After arriving home and showering, the two of them cuddled in bed for a while before getting ready to sleep.

These past couple of days were genuinely exhausting. But after eating a soufflé with his wife at a café, Lin Jianyuan felt like his energy was completely replenished.

So he closed his eyes in perfect contentment and went to sleep.

Then he discovered… he couldn’t fall asleep.

Okay. Turns out he wasn’t feeling so energetic just because he was hopelessly love-brained. It was also because he drank coffee that night. Hahahahaha...

Xie Yu, on the other hand, was already asleep. Whenever he ate even slightly too much, he easily slipped into a food coma.

At the moment, one enormous bundle of pink innards was curled obediently in Lin Jianyuan’s arms.

Warm and soft.

Just holding him made Lin Jianyuan's heart feel full.

Life really couldn't get any more complete than this.

Lin Jianyuan secretly basked in happiness for a while. Then he took out his phone, turned the brightness all the way down, muted the sound, and casually started scrolling Little Red Book.

He used to prefer scrolling Weibo, actually. But after discovering that his roommate liked Little Red Book, he gradually switched to using it most of the time too.

On a sudden whim, Lin Jianyuan opened Weibo, and by pure coincidence, he immediately saw a familiar name.

Number one trending topic:

#ShiShaoningFemaleAssistant

Lin Jianyuan: “?”

It was such a strange feeling seeing someone he knew on the trending list. Without hesitation, Lin Jianyuan tapped in.

Well, damn. It was even a dating scandal.

After working with Shi Shaoning for so long and getting used to calling him “Captain Shi,” Lin Jianyuan almost forgot that he had another identity. A wildly popular celebrity!

No wonder Shi Shaoning was always fully covered up whether he was on a mission or not. Mask, sunglasses, and baseball cap. Honestly, once he put that entire outfit on, anyone passing by would inevitably look twice.

After all, Shi Shaoning only covered up his most handsome feature, which was his face.

He didn’t hide his broad shoulders, narrow waist, or 185-centimeter male-model physique.

Lin Jianyuan didn’t even need to read the comments or look at an AI summary. He immediately forwarded the trending topic straight to Shi Shaoning and added a teasing emoji.

Shi Shaoning clearly wasn’t asleep yet. He replied instantly: “What? [eye roll]”

Lin Jianyuan: “Is it real? [eating melon]”

Shi Shaoning: “Fake.”

Lin Jianyuan: “Figured. You’re so f**king busy. When would you even have time to date?”

Shi Shaoning: “???”

Shi Shaoning sent a “furious” sticker. Then another sticker of someone violently slapping a dog’s head.

Lin Jianyuan nearly died laughing when he saw them.

Sure, he sympathized. But who was Shi Shaoning? He wasn’t just Lin Jianyuan’s coworker; he was also a top young heartthrob!

Lin Jianyuan: “I sympathize, but I’d like the gossip. [Please Elaborate.jpg]”

Shi Shaoning: “There’s genuinely nothing. She’s just an ordinary coworker.”

And just like that, Lin Jianyuan successfully obtained fresh and first-hand gossip directly from the person involved.

Apparently, Shi Shaoning’s company assigned this female assistant to him from the very beginning of his career.

She was highly capable and had a good personality. Shi Shaoning got along with her well, and he trusted her to handle all kinds of things.

After working together for so many years, they naturally became very familiar with each other. So later, when Shi Shaoning suddenly hit the jackpot and became a hugely popular young star, his company wanted to replace her with a male assistant.

Shi Shaoning refused, and his reasoning was simple. She was doing a perfectly good job all this time. Why should he kick her aside just because his career took off? Ridiculous.

And naturally, marketing accounts seized on that and completely blew it out of proportion.

At first, paparazzi photographed Shi Shaoning and a “mysterious woman” riding together in his nanny van late at night.

The marketing accounts originally intended to smear him by claiming he had a secret girlfriend. But his fans took one look and immediately recognized the woman as his assistant. Then they turned around and furiously attacked the paparazzi for deliberately posting blurry photos and trying to slander their gege.

Immediately afterward, one marketing account suddenly dug up years’ worth of Shi Shaoning’s so-called “sweet interactions” with his female assistant. It even listed countless alleged “clues” supposedly proving that the assistant was secretly their sister-in-law.

The account implied that the two developed feelings through work, then used their jobs as an entirely legitimate excuse to appear together openly all the time.

And the most “conclusive evidence” of all was this: Shi Shaoning disappeared for at least three days every single week.

He wasn’t filming variety shows, wasn’t on set, and wasn’t attending any events. Moreover, every time he vanished and then reappeared, his female assistant was always somewhere nearby.

Obviously they were sneaking off on secret dates!

Lin Jianyuan: “…”

Shi Shaoning: “[ANGRY][ANGRY] I disappear because I'm working at the Aberration management bureau!!! I’m either out on assignment, in a meeting, or F**KING WORKING OVERTIME! What secret dates?! I’m dating a fucking GHOST!”

Lin Jianyuan: “So your assistant is actually going to the mission location to pick you up and take you back to work in the entertainment industry?”

