Chapter 47

The white shirt, torn to shreds, hung on the male insect’s beautiful body, fully exposing the snow-white lines of his shoulders and neck. The black suspenders used to secure the shirt tightened precisely where they needed to.

A layer of beautiful, cool-toned thin muscles covered the male insect’s body, making it highly ornamental.

Ludwig was dragged right in front of Shen Yu, the distance between them incredibly close. As soon as he lowered his head, he could see that layer of decorative thin muscles rising and falling with each breath, brushing against the shreds of the torn shirt and assaulting his senses.

The female insect’s eyes darkened, a surging dark red churning in their depths.

This scene would have been utterly erotic to any female insect. If turned into lewd limited-edition photo prints for sale, they could fetch an unprecedented sky-high price on the black markets outside the Imperial Capital Star Domain, sparking frenzied, obsessive pursuits.

Perhaps even outsiders would crave a taste.

Though Ludwig loathed the male insect before him with every fiber of his being, his body responded with brutally honest desire, surging through him like an undercurrent without any pheromone guidance from the male insect.

Ludwig felt more convinced than ever that his previous decision had been utterly brilliant.

Fuck. When the time came, he would savor every moment first, then torment this damned male insect mercilessly and hack him into pieces.

Noticing Ludwig’s gaze, Shen Yu frowned and tightened his grip on the female insect’s hair, his voice turning icy: “What are you looking at?”

The dark red hair was seized again by those slender fingers, sending a numbing jolt through his scalp followed by instant tearing pain.

Ludwig was forced to tilt his head up, his palm clutching the torn shirt fabric with white-knuckled force as his arm muscles tensed.

Ludwig met Shen Yu’s stare head-on, plunging into those emotionless ice-blue abysses. Going all in, he arched his sharp brows and spat out each word through gritted teeth: “Looking at your big tits.”

007：【……】

Shen Yu：【……】

Number Two, stiffly holding a spatula in the background: “……”

Shen Yu hadn’t anticipated such a retort at all. The atmosphere plunged into an eerie silence. Ludwig ground his teeth, his knife-sharp gaze glaring ferociously, his expression as feral as it got—anyone unaware might mistake him for a savage beast.

Shen Yu’s pale lashes drooped low before he suddenly let out a soft chuckle.

That cold laugh echoed through the quiet air like a death sentence.

Fuck.

The moment Ludwig heard it, he knew what was coming. Whenever the male insect showed this side—smile or laugh—it meant agony from icy assaults on his spirit sea.

Hmph.

Ludwig sneered inwardly. Honestly, couldn’t he mix it up? Always the same old trick. He pictured the fabric in his hand as the male insect before him, clenching his fist until his knuckles whitened.

At the same time, the female insect’s mountainous muscles coiled tight, bracing for Shen Yu’s onslaught of mental power.

Just a crippled male insect without even mental tentacles—what was there to fear?

But the expected pain never arrived.

Ludwig felt his scalp relax as the grip on his dark red hair suddenly released, strands falling under gravity. One poked into his eye, bringing an irritating foreign sensation, and he squinted.

Shen Yu let go of his hair and stepped back.

The sudden distance made it even easier for Ludwig to admire the male insect’s stunning body.

Number Two promptly fetched a blanket. Shen Yu unfolded it and draped it over himself, eyeing the tall, defiant female insect in the courtyard with cold detachment.

A disobedient dog.

Shen Yu parted his lips: “You, come here.”

A warning twinge of pain pulsed from the mental shackles. Ludwig’s eyelid twitched as he was compelled to trail behind the male insect.

The pair reached the spot where the kitchen met the stairs—a gray wall adorned with a single oil painting. It depicted the female insect’s bone wings unfurling red victory ribbons that soared high, narrating the alien king’s triumph in the Madridian War.

The male insect pressed his hand to the wall.

A wave of red light swept across it in an instant. The gray-white surface slid open backward, revealing a deep tunnel descending into darkness.

Ludwig’s brows twitched.

The basement was pitch-black and oppressive. Shen Yu led the female insect down step by step, the only sound the sharp click-click-click of their footsteps.

The female insect’s night vision was extraordinary; even before the lights flicked on, he had already scanned the entire space.

The room wasn’t large—square walls, white tiled floor. One wall bristled with a full array of torture instruments. At first glance, it screamed interrogation chamber, but it wasn’t. Beyond the tools of torment sat a central medical bed-like apparatus, its surgical knife glinting with icy menace—

Surgical shears, bone forceps, dissection tweezers, vascular clamps, retractors, probes, perforators… every dissection tool imaginable.

