Even the Abyss Wants a Wife 9

Chapter 9

As soon as the words “fall in love” came out, the atmosphere in the entire monitoring station suddenly changed.

Team Leader Mo was truly surprised, “Little Flower, you… you’re in love with the Abyss?”

The other vanguard members waiting nearby heard this and fell into a strange silence for a moment. After thinking about it, they found it surprisingly reasonable.

The Abyss and the little flower in front of them didn’t look like creatures of the same species that could coexist. Besides them having special feelings for each other, there was no other explanation.

Although it was a bit strange for the Abyss to fall in love with a flower, both of them had evolved human forms. Moreover, the little flower demon was practically raised by Team Leader Mo, having grown up in the human base.

Lin Ling had no idea that his one sentence would cause the humans to make so many assumptions. He quickly denied, “I’m not! I didn’t! I’m just curious, nothing else!”

The little flower demon tried his best to defend his good friend’s innocence, but it seemed that no one really believed him.

After getting the answer he wanted, he excitedly returned to Shi Changyuan’s side.

“Done?” Shi Changyuan looked at Lin Ling, who was bouncing towards him, and naturally took his hand.

The humans peeking from behind the door and on the monitors: !!!

“Mm-hmm, all done!” The little flower demon had no objection to Shi Changyuan’s action and naturally snuggled up to him affectionately.

“I saw Sister Mo, who often gives me fertilizer. She’s a really amazing scientist. She looks so cool in her white coat. She even researched a new flavor of fertilizer for me before.”

“I’ll introduce you to her when I get a chance!”

The Abyss led the little flower demon, walking step by step out of the human base. The little flower demon chattered all the way, and the Abyss responded to almost every sentence, showing no impatience.

Lin Ling looked up at Shi Changyuan beside him, blinked, and began to ponder his little scheme.

He had just asked Team Leader Mo about what it was like for humans to fall in love. Although Team Leader Mo hadn’t been in love herself, as a top scholar, she had a wealth of theoretical knowledge.

She had pushed up her glasses and said, “Love is a relationship between people based on mutual admiration, driven by basic human desires and psychological needs.”*

Seeing that Lin Ling didn’t quite understand these theories, Team Leader Mo switched to simpler and more colloquial terms, almost admonishing him, “Anyway, Little Flower, you have to remember, falling in love isn’t just about holding hands, kissing, and going to bed.”

“Complete love is composed of intimacy, passion, and commitment. These three are indispensable.”*

“Especially commitment, otherwise it’s just hooliganism!”

The little flower demon automatically filtered out the parts he didn’t need and only extracted what he needed.

Falling in love involves holding hands, kissing, and going to bed. Falling in love… He secretly compared each point in his heart, and became even more confused.

He and Shi Changyuan only fulfilled one of those!

“What are you thinking about?” Shi Changyuan looked at Lin Ling, whose expression kept changing, and gently pinched and rubbed the soft flesh of his cheek.

“I’m thinking about finding a random reason to teach the little parrot a lesson,” the little flower demon said mischievously.

“Okay.”

Shi Changyuan didn’t ask what that gossipy parrot had done to provoke his seed, but if Lin Ling wanted to beat it up, then the Abyss was the best enforcer, like a foolish monarch who favored his close ones regardless of reason.

The two walked through the human base. There was no large-scale destruction as the humans had feared, only the occasional object that caught the little flower’s interest, which the Abyss would immediately pocket.

But the little flower had a strong sense of morality and was unwilling to “shoplift” with the Abyss. He tugged on the Abyss’s sleeve, and the Abyss helplessly compromised.

The Abyss seemed to be able to conjure the things it had devoured and place them in the little flower’s arms, and then the little flower would barter with them in the human base.

If it weren’t for the wrong time and place, anyone who saw this surveillance footage would only think that this was just an ordinary human couple on a sweet date.

In the Seventh Base’s monitoring station, all fifteen members of the vanguard team gathered together, watching all the footage of the Abyss and Little Flower from their arrival to their departure, and then the entire monitoring room fell silent.

