Chapter 250
Chapter 250: Come Here—I’ll Feed You
After hearing his demands, Jiang Tea Tea didn’t even bother hiding her contempt. She tilted her head toward the interrogator beside her, curiosity bright in her eyes.
“Hey, I have to ask—how many freaks like him do you run into in a year?”
The interrogator sniffed. “A shameless weirdo like this? First one in my entire career. I’m honestly stunned. Makes me feel like some country bumpkin who’s never seen the world.”
Jiang Tea Tea let out a long, meaningful “Oh?” Then she opened her mouth and aimed her words sideways—pointing at the mulberry tree while cursing the locust.
“Sounds like you don’t handle enough criminals. Later I’ll use my baby face and lean on the fact that your Commander-in-Chief likes me and trusts me. I’ll have him toss you more cases. More suspects. More variety.”
She smiled sweetly. “See enough scum and a clown like him won’t feel rare.”
The interrogator saluted her with the highest respect and—just like her—said something brazenly narcissistic.
“Thanks for the tip. But I think the Commander-in-Chief likes me too. Trusts me too. I’ll go flash my face myself. I’m sure he’ll ignore the Empire’s laws and open the back door for me—promote me straight into the Empire’s Second-in-Command.”
Jiang Tea Tea burst out laughing. “Perfect! Next time bring your whole department. More people, more power. Who knows—maybe Chong Ming gets so happy he hands over the Empire’s laws, abdicates on the spot, and lets us all develop freely, sweet and carefree!”
The interrogator played along enthusiastically. “Done. I won’t just call the interrogation unit. I’ll call the intelligence department, the security department—hell, even logistics.”
He clasped his hands together dramatically. “Just imagining all of us going to butter him up and the Commander-in-Chief tossing the law aside for us… I’m so happy I could dance. My ancestors must be burning incense from beyond the grave!”
Across from them, Chong Xing Qi’s face twisted.
Shameless. Absolutely shameless.
What did they think the Empire’s laws were—party tricks?
Did they really believe he was some insignificant clown? That he didn’t have leverage?
He was standing above the law and bargaining because he had cards in his hand. Cards strong enough to make the law step aside. Strong enough to force Chong Ming to grant him special privilege.
And they dared mock him.
He’d planned to kill two dragons of the Gold Dragon Clan, overturn the imperial line, and take the throne himself. That was the point of all of this.
What would he take the throne with—Reboot and a horde of infected living-dead? A pile of mindless meat?
Childish. It was almost endearing how naive they were.
In front of overwhelming firepower and high technology, even Jiang Tea Tea—a demon plant with only three or four levels of magic power to show—didn’t dare pop her head out and loudly declare she had five cubs.
But he thought he was some ancient eldritch powerhouse and started dreaming.
Chong Xing Qi’s expression shifted from pale to green to pale again. He didn’t even feel the pain of his nails digging into his own flesh. Blood kept welling into his palm as if from a spring.
He refused to give up.
“Jiang Tea Tea. You think my request is a delusion. You won’t pass it to Chong Ming. Fine. But can you take responsibility for a dozen—dozens—of labs breaking out with large-scale supervirus outbreaks at the same time?”
His voice went harsh, frantic. “No. You can’t. And neither can Chong Ming. He can’t bear the consequences either. So I advise you—repeat my demand to him word for word.”
“I can die. I can go to the Yellow Springs with my family. But my Yellow Dragon Clan—hundreds of thousands of dragons—can’t be exiled to Fringe Star. Not a single mistake. Not one.”
Jiang Tea Tea couldn’t help it. She laughed.
“You’re threatening me?”
When humans are speechless, they laugh. When demons are speechless, they laugh too.
With his IQ and the sheer, breathtaking level of stupidity on display, she wouldn’t even want him as fertilizer. She’d be afraid of absorbing him and becoming the kind of person who laughed whenever she didn’t know what else to do.
Chong Xing Qi snarled. “I’m not threatening you. I’m informing you.”
Jiang Tea Tea pointed at the camera in the room, then at the interrogators seated around her.
“You’re in this room. Every word we’ve said is being recorded—three hundred and sixty degrees, no blind spots.”
She smiled, sharp as a blade. “Everything you just said—threatening me, threatening Chong Ming—if the Commander-in-Chief flicks his finger, the next second every citizen in the M31 Star System will know you threatened him.”
