Volume 6: Days of Being Zapped in the Lab
A Face
What a friendly and harmonious meeting indeed.
“So, what are you planning to do with this child?” Lou Jingmo asked her.
Shen Maomao sighed melancholically. “That’s what I’m thinking about too. During the day, we have to go be experimented on, and he can’t be left alone—mainly because I’m afraid he’ll try to kill me the moment I leave. But if I take him with me, and someone finds out we stole an experimental subject… Ai…”
Lou Jingmo corrected her, “You stole the experimental subject.”
Shen Maomao: “???” Cutting ties the moment the card is handed over? Is that something a human would do??
Lou Jingmo kept rocking the child, but after just a short while, she impatiently handed him back.
The Little Ancestor snuggled into Shen Maomao’s arms, sucking his own fingers, making Shen Maomao shiver from the cold.
Although he felt cold, Shen Maomao still found him scorching hot to handle, like a hot potato1 she could barely hold onto. Her expression was on the verge of tears as she said anxiously, “Lou-jie, stop messing around! Hurry up and think of a plan!”
Lou Jingmo asked, “Can he block the surveillance?”
Shen Maomao replied as if it were obvious, “Of course! Otherwise, I would’ve been discovered long ago.”
“Well, there you go.”
“Huh?”
Lou Jingmo looked at her as if she were looking at an idiot. “Since no one can discover you, why don’t you just carry him and look for an exit?”
Shen Maomao’s eyes lit up. “Why didn’t I think of that?!”
Lou Jingmo: “Probably because you’re stupid.”
Shen Maomao glared at her.
Lou Jingmo lay back down on the bed, rolled over to face away from her, and said languidly, “It’s very late now. Please take him and do whatever you need to do. I need to rest.”
Shen Maomao, rocking the Little Ancestor, looked at her resentfully. “Lou-jie, I feel like you’re acting like a scumbag who bolts after pulling up his pants.”
Lou Jingmo: “Z… Zzzz.”
Rebuffed, Shen Maomao could only carry the Little Ancestor and sway unsteadily out of Lou Jingmo’s room, pulling the door closed behind her. Then she murmured mournfully, “Baby, we really are two people with a bitter fate…”
The Little Ancestor happily gurgled “Ya ya!” twice, utterly carefree.
Shen Maomao slowly walked towards the deeper end of the corridor, talking to him as she went. “Are you familiar with this place? Was it you who patted my hand that day? Was it you knocking on this door from the inside? Since you can run around everywhere, why did you still knock on the door to scare us? Where did the people who didn’t come back at night go? Baby, do you know?”
While talking, she had already carried the Little Ancestor to the tightly locked iron door.
The door had been replaced; the creepy handprints were no longer there. But Shen Maomao still didn’t dare get too close, only standing more than a meter away from the iron door, letting the Little Ancestor look at it.
At some point, the Little Ancestor had stopped making sounds. Shen Maomao looked down and found that the Little Ancestor had opened all thirteen of his eyes and was now staring unblinkingly at the door.
“Bang—!” A loud noise suddenly erupted. Shen Maomao jumped in fright, stumbling back two steps.
She looked up and saw a small handprint appear on the door; she looked down at the stunned Little Ancestor in her arms.
So there wasn’t just one child?!
The small hand only slapped the door once, and then there was no further reaction.
The next second, the Little Ancestor suddenly started wailing at the top of his lungs.
The piercing cry seemed to pierce Shen Maomao’s skull2, shooting straight through the floor towards the heavens.
Accompanying his cries, the other Little Ancestor inside started banging on the door again—“Bang! Bang! Bang!”—imprinting several more handprints, causing the iron door to bulge out significantly, leaving only a thin layer remaining. It looked like it was about to burst open at any moment.
Shen Maomao was almost deafened by them. Covering one ear with her free hand, she backed away, shouting, “My two Little Ancestors!! Stop howling!!! Let me think of a way to open the door! How about that?!”
The Little Ancestor in her arms gradually cried less intensely, and the one inside the door also stopped banging desperately.
Fortunately, under his influence, no one else seemed to have heard his cries or the banging from inside. Now that everything was quiet again, she could even hear the steady breathing of nearby residents, completely undisturbed.
Shen Maomao held the Little Ancestor in her arms up to her face, looked into his thirteen eyes, and said seriously, “Who is that inside? Is he related to you? Let’s work together and rescue him too, okay?”
Tears streamed from the Little Ancestor’s two normally positioned eyes, revealing a bone-chilling sorrow, while his other eyes glinted coldly, creating a discordant and terrifying sight.
Shen Maomao hugged him tightly; out of sight, out of mind3.
The Little Ancestor wriggled like an eel onto her head, tugging her hair and pointing forward. “Ya ya!”
Shen Maomao let out a huge yawn. “I’m so sleepy. It’s too late now, lots of places aren’t open. Can we try again tomorrow?”
The Little Ancestor disagreed, not only disagreed but opened his mouth, preparing for another round of wailing.
Shen Maomao retreated step by step back to her own cage, sat down on the edge of the bed, rocked him gently, and hummed a song, “Sleep now, sleep now~ my dear baby~”
Lou Jingmo next door knocked on the wall. “Shut up!”
