The Unhinged O Has Designs On Me - Chapter 10

This incident today had thoroughly offended Shen Jingmian.

As Yue Xing walked back to school, she distractedly reviewed the conversation she had just had with Shen Jingmian.

Before she left, Shen Jingmian’s gaze had been like piercing ice, stabbing straight into her heart.

Yue Xing guessed that after this, Shen Jingmian would settle both old and new accounts with her together.

But she did not regret it.

She could not figure Shen Jingmian out. Staying by Shen Jingmian’s side would not only fail to give her a chance to kill her, it would also cost Yue Xing her life for nothing.

Fortunately, aside from offending Shen Jingmian today, Yue Xing had also achieved her goal.

Shen Jingmian had indeed been weakened recently because of her pheromone disorder.

When Yue Xing had drawn close to Shen Jingmian, Shen Jingmian’s heartbeat had been slightly faster than the last time they met, and her breathing had also tightened a little.

Rapid breathing was a reaction caused by exerting strength while injured. When Yue Xing had tried to pull her hand away, the breathing by her ear had grown even heavier.

Not only that, Yue Xing had also smelled blood on Shen Jingmian.

It was very faint, but there had been the smell of alcohol from treating a wound.

Aside from that, Shen Jingmian’s gland was also evidence.

Although, as a beta, she could not smell Shen Jingmian’s pheromones, the way Shen Jingmian’s neck trembled even more violently when she was angry had given her the answer.

The gland was an organ that reflected its owner’s emotions.

As an S-rank omega, Shen Jingmian could not possibly be unable to control even her gland with precision.

The only explanation was that Shen Jingmian’s control had weakened because of her pheromone disorder.

Only, the biggest problem now was—

Even if she had confirmed Shen Jingmian’s pheromone disorder period, she still could not kill Shen Jingmian.

She was not Shen Jingmian’s match.

When Yue Xing thought of that earlier probing attempt, her head started aching uncontrollably.

At the time, Shen Jingmian had suddenly grabbed her wrist, and Yue Xing had tried to pull away. Although she had held back with the intention of testing her and had not used her full strength, Shen Jingmian’s strength had not been fake.

When Shen Jingmian grabbed her, she could not leave.

If she wanted to make a move during Shen Jingmian’s pheromone disorder period, it would be absolutely impossible with her current strength alone.

Should she increase her strength as quickly as possible…

A place flashed through Yue Xing’s mind.

A moment later, Yue Xing shook her head and denied the idea.

Chixing’s school rules strictly forbade students from entering gray zones.

If someone with ulterior motives caught her and reported it, Yue Xing would at the very least receive a major demerit.

She would have to think of another way. Yue Xing shoved her hands into her pockets and continued walking forward.

From time to time, excited crowds rushed past her, their voices high with emotion.

“The White Fox I bet on today really came through! A month’s salary, just like that!”

“I’m telling you, everyone thought a beta like her couldn’t beat that tall, hulking alpha on the other side. Who would’ve thought—hah! She won! Anyone who bet on her made a killing with those odds!”

The lingering voices were like smoke, curling by Yue Xing’s ears for a long time.

A gust of wind rushed into Yue Xing’s coat, filling her arms. Once, cheers of congratulations and angry accusations had both surged into her memories at the same time. If there were wins, naturally, there would also be losses.

In a lopsided duel between beta and alpha, White Fox had won.

Unfortunately, the fight where she had staked everything had not been worth mentioning in the eyes of those spectators. All those people cared about was the enormous value her victory could bring.

Betting on a treasure. Hah. Betting on a treasure.

Yue Xing lowered her eyes, her expression faint.

She understood, but she hated Shen Jingmian’s arrogance.

Shen Jingmian treated her as a wolf that could be tamed, a stubborn stone that could be polished, a toy she could freely toy with.

Shen Jingmian only wanted the right to use her.

After the weekend passed, Monday came again, and it was once more Shen Jingmian’s class.

Yue Xing went on the academy’s StarNet and glanced around a few times. Shen Jingmian’s followers had already listed out her itinerary for the entire day.

