Lily raised her head from Madam Lu’s shoulders, dark eyes staring at An Zhe. Her eyes always had a special colour, misty, that reminded An Zhe of the creatures in the Abyss. In fact, every lady and girl on the 22nd floor had such a worldly look. If the judges were here then they might conclude these females weren’t human. If such a person was born in the Garden of Eden and couldn’t leave for a lifetime, they must be different from the outside humans.
An Zhe’s head suddenly felt some pain. The same type of fluctuation appeared again in his mind but it was far less grand and scary than what he had felt at night. It was much more specific and much closer, as if the source was just beside him.
He stared at Madam Lu. The light changed and he saw a rainbow in her eyes. “You…”
An Zhe took a few steps back. Behind him was a red alarm bell installed in every room. “Don’t you want to be human?”
Madam Lu watched him and tears rolled down from her eyes.
“Humans have no hope,” she declared.
“Wait until Lu Feng comes back…”
He hadn’t finished speaking when Madam Lu suddenly laughed. At the same time, tears kept falling from her eyes. Her entire body was shaking like a leaf in the autumn wind and her right hand covered her mouth so that only intermittent laughter could be heard.
“Humans… they have caused me and my children too much pain.” An Zhe finally heard her speak. She might be pitying Lu Feng but the next moment, Madam Lu’s voice became hoarse.
“Lu Feng… he is firmer than me. He is like this base. He can sacrifice everything for the sake of humanity but he will never get what he wants.” The lady reached out for a bright red rose. The thorns pierced her hand but the pain made her voice calmer. “He wants to protect everything that will be destroyed. His belief is a castle in the air… he won’t die well. The fact that I can’t see the day he goes crazy, that I can’t see the day when this base collapses… is my only regret.”
The hopeless, sad hatred hidden in her voice made An Zhe’s eyes widen. He had no idea what was going on and stared at her in disbelief.
The rose petals slipped from Madam Lu’s hand and her voice softened. “What I want to do is leave here. What is your purpose for coming to the human base and coming to him, little heterogeneous?”
An Zhe stared at her and couldn’t say anything.
However, Madam Lu didn’t seem to want to hear her answer. Her neck was getting longer and her entire body was changing. She stretched and bent in strange arcs, swelling and swelling—
Dark lines appeared on her body. Her body turned elliptical and her arms became an arthropod’s slender foot. A part of transparent wings tore through the dress and emerged from her back. In just one minute, she had become a half-human, half-bee creature.
The weird fluctuations were becoming fiercer but they only shrouded Lily’s body. Then Lily’s body changed the same way.
“The time is coming. Human genes are too weak to perceive what is happening in the world. They couldn’t tolerate variation and a loss of choice but other creatures aren’t strong.” She whispered softly. “We will all die. I don’t hate humans. I have worked for the base for 35 years, relieving women of a lot of pain and allowing the base to give birth to more babies every year.”
She smiled. “However, in the face of this disaster, all work is futile. It just proves the insignificance and powerlessness of human beings. I just want to experience the things I never got to in the last moment of peace.”
Her wings sparked in the moonlight. The bee’s body was large, slender and beautiful.
Lily’s change was completed first. She had become a slightly smaller bee, fluttering beside Madam Lu. She was skilled in flying like she was born a bee instead of a human.
An Zhe glanced at Madam Lu but saw her closing her eyes with a slight frown.
Her quiet face had a slightly pained look. Then an indescribable change occurred on her head. Compound eyes full of iridescence rose and antennae grew out from her head. The human bones were distorted and hardened into a hard, honey-coloured shell. The creature’s hugeness and beauty far surpassed the insect monsters that An Zhe had previously seen. In this hexagonal hive, she was the queen bee.
There was the rustling sound of wings shaking. The transparent insect wings shook like flowing white gauze and then her body flew up, slowly rising toward the dome and speeding up when she got close!
There was a heavy tremor and web-like cracks appeared in the solid glass dome. An Zhe thought that the material of the dome should be very strong but with the second and third strikes, countless fine glass fragments fell to the ground and onto the rose petals like dew drops.
The alarm was triggered. The entire room turned red and the alarm sound was deafening. There was the clatter of footsteps and staff members in white clothing broke through the door. Then they saw the scene in front of them and all froze.
A huge hole was created. The Lily bee flew out, rising upward and her figure soon disappeared into the darkness.
The queen bee was slower. She hovered above the dome, turned her head and glancing down. Perhaps she still had some nostalgia for this place. Then she slowly turned her head back and her wings moved slightly like she had made up her mind to fly upwards.
However, the next moment, the fluttering of the wings shook and there was silence. The wings that stopped moving gave off an ominous feeling. The huge queen bee was bathed in moonlight as she slowly turned and her bright compound eyes stared straight down at An Zhe and the entire Garden of Eden.
The queen bee’s right forelimb moved, the tip giving off a cold and sharp silver light. This point gradually enlarged as an entire pair of forelimbs and then the huge skull descended back through the hole.
A strange feeling rose in An Zhe’s heart. This action was too weird for someone who had made up her mind to leave here. Madam Lu, who was free, wouldn’t come back here unless the one who now ruled the queen bee was no longer Madam Lu. It wouldn’t happen unless the monster’s instincts easily defeated the human spirit.
What would a complete heterogeneous do facing the Garden of Eden?
All of this happened in a few seconds. An Zhe stared at the staff members still frozen on the spot and spoke in a hoarse voice, “…Leave.”
However, the queen bee raised her head the moment he spoke. A very strong and indescribable wave flowed from her and swept all over this area! An Zhe’s head was sore and some blurry pictures unfolded before his eyes.
Previously when An Ze died, An Zhe had absorbed his blood and tissues and An Ze’s memories had appeared in his mind like a picture. In the outer city, on the day the insect tide came, he was bitten on his finger by an insect. That night, he dreamed about insects flying in the wild.
At this moment, An Zhe faced the snippets of memories and realized what was happening. The queen bee was infecting them without contact.
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