OVPBM 2

Chapter 2 – “Now, You Only Have Me.”

“Warning! Warning!”

“Lifeform monitoring abnormal…”

The sudden cold mechanical voice echoed again and again within the prison chamber.

A blood-red fishtail lashed violently, trying to break free from the quantum cables entangling it.

The fine cables intertwined with flesh and bone tore the wounds open once more. Blood mist surged in an instant, dyeing more than half the tank a deep red.

Bang!

The next second, the merman’s left arm broke free of the quantum cable entirely and slammed hard against the transparent protective layer.

With a faint crack, a thin, long fissure appeared across the massive tank.

“Ah!” One of Lu Yunwan’s subordinates screamed. A stabbing pain shot through everyone’s foreheads, forcing them to stagger back a full step.

It was a mental strangulation. Lu Yunwan understood instantly. In the original novel, Chu Xuanzhou had been tortured by the villain’s subordinates until he was on the brink of death. In that moment, he erupted with overwhelming hatred and, driven by that hatred, awakened his top-tier merfolk bloodline and mental power.

He slaughtered everyone around him and staged it as an accident before escaping.

And Lu Yunwan’s sudden arrival here had triggered that plot ahead of time!

The red warning lights not far away began to flash. Lu Yunwan felt as if he could already see Death raising its scythe toward him.

Having finally gotten a second life, he refused to die now.

The threat of death instantly scattered all of Lu Yunwan’s other thoughts. In that moment, only one thought remained in his mind: Interrupt Chu Xuanzhou’s mental power awakening!

First, he had to disrupt the hatred.

In the chaos, Lu Yunwan suddenly reached toward the crack in the protective layer and forced his way inside.

The jagged, splintered edges tore open his wrist. Blood poured out at once.

Their blood mingled, weaving together into a dark red.

Lu Yunwan looked straight at Chu Xuanzhou like that and slowly revealed a faint smile. He pressed hard against the wound on Chu Xuanzhou’s chest.

As if he could pierce through flesh any moment and tear out the other’s heart.

Sensing danger approaching, the merman instantly tensed.

Lu Yunwan suddenly leaned in close and murmured dreamily beside his ear, “Look, Your Highness. With no power and no influence, even someone as fragile as me, a human, can kill you at any moment.”

Under Lu Yunwan’s palm, Chu Xuanzhou’s heartbeat sped up in an instant.

Outside the protective layer, the man smiled and slowly moved his hand upward. At some point, his gaze toward Chu Xuanzhou had filled with affection.

Lu Yunwan brushed affectionately against the corner of Chu Xuanzhou’s lips. “But don’t worry, Your Highness. I’m doing this only so you remember… the laws of survival in the Empire.”

He slowly withdrew his hand and, smiling, licked clean the fresh blood at his fingertips that belonged to Chu Xuanzhou.

Everyone who had witnessed the scene read the same thing in him: a mad, pathological love. Lu Yunwan could have simply spoken, yet he chose pain to etch the memory into Chu Xuanzhou.

…His personality was indeed as mysterious and unfathomable as the legends claimed.

“Everyone in the entire interstellar world knows the Empress Dowager is Your Highness’s only family. She was the one who brought you back from a lower star, restoring your identity.”

The merman, covered in wounds, finally lifted his gaze at that moment.

“I merely made an offhand remark, doubting that Your Highness had something to do with the Empress Dowager’s death. And that person who once had a marriage contract with you didn’t question anything at all. He delivered you here with his own hands. Isn’t it laughable?” Lu Yunwan’s eyes seemed unfocused, appearing hazy and gentle.

“So, Your Highness, this is the punishment I give you,” Lu Yunwan whispered, enamored as he looked at the merman’s wounds that continued to seep outward, admiring them as if they were works of art. “A punishment for believing in anyone other than me.”

…Believe him?

Believe someone who was trying to kill him?

Anyone hearing this would find it absurd.

The merman finally stopped struggling. The thick, unyielding hatred in his dark purple eyes was briefly dulled by doubt, and he subconsciously began to speculate about Lu Yunwan’s intentions. 

Was it the cruel teasing of prey about to die? Or something else?