A few posts even showed off photos of Shen Jingmian, taken from the side or half behind her. One look was enough to tell they had been shot secretly.

That did make it convenient for Yue Xing to observe her.

There was nothing on Shen Jingmian’s neck today.

It seemed the duration of her pheromone disorder was one week.

Yue Xing pondered this, casually gripping her pen as she scribbled aimlessly across the tabletop.

Seeing that Yue Xing had been quiet for a long time, Ming Le scooted over curiously. “Why are you so quiet today?”

Yue Xing was just about to answer when the classroom abruptly fell silent. Following her instincts, she lifted her head. Sure enough, Shen Jingmian had walked in.

Not one second early or late. Just as Shen Jingmian stood at the podium, the class bell rang with perfect precision.

Accompanying it was Shen Jingmian’s faint voice.

“For the first class, I need a basic understanding of everyone’s combat ability.”

“In a moment, all of you will enter the virtual classroom through your mental power. I’ve already prepared a battle scenario for everyone.”

Everything was perfectly normal. Only Yue Xing’s heartbeat missed a beat.

She raised her hand, indicating to Shen Jingmian.

“Teacher Shen, what should I do if I don’t have mental power?”

Low snickers sounded around her, and familiar mockery slipped out smoothly.

“How pitiful. A student who can’t even attend class. I really don’t know what meaning there is in keeping her here.”

“A beta with no mental power. If she goes to the battlefield, she’ll probably just be going there to die.”

The elimination match a month later had equally turned everyone in the class into enemies. And Yue Xing had been listed by almost everyone as one of the people certain to be eliminated.

They were glad there was a beta in the class, taking up one elimination slot for them.

Without prior agreement, they all regarded her as weak, and naturally mocked her.

Yue Xing did not care, but someone cared on her behalf.

Smack!

Ming Le slammed her palm onto the desk. The pressure of an A-rank alpha pressed coldly toward the group who had just been gossiping.

Her usually bright face was now so cold it made people shiver.

“If you don’t know how to speak, I can teach you.”

Everyone fell silent. No one dared say another word.

Shen Jingmian watched this farce unfold, tacitly allowing everything to happen as she coldly stared at them all.

Yue Xing felt warm because of Ming Le’s defense. Her palm silently patted the back of Ming Le’s hand, stroking it lightly, her eyes telling her, It’s all right.

Ming Le’s expression was still cold, and only after Yue Xing squeezed her hand a few times did it ease.

Yue Xing smiled faintly at her in sincere gratitude.

Their gazes tangled together. Shen Jingmian swept a look over them, did not obstruct this intimacy, and merely used her eyes to repeatedly memorize the scene.

After a while, only once the classroom had completely returned to cold silence did Shen Jingmian order in a slightly hoarse voice,

“Yue Xing, come with me. Everyone else, enter the virtual classroom.”

Ming Le looked at Yue Xing worriedly. “Why don’t I go with you?” She had fought Shen Jingmian before and been beaten until her whole body ached.

If the two of them went together, they could at least support each other and serve as each other’s crutches.

Yue Xing stood up. Shen Jingmian’s urging gaze had already been handed over.

She waved a hand, not wanting to drag Ming Le into this.

“It’s fine. I can go alone.”

If she were meeting Shen Jingmian in private, Yue Xing would still be worried. But this was during class. Shen Jingmian could not do much to her.

Ming Le still wanted to say something, but before Yue Xing’s back could chill completely, she waved at her first, then turned and ran toward Shen Jingmian.

The short ponytail at the back of her head swayed. Ming Le’s gaze passed over Yue Xing and met the coldness in Shen Jingmian’s eyes, a bone-deep chill.

When Yue Xing ran to her side, Shen Jingmian glanced at her faintly, then silently turned around.

Yue Xing followed.

With just that one glance, Ming Le felt that the coldness around Shen Jingmian seemed to have melted a little.

Shen Jingmian was white everywhere, like a snow mountain standing there. Her coldness and arrogance made people instinctively fearful with one look, and yet she also had a pair of deep, obscure gray eyes, making her thoughts impossible to read.

