However, even by the time the elevator descended to the basement, Chen Ce Bai still hadn't answered her.
Qiu Yu wasn't particularly anxious.
If Chen Ce Bai's gift was an intellect far beyond the norm, then hers was being effortlessly likable.
She could keenly sense whether people liked or disliked her, whether a sentence would earn a positive response. Thanks to this, she'd rarely ever been rejected.
She seldom confided in Chen Ce Bai precisely because she could never get a read on him. His attitude toward her had always been ambiguous—no matter what she said, he seemed indifferent, unmoved.
But today, for once, he'd broken his clockwork precision and arrived two minutes early to pick her up.
To an ordinary person, being early or late was hardly worth mentioning. But for someone like Chen Ce Bai—a man of pure reason—breaking his internal schedule was akin to an AI defying its programming, a predator ignoring its instinct to hunt.
Then there was the urgency in his eyes when they locked gazes, the way he had defended her from those snide remarks…
All of it pointed to the same conclusion—he wasn't as indifferent as he pretended to be.
Still, Qiu Yu had only ever been married, never truly in love. After thinking it over, she began to doubt herself again.
Maybe it was just her imagination?
With anyone else, she wouldn't second-guess herself like this. But this was Chen Ce Bai. A genius, a model student, a scientist—each identity intimidating in its own right, yet he embodied all three effortlessly.
As time went by, Qiu Yu grew more and more uncertain of her instincts, so much so that she no longer noticed the watcher's gaze that had haunted her for days.
She used to complain that the underground parking garage was too big, easy to get lost in—but now it felt small. Especially with Chen Ce Bai's mind working like a perfect map; in just a few steps, he located their vehicle.
Still with no response from him, Qiu Yu felt a mix of frustration and disappointment. She sat in the passenger seat with a sullen face, fastening her seatbelt.
Before she could finish, a shadow loomed over her.
Chen Ce Bai reached out and clicked her seatbelt into place.
Qiu Yu thought he was finally going to answer her, and turned toward him expectantly—only to see he was staring straight ahead, making no effort to meet her gaze.
Her frustration boiled over.
"If you don't want to be in a relationship with me," she said, her voice laced with defiance, "you could just say it. No need to spare my feelings."
She'd rarely been rejected in her life—but Chen Ce Bai had always been the exception. Her voice grew faintly bitter: "I've embarrassed myself enough in front of you."
Chen Ce Bai finally spoke. "What embarrassment?"
Qiu Yu figured that once he turned her down, there would be no going back. So she might as well get everything off her chest now.
Her face set, she said flatly, "Back when Pei Xi came to our place…"
Chen Ce Bai cut in sharply, "And?"
From the corner of her eye, she saw his fingers tapping the steering wheel.
He rarely fidgeted. That meant agitation.
Qiu Yu had long developed the habit of interpreting his expressions. But as soon as she realized she was doing it again, anger flared: Why was she still trying to guess what he was thinking?
If they were over anyway, why bother?
"He said something outrageous in the kitchen," she snapped. "And you didn't say a word to defend me. That's basically the same as those people today gossiping right to our faces!"
Chen Ce Bai's fingers resumed tapping. "What did he say in the kitchen?"
"You're telling me you don't remember?"
"I want to hear you say it."
There was a sharp edge to his voice—coarse, almost feral.
Qiu Yu snapped. "He said my cooking was bad and told you not to eat it!"
"And?"
"Normally, you'd speak up and say you'd eat it anyway, even if it tasted bad, right?" Her voice was rising. "He crossed a line!"
"Did he," Chen Ce Bai said coolly, his glasses catching a flash of light from a passing car. "I thought you allowed him to."
"Bullshit!" she shouted.
The moment the words left her mouth, Chen Ce Bai suddenly reached out and gripped her wrist.
His hand was ice cold, like a corpse's fingers locking around a living arm.
She shivered, horrified.
"That day," he said in an eerily calm voice, "he held your hand like this. And you didn't pull away. Doesn't that mean you allowed it?"
"I wasn't watching where I was walking—he just helped steady me!" she snapped.
"The chip's response time is in microseconds. If he wanted to alert you that I was approaching, he could've just spoken. And besides, you're my wife. Even if you bumped into me, so what?"