Lu Yunwan listened as the frequency of the abnormal life signs alerts by his ear gradually decreased, but while acting the part of a mad, obsessive lover, he did not dare relax even a little.

He pressed his hand against the intact portion of the transparent protective layer, tracing Chu Xuanzhou’s face through the cold barrier. Blood kept flowing from the wounds on Lu Yunwan’s wrist, yet he seemed completely unaware of it. He did not even frown.

“Your Highness, do you remember the last time we met?” Lu Yunwan asked softly, as though falling into a gentle recollection. “You played a piece for me. From that moment on, I decided to keep Your Highness by my side.”

Chu Xuanzhou’s thoughts were thrown into disarray. Instinctively, he recalled what had happened the last time they met.

As the illegitimate child of the Empire’s Emperor, Chu Xuanzhou had been brought back to the Capital Planet by the Empress Dowager, who had ruled the Empire for over a hundred years, when she was on her deathbed.

The old mermaid, weary of the endless struggle for power, wished to experience familial warmth for once. She brought back Chu Xuanzhou, who had studied music since childhood, who possessed no mental power, and who had always existed outside the political sphere.

《 The Merfolk Empire 》 stated that until he killed the villain’s men and fled to the border planets, Chu Xuanzhou’s character had remained pure and clean, utterly incompatible with the imperial family.

This was the only thing Lu Yunwan felt grateful for. The Chu Xuanzhou he encountered had not yet blackened!

Two weeks prior, when Lu Yunwan had visited the gravely ill Empress Dowager, he encountered Chu Xuanzhou and demanded that he play a piano piece for him.

The novel never explained why the villain suddenly made such a request. Lu Yunwan guessed that it was simply the original host deliberately humiliating him.

The Empress Dowager had been the original host’s greatest political enemy. Even his pursuit of Chu Xuanzhou had been for the sake of eliminating her faction entirely.

But now, relying on the fact that the protagonist had no mind-reading abilities, Lu Yunwan fabricated story after story without shame.

Lu Yunwan looked at the wound on Chu Xuanzhou’s chest where he had touched him earlier, lowered his voice, and whispered with an intimate ambiguity, “A melody that pure can only be played for me, Your Highness.”

The prison room fell into absolute stillness. In Lu Yunwan’s ears, only his own uneven breathing remained.

He murmured softly, “Now, you only have me.”

Beneath the veil of the merman’s long silver hair, no one saw Chu Xuanzhou’s gaze darken.

Slowly, he began to ponder Lu Yunwan’s words.

Beep—

“Abnormal lifeform monitoring complete.”

No one knew how long the silence lasted. The cold mechanical voice finally disappeared, and Lu Yunwan’s heart, which had been hanging in suspense, finally settled down.

No one, including the protagonist, knew that this alert meant Chu Xuanzhou’s mental power awakening had been successfully interrupted by Lu Yunwan.

Pain finally arrived late. Lu Yunwan silently drew his hand back.

Ahhh, it hurts so much!

Earlier, he had focused entirely on overwhelming the other with sheer momentum, imitating those melodramatic villains in films who smash glass with their bare hands. But pretending to be that cool was not something ordinary people could manage.

Thankfully, this was the interstellar era. His hand should survive. Lu Yunwan let out a small sigh of relief.

A chaotic flurry of comments flashed rapidly through Lu Yunwan’s mind, while the people around him only saw the Regent frown one moment and curve his lips the next.

Those eyes, dark as the deep sea, had never before revealed their master’s emotions so easily.

…His Excellency really seems to like Chu Xuanzhou?

Seeing the health monitor still flashing red not far away, Lu Yunwan’s subordinates hesitated for a long moment before finally stepping forward to remind him cautiously, “Your Excellency the Regent… His vitals are declining rapidly. Should we transfer him to the medical pod? If this continues, um… He might be in danger of dying.”

Of course there was! Lu Yunwan wished he could take the protagonist out right now and worship him, but the Regent in 《 The Merfolk Empire 》 was notoriously lazy and did nothing himself. And Chu Xuanzhou’s personality was also extremely sensitive and suspicious.