“Do you… have any thoughts about what Little Flower said, about the Abyss just looking for a seed?” Team Leader Mo was the first to speak, breaking the silence.

They called themselves a vanguard team, but in essence, they were a suicide squad. When the Abyss fluctuation rapidly approached today and finally appeared inside the base, they were already prepared to be wiped out.

But they really didn’t expect…

An Abyss that devoured life, wanting to grow a seed of life, was a bit strange.

“Is that so hard to understand?”

“I think Little Flower is the seed that the Abyss lost.” One of the young men impatiently ruffled his yellow hair. “Sister Mo watered and fertilized it, and it sprouted and bloomed, isn’t that normal?”

“Otherwise, why would the Abyss be so good to him?”

“As long as we start with that seemingly innocent and kind little flower, establish a friendly relationship, can’t we solve this world-class disaster?”

The others: …?

“You think too simply.”

Team Leader Mo sighed, not as optimistic. She stared at the monitor for a long time, recalling how she had dared to follow Little Flower before, trying to observe the Abyss up close.

When Little Flower went out of the monitoring station door and rushed towards the Abyss, Team Leader Mo had personally seen the emotions in the Abyss’s eyes. She couldn’t deny such pure feelings.

In the end, she made a judgment similar to the young man’s. “But it’s not entirely impossible.”

“We need to observe and assess.”

…

Recently, the little flower demon had been troubled. He always felt like someone was secretly following him.

Not any other creature, but humans, humans who were even more timid, cautious, and fragile than him, genuine humans.

But these humans wouldn’t appear in front of him. They just followed from afar, or played with a small mechanical bird on the city wall that could fly in the air, not intending to greet him.

Lin Ling looked at the mechanical bird flying straight towards him, buzzing, put on his little grass hat without interest, turned his head away from them, sat in the shade behind the boulder at the edge of the Abyss, and continued with his work.

He had exchanged some of the things the Abyss had given him at the base a few days ago for a small illustrated booklet on weaving, along with some colorful string and small bells.

The booklet had many weaving tutorials, and the little flower demon planned to study them carefully and weave a beautiful gift for Shi Changyuan.

He thought for a long time, and finally, seeing the black shadow on his wrist, decided to also give the Abyss a bracelet with little flowers!

Good friends should match!

“Ling Ling, the sun has moved.”

A familiar voice came from above Lin Ling. He looked up and met a pair of deep, dark eyes.

Immersed in his own world, the little flower demon hadn’t noticed Shi Changyuan’s approach, nor had he noticed that the sunlight was now shining on him.

Lin Ling quickly got up, picked up the small mat under his bottom, changed positions, and continued to hide in the shade of the boulder.

He looked at Shi Changyuan, pulled out a round cushion of the same style but several times larger from somewhere, placed it beside him, then looked at Shi Changyuan, patted it, and invited him warmly, “Want to join me?”

“With this, sitting on the ground won’t hurt your butt!”

Shi Changyuan smiled and sat down next to the little flower demon.

The Abyss’s human body was much taller than the little flower demon’s. Even when sitting down, his head was higher than Lin Ling’s, and his outstretched legs were longer than Lin Ling’s.

Lin Ling looked at the Abyss’s long arms and legs with envy in his eyes. Whether it was animals, plants, or humans, they all seemed to particularly hope that their bodies would be large enough. After all, when fighting, a larger size meant more power.

But the most direct benefit of the Abyss’s size advantage, as far as the little flower demon was concerned, was that it made a comfortable cushion!

Every time the little flower demon felt lazy, he would use the Abyss as a cushion, leaning softly against him like he had no bones. As long as Shi Changyuan reached out and wrapped his arms around him, Lin Ling would be completely enveloped in his embrace.

“Hold out your hand.”

Lin Ling didn’t think there was anything strange about this posture. He adjusted himself to the most comfortable position, looked at the wrist extended in front of him, took out the unfinished flower string, loosely wrapped it around the wrist once, and then adjusted the tightness.

“Okay, I’ve got it. When my flower bracelet is finished, I’ll bring it to you!”

