On the Other side some months before:
At first, Li Mei told herself she was fine.
Yes, she was being used. Yes, she had no real choice in the matter. But she was still herself.
She could curse him when he wasn't listening.She could hate him in her mind.She could do her job and forget about him afterward.
But slowly, things began to shift.
At first, she ignored it. The way her thoughts lingered too long on their conversations. The way she sometimes anticipated his voice in her mind before he even spoke.
It was the nature of this unnatural connection, she reasoned. A survival mechanism. A coping strategy. Then one night, lying in bed, she caught herself thinking about him. Not with anger. Not with fear.
She tried to resist.
She went out with friends more, surrounded herself with people. She forced laughter, pretended everything was normal. But no matter where she was, no matter what she was doing—if he decided to reach out, she would hear him.
A simple thought brushing against her mind. A command, an inquiry, of that man, sometimes just his presence.
The worst part? He never spoke more than necessary.
There were no taunts. No mockery. No cruelty. Just indifference.
He didn't harm her, and that was worse.
Because if he was cruel, she could hate him. If he played with her, she could resist and tell her there wasn't any choice for her .But this?
She sat in front of her laptop, reports open, unable to focus. The cursor blinked on an empty document. Her thoughts were somewhere else. And when the silence stretched too long—when hours passed with nothing from him—She felt... unsettled. She felt herself self attaching to a chain. The other party is standing next to her ready to unlock her, but she felt comfort in bindings.
It started as an accident. A stray thought slipping through the cracks of her mind.
She had told herself—this was just survival. Keep him satisfied, stay alive. He wasn't human; he was something else. A force of nature, inescapable, omnipresent.
But that didn't explain why her heart beat like this.
She should hate him. She did hate him. And yet, knowing that he was always listening, knowing that even in the silence, he was there—hearing, understanding, maybe even expecting her—created something sickly warm inside her.
A sensation she should have never felt.
She exhaled sharply. The thought had slipped out before she could stop it. Stupid. She was stupid. She braced herself for pain, for that unbearable pressure on her soul.
But Han Chen didn't reply. So she began diverting to other information to make her seem more useful.
Not immediately, but he replied eventually.
Then—
She felt elated and same-time hated herself for being so.
so tonight, she casually slipped more thoughts.
<...You must think I'm pathetic.>
The messages she sent became more than just reports. They became conversations.
A pause. Then—< Girl, do your job well, no one's tormenting you. If you are done, come to me I will remove it for you...>
Her fingers curled around the edge of the desk. She could feel her pulse in her throat. She should stop here. She should take the chance to escape.
But she didn't.
Her lips parted. Her voice was small.
< I... want to keep them. >
< No i can be useful >
She found herself smirking. Why was she smirking? Because there wasn't any punishment accompanying that harsh statement.
... Months passed.
It was inevitable. One day, she send out her deeper feelings.
<...Sometimes, I don't mind it.>
There. It was out. The sickness clawing at her mind, the thought she couldn't kill.
Silence.
Longer than usual.
Then, Han Chen's voice, direct, piercing, inescapable.
Her breath hitched.
Cold. Absolute. He spoke as if stating a law of the universe.
His voice boomed in mind as indifferent as ever.
Li Mei felt something twist inside her, as if her own thoughts had betrayed her.
A beat of silence.
<.....>
The connection severed.
For the first time since it all began, she was alone in her own mind.
And she hated it.
Han Chen had stopped listening.
At first, it was a relief. She told herself she could breathe again. No one crawling through her mind, no one punishing her stray thoughts. But soon, the silence became suffocating in its own way. The absence of his presence was worse than his control.
It felt like withdrawal.
Her fingers trembled her hair, she neatly combed. Her co workers sympathizing for her believing she might be frustrated by work.
Was she discarded?
The thought made her stomach churn. He had used her and left. As if she was nothing. As if she had never mattered at all. She needed to make him look at her again.
Over at the bathroom, she halted shouting "Haa...", what was supposed to come out as Han respond to me...I am useful..stopped midway because, even though she was frustrated and intent to raise that name in public especially in federal dept, aloud, her subconsciousness thought of its harm or good before she could shout, triggering the dormant Gu worm hidden inside.
She felt the pain again. More painful than the first time, but it went away in a moment as her subconsciousness is again reinforced with thoughts of submission.
Her stomach churned vomiting what he had eaten for breakfast out. Yet as she lay wasted, below she had a smile on her face. Han Chen was also alerted by this call of its mother beast responding its child has been triggered. < What did you do? >
< Ha You listened finally. You bastard you kept it in me. But I like it>
He read through her subconscious thoughts and found what happened. She even dared to shout his name aloud.
< This fu*****. Clean yourself and take a leave. Go home.>
< Why?>
< That's my order>
With new sense of purpose, she raised bringing back her mentality. Cleaning herself up, she took taxi and went back home early.
He left to his rented apartment. Bring out his treasured sword transformed from the pendant on his neck. Changing to a spell that turned him invisible just like before along with the sword, he flew past he metro city. Han Chen used sword flight outside, in the real world for the first time. He was just below the sonic level and it took under 8 minutes traverse those 100 miles.
From the direction sensed from child Gu worm he descended onto her apartment flat. It was on 34th level. Infront of her door he stood < Open the front door>
She opened it only to find no body. Han Chen casually entered inside and found no surveillance nor active recording anywhere. Just as she closed the door and turned back she saw an otherworldly looking young man with hair flowing behind him as if floating like immortal, skin itself is glowing, is inspecting her home..Momentarily trances she, recovered taking the gun from her holder and aiming at him. " Han Chen?"
she didn't lower her gun. " You son of a ....
" Then shoot"
" what...., I will really do that ... don't tempt me either.."
" I order you to shoot me, you mortal " He said in angry tone for the first time.
" Her body involuntary obeyed, bombarding him with bullets that can pierce martial masters and even severely injuring grand-masters if more than one fell"
" No" after what happened she rushed over screaming hugging him, But feeling no change than those crushed bullets all over the ground, down, she backed out taking a good look. The Area in front is covered in crushed bullets. He didn't even bother using armor. Just the spiritual energy in his body is already a 1000 times more potent than that of grand master. Where can these bullets injure him, coupled with peak body refinement, it all went down.
" I have so many unanswered questions...but first I am sorry. " She said regaining her composure.
" No need for that. You are a trained women in dealing with criminal master minds with martial mastery right? How did you even passed the psychological profiling? Ever heard of Stockholm syndrome, yours is an extreme version of that."
" You only needed to be useful to me, yet you invited these stray thoughts to influence you, and now you have become blunt as a tool. You even dared to utter my name to vent out your frustrations?"
" I will remove your memories, you can live freely from now on. And I will keep my promises."
Han Chen said in a series of pauses.
"No… No… NO!"
She kept backing away, fear wild in her eyes. But there was nowhere left to run. At the corner of the room, Han Chen closed the distance, trapping her in place.
Raising his hand, he summoned the Gu worm back. She gasped, choking on a cry as blood trickled from her lips—the creature fought to remain inside her, but his command was absolute. With a final, agonizing shudder, the Gu worm was expelled, writhing as it slithered toward his palm.
The moment it touched him, Han Chen flooded it with spiritual energy, sealing it within his world bead.
"
Her breath hitched. Then, with a feverish desperation, she tore away her tattered dress, falling to her knees—utterly exposed, utterly broken.
"I am d—"
Han Chen didn't bother to listen. This women clearly lost it. After all, he has been with countless women doing all sorts of things to learn to forget and wear down the heart demon. This wasn't any better. He has seen greater depravity than this. Giving his final order < Do not move> he started the process.