“So tell me.” Her gaze pinned him in place. “Given the Zhen Lin Empire’s sense of belonging and loyalty, do you think they’ll personally kill their infected family members in the name of righteousness… or do you think they’ll beg the Commander-in-Chief to compromise with you, protect your Yellow Dragon Clan, let your clan keep its fiefdoms, and continue living as nobles?”
His mouth opened. “You—”
“Don’t.” Jiang Tea Tea cut him off with a lazy flick of her wrist. “Don’t think your threat counts as a threat. Don’t think your laboratories are untouchable. And don’t think you’re anyone.”
“Chong Xing Qi,” she said, each word crisp, “you and your grandfather, grandmother, dad, mom—you are the shame of the Yellow Dragon Clan, not its glory.”
“It was you who tried to overthrow the imperial line. You who tried to wipe out the Gold Dragon Clan. Not the Yellow Dragon Clan as a whole.”
“You’re dragging others down with your own overreach. Now that death’s at your door, you want to martyr yourself and carve out a ‘final path’ for your clan. That’s not courage. That’s daydreaming.”
“You created the mess for the Yellow Dragon Clan yourself, then you want to be their savior?” She curled her lip. “Disgusting. Like opening a shop called Disgusting and discovering you’ve arrived home.”
Chong Xing Qi looked like she’d reached into his chest and torn out the last shred of dignity he’d been hiding behind. Naked, exposed—nothing left.
Jiang Tea Tea turned to the interrogator beside her. “He’s admitted he knows where the underground labs are and where the viral bodies are kept. Can you make him talk—make him wish he were dead until he does?”
“Of course.” The interrogator answered immediately. “We have plenty of methods and plenty of strength. We can turn a man of steel into a lamb.”
Jiang Tea Tea lifted her hand in an inviting gesture. “His mouth is hard. His attitude is arrogant. Come on—raise the intensity. Let him learn the world is cruel.”
The interrogator gave the men standing on Chong Xing Qi’s left and right a look.
They stood at once.
They bound Chong Xing Qi to the chair. They tilted it up so he hung half-suspended. A harsh light blasted into his eyes. They forced his legs and tail toward draconic form—along with a whole series of measures, one after another.
He was, in the end, only a nineteen-year-old genius researcher. He’d grown up praised, pampered, held in hands and mouths like something precious.
He’d never endured interrogation—whips, insults, pain. None of it. And the people questioning him weren’t amateurs. They were seasoned masters at this.
In less than three hours, he broke.
No more bargaining. No more self-importance. No more childish delusion.
He spilled everything he knew—names Chong Ming didn’t know, lists that could be traced and lists that couldn’t, lab locations, collaborators, local sponsors, the work they’d done. Everything.
It took eighty pages of A4 paper to record it all.
Jiang Tea Tea finished chewing the last bite of fruit in her hand and accepted the stack. She weighed it lightly in her palm.
“Heavy enough.”
Chong Xing Qi had become a wreck. Human body, dragon scales, dragon tail—scales loosened, tail bent at unnatural angles. His hair looked scorched. His chest rose shallowly. He looked like he could die at any moment.
The interrogator nodded. “Heavy indeed. Heavier than we imagined.”
Jiang Tea Tea handed the eighty pages back. “You interrogated him. Take it to your Commander-in-Chief.”
The interrogator grinned, sharp as a monkey. “The Commander-in-Chief told us to interrogate together. We’ll deliver it together—”
“Wait. Wait.” Chong Xing Qi’s voice rasped—urgent and weak. “Jiang Tea Tea. Wait. I have something to say.”
Jiang Tea Tea didn’t put the papers down. She lifted the stack, turned, and looked at him coolly.
“Speak.”
His wrists were chafed raw by the cuffs. Skin and tendons torn. It was as if only bone still held bone together.
“Reboot… she’s just an eleven-year-old child. I made her—with other researchers.”
“When she started remembering, when she began learning to speak, I appeared in front of her. I stayed with her. I raised her. Everything she did was my order. My crime. It has nothing to do with her.”
He swallowed, then forced the next words out. “I know you. A 3S-rank mutant plant ability. But that’s just a minor talent to you. Your hypnosis is powerful.”
“Help me.” His eyes clung to her like a drowning man. “Hypnotize her. Make her a normal person. Please.”
Jiang Tea Tea walked up and slapped him across the face with the stack of testimony.
“You keep pushing, keep overreaching, keep believing you matter. Even with death on your doorstep, you’re still fantasizing.”
“Reboot has three superviruses in her body. Three. Her saliva, her sweat, her blood, her flesh—hell, even the air she exhales is toxic.”