Shi Shaoning: “YES!!! What else would she be doing?!”

Lin Jianyuan genuinely sympathized this time.

Lin Jianyuan: “So what happens now?”

Shi Shaoning: “What else? Clarification + PR.”

Lin Jianyuan: “What about your assistant?”

Shi Shaoning: “Replace her.”

Lin Jianyuan: “She really got dragged into this for no reason.”

Shi Shaoning: “Not exactly. She’s actually pretty happy about it. Because she never knew what the hell I was doing every time I suddenly disappeared without explanation. She even suspected that I was secretly involved in some illegal business. She was on edge every day, terrified she’d get arrested along with me. Now she can finally be free.”

Lin Jianyuan almost laughed out loud.

When he thought about it that way, the Bureau’s confidentiality agreements really did interfere quite a lot with most employees’ everyday lives.

After all, even with the people closest to them, they still couldn’t explain what they actually did all day.

On the other hand, Lin Jianyuan and Xie Yu worked at the same organization. One was a prison officer while the other was a criminal police officer, so their daily work overlapped constantly.

They really were lucky.

A thought suddenly occurred to Lin Jianyuan. He messaged Shi Shaoning: “By the way, have you picked a new assistant yet?”

Shi Shaoning: “No. It’s annoying. The company thinks I have a shitty temper and they’re worried I’ll nitpick whoever they hire, so they said they’re going to find ten people at once and make me choose for myself. If I choose one myself, I won’t be allowed to change my mind afterward.”

Lin Jianyuan: “What kind of person do you want?”

Shi Shaoning: “Whatever. I don’t really have any requirements.”

Lin Jianyuan didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “When someone like you says you ‘don’t have any requirements,’ that’s basically the highest requirement of all.”

Then Lin Jianyuan remembered that last time, when Shi Shaoning became delirious, Pei Shuo also helped calm him down.

Actually… Pei Shuo might genuinely be a good fit.

The kid was patient and had a good temper. That shitty company tortured him for so long, but he still didn’t even know how to swear. That alone suggested he would probably adapt perfectly well to Shi Shaoning’s “bad temper.”

And Pei Shuo was young, energetic, and healthy too.

Well. He was healthy for now. If he stayed at that shitty company for another two years, who knew?

The sooner he escaped that hellhole, the better!

Lin Jianyuan decisively typed: “I know a young guy who’s pretty great. He used to be my apprentice. How about I send him over to be one of your ten candidates?”

Shi Shaoning: “Whatever.”

Shi Shaoning sounded thoroughly uninterested.

Lin Jianyuan thought: You’re uninterested now. But just wait until you discover that this is the same guy who basically soothed you all the way back into a fetus when you were delirious…

The thought alone made Lin Jianyuan want to laugh.

He turned around and messaged Pei Shuo about applying for the assistant job.

He didn’t mention that the celebrity was Shi Shaoning, and he definitely didn’t mention that he was the same fellow patient from last time. He only said: “a celebrity friend of mine.”

Unexpectedly, Pei Shuo, who normally replied instantly, didn’t respond right away this time. So Lin Jianyuan could only go to sleep first.

However, when he hugged his warm and soft wife and once again tried to fall asleep…

A leg suddenly appeared in his mind.

Lin Jianyuan’s heart jolted.

He abruptly remembered the thing he almost forgot. Although time was tight back then, Lin Jianyuan still remembered what that leg felt like when he touched it.

Cold and chilly. Also fresh, soft, and elastic.

But without any warmth.

That icy sensation was terrifying. Was that what a corpse felt like?

Lin Jianyuan: “…”

With complicated emotions, Lin Jianyuan looked down at his wife sleeping obediently in his arms.

An intense battle between heaven and man raged inside his heart.

One second later, the battle ended.

Lin Jianyuan decided to pretend he knew absolutely nothing.

He hugged his wife more tightly, closed his eyes, and released a long breath.

Then he forced himself to fall asleep.

Lin Jianyuan finally fell asleep.

Later that night, Xie Yu woke up.

He was an Aberrant. He didn’t actually need to sleep in the first place. He only felt like sleeping for a little while whenever he was full.

Now that “little while” was over, he woke up again.

He checked the time. It was only three in the morning, which was the time when humans slept most deeply.

Silvery moonlight quietly crept across the entire room. The moon was especially bright tonight. Even the Social-Anxiety Mood Lamp looked dim in comparison.

Xie Yu didn’t understand why the moon was bright sometimes and less bright at other times. But he liked it better when the moon was large and round.

Lin Jianyuan said that was called “completeness.”

“Completeness.”

Don’t understand.

Bored, Xie Yu extended his duodenum and poked his lover’s face.

Sleeping so deeply again.

No matter how much he poked, Lin Jianyuan didn’t wake up.

Xie Yu poked him idly for a while. Then he suddenly remembered how Lin Jianyuan hugged him before bed and rubbed himself all over the sheets.

Lin Jianyuan seemed to really enjoy rubbing against things like that. Especially with his legs.

His lover liked holding him while the two of them burrowed together under the blankets. Then he would rub his bare legs all over between the bedsheets and quilt.