Shen Yu switched on the lights. Though braced for it, he still couldn’t suppress a twitch at the corner of his mouth upon taking it all in: “……”

In the original plot, Vidonien’s first punishment for Ludwig involved stripping away his senses. After injecting the hypersensitivity agent, Ludwig was sealed in the black box for a full three months.

Once inside, vision was stripped first, followed by gloves and specialized clothing that nullified touch. The black box’s odor processor eliminated smell, and the sealed basement cut off all sound.

Throughout, a single tube delivered nutrient fluid to sustain his vital signs.

Shen Yu drew a deep breath: 【……Second round it is, then. Give me a new identity.】

007：【Timelines exist folded together, and everyone has corresponding identities in every world—they can’t be swapped. In a sense, host, you are them from another world, and they are you from another timeline.】

Shen Yu：【……】

Ludwig’s brows furrowed deeply. For some reason, the basement’s layout felt hauntingly familiar, cold light glinting off the instruments in a sinister gleam.

Shen Yu sighed and experimentally nudged the black box in the corner with his foot—a massive sealed container big enough for an adult female insect.

The silver-haired male insect turned his face slightly, his ice-blue pupils sliding toward the outer corner as his voice turned frigid.

“Get in.”

After the hypersensitivity agent injection, endless darkness swallowed him like a tidal wave.

It was utterly quiet.

Prolonged isolation scattered Ludwig’s focus. The black box housed sleep-deprivation sensors; the moment it detected drowsiness, the mental shackles would disrupt his spirit sea with automatic attacks.

His brain felt hammered by countless rivets, flesh splitting open before being crammed with cotton and doused in alcohol—agony beyond bearing.

The female insect kept his eyes wide, dark red orbs straining against their sockets, bloodshot and fixed on the void of black.

Ludwig had no idea how long he’d been trapped in this godforsaken coffin.

His mind descended into irreversible chaos. Prolonged disarray ravaged his senses. At first, he fended off the torment by replaying memories from the first half of his life.

Until one day, he realized even his imagination was warping.

Deprived of sensory input, his brain spawned hallucinations, twisting memories into fractured variants.

These versions coiled around him like quicksand, dragging him into the abyss of mental collapse. If memories failed, existence itself lost meaning.

He couldn’t let his memories fail, so Ludwig forbade himself from recalling.

But that plunged him into an even more paranoid, frenzied void.

Utter detachment. Total sensory distortion. Crushing isolation.

The silence was suffocating. Had the world ended? Had he?

Panic and anxiety such as he’d never known gripped Ludwig. He craved any external input—sound, touch, anything. Even pain would do.

He needed proof he still existed.

Wars of annihilation hadn’t broken him. Being devoured alive by aliens on the brink of despair hadn’t. Horrific spirit sea assaults hadn’t. But this infinite detachment and loneliness nearly did.

Sleep offered no escape. At his breaking point, he yearned only for the end.

Let him die. Let him die.

Ha.

God, he wanted to die—

His body was a hollow shell without a soul. Ludwig teetered on madness, severed from any sense of self. A ball gag sealed his mouth, denying even suicide by tongue. His limbs were embedded in the black box, strapped immobile.

Ludwig clenched his fingers, desperately clutching the hair tie in his palm—the sole thing he could still feel.

Veins bulged on his hand as if grasping a lifeline.

It was his lifeline.

Ludwig thanked his past self for not discarding it.

At first, it carried a faint trace of the male insect’s pheromone, too subtle to identify.

But it was his only touch, his only scent.

His everything.

Ocean currents. Fresh flowers.

He stood on a jagged hilltop jutting from the land toward a surreal blue sea, clusters of shade-giving flowers blooming on the rocks.

Ludwig atop the wind-lashed peak, sea breeze and waves tousling his wild red hair. Gazing into the distance, he spotted a hazy silver silhouette.

All beauty linked back to that figure.

Yet the scent faded fast—plucked from soft strands, it held little to begin with, just faint remnants. Beyond the male insect’s pheromone lingered a subtle sweetness.

Like pastries.

And traces of another female insect—familiar, somehow. Each time he edged toward deeper recollection, he halted, refusing to probe.

The female insect from that date?

Realization sparked a surge of murderous rage in Ludwig. Luckily, the scent was scant and soon dissipated.

Not a good omen. He felt it thinning, slipping silently from his grasp.

Ludwig squeezed tighter, but it was futile. Even this final sensation vanished.

Plunged back into endless dark.

Sleep. Just sleep.

Pain. Pain. Pain.

Aaaah—

Head splitting, heart hammering, nausea crashing in panic. Ludwig arched his spine rigid, clinging to fantasies of that one anchor.

Anything. Anything—he needed to hold onto something—

On the verge of shattering, Ludwig heard a detached voice.

Like flowers borne on ocean currents, landing in his palm.

“Hey, can you cook?”