Even though Ming Le had known her since childhood, she had always felt that she could not blend into the aura around Shen Jingmian.

But Yue Xing was different.

She followed behind Shen Jingmian. Although the difference in their statuses was worlds apart, their auras somehow blended strangely. Yue Xing had been taken by Shen Jingmian into her own territory.

Was this Shen Jingmian’s tacit permission?

Ming Le could not say. She only looked at their departing backs, her brows tightening.

“Did you reject me because of Ming Le?”

Shen Jingmian’s question came abruptly. Yue Xing looked over, always feeling as though Shen Jingmian had hidden this sentence for a long time.

All along the way, she had felt Shen Jingmian’s expression was taut, as if she were deliberately suppressing some emotion.

But now that Yue Xing looked closely, Shen Jingmian’s expression seemed normal. When Yue Xing stared at her, she only glanced back faintly.

Shen Jingmian had seen Ming Le defending her earlier. Yue Xing put down her doubts and denied it.

“No.”

Two words alone seemed a bit too cold, so Yue Xing added, “Ming Le is a good person. Because we’re friends, she takes better care of me.”

Shen Jingmian gave a scoff. That laugh vanished quickly between her lips and teeth. Yue Xing glanced at her and only treated it as if she had heard wrong.

Why did she feel that Shen Jingmian’s mocking laugh was directed at Ming Le?

Shen Jingmian led her for a long time. The two crossed an entire teaching building, winding around before finally arriving at a deserted top floor.

It was too quiet. Yue Xing felt somewhat uncomfortable with the atmosphere here.

She could not help looking at Shen Jingmian. Surely she was not planning to make a move against her now.

When Shen Jingmian brought her into the room, Yue Xing looked at the familiar furnishings inside, and her pupils shrank.

“You still remember, don’t you?” Shen Jingmian stood by the wall, stretching out a fingertip. Yue Xing did not know what she tapped.

Sensing something, Yue Xing turned back.

Under her gaze, the door closed without accepting refusal, shutting her and Shen Jingmian inside together.

At the same time, the room’s lights flared brightly. Every inch of the room’s layout was identical to the scene in Yue Xing’s memories.

The sofa, tea table, and desk had been restored one-to-one. Even the walls completely imitated the starship’s iron-gray color, bright and reflective.

Shen Jingmian had come prepared.

“Looks like you do remember.” Shen Jingmian clapped lightly.

She was pleased. Yue Xing keenly sensed Shen Jingmian’s mood, and the fist hidden behind her back quietly clenched.

Shen Jingmian had clearly noticed her tension. Her brows and eyes lifted slightly.

“Are you nervous? Or—”

Shen Jingmian’s lips and teeth parted lightly, her words cool. “Are you afraid I’ll kill you?”

Yue Xing asked back, “Will you?”

She truly did not understand why Shen Jingmian had specifically built this room, but she did not believe Shen Jingmian would be stupid enough to kill her during her own class.

Shen Jingmian lowered her eyes and said to herself, “That’s right. Will I kill you?”

Was she willing? Could she bear to? Could she bring herself to do it?

She asked herself over and over again. Each time she asked one more time, her voice grew colder and colder.

The aura around her unconsciously changed. The suppressed coldness turned into heavy killing intent.

Yue Xing noticed it immediately. Her jaw tightened as she stared straight at Shen Jingmian.

She was somewhat regretful. That question just now had been a wrong move.

Not only had she failed to draw out Shen Jingmian’s words, she had instead thoroughly provoked her anger.

Shen Jingmian narrowed her eyes, her tone unfriendly.

“Yue Xing, you really do take me for a good senior, don’t you?”

From the moment they had met until now, every single thing Yue Xing had done had challenged her bottom line.

She had been courting death all along.

“Or should I say, do you take yourself for a gentle and obedient junior?”

Shen Jingmian said this, but her whole face and posture made it clear she did not believe it. Her fingertips flicked her cuff, her words darkening, and her pupils followed, filling with gloom.