After the little flower demon finished speaking, he pulled the string back from Shi Changyuan’s wrist.

“Still have to wait?” Shi Changyuan immediately grabbed the end of the string and asked, “Isn’t this one okay?”

“No,” the little flower demon poked Shi Changyuan’s hand holding the string, trying to take back the ugly bracelet. “This is a failed product.”

“I want the first one,” Shi Changyuan still didn’t give up.

“When I finish weaving it, it will be the first one,” the little flower demon used his sweet words and superb coaxing skills, “I won’t give those ugly bracelets to any other neighbors or friends.”

“You are the only person I want to give a bracelet to.”

“Before you, I won’t give any woven items to anyone, not even failed ones.”

The Abyss had to admit that he was indeed coaxed, but he still insisted that the little flower demon hand over all the failed products to him for disposal.

“I can put them in the Abyss as souvenirs.”

Shi Changyuan let go of the string, grabbed Lin Ling’s hand, spread it open, and examined each of the little flower demon’s fingers one by one, making sure there were no wounds from weaving, and then slowly said,

“They were all made by Ling Ling.”

Lin Ling wanted to laugh. He tilted his head, and just as he was about to speak, he suddenly heard a few strange “kacha” sounds, which immediately attracted their attention.

Lin Ling and Shi Changyuan turned their heads and looked to the side, finding that the human’s mechanical bird was stuck in the branches.

Shi Changyuan looked at the machine, recognized this human product with recording and video capabilities, and his face darkened.

So, in the human’s footage, only a black shadow flashed across the screen before it went black.

On the city wall of the human base, the faces of the two young men holding telescopes and observing the movements of the Abyss and Little Flower instantly turned ugly. They uploaded all the data they had obtained and then reported through the walkie-talkie, “We’ve been discovered by the Abyss.”

From the walkie-talkie on the other end, in the monitoring station, besides Team Leader Mo’s voice, there was also the alarm from the fluctuation monitoring instrument, indicating the Abyss’s emotional fluctuation.

Team Leader Mo: “The Abyss might issue a warning or retaliate, you guys need to return to the monitoring station immediately!”

Humans had a certain understanding of the Abyss, but before they could leave the top of the city wall, the Abyss had already appeared at the gate of the human base.

The alarm from the walkie-talkie became even louder.

The two vanguard team members on the city wall looked at the figure at the gate, and a great fear arose from the bottom of their hearts, enveloping everyone.

That oppressive feeling was like humans facing an unstoppable natural disaster, a power beyond human comparison descending, step by step, towards them.

Just as the two vanguard team members were feeling dizzy, a head suddenly popped out from behind the Abyss, a delicate and beautiful face, wearing a poorly made straw hat adorned with small white flowers.

“Are they the ones peeking?!”

The humans heard the little flower behind the Abyss speak angrily, but even when angry, his voice was soft.

“That’s so mean!”

“Don’t flowers, grass, and Abysses have any privacy?!”

One of the team members reacted first, his voice hoarse and legs trembling. He looked at the person behind the Abyss and tentatively said, “Sorry…”

“We’ll delete the footage right away…”

“Not enough!”

The little flower demon, emboldened by the Abyss, glanced at the Abyss and saw that the Abyss was also looking at him, as if seeking his opinion, which made him swell with pride.

Lin Ling, looking like a little guardian of rights, firmly said, “We need to complain! We need compensation! We need a self-criticism!”

Little Flower’s voice was transmitted to the monitoring station through the walkie-talkie. Everyone suddenly breathed a sigh of relief. At least judging from the little flower’s personality, he wouldn’t do anything too extreme.

The little flower demon blinked, his eyes darting back and forth between the two, then his eyes lit up, landing on their chests. “I want that—”

He pointed at the walkie-talkies hanging on their chests, his eyes full of longing, then whispered behind Shi Changyuan, “I’ve seen this before, you can talk to each other even when you’re far apart.”

“They happen to have two, one for you, one for me.”

“That way, no matter where you are, when I want to find you, I can find you immediately.”

