Chapter 2: Aren't We Friends Too?
For a moment, Lin Yan felt a chill crawl up the back of his neck. Like he’d just been locked onto as prey by a venomous snake lurking in the grass.
Lin Yan’s sixth sense had always been spot on.
Back during the Gaokao, relying purely on that sixth sense, he’d successfully guessed the last three multiple-choice questions on the math exam, plus the final two fill-in-the-blanks. He’d scraped into a 211 university by the skin of his teeth. His luck was so good it was like he had cheats enabled.
So when his sixth sense told him the current situation was extremely dangerous, he thought about it for a second.
Then he understood—
Given how things were right now, there was a high chance they wouldn’t make it to the hospital in time for emergency treatment. The bug egg would miscarry, and his own little life would be gone with it.
So Lin Yan turned around and threw open the doors of the punishment room, asking the head servant standing guard nearby, “Are there any knives in the house?”
The head servant in his tailcoat froze.
But thanks to years of professional survival skills under the whims of an unpredictable male Zerg, he didn’t show a single extra expression:
“We do, Your Excellency. Please wait a moment.”
Very quickly.
The head servant brought over a wooden box, lifting the lid carved with gilded patterns to show Lin Yan—
Inside was a neat row of blades. Push daggers, folding knives, switchblades, everything.
There were even kitchen knives—paring knives, boning knives, carving knives.
When handing it to Lin Yan, the head servant seemed to want to say something but held back. Still, he risked angering the male Zerg to add a reminder: “If Your Excellency and the Admiral haven’t finished having your fun in the punishment room yet, you could try playing with something else.”
“The Admiral just conceived the bug egg, and he’s still wearing a suppression ring. Knife wounds won’t heal easily—”
What the hell was this guy babbling about?
Lin Yan didn’t listen to a word of the head servant’s advice, nor did he know where the man’s train of thought had derailed to.
His entire focus was on saving his own skin. He snatched the wooden box of knives, spun around, and slammed the punishment room doors shut with a bang.
Leaving the head servant’s nagging outside the heavy doors.
Head servant: “...”
The head servant could only stand outside the door praying for Admiral Kaspa and the unborn bug egg, holding his breath as he eavesdropped on the sounds inside the punishment room.
But the head servant didn’t know.
Right now, inside the punishment room, Lin Yan was hugging the knife box, going through the plot of the original novel line by line in his head. He’d only skimmed it before, but certain specific settings from the book were still fresh in his memory.
Especially the setting about male Zerg pheromones, which had shaken his straight-man worldview until it nearly collapsed—
To female Zergs, male Zerg pheromones were a miracle cure. They could treat anything.
There were two ways to provide male Zerg pheromones.
The first, and the most common in the Zerg world, was physical contact, kissing, and the indescribable.
For male Zergs, who were naturally promiscuous and carefree, this was the go-to method for healing a female Zerg’s mental sea and various illnesses.
But for him, a straight guy, that was way too avant-garde.
So Lin Yan chose the second method.
Actually, a male Zerg’s blood also contained massive amounts of male Zerg pheromones.
As long as he got Kaspar to drink some of his blood, there was an eighty percent chance they could hold out until the medics arrived...
Right?
Lin Yan rummaged through the knife box and picked out the smallest fruit knife: “We can’t wait for the hospital people to get here. Let’s start.”
Kaspar lifted his eyelids.
He had sanpaku eyes. Even though he was bound and humiliated by chains, the way he looked at Lin Yan was like looking at a dead bug. Not a single ripple in his gaze: “...”
Lin Yan had already decided to abort this child.
Even if he regretted calling the hospital, didn’t want him to safely undergo the abortion procedure in an operating room, and instead grabbed a knife to personally slice open his gestation sac.
Kaspar wasn’t unprepared for that.
It was fine.
At worst, he’d do exactly what he did in his past life—chop Lin Yan into pieces and use his life as a burial offering for the child.
It was just.
Kaspar looked at Lin Yan, who was shaking like he had Parkinson’s right in front of him. His eyelid twitched, feeling utterly baffled: “Didn’t you say we were starting? Why is my Lord Husband shaking?”
Of course Lin Yan was shaking.
The fruit knife in his hand was sharpened, looking exceptionally lethal. He’d been lining it up against the pad of his index finger for ages, but he just couldn’t bring himself to cut.
In modern human society, advancements in medicine meant ordinary people like him rarely tasted real pain.
When he was a kid getting a tooth pulled, he’d demanded anesthesia. God knows how much it would hurt to slice himself open with a knife.
But hearing the big villain speak up felt like death knocking on his door. In a fit of anger, he decided not to instantly reply to Kaspar anymore. He needed to let the guy know what the majesty of a Lord Husband felt like.
After a three-second pause.
Lin Yan said quietly, “Got it, coming, coming.”
Then.
He hardened his heart.
Closed his eyes.
Under Kaspar’s gaze, that fruit knife plunged down without a shred of hesitation.
Crack—
It was the sound of a blade piercing flesh.
But to Kaspar’s surprise, what was sliced open wasn’t his abdomen.
Nor was the bug egg ruthlessly scooped out.
Instead, a deep, bone-scraping wound appeared on the male Zerg’s pale, slender wrist.
Blood flowed down his arm.
The rich scent of male Zerg pheromones barged in like a ruthless bandit, occupying every corner of the punishment room.
Kaspar: “?”
The male Zerg pheromones affected the female Zerg’s cognitive state. Kaspar blinked incredibly slowly, as if someone had pressed the 0.5x speed button on him.
Lin Yan was sucking in air from the pain, terrified of wasting the blood and taking that cut for nothing.
In his panic, he tapped Kaspar’s blank face with the knife handle, then pinched Kaspar’s jaw with a mix of frustration and urgency:
“Kaspar, open your mouth.”
Normally speaking, Lin Yan’s strength couldn’t possibly restrain Kaspar.
But the instant the male Zerg pheromones flooded the space around Kaspar, his pupils dilated, and he couldn’t suppress a groan: “Ngh—”
The moment the fresh blood was forced into his mouth.
Kaspar’s Adam’s apple bobbed violently up and down, swallowing involuntarily.
Between swallows, Kaspar panted restlessly, speaking in broken fragments: “Don’t... too much...”
His thoughts were completely scrambled.
He couldn’t even process what Lin Yan was trying to do.
Lin Yan kept watching Kaspar’s expression. Seeing his heavy breathing, the bulging veins on his neck, and how he was trying to push him away, he stopped pouring it in: “What’s wrong? Does it feel bad?”
Feel bad?
Kaspar felt so good it was like being wrapped in a blanket in an air-conditioned room during summer.
His mental sea was being ironed smooth, inch by inch.
Becoming gentle and calm.
He couldn’t speak at all. It was simply because Lin Yan had given him way too many male Zerg pheromones at once. His eyes lost focus, and he had absolutely no strength left to move.
Colloquially known as: blissed out.
Lin Yan wasn’t a mind reader. He couldn’t share Kaspar’s sensations. He just assumed Kaspar was in too much agony to move, so he decided to call for help, pressing the call bell inside the punishment room.
Instantly, a sharp, loud ring echoed throughout the entire estate, startling the birds into flight.
The head servant, who had been guarding the door the whole time, heard the bell. He pressed hard on his twitching eyelid and sighed: “Sigh.”
He’d had a feeling His Excellency was going to pull some stunt today.
And sure enough.
He gathered his exhausted emotions, plastered on his professional customer-service smile, and knocked on the punishment room door: “Does Your Excellency have any orders?”