Letting Chu Xuanzhou out immediately would be far too normal. So normal it would be entirely unlike the original host.

Besides, there were countless people around the Regent watching for an opportunity. If he acted even slightly out of character, the trouble waiting for him would be endless.

Lu Yunwan ignored the gravely injured Chu Xuanzhou and suddenly turned, looking toward his subordinates.

“How many Regents does the Empire have?”

“Y-you… You are the only one…” The man in black dropped to one knee with a thud. Pressing his trembling right hand to his chest, he answered with utmost reverence.

Lu Yunwan bent down and smiled as he patted the man’s cheek with a bloodied hand.

His movements were light, more humiliating than punishing. “Oh, I thought you were one too.”

The kneeling man’s body trembled. It was both fear of the Regent King and an uncontrollable thrill from having the man approach him so suddenly.

Meeting those feverish eyes, Lu Yunwan, who had just muttered a silent “I’m sorry” in his heart, wanted to scream, ‘Help! It was one thing for the original host to be a pervert, but why did his subordinates also seem a bit abnormal?!’

He quickly moved his gaze away, rifling through his memories for descriptions of the villain in the novel, then looked toward the protagonist, who was on the verge of losing consciousness.

Beneath long, slender brows was a pair of peach-blossom eyes tinged with purple mist. The future master of the interstellar realm was still at an age where his beauty carried a delicate and androgynous air. His features were exquisite, his temperament cold yet fragile, like a night-blooming flower carved from ice.

Young merfolk carried a natural aura that evoked pity, a trait that helped them survive.

Chu Xuanzhou, who had not yet awakened his top-tier merfolk bloodline, still possessed that fragility.

Lu Yunwan could not help but quietly scold himself before slipping back into character.

Like a child who had finally obtained a beloved toy, he asked sweetly yet troubled, “Where should I place Your Highness?”

After a brief pause, he suddenly sounded as though he had discovered something. “Even if you died and became a cold corpse, Your Highness would still be the most beautiful… Like amber, eternally perfect.”

A chill swept through the room.

No one here doubted that Lu Yunwan might actually kill Chu Xuanzhou for the sake of this so-called eternal beauty.

The moment his words fell, hatred and killing intent surged wildly in the merman’s heart. Red lights flashed again, and the lifeform anomaly alarm blared once more.

Lu Yunwan suddenly raised both hands and pressed them firmly against the web of cracks covering the protective layer. His heavy black mantle slipped from his shoulders, pooling at his feet like a dark, multi-petaled rose.

“Your Highness wants to kill me?” Far from angry, he grew excited by this discovery. “Good,” Lu Yunwan said softly.

As someone who had once wielded psychic powers, Lu Yunwan could sense that the so-called mental core of this world was the same thing as the ability crystal core he was familiar with.

He focused sharply and rammed his mental power hard against the transparent protective layer.

Crack—

The next second, not just this chamber but all the alarms in the entire Regent’s residence began to shriek. 

Cracks spread faster than the eye could follow, and in an instant, the entire layer shattered into fine fragments.

Scarlet nutrient fluid rushed outward, flooding the entire prison cell.

Without buoyancy, Chu Xuanzhou was left hanging in midair by the crisscrossing quantum cables.

The thin wires embedded in his nerves suddenly yanked violently. Chu Xuanzhou felt as though his entire being was being torn into countless pieces by pain.

The agony was so intense that he couldn’t make even the slightest sound.

With a soft crunch of broken fragments underfoot, Lu Yunwan walked to his side.

He gently lifted Chu Xuanzhou’s hand and placed it against his own neck, closing his eyes like a man offering himself in sacrifice. “But you must do it yourself. Your Highness, I only want to die by your hands.”

Beneath the merman’s cold fingertips was warm, fragile human skin. With each breath, he could even feel the pulse of Lu Yunwan’s blood.

…Chu Xuanzhou realized with perfect clarity that he had encountered a true madman.

𓇼 ˚｡⋆ 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞⋆｡˚ 𓇼

Author’s Note:

Lu Yunwan: When I get unhinged, even I scare myself _（:з」∠）_