A traitorous thrill ran through her, unbidden—God, why did that line sound so attractive right now?
Then, without warning, Chen Ce Bai yanked her toward him.
She fell into his lap.
He didn't drive a sports car or a sedan—he preferred off-road monsters, vehicles built like mechanical beasts, armored and unyielding, able to withstand even high-caliber fire. The driver's seat was spacious; he didn't need to adjust anything to pull her right into him.
Qiu Yu stiffened, anger flaring. "What are you doing?"
"You asked your question. Now it's my turn."
"I didn't ask anything—!"
One arm wrapped firmly around her waist, the other hand clamped her chin in place, holding her face forward.
"Other than his hand," he asked coldly, "where else did he touch you?"
There was a dangerous undertone in his voice—malicious and chilling. Completely unlike him.
Qiu Yu felt something was wrong. Very wrong.
This level of emotional instability? From Chen Ce Bai?
Unthinkable.
The more intelligent someone was, the more predictable and stable their emotions tended to be—because they could anticipate most outcomes. She'd always feared confessing her feelings to him, assuming he'd calculate their inevitable breakup before she even finished her sentence, and reject her outright.
…But now, everything was unfolding in the exact opposite direction.
When she didn't answer, Chen Ce Bai's voice darkened further:
"Speak."
"We're just friends," Qiu Yu insisted.
"You really believe he sees you that way?" Chen Ce Bai's grip on her chin tightened as he forced her to turn slightly. "The way he looks at you—it's like he wants to devour you. Or maybe that's what you enjoy, being stared at like that. That's why you let him cross the line again and again. That's why you invited him into our home—so I could watch him eyeing you like that?"
Qiu Yu was stunned.
And for a moment, she didn't notice that as Chen Ce Bai's voice sank lower and colder, the presence—the watcher's gaze—was growing more frenzied, more distorted, like something on the brink of madness.
But she wasn't stunned by shame.
She was baffled.
Chen Ce Bai's words… made no sense. They were erratic, paranoid. Almost delusional.
What was happening to him?
She tried to turn around to look at him, but his grip suddenly tightened again.
"Don't move."
She had been ready to argue—but now, hearing him say such irrational things, the anger drained from her.
She was left only confused.
"I don't really get… what you're trying to say," she murmured. She pressed her palm to his hand and lowered her head to kiss it lightly. "That doesn't sound like something you'd say."
Chen Ce Bai's fingers twitched. The pressure on her chin slackened.
Qiu Yu tried to pull away.
But her movement seemed to set something off—he caught her chin again, this time even faster, even harder.
From the moment they stepped out of the elevator, Qiu Yu hadn't met his eyes again.
She could only gauge his emotions through his breath, heartbeat, and body temperature.
And when he gripped her chin, his breathing seemed to grow heavy for a few seconds.
Qiu Yu decided to soothe him first.
"…I've really never thought of him that way. Pei Xi and I grew up together. Back in elementary school, when he was my deskmate, he once cut up my sweater and put snails in my drawer… Then told me I smelled like snail pee."
She blinked, her expression sweet and guileless.
"I've never seen him as the opposite sex. I don't even know why you brought him up all of a sudden… If it makes you uncomfortable that we're close, or if you don't like certain things he does, you can just tell me. I'll be more careful."
What she didn't realize was that her innocence—her candor and the honey-smooth sincerity in her voice—only inflamed his predatory urge further.
From the moment she asked him if they could "date," something dark and indescribable had been stirring inside Chen Ce Bai.
He hadn't looked at her once the entire time—but he'd taken in every tiny expression on her face.
He'd seen her smile, frown, hesitate. Her unease, her quiet sulking, the way she fastened her seatbelt in dejection.
Chen Ce Bai wanted nothing more than to grip her chin, force her to face him, lock eyes, and tell her coldly: Everything you think you see is a lie.
He was nowhere near as calm and rational as he appeared.
Right now, for example, he didn't just want her sitting on his lap.
He wanted to tie her down with a belt.
She'd only said a few words—that didn't sound like something he would say—and that was enough to make his dark urges roar to life.
