fast nor slow, with no extra rhetoric, no deliberate warmth—just a statement.

Starting today, the Federal Weird Investigation Bureau will allocate special resources for a comprehensive evaluation and suppressive training of you. Medical Team, Research Team, Rules Analysts—whatever is needed will be provided.

Lu Yu opened his mouth but couldn't make a sound.

"You don't have to bear it alone anymore."

When Su Ming said this, his tone didn't change, his gaze didn't change.

But Lu Yu stared at him; the tears welling in his eye sockets finally couldn't be held, falling in big drops.

The boy bit his swollen lips, squeezed out a few indistinct syllables from his throat, and after struggling for a while managed to form a complete sentence.

"Thank...... Su teacher."

His voice was hoarse to the point of almost breaking.

Su Ming didn't say anything else.

He stood up, grabbed the coat on the back of the chair, draped it over his arm, and walked to the door.

He glanced back.

The boy curled up in the blanket, his shoulders still twitching sporadically; his face buried in the crook of his arm, he cried silently.

Su Ming turned his head back.

He pulled open the door.

He walked out.

The metal door closed behind him; the electronic lock engaged with a crisp, decisive sound.

Click.

Footsteps stepped on the corridor floor, fading evenly away.

Ten steps.

Twenty steps.

Thirty steps.

The sound grew softer and farther, eventually swallowed by the soundproof door at the end of the corridor, falling into complete silence.

Only the electronic beeping of the monitor remained in the ward.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

The boy curled on the hospital bed; his shoulder trembling stopped.

First the frequency slowed.

Then it completely stopped.

Lu Yu's face lifted from the crook of his arm.

The corners of his eyes still held half‑dry tear tracks, but in those eyes all the anguish, fear, guilt, and collapse that had been surging just three seconds ago—

Gone.

Clean and pure.