Shi Changyuan wanted to say that the black shadow could help him find Lin Ling at any time, but he didn’t want to discourage the little flower demon from wanting to find him.

This thing was perfect.

Shi Changyuan nodded in agreement.

Seeing the Abyss nod, the two team members immediately and perceptively took off their walkie-talkies, handed them forward, and even thoughtfully told Little Flower how to use them.

Little Flower happily held the two walkie-talkies and admonished, “You should reflect on this matter carefully and write a self-criticism! I’ll come to you for your self-criticisms in two days, and you’re not allowed to just pretend to obey and not actually change!”

How could the two humans dare to disobey? They quickly nodded in agreement.

“Okay, then it’s settled.”

After saying that, Little Flower held the walkie-talkies, took the Abyss’s hand, and left the human base, leaving behind the two humans who had escaped from the Abyss’s grasp for the first time.

When the two team members returned to the monitoring station, they saw Team Leader Mo deleting the footage they had painstakingly captured.

“Sister Mo, really delete it? This can prove that the Abyss can communicate, it’s evidence for the peace faction.”

“Of course, we’ve already reached a deal, we naturally have to be honest.”

Team Leader Mo glanced at the two who seemed to want to say something, her expression unchanged. “What, do you think it’s okay to just deceive and lie to someone because they’re not human?”

Team Leader Mo chuckled, “Humans are no longer at the top of the food chain in this world. Refusing to let go of that deadly pride will lead to trouble.”

The two team members shuddered and immediately took out paper and pens, scribbling away as they wrote their self-criticisms. They even competed on the number of words, fearing that if their self-criticisms weren’t as long as the other’s, they wouldn’t seem sincere enough, and then they would be done for.

“But it’s not a complete loss. Although the video is deleted, we have obtained more powerful information and can even complete the safety assessment report.”

…

The people in the monitoring station were on edge for several days, waiting for the Abyss and Little Flower to reappear, but the two never came near the human base again. However, the little flower demon’s voice could often be heard from the walkie-talkie.

The life of Little Flower and the Abyss seemed exceptionally simple and comfortable. Every day, it was either asking if you were awake, asking if you wanted to go somewhere to play, or asking where you were when the Abyss went to the river to fetch water.

The weather in the apocalypse was always extreme. A few days ago, it was scorching hot, and the Abyss, in order to raise a flower, had to water it three to five times a day. Now, the sky suddenly darkened, and several muffled thunderclaps sounded, a prelude to a rainstorm.

In the dim light and strong wind, Shi Changyuan slowly pushed open the door of the monitoring station.

On the monitor, the dark figure went all the way unimpeded, arriving at the monitoring room.

No one could stop him. They could only hold their breath and wait for him to push open the last door separating them.

Everyone’s bodies tensed, trying to guess what the Abyss wanted to do on this stormy night.

As the silent confrontation continued, the walkie-talkie in Shi Changyuan’s pocket suddenly started to sizzle, and then Little Flower’s shouting voice came from inside.

“Shi Changyuan, have you seen Sister Mo? Remember to say hello for me! And the self-criticism, I gave them five extra days.”

“Oh right, it’s about to rain, you have to come back quickly—”

Instantly, the tense, almost suffocating atmosphere was broken. Shi Changyuan looked at all the people who were on high alert, then slowly and reservedly looked at Team Leader Mo, and nodded.

This counted as greeting and inquiring.

Then, Shi Changyuan extended his hand to the two humans from before, to retrieve the things Little Flower had asked for.

The two humans tremblingly placed the 30,000-word self-criticisms in front of the Abyss, then watched as the Abyss looked down at them, said nothing, and turned to leave.

Everyone, whose hearts had almost stopped: …gasping for air.jpg

So, on this sleepless, stormy night, the human vanguard team submitted a very professional plan to save the world to headquarters.

“A Plan to Save the World with Love”

“Feasibility Assessment Report of the Plan to Save the World with Love”

“Implementation Details Appendix 1 of the Plan to Save the World with Love”

The top brass of all human bases who received the above emails: …What the hell is this???