Chapter 14: Time to go around and leave some bodily fluids.

It’s late at night.

Ella could not fall asleep at all.

The ship rocked gently on the water’s surface, swaying left and right, rising and falling, like a giant cradle.

But for someone who had lived on an island for ten years, this rocking was not soothing. It was torture.

Her stomach churned in rhythm with the ship’s movement. Her head felt dizzy with every wave. Every nerve in her body was screaming, wanting to return to that solid, unmoving land.

But that land was gone.

Today was the first day she had lost her insect nest and completely become a captive of those failures.

Humiliation. Grief.

The moment her connection with the swarm was severed still played vividly before her eyes. Tens of thousands of light points extinguishing one after another, like a silent, dazzling, suffocating meteor shower.

When she closed her eyes, those extinguished light points would light up again inside her eyelids, only to go out once more. Over and over.

“Ugh… Bleh! Again!”

She suddenly sat up from the bed and lunged toward the trash can beside the nightstand. Stomach acid burned her esophagus as vomit surged out of her mouth, carrying a bitter, sour, rotten smell.

In truth, she had already vomited until there was nothing left to vomit.

Her stomach was empty. Every heave was dry retching. Her stomach walls spasmed but produced nothing. Only some yellow bile and transparent mucus dripped from the corner of her mouth.

But her body did not think so. Its reaction was more honest than her will. It could not adapt to this ship. It hated this ship. It wanted to leave this ship.

“Aaah… It hurts so much…”

She hugged the trash can, pressing her forehead against the rim. Her long silver hair hung beside her face, swaying gently with her retching.

Her back was trembling. Her fingers were trembling. Physiological tears caused by the strain clung to her eyelashes.

She stayed squatting like that for about five minutes.

Until her stomach finally calmed down.

She placed the trash can back beside the nightstand, wiped the corner of her mouth with her sleeve, then leaned back onto the bed. She lay on her back, staring at the ceiling.

She tried to empty her mind.

But her brain refused to obey.

She could not sleep.

She could not sleep at all.

In a fit of anger, she decided not to sleep anymore.

Ella sat up on the bed and slipped her feet into the slippers. The slippers were a little too big. Yiwen had given them to her when she came out of the bathroom. They were gray-blue, and the soles were so soft it felt like stepping on cotton.

She stood up without turning on the light.

Moonlight filtered in through the porthole, casting a silvery-white rectangle on the room’s floor. The light was faint, barely enough to illuminate the wood grain on the floor, but not enough to dispel the darkness in the room.

Her gaze fell on the bed beside hers.

Zhuluo was asleep.

The black-haired girl lay on her side, body slightly curled. Her hands were folded beside the pillow, and her knees were gently bent.

Her sleeping posture was quiet like a painting. There was no unnecessary tossing, no unconscious kicking, and even the rise and fall of her breathing was so subtle it was almost invisible.

Moonlight shone on her face. The contours of that face looked exceptionally soft in the darkness. Her golden pupils were closed, and her eyelashes cast a small fan-shaped shadow beneath her eyelids.

The six small eyes on her collarbones were also closed, neatly arranged above the collar.

When she was asleep, she looked almost like a princess.

Quiet, elegant, beautiful.

Completely different from the person who had clamped Ella’s tentacle with spider legs during the day.

Ella stood beside the bed, looking down at her for a long time.

Her gaze slowly moved downward from Zhuluo’s face, across her neck, across her collarbones, across the gentle curve of her body beneath the blanket, and across her fair ankles exposed outside the blanket.

Then her gaze stopped at her own back.

The severed end of the tentacle had already formed a thin scab. Pink tender flesh was slowly growing, but it would take a long time to recover to a usable length.

“Tch… If only the tentacle hadn’t been cut off…”

The moment this thought surfaced in her mind, she almost instinctively agreed with it in her heart.

If the tentacle hadn’t been severed, she could have secretly inserted it into the other party while she was sleeping and injected the DNA.

She could have turned this black-haired, quiet, princess-like girl into her incubator while she slept.

By the time Zhuluo woke up, dozens of eggs would already be developing inside her body. Her nutrients would be slowly sucked away. Her body would be serving the swarm.

Just as she should.

Just as all failures should.

Thinking of this, Ella felt her face grow slightly warm.

But she believed it was because she was excited about the upcoming revenge. She would never develop any desire toward these failures. Even if she inserted it or pressed against them, she would feel nothing.

These failures would only become her breeding machines.

She was very confident in this thought of hers.

She nodded, as if confirming something, then turned and left Zhuluo’s bedside.

She sat back down on her own bed, hugged her knees, and began to think.

“Still… I really don’t remember these failures…”

She muttered softly, her voice so quiet that only she could hear it.

Zhuluo from seven years ago, Butterfly Wing from even earlier, and Yiwen whom she had no impression of at all. They said she was their creator, that she created them and then abandoned them, that they were failures she casually threw into the sea.

But she did not remember.

She really did not remember.

Or she did not want to remember?

She shook her head, throwing the thought out of her mind.

“I understand now.”

Her voice suddenly became firm, as if she was giving herself mental reinforcement.

“It must be because I was pursuing efficiency and didn’t pay attention to these failures. That makes sense. Yes, that’s it.”

The corners of her mouth curved up slightly.

“They’re lying to me. I am myself. The Insect Nest Will is my will. I have not been eroded.”

When she said this, even she felt that something was off.

But she did not delve into what exactly felt “off.” Instead, she stuffed it, along with everything else that made her uncomfortable, into that dark corner deep in her chest.

Her gaze shifted toward the porthole.

It was probably two or three in the morning now.

The time when everyone on the ship was sleeping the deepest.

She quietly got down from the bed and slipped into the oversized slippers again. Her movements were very light, so light that the floor made no sound. She even held her breath.

She walked to the door and placed her hand on the doorknob.

Then she turned her head and glanced at Zhuluo.

Zhuluo did not move. She remained in that side-lying position, breathing steady and long. The small eyes on her collarbones were still tightly closed.

Ella turned the doorknob, opened the door, slipped out through the gap, and gently closed the door behind her.

Click.

The door lock made a faint sound.

She stood in the corridor and took a deep breath.

The corridor was long. On both sides were rows of tightly closed doors. Moonlight came in from the porthole at the end of the corridor, casting a circular patch of light on the floor.

The air was filled with the unique smell of an old ship — a mixture of wood, tung oil, sea salt, and some indescribable musty odor.

She did not know the exact layout of this ship, but she knew one thing. She needed to find a hidden place that would not be easily discovered.

Then leave her bodily fluids there and wait for the bacterial carpet to slowly form.