Did she even realize how jealous he could be?
When Pei Xi had grabbed her wrist, he hadn't thought twice—his first impulse had been to draw a gun, aim, and pull the trigger.
He wasn't a man prone to emotion.
And yet she could make him restless, aroused, and murderous in the blink of an eye.
He wasn't particularly lust-driven either—but he constantly wanted to hold her, kiss her.
She liked to close her eyes when they kissed. But he hated that. Hated when her gaze disappeared into someplace unreachable. He always wanted to make her open her eyes and watch as he sucked her tongue and swallowed her saliva, rough and unrelenting.
More than once, he'd imagined binding both her wrists—with a belt, a tie—just to keep her still. To catch her. To satisfy the filthy, terrifying possessiveness churning inside him.
And that was just the beginning. There were worse, more obscene fantasies—ones he couldn't even replay in his mind while she was sitting next to him.
She knew nothing. Absolutely nothing about him.
Not even that he was no longer entirely human. That he was becoming a beast losing control.
A relationship? In this state?
Chen Ce Bai let go of her, then jerked his chin toward the passenger seat, silently telling her to move back.
Qiu Yu didn't understand why, but she complied, settling back into her seat, tilting her head as she looked at him.
Her gaze was too clear. So clear it made his predatory instinct gnash and writhe.
Chen Ce Bai took off his glasses, tossed them aside, closed his eyes, and rubbed his brow.
Useless.
Even with his eyes closed, even without the glasses, he could still see her.
It was like she had a holographic tracker embedded in her body—always there, always burning into his mind.
He didn't know exactly what he was becoming—but he had an idea.
Every change in his body seemed tailored toward one thing: hunting her.
A violent hunting instinct. A possessiveness spinning out of control. The ability to track her, scent her, the need to devour her whole.
For three years, he had stayed quietly by her side, not letting a single stray thought bloom.
And so his genes began to shift. Two divergent strands of DNA started recombining, forming something new—something that defied nature.
They were urging him, coaxing him.
—Hunt her. Own her. Swallow her.
Chen Ce Bai turned his head and looked at Qiu Yu—without his glasses now.
His vision had also changed. As if he'd swapped his eyes for high-precision cybernetic implants. He could see even the slightest twitch of her expression, dissecting and decoding it in real time.
Ordinary people, upon gaining this level of visual clarity, would feel dizzy, nauseated—overloaded by the overwhelming input.
But not Chen Ce Bai.
Even if his brain had to process thousands of frames per second, it could handle it. Efficiently. Ruthlessly.
He stared at Qiu Yu for a long moment, then suddenly leaned in and caught the tip of her tongue between his lips, sucking hard—so hard her tongue ached at the root—before pulling back.
Calmly, he said:
"If I said this is the kind of thing I'd say—what then?"
Qiu Yu blinked, stunned—then realized: he was answering her earlier line. "That doesn't sound like something you'd say."
Without his glasses, his features sharpened to something almost hostile—predatory. His eyes were narrow, piercing, with irises as dark as ink. Even the most casual glance from him felt like a brand searing into her skin.
"If I told you," he said softly, "that I'm the one who really wants to eat you—what then?"
Her heart skipped a beat. The first thing that came to her lips was:
"…Eat me how?"
Chen Ce Bai braced his forehead with one hand, then without warning reached over, gripped her chin, and kissed her—harsh, cold, and with no restraint.
He didn't hold back anymore.
His long, narrow eyes remained wide open, icy and unwavering, never leaving her face.
Every time she instinctively tried to close her eyes, he would pull her tongue into his mouth, his voice breaking through in a cold whisper:
"Keep your eyes open."
Qiu Yu's heart rate shot past 180. For the first time, a kiss made her scalp tingle, her teeth chatter.
The car was too small. His kiss left her dazed, and his sharp gaze disoriented her even more. Her breathing quickly turned shallow. Her hands went limp—she couldn't even manage to wrap them around his neck.
Chen Ce Bai grabbed her face, forcibly breaking the kiss. He caught the strand of saliva that fell with his fingers, rubbed it gently between his thumb and forefinger.
And then he said quietly:
"If I told you this is the real me—would you still want to be in a relationship with me?"