His lover said it felt “really comfortable.”

Xie Yu didn’t actually understand because he had no sense of touch.

Yes. A digestive system had no tactile sensation, so he had no idea what humans meant when they said: “rubbing against bedsheets feels good.”

With that thought, Xie Yu decisively opened Little Red Book and searched: “Why do humans have a sense of touch?”

A few seconds later, Xie Yu got his answer.

The nervous system.

Aberrants perceived the outside world through “perception.”

However, humans experienced touch, hot and cold, and changes in temperature because they had nerves.

Nerve endings were distributed throughout the skin, and spinal nerves were protected inside the vertebral column. Furthermore, the most complicated human organ of all and the ultimate organ that still wasn’t fully understood: the brain.

Everywhere, there were nerves.

As an entire digestive system, Xie Yu naturally didn’t think there was anything particularly complicated about growing another nervous system.

But then he opened an anatomy atlas.

Xie Yu: “?”

Wait. Hold on.

This is the nervous system???

These several hundred pages of detailed anatomical diagrams are all nerves???

In disbelief, he turned his head and looked at his lover.

That apparently simple-looking body was hiding such an insanely complicated nervous system inside?!

…When Xie Yu made hands and legs for himself, he only copied the external shape.

After all, he copied from the white moonlight in Lin Jianyuan’s dreams.

Lin Jianyuan dreamed about his white moonlight washing underwear. He did not dream about a complete, detailed anatomical diagram of his white moonlight.

So this assignment was impossible to copy!

If Xie Yu wanted to grow a nervous system identical to a human’s, he could only study!

He could only research the information and read the books himself!

Xie Yu: “.”

Crack.

A clear, crisp sound came from inside his stomach.

Xie Yu: “…”

Social-Anxiety Mood Lamp: “?”

The Social-Anxiety Mood Lamp, diligently supplementing Lin Jianyuan’s calcium throughout the night, stared in horror as the Evil Domain opened his mouth and inserted an intestine.

Then rummaged around inside his own stomach.

Rummage. Rummage. Rummage.

And pulled out a giant black crystal.

Evil Domain: “.”

A familiar scene and movements, except one crucial step was missing.

The Evil Domain didn’t even suck on Lin Jianyuan’s brain this time. So why was there already a crystal in his stomach?

The Social-Anxiety Mood Lamp was confused for one second. Then it quickly understood.

Ohhh. The Evil Domain grew this one himself!

Xie Yu stared silently at the huge black crystal attached to his duodenum.

He didn’t even need to chew it to know what it was…

And he absolutely did not want to chew it!

If Lin Jianyuan were the Aberrant facing this exact problem, then Evil Demonic Beagle King Lin Jianyuan would definitely tell the Angel Eyeball to randomly select one lucky medical student who just finished memorizing the entire nervous system textbook, steal all their memories, and kindly remind them:

You just finished memorizing it, and now you’ve forgotten everything!

Why are you sleeping?! Get up and memorize it again!

Unfortunately, Xie Yu never worked in advertising. He wasn’t a creative-industry genius who earned a living with ideas.

And that was exactly why work experience mattered.

Without any experience in advertising or creative work, Xie Yu could only stare obediently at the electronic anatomy atlas on his phone and begin studying.

Good news: He had something to do when he couldn’t sleep at night.

Bad news: He wouldn’t need to sleep for the next month.

Xie Yu wanted to take out the limbs he already made and compare them against the diagrams.

He rummaged around inside his stomach, and could only find two arms and one leg.

He searched his entire gastrointestinal tract and still couldn’t find the other leg.

Huh?? Where’s my leg?

Xie Yu thought for a long time but still couldn’t remember where he put it.

Whatever.

If he couldn’t find it, he would just make another one.

Xie Yu decisively refused to waste emotional energy on the problem and tearfully began his long journey of studying of the human nervous system.

…

It wasn’t until the next morning that Lin Jianyuan finally received a reply from Pei Shuo.

Pei Shuo sent a voice message: “Bro, I might not be able to. I’ve been getting blisters on my hands these past couple of days. They itch like crazy.”

Lin Jianyuan immediately called him. “What happened? Chickenpox?”

“Bro, why did you suddenly call me? You scared me.” Pei Shuo said he was startled, but his voice sounded delighted. “It’s not chickenpox, and it isn't contagious either. It just looks kind of gross, and the medicine I’ve been using hasn’t helped at all. Sigh.”

Lin Jianyuan could hear noisy background sounds through the phone. “Where are you? The hospital?”

Pei Shuo: “Yeah.”

Still holding the call, Lin Jianyuan gave his roommate’s little duodenum a shake. His roommate happened to be off work today too.

Lin Jianyuan said: “Oh, oh, XX Hospital, right? My wife and I happen to be walking around nearby. What floor are you on? We’ll come over… No trouble at all. We’re really nearby. It’s like a two-minute walk…”

Xie Yu took his hand, and the next second, the scenery around them shifted.

Lin Jianyuan and his roommate were already standing outside the outpatient building of XX Hospital.