Chapter 84: Carnivore · Finale

He spent the entire night trapped in nightmares.

In his dreams, there was always that seven- or eight-year-old Lulu, desperately craving his parents’ hugs and soothing words, bending over backward to make them happy.

They didn’t like him eating meat, so he forced it down, mixing it with other things and fooling himself into believing it was bitter and tasteless.

They didn’t like him racing around the yard with a kite, so he simply handed it back to Brother Yuxiao.

He realized he had forgotten so many things.

At least, forgetting was a good way to protect himself.

Around four or five in the morning, Qiu Lu woke up to find his phone buzzing with a long string of missed calls from his blacklist—and a message from Ji Yuxiao sent at two a.m.

“Wake up and come find me for breakfast.”

They headed out at six to eat noodles, the air thick with milky white steam, while birds trilled endlessly in the woods.

Qiu Lu asked, “Didn’t you sleep well?”

Ji Yuxiao twirled a chopstickful of noodles and glanced up at him.

“Fine,” Qiu Lu said glumly. “It was me who didn’t sleep well. You guessed right.”

“OAC messaged you too, didn’t they?” Ji Yuxiao said. “It’d be safer for special students like us to dorm back at OAC. Otherwise, the risk of nighttime transformation is too high. You planning to move?”

“Yeah,” Qiu Lu replied. “It’s a fifteen-minute bike ride, but way more freedom.”

“I’ve already put in the application. We’ll room together.”

Qiu Lu nodded on instinct, then froze solid.

“Huh?”

“What do you mean, ‘huh’?” Ji Yuxiao slid the iced soy milk over to him and propped his chin on his hand. “Your Breeding Feathers are that long already. Haven’t you been waiting for this day?”

Qiu Lu smiled, warm as a spring breeze. “What are you talking about, bro? I have no idea.”

Ji Yuxiao leaned in close and whispered five words into his ear.

Qiu Lu’s face flushed crimson. He buried his head in his bowl and shoveled in noodles.

Ji Yuxiao, in high spirits, asked, “So that’s a no?”

“N-No… it’s not.”

He had been lost in the haze of completely severing ties with his old family, never imagining a new one would come along so soon.

Last night, Qiu Junwei had sighed his way into the hospital. It turned out to be a hypertensive crisis—nearly a cerebral hemorrhage.

Cui Mengmei, naturally, had no time for anything else. She wailed about her miserable life while dragging her still-recovering body to tend to him: wiping him down, feeding him medicine, watching over him all night. It was more care than she’d likely ever get for herself.

Those were the petty concerns of outdated souls.

Qiu Lu knew it full well. With his current mutated identity and a same-sex lover, there was no going back to that twisted household.

Not for his own sake, and certainly not for anyone else’s.

He just hadn’t expected to bridge the gap of university life and share a dorm with Brother Yuxiao for real.

OAC had spent the past two years pulling strings with universities across the board, all to keep the awakening of snake-bird Blood Descendants under strict, multi-layered secrecy. Now, at last, the joint nighttime research program across schools provided these students with safer housing.

The previous year’s freshmen had spent nearly every weekend half-shifted into Transformation form just to stave off their bodies’ rejection responses.

Thank goodness it was finally settled.

When he returned to the dorm to pack, his roommates were full of reluctance.

“That’s so cool. I heard your program even does nighttime field trips?”

Qiu Lu tucked his toothbrush and desk lamp into a box.

“Looks like it.”

Nighttime flights out to splash in the water, with the occasional squabble with other birds.

“But I hear the requirements are brutal. Even top grades might not cut it—you need a mentor interview too.”

“Haha… yeah, pretty much.”

The bare minimum qualification: you couldn’t actually be human.

He folded up his bedding and clothes, then handed each roommate a little white bird-shaped night-light.

“Just a small token. Hope you like them.”

They all grabbed theirs with eager thanks, sighing even harder.

“Lulu!! Who’s gonna bring us food after you’re gone?!”

“Lulu, you can still help me sign in for class, right?!”