Shen Maomao: “Eh? Lou-jie, you can hear me?”
Lou Jingmo: “Always could.”
Shen Maomao: “What’s the principle behind that? How come others can’t hear?”
Lou Jingmo: “It might be related to the contract between us. I can sense your presence, so his ability doesn’t work on me…”
“Hoo… hoo…”
While they were talking, tiny snoring sounds rose from Shen Maomao’s arms—the Little Ancestor had fallen asleep!
Shen Maomao lowered her voice, saying excitedly, “Lou-jie! He really likes my lullaby!”
Lou Jingmo: “…Are you sure you didn’t bore him to death?”
Shen Maomao puffed up like a pufferfish. “Does my singing really have that much power?!”
Lou Jingmo couldn’t believe she had such nerve4. “Put your hand on your conscience and say that again?”
Shen Maomao patted her chest. “My conscience is alive and kicking5.”
Lou Jingmo closed her eyes, not wanting to deal with her anymore.
Shen Maomao gently placed the child on the table beside the bed, then lay down on her own small, shabby bed, planning to catch a few hours of sleep first.
After lying down, she felt something wasn’t right, so she pulled out a corner of her blanket, covered the Little Ancestor with it, then lay back down and closed her eyes.
Early the next morning, before the bell rang, Shen Maomao was woken up by a small thing crawling all over her.
Seeing her awake, the Little Ancestor happily patted Shen Maomao’s face, gifting her a big slobbery package6 in the process.
Shen Maomao, having moved past fear, now calmly plucked him off her face, then carried him to the next room and handed him to Lou Jingmo. “Hold him for a sec, I need to take care of a biological need.”7
Lou Jingmo: “…” She inexplicably felt like they were a young couple, new parents taking shifts with the baby.
Meanwhile, Shen Maomao returned to her room. Planning to take care of her biological need under the cover of darkness, she opened the toilet lid, only to see a face plastered inside the toilet bowl.
It was hard to describe what it was. It really was just a thin layer of facial skin, not a whole head, but the eyes, nose, and mouth on the face were flexible, capable of movement. It looked like a man’s face.
Shen Maomao expressionlessly closed the toilet lid again, almost wetting her pants from fright.
Turns out fairy tales are all lies8. The idea that even ghosts find toilets disgusting? All fake.
She turned and started searching the room for a handy weapon, spotting the toilet plunger next to the toilet. She immediately grabbed it and lifted the toilet lid again.
The face actually hadn’t left. Upon seeing her, it even stuck out a scarlet tongue, licked its lips, and slurped its saliva—utterly sleazy.
Shen Maomao practically sneered, then directly smashed the plunger onto its nose, pushing down hard, cursing as she plunged, “F%ck your mother! Scared me to death! You damn sleazy dog thing, this lady9 will plunge you to death!”
The face skin let out an inhuman shriek. Shen Maomao was genuinely terrified, so she kept plunging relentlessly. Just then, the morning wake-up bell rang. Shen Maomao’s curses and its wails were completely drowned out by the bell, unnoticed by anyone.
Before people started emerging from their cages, Lou Jingmo slipped into her room carrying the child. She was instantly startled by Shen Maomao’s posture and couldn’t help asking, “What are you doing?”
Shen Maomao froze, quickly schooling her ferocious expression. She put the plunger aside and pressed the flush button.
The sound of flushing water was also masked by the bell. The sleazy face, barely conscious, was swirled down the drain. She breathed a sigh of relief and said, “There was a really sleazy thing. I already talked it over with it, told it to leave quickly and stop scaring people here…”
Lou Jingmo looked at the fine beads of sweat on Shen Maomao’s nose and fell silent.
What a friendly and harmonious meeting indeed.
She tossed the child back to Shen Maomao. “You watch him. I’m going to the laboratory. Today I’ll go back and see what B Experiment is. You can take him to check out the situation near the elevator.”
Shen Maomao took the child, feeling a bit worried for her. “B Experiment is so mysterious. Will you be in danger?”
Lou Jingmo: “Maybe it’s not as mysterious as we imagine. Besides, if something happens to me, don’t I still have you?”
Two lines of hot tears streamed down Shen Maomao’s eyes. “You must protect yourself, mother of my child! If anything happens to you, the child and I will raise hell in the laboratory to save you!”
The Little Ancestor cooperated perfectly, stretching out his arms and letting out two “Ya ya!” sounds, as if agreeing with her.
Lou Jingmo felt a headache coming on. “Go find your clues. I’m leaving. Bye-bye, no need to see me out.”
Shen Maomao, holding the ice-cold Little Ancestor, watched reluctantly as Lou Jingmo walked out of the room and headed towards the laboratory, waving a non-existent little handkerchief in her hand.
She patted the Little Ancestor’s somewhat prickly hair and rallied him, “Baby, your mom has gone to find clues. We need to make an effort too, strive to free your brothers and sisters!”
The Little Ancestor clenched his little fists. “Ya ya!”
The big one and the little one also walked out of the cage. The Little Ancestor glanced back at the big iron door, then averted his gaze and advanced forward with Shen Maomao.
LP: This chapter is fun!
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