“If you do something wrong, you ought to pay the price.”

Yue Xing felt her anger.

At a time like this, Yue Xing should have been fully focused, but the sudden camellia fragrance in the air forcibly hooked away one distracted moment from her.

Yue Xing blinked and came back to herself, but it was too late.

Spacing out in front of Shen Jingmian was a malicious provocation. Even if it had only been for a split second, it could not escape Shen Jingmian’s eyes.

“Yue Xing.”

That dark, gloomy voice pressed against her ear one syllable at a time. At some point, Shen Jingmian had already appeared in front of Yue Xing.

Sparks of anger lit those gray eyes. She was too close, close enough that Yue Xing could count her long lashes clearly.

Yue Xing’s pupils shrank, and she could not help stepping back. This step fell into Shen Jingmian’s eyes as something reasonable, yet something that should not have happened.

“You’re very good.”

“Very good.”

Two “very goods” in a row. Shen Jingmian was furious.

Her fair hand seized Yue Xing’s neck without giving her any chance to object. Shen Jingmian’s angry eyes were so dark they almost turned black.

Yue Xing’s breathing tightened. It had happened in only an instant.

Strangely, the emotion surging in those eyes at this moment made Yue Xing understand Shen Jingmian’s anger even more clearly than the hand currently endangering her neck.

Yue Xing was drawn into looking into her eyes.

That reckless anger did not seem entirely born from being provoked. There was also… disappointment.

“What were you thinking about? Were you thinking again about who would come save you?”

Shen Jingmian’s fingertips tightened. Seeing Yue Xing’s brows furrow faintly as if in resistance, her own throat tightened, and she used even more force.

She stared fixedly at Yue Xing and could not help mocking her. “Is it Du Nian, or Ming Le? Which of the friends you chose will come save you?”

As she spoke, Shen Jingmian’s chest rose and fell more heavily. Her fingertips curled inward, and the killing intent around her deepened.

Yue Xing’s throat instinctively shrank. Smelling Shen Jingmian’s cold killing intent, she decisively reached out.

“Shen Jingmian!” Yue Xing exerted force, trying to save her neck. “Calm down.”

Realizing that Yue Xing was opposing her, the coldness in Shen Jingmian’s eyes deepened. Her hand no longer held back and completely grasped Yue Xing’s neck.

Breathing, survival—everything depended on her single thought.

“I was thinking about you!”

The words were too blunt. Even Shen Jingmian froze for an instant.

Yue Xing seized the opportunity and finished everything in one breath.

“I smelled the camellia fragrance just now. It was exactly the same as the scent in your home last time. I was smelling it. I was thinking about you.”

“I wasn’t thinking about anyone else.”

The last sentence was added by Yue Xing after peeking at Shen Jingmian’s expression.

There was no clear reason. It was probably her sixth sense at work again.

The neck that slowly loosened told her that her intuition was very accurate. Shen Jingmian had let her go.

Yue Xing thought Shen Jingmian really was domineering.

But thinking more carefully, Yue Xing also felt that Shen Jingmian’s actions were only natural.

Even if it were her, if she discovered Shen Jingmian spacing out at a time like this, she would also feel that Shen Jingmian was looking down on her.

Let alone Shen Jingmian. Most likely, no one had ever dared space out when she was angry.

The more Yue Xing thought about it, the more absurdly bold she felt she had been just now.

“Camellia.” Shen Jingmian lowered her eyes.

From Yue Xing’s angle, it looked a little like the corner of Shen Jingmian’s eye had lifted.

Was Shen Jingmian smiling?

From the slight lift of her brows and eyes, Yue Xing felt an ominous premonition arise bit by bit.

Shen Jingmian had a cold temperament and a poisonous tongue. Based on Yue Xing’s shallow understanding of her, nothing good ever came from this person smiling.

Under Yue Xing’s watchful, wary gaze, Shen Jingmian tapped her arm and suddenly asked a question completely unrelated to the current situation.

“Yue Xing, do you know what my pheromones smell like?”