“Lu Bao—”

When he wheeled his two boxes out of the dorm building, he spotted Ji Yuxiao waiting right at the entrance.

The two of them were like migratory birds lugging snail shells on their backs, hauling five boxes off to their new nest.

In the taxi, Qiu Lu suddenly thought of White Water Marsh Park, the spot they used to haunt.

The park was full of towering maples and sycamores, their crowns rising four or five stories high. From up there, you could survey the entire park like a bird—nesting felt like sleeping on a cliff’s edge, with the world’s shifting lights and shadows at a single glance. One wrong roll, though, and you’d plummet to a shattered end.

Qiu Lu gazed out dreamily. If he told Ji Yuxiao he wanted to nest there, his brother would agree with gentle warmth.

Deep down, they both harbored a taste for danger—subtle, leaving no trace.

Given his parents’ tempers, every time Ji Yuxiao snuck him out of class or treated him to meat on the sly, it had been a surefire way to set them off.

But this person just kept tugging at him right on the edge of the cliff, as if he had no fear of death whatsoever.

“Let’s go.”

“Let’s go.”

“Let’s step into the freest wind.”

Qiu Lu had been silent for far too long, so Ji Yuxiao pressed the back of his hand gently against his cheek.

“You okay?”

“Do you still remember White Water Marsh Park?” Qiu Lu asked.

“Yeah. Want to go back and take a look?”

“I’m thinking, if we ever get the chance in the future, I’d like to build a nest on the tallest tree there.”

Ji Yuxiao laughed. “Sounds good. We’ll do it together over break.”

It was exactly as he had guessed.

Qiu Lu tilted his head. “That high up? Aren’t you worried about the risks?”

Ji Yuxiao met his gaze, his expression plainly saying, Do I not know you well enough by now?

They both burst out laughing.

“Would you really worry about something like that?” Ji Yuxiao pulled him into his arms, his palm pressing lightly against the back of Qiu Lu’s head. “The more dangerous it is, the more you crave it—and then you put on that innocent face like you haven’t got a clue.”

Qiu Lu murmured softly, “That’s exactly why I like you…”

The cab driver immediately turned to stare out the window, pretending he hadn’t heard a word.

Ji Yuxiao froze for a beat. As soon as the cab pulled up, he unloaded their suitcases first, then fished out the new key to their double dorm room.

“Hold out your hand.”

Qiu Lu opened his palm, and the silver key dropped neatly into it.

“I like you too,” Ji Yuxiao said, leaning down to press a kiss to his forehead. “I’ve always liked you.”

“Come on. Let’s head to our new home.”

For a fleeting instant, Qiu Lu wondered if a dorm they could only live in for four years could truly be called home.

But when the light blue door swung slowly open and they began placing their belongings around the twenty-square-meter space, the subtle traces of their lives started to intertwine in silence.

Their toothbrush cups stood side by side, towels hanging from the same rack.

The bookshelf overflowed with notebooks, reference books, and their favorite novels.

A memo board hung on the wall, and the door bore a basketball poster they both loved.

It all felt like a warm, impossibly surreal dream.

Qiu Lu reached out to touch Ji Yuxiao’s professional textbooks, his fingertips trailing over the spines one by one, as if forging new connections in his nerves.

He realized he had been smiling the whole time.

From today onward, the door could swing freely open and shut.

He could read whatever books he wanted and study late into the night.

He could be the egret with feathers flowing like tassels—or the lively, radiant Qiu Lu.

In their shared world, there would be no more control. No more pretense.

“Lulu,” Ji Yuxiao called. “Did you put your own sheets on the bed?”

Qiu Lu glanced over, blinking in surprise. “Aren’t we sleeping separately?”

Ji Yuxiao, who knew the answer perfectly well, replied, “Do we need to?”

He closed the distance between them step by step, then brushed a kiss against his ear.

“There are some things we can do right now.”

“Like love.”

As long as you’re here, love becomes the eternal watery wilds and boundless skies.