淫欲的代价

When they both arrived at the residence, He Yuan placed a bunch of new humans right outside the door with an order that he was not to be disturbed, no matter what, for the rest of the day. After locking the door firmly, he looked to 888. "How exactly do we do this?"

888 remained silent and just walked over to place his palm on He Yuan\'s chest. He also had no idea on how he was supposed to return Du Ling\'s soul thread and the fact that his own energy was almost nonexistent in his physical state was another barrier to worry about.

He surrounded Du Ling\'s soul thread with his tiny amount of energy and slowly began to transfer the thread back into Du Ling\'s body.

The both of them gasped out in pain at the same time. Transferring the soul thread back was every bit as painful as extracting it was.

It took over six hours for them to successfully transfer Du Ling\'s soul thread. Luckily, they were both able to retain their consciousness this time.

Both system and host collapsed, face down, on the bed whilst breathing heavily. He Yuan turned to face 888. "Can you dematerialize now?"

888 remained silent and tried to dematerialize instead. [Hm.]

He Yuan secretly let out a breath of relief he\'d missed the familiar presence of 888 in his mind space. He suddenly paused. 888 wouldn\'t be punished right? "888, are you okay? Do you feel unwell anywhere?"

[No. At least for now.] 888 replied. It felt quite unreal to be back in He Yuan\'s mind space and the realization that he\'d spent over two years living -in his own flesh- in a task realm felt a bit mind boggling. Such occurrences just did not happen.

He was also secretly expecting to be punished for directly interacting with the task realm but there was nothing. It seemed Du Ling\'s soul thread was a great cover. A small smile graced his lips.

As much as he\'d been scared shitless when he lost his host in the beginning, he also had to admit that he\'d relished in the feeling of independence -something he\'d lost the day he was bound to a host.

He Yuan sat up on the bed when the prompt appeared. [Task Complete, Leave Task Realm Yes/No]

He clicked on Yes and Du Ling\'s body fell back on the bed once more.

The next day, Du Ling opened his eyes. He stared at his hands which were extended in front of him and choked on an extremely emotional sob.

He was alive. He stood up quickly, swaying a bit when a bout of dizziness hit him before going over to the broken mirror in the room.

His pure black hair had outgrown a bit. His body was even more fit than he remembered too. He opened his mouth and poked at his extended canines with a finger as his brain filtered through memories that felt like him and not him at the same time.

He\'d been given a second chance.

When he showed up at that contract space he\'d thought it was a sham but it turned out it was all true and an entity had truly helped him.

When he got to the memory of Du Jian and Lu Ming\'s death, he sighed in relief. Honestly, he would\'ve have probably tried to help them if the choice was left to him and that was because, no matter how he was wronged, he was someone who attached great importance to the people in his life as the number wasn\'t much.

He was glad he didn\'t have to make that choice.

Knock, Knock!

Du Ling snapped our of his reverie at the short sound. He cleared his throat. "Hm?"

"Base leader, the human-zombies have been wiped out and the inhabitants of the military base have arrived, requesting to be merged."

"G-give me thirty minutes." When the footsteps receded, Du Ling ran a hand through his hair. He could do this, there was no need to be nervous.

The next few minutes were spent cleaning up and getting himself prepared to face the new order that the entity had painstakingly laid out. As he walked on the streets of the base -with people nodding at him respectfully- he was awed and most importantly, grateful.

He was someone who hid himself in his shell because he was too scared to face the world. They\'d told him he was stupid, so he didn\'t bother to try, he\'d been told he was unambitious and again, he didn\'t bother to try.

He\'d been told that he would never amount to anything and he\'d calmly resigned himself to his fate. But that was wrong. The entity had showed him that you did not need to conform to the standards that had already been laid out by others.

If the entity had done just that, then the new humans wouldn\'t have existed. Just an army of zombies constantly fighting against an army of humans.

