“You tried that last time, remember? It didn’t work,” Chu Xuzhou said.
“Last time, I tried suppressing it. My energy isn’t as strong as yours—I couldn’t hold it back,” Bai Chen replied. “This time—”
Chu Xuzhou’s gaze shifted from Bai Chen’s lips to his eyes. “And what method are you planning this time?”
“The same one you used when you were drawing my blood.” Bai Chen looked at him with pure, earnest eyes.
“What—”
An unnaturally soft warmth cut off Chu Xuzhou’s words. He stood frozen, his bottomless black eyes reflecting Bai Chen’s face. Boom! In the void of his mind, the universe exploded.
His silent heart began to pound fiercely. His stagnant blood surged through his veins.
The scorching heat building inside him drained away into the lips pressed against his, cooling him just a fraction at first—only for an even fiercer blaze to erupt, raging and spreading through his body. Not only did Chu Xuzhou’s temperature climb higher, but Bai Chen flinched as the heat scorched his lips, flushing his cheeks red.
Regaining his senses, Chu Xuzhou placed his hands under Bai Chen’s arms to push him away. He barely budged him before Bai Chen parted his lips and sank his teeth in.
The body heat kept rising, turning the dressing room into a furnace. An ordinary person would have been cooked into a vegetable by now. Even Bai Chen, no ordinary guy, was starting to buckle. He felt like he was about to burst.
Dong Man hadn’t been wrong. Neither had his own suspicions. For the first time, Chu Xuzhou felt like he might explode from an overdose of… something.
Scalding affection flooded into Bai Chen’s veins without end. If he’d gone to film that scene right now, it would’ve been a breeze—every vein in his body bulged visibly. The love nourished him even as it seared, swelling his vessels until not a drop more could fit.
Bai Chen released him on his own, limp and drained. He blinked up at Chu Xuzhou with damp eyes. “Sorry. That didn’t work either. I couldn’t bring your temperature down.”
“…”
Chu Xuzhou had been about to speak, but the sight of those reddened, innocent eyes left him speechless.
“Give me a minute to think of something else,” Bai Chen said.
Chu Xuzhou finally pressed a hand to his temple. “Really, you don’t need to. Thanks.”
Bai Chen sighed regretfully. “Alright. I still think channeling the heat outward is the right idea. It just might take more than once.”
Chu Xuzhou: “…”
He closed his eyes, circulating his energy through his body once. He still couldn’t suppress the rising heat, but things finally settled a little. The roaring in his head and chest quieted.
“The direction’s right, but wrong spot. Next time, don’t use your mouth,” Chu Xuzhou said.
Bai Chen: “My hand?”
Chu Xuzhou: “That could work.”
“Like this?” Without warning, Bai Chen grabbed Chu Xuzhou’s hand and pressed their palms together.
“…”
“Chest works too?” Bai Chen wrapped his arms tightly around Chu Xuzhou and tilted his head back to look up at him.
“…”
“Legs?”
“…”
That day, plenty of people saw Xuzhou Big Shot head into Bai Chen’s dressing room. But only Bai Chen emerged afterward. Xuzhou Big Shot had vanished.
Dong Man was growing bolder around Bai Chen. She sidled up to him, asking with the casual intimacy of a girlfriend gossiping about her love life. “Where’s Xuzhou Big Shot?”
Bai Chen yawned contentedly. “He’s not in any shape to see people right now.”
Not in any shape? How so?
Dong Man was dying of curiosity, itching to fire off her Mind Reading Skill on Bai Chen and find out.
She only got three uses a day—precious chances she hadn’t wasted on him yet. With the Living Dead possibly out of reach today, she might miss her shot. After a moment’s thought, Dong Man activated her first read on Bai Chen.
She froze.
Every time she’d used Mind Reading before, she’d plunged into the target’s inner world—hearing their thoughts, glimpsing or sensing a symbolic landscape. With the Living Dead, it had been endless void and darkness. For Bai Chen, she’d imagined something soft, beautiful, bright.
No such luck.
Instead, activating the skill on him just replayed the scene right in front of her.
Bai Chen sat beside her, looking sleepy. Crew members bustled about. The director’s booming voice called out orders. A tendril from the Vascular Strangeness slithered out from the loft window again. The air hung heavy with the bizarre mingled scents of coffee and blood.
Had the skill failed?
Dong Man tried again on Bai Chen. Same result.
What the hell?
The more she thought about it, the more off it felt—like something terrifying lurked beneath. She rushed to share the discovery in the System Group.
Team Two Captain Dong Man: 【I think there’s something wrong with that celebrity the Living Dead is chasing.】
Team Two Captain Dong Man: 【My Mind Reading Skill works on the Living Dead, but it fails on him.】
Team One Captain Du Feili: 【You saying Bai Chen’s even more unfathomable than the Living Dead?】
Team One Niu Lingyu: 【No way… Don’t tell me there’s a fifth Apocalypse Boss…】
【…】
Liu Mo popped up amid the flood of 【…】s. 【I’m out of the Underground World! Listen, it’s nothing like Du Feili said! Yin Bujie has a son!】
Team One Captain Du Feili: 【Thrilled to see you back, but this? I’m numb already. Did Yin Bujie go soft because of the kid? Given up world-ending?】
Team Four Captain Liu Mo: 【How’d you guess?】
Soon, Team Three chimed in too. For the first time, all four squads from Mad Flower Blood Moon gathered in the group. They pooled their intel again.
In this horror novel, there were originally four terrifying bosses—each a world-destroying loose cannon.
But this transmigration run was different.
One boss had a little cat he adored to his bones, and now he just wanted to live well and pamper it.
The novel world evolved. A butterfly effect made a cat like that pop up? Fair enough.
One boss had a little brother he wanted to protect forever—daily healing from the kid, no more random meltdowns.
The novel world evolved…
One boss couldn’t take his eyes off a certain celebrity, orbiting him constantly with no time to wander.
The novel world evolved…
One boss had a son he both loved and loathed, daily headaches over raising the brat. World destruction? What was that?
The novel world evolved… But even with evolution, all four World-Destroyers suddenly having this “soft spot” holding them back from apocalypse? Too coincidental!
As the transmigrators in Team Four mulled this in stunned silence, personnel from outside the novel finally appeared for the first time.
Book Transmigration Bureau Chief Shen Jian: 【Hello, transmigrators. Apologies for the late contact. World safety first—we could only message once we confirmed relative security.】
Book Transmigration Bureau Chief Shen Jian: 【Transmigrators, new mission priority: Fully investigate the munchkin cat A Nuan, celebrity Bai Chen, younger brother Qiao Qingli, and son Yin Le around Danger Bodies No. 1, 2, 3, and 4.】
Book Transmigration Bureau Chief Shen Jian: 【We suspect these four are one and the same.】
In the Book Transmigration Bureau’s Fourth Floor Conference Hall.
The Mad Flower Blood Moon novel world had four such bosses—not ideal to send in endless transmigrators. Only 180 available total. Yet facing this extinction-level crisis, they threw everything at it outside. The Fourth Floor Conference Hall alone packed two thousand engineers and observers glued to the novel’s feeds.
Four walls, four massive screens—one per squad captain’s view. Five hundred people per screen, eyes locked, logging every detail.
An overhead mega-screen cycled key moments, freezing on four portraits.
A cute green-eyed munchkin cat. A celebrity with a face to make hearts skip. A delicate, handsome boy. A black-clad boy with a cold expression.
Data raced across the portraits, coalescing into a seamless timeline—the sleep and wake times of all four.
The tense, solemn hall erupted in uncontrollable murmurs.
Seeing it, the Book Transmigration Bureau Chief was stunned too. He turned to his side, to Chief Engineer Cheng Feixue of the Book Transmigration Systems. “You’re saying these four are the same person? If it’s a person?”
Cheng Feixue tucked a strand of long hair behind her ear and hit a green button on the master console, routing the feed to the Fifth Floor Conference Hall. Another thousand observers there—mostly psychologists, micro-expression experts—focused on moods, emotions, psych profiles.
“Hard to wrap your head around, but yes,” Cheng Feixue confirmed. “They all love sleep, and the timings match perfectly. That many coincidences?”
The Bureau Chief asked, “Should we pass this to the transmigrators now?”
From the start, non-critical intel stayed out—those four bosses were too powerful. One slip in contact, and they might trace the signal back to this world. Game over.
“Send it,” Cheng Feixue said. “Think those four bosses have the bandwidth for a whisper of message energy right now?”
Bureau Chief: “…”
So the messages went out.
The transmigrators receiving them were even more shocked.
Team Three Captain Lu Dong: 【What?! Just got off the high-speed rail—did I miss something? These four are the same person?!】
Team Four Captain Liu Mo: 【This is nuts. If true, does Yin Bujie know the son he’s trash-talking Qiao Qingshuang with is actually Qiao Qingshuang’s little brother?】
Team One Captain Du Feili: 【Imagine the Living Dead going to kill the boy and finding his favorite celebrity purring in the kid’s arms. Awkward.】
Team Two Captain Dong Man: 【Qiao Qingli and Bai Chen nearly crossed paths. Qiao Qingshuang liking Bai Chen ties to Qiao Qingli, right?! No wonder Bai Chen rushed back to the hotel to sleep that night! I’m sold!】
The transmigrators buzzed in the group, shocked and thrilled, piecing it together—the deeper they dug, the more it fit.
Dong Man suddenly jumped in: 【Hold up, everyone. If these four are one entity, then objectively, this guy’s stopped all four bosses from dooming the world. What if he’s some big-shot transmigrator from our world?! Beat us here and saved it solo?!】
Du Feili cracked. 【Impossible!】
If a single transmigrator pulled that off—easily reining in four bosses—while he and his rotating teammates racked up failure after heartbreak? What was all that for?