“I’m a beta.” Yue Xing did not understand. “I can’t smell pheromones.”

For every AO, the scent of pheromones was the most private thing. Their emotional fluctuations, their unique and hidden scent, were things that had always only been exposed to the most intimate people.

Even though the academy’s StarNet had countless pieces of information about Shen Jingmian, the column for pheromones was always blank.

Of course Yue Xing would not know. Nor should she know.

And yet, the way Shen Jingmian looked at her now carried a pitying smile that absolutely should not exist in this situation.

The pity was for her. Shen Jingmian was pitying her. Shen Jingmian knew everything and was delighted to watch her stupid, oblivious state play out.

Yue Xing did not understand, but her thoughts, which had never stopped running, had already pointed her one step ahead toward a faintly predicted answer.

A beta could not smell pheromones… but Shen Jingmian had asked her about the scent of her pheromones…

Seeing Yue Xing’s face gradually tighten, the smile in Shen Jingmian’s brows and eyes deepened.

She was extremely pleased by Yue Xing’s current appearance: having guessed it but not daring to think deeper, afraid she would touch something.

“Aren’t you going to ask me?”

As a reward for amusing her, Shen Jingmian gave her a choice.

Lower your head to her, then seek a definite answer, and finally receive the one and only antidote.

However pleased Shen Jingmian was at this moment, Yue Xing felt just as terrible.

Yue Xing did not like running away, but the matter Shen Jingmian had placed before her now was enough to overturn every plan she had made so far.

The price was too high.

Why did it have to be Shen Jingmian?

Yue Xing only felt that the heavens were playing with her, filling her with indescribable resentment.

Why, after letting her know the fate that she would die, did they now insist on making Shen Jingmian the first person to dig out her weakness?

Shen Jingmian stood a few steps away from her, and Yue Xing could see the specks of amusement in her eyes.

Seeing Yue Xing’s ugly expression, Shen Jingmian finally dispelled the stagnation that had clogged her heart because of Yue Xing for so long.

“Aren’t you going to ask me?” Shen Jingmian asked again, carrying an infuriating smile.

Yue Xing said nothing, not even lifting her eyes. The answer was already laid out in the open.

Only alphas or omegas could smell pheromones. To her, either one was terrible.

Shen Jingmian would only appreciate her misery.

“Yue Xing, I like your expression right now.”

A cool hand cupped Yue Xing’s cheek. The breath from Shen Jingmian’s lips drifted along her brows, lashes, and skin. Yue Xing once again clearly smelled that cold, moist tea fragrance, seeping into her nose.

Shen Jingmian’s fingertips tapped downward as if playing with a prized object. Yue Xing could feel her gaze.

It wandered faintly over her lips, with an overwhelming sense of presence, as if savoring her.

Yue Xing turned her face away, expressing her subtle dislike through the movement. Only, she had underestimated how malicious Shen Jingmian’s tastes could be.

Shen Jingmian pinched her chin and lifted it without allowing refusal.

“But I don’t like mutes.”

All her words had to be answered.

She had already been excessively generous in indulging Yue Xing, so much so that even she felt she had spoiled her too much.

But whenever she thought that this was Yue Xing, Shen Jingmian was always willing to say one more thing to her.

“Ask me.”

Shen Jingmian was utterly arrogant.

Clearly, she was the one who had something to say to Yue Xing, yet the birth of this answer had to come from Yue Xing asking her, and from Shen Jingmian bestowing the answer.

Yue Xing did not want to cooperate, but the current situation did not allow her to say no.

“I never had a rut before. I should be a beta.”

So Yue Xing did not understand. “Why can I smell your pheromones?”

Yes. She could only smell Shen Jingmian’s.

Yue Xing’s breathing tightened, and she was stunned in place by this discovery.

She spent every day and night with Ming Le. She had once been so close to Du Nian while spraying her suppressant for her, but she had never smelled their pheromones.

“I’ve only ever smelled your pheromones…” Yue Xing murmured.

Shen Jingmian liked this sentence, and so she