"Squad leader Ling!" Xiao Yu shouted at the top of his lungs and rushed over to Du Ling.

Du Ling froze when the youth hopped into his arms. He literally didn\'t know what to do, he wasn\'t used to people being so bubbly around him. Even when he was dating Lu Ming, the man wasn\'t so touchy feely.

Xiao Yu stood back on his feet and looked around. "Where\'s Re-" He froze. He clearly remembered wanting to asking about someone but he suddenly had no idea who that person was -or was it something?

Du Ling frowned. "Where\'s what?"

Xiao Yu mirrored Du Ling\'s frown. "I- I think I was going to ask about someone. A he... Or a she? I can\'t really remember. Are you especially close with anyone?"

Du Ling\'s frown deepened. What was the young man talking about? He\'d gone through the memories of the past three years but he couldn\'t remember \'himself\' being especially close to anyone. Except Xiao Yu of course -and Liu Bao in the early stages.

Xiao Yu took in Du Ling\'s confused look and waved. "I must\'ve had a hyper realistic dream last night and now my perception of reality has been warped. I\'m also very tired from travelling too."

Next he leaned closer to Du Ling and whispered. "Squad leader Ling, I heard Du Jian, Lu Ming and the former base leader were responsible for the base exterminations, was it really them?"

Du Ling looked down on the wide eyed man looking up at him with a compelling smile and gulped audibly before answering with a slow nod, " Hm."

Xiao Yu\'s eyes widened even more. "I knew it! Those three would of course be involved in such an act! Squad leader Ling, I also heard that you had single handedly killed all three of them when they brought an army of human-zombies over."

Now Du Ling was exasperated. That was definitely a rumour. How on earth did such an absurd news even spread?! "No," He answered and led Xiao Yu away.

Liu Bao looked at their retreating figures and sighed. At first she\'d been avoiding Du Ling due to heartbreak but when he\'d returned as a \'zombie,\' she chose to completely cut him off due to fear.

Even when he\'d been proven safe and then later condemned, she chose not to speak up and now it was too late. Although it was impossible for them to be together, it would\'ve been possible for them to remain good friends. She\'d blown it.

For the next weeks, Du Ling slowly acclimatized himself to his role as the leader of the new human base. He also received constant telegrams from his psychics all over the world about how they were slowly easing the existence of new humans to the normal humans.

It was taken well in some places but in other places, not so much. Xiao Yu and Cho were his constant companions as they followed him everywhere.

Him and Cho had also been invited over to Xiao Yu\'s home on several occasions. Xiao Yu\'s family members were quite welcoming and although his mother had been hesitant at first, she became reassured when she realized that the both of them truly meant no harm.

Xiao Yu began to proactively send Du Ling signals and Du Ling had to admit that he was quite attracted to the Xiao Yu too but he hesitated to make a move because he was unsure. Unsure whether Xiao Yu\'s attraction was to him or to the entity that had occupied his body.

There was a sudden knock on his office door and a red faced Xiao Yu walked in. When he met Du Jian\'s eyes, he looked down shyly and blushed furiously.

Next he dramatically cleared his throat. "Squ- No... D- Du Ling, do you want to maybe hang out sometime." He waved his hands quickly. "Not the usual hangout like we do all the time buy... maybe... a hangout-hangout.

-That is if you want to. It\'s okay if you don\'t, no pressure or anything I see that you\'re quite busy with base duty and the new human laws and all that..."

Xiao Yu trailed off whilst Du Lung stared at the flustered young man with a smile. There was no way of knowing which \'Du Ling\' Xiao Yu was attracted to and he was a bit skeptical after Lu Ming but he wasn\'t going to wrong by himself by not trying.

He also realized that he was slowly losing memories of the entity so why bother too much?

He couldn\'t deny the attraction he felt for the young man and as for who Xiao Yu really liked, there still had a long time ahead of them to find out and so he stood up and walked over to the rambling young man.

"Sure."