“Those viruses have no cure right now. You’re a researcher. You know what ‘no cure’ means.”
“And you’re begging me to seal her memory, give her freedom, raise her like an ordinary child.” She leaned closer, voice like ice. “Even if I wanted to, would Chong Ming? Would the Zhen Lin Empire’s hundred billion mouths agree?”
She straightened. “Your family really is skilled at one thing. Treason. Splitting the country. Hurting your own people. Shamelessness as a craft.”
Chong Xing Qi trembled violently. His lips moved, trying to form a word. Nothing came out.
For thousands of years, the Yellow Dragon Clan hadn’t been named Chong. They’d been rewarded with the surname because they’d once supported the Gold Dragon Clan fiercely. Later, after crimes, they’d been stripped of it, exiled, ground down.
In the last hundred years, after sacrificing thousands of dragons and fighting like beasts on the battlefield, they’d been granted the imperial surname again.
Reboot. The name he’d given her.
He’d hoped she would be as terrifying as Chong Ming—his best weapon, the key to a new era.
Now it was all gone.
A Yellow Dragon Clan that had betrayed the Gold Dragon Imperial Clan twice… had done it again. Returned to its original place: a joke, spat on by other dragon clans.
Jiang Tea Tea carried the thick stack of testimony with the interrogator to Chong Ming’s office to report.
“Commander-in-Chief, this is Chong Xing Qi’s confession. All names and lab coordinates. People not in his parents’ or grandparents’ memories.”
“This interrogation was entirely the interrogation unit’s achievement. I just watched. Don’t count me in for credit, thanks.”
Jiang Tea Tea’s classmate wanted to give the credit away?
No.
She was the soul of the interrogation.
The interrogator immediately snapped into a crisp salute. “Reporting, Commander-in-Chief. The main credit for this interrogation belongs to Jiang Tea Tea, Classmate.”
“If she hadn’t destroyed Chong Xing Qi’s psychological defenses, we wouldn’t have gotten this so easily. Under three hours, we extracted everything. We do not claim merit. Please judge clearly, Commander-in-Chief!”
Chong Ming rested one hand on the eighty pages, eyes sweeping them both.
“I monitored the interrogation process from start to finish. Stop pushing credit around. When the case is closed, merit will be rewarded accordingly.”
“Yes, Commander-in-Chief!”
Chong Ming gave a slight nod. “Go. Jiang Tea Tea, stay.”
The interrogator saluted again, stepped back three paces, and left with his spine straight as a rod.
The moment the door shut, Chong Ming pulled out a storage button and tossed it toward Jiang Tea Tea over the desk.
“The thirteen medicinal materials you wanted.”
Jiang Tea Tea caught it. “Chong Ming, I’m suddenly realizing something. Being your subordinate is miserable. Twenty-four hours a day on a treadmill. Can’t even get food to your mouth.”
She was starving. Truly starving.
Did he not know she had cubs?
Or did he really think she was nothing but a beast of burden?
How did a dragon with eyes only for work end up adored by so many?
Chong Ming had undone two shirt buttons. His throat and Adam’s apple were exposed, the line of his neck clear.
“I think you need dragon blood,” he said calmly, “not food.”
Jiang Tea Tea stared at his throat. His pulse. The faint lines of his veins. She swallowed without meaning to.
“No. I’m hungry. I want food. Not dragon blood.”
The corner of Chong Ming’s mouth lifted, almost imperceptible. “Actually… when a mother is carrying cubs, drinking more dragon blood helps. The cubs take what they need. The rest strengthens the mother.”
“You awakened many abilities. High rank. Sometimes abilities clash. Dragon blood will help your body.”
He’d confessed to her. Chased her. And for days he hadn’t seen her, held her, touched her. He was so busy his feet barely touched the ground, and she was busy too.
When he finally had her in front of him, his desire was stretched tight—controlled only by sheer will.
Jiang Tea Tea reached behind herself, pulled out a cup, and planted it on his desk, rolling it toward him.
“Come on. Bleed.”
Chong Ming stopped the cup with one hand, looking at her with helpless fondness. “Using a cup wastes water, requires washing, and the blood won’t be as fresh. Nutrients will be lost. So—”
Jiang Tea Tea cut in, finishing his deliberately paused sentence. “So I hug you and chew on you?”
Chong Ming laughed softly. “Yes. Hold me and bite. Fresh. No nutrition loss. No water waste.”
He leaned forward just enough, voice low and dangerous.
“Come here. Drink as much as you want. I’ll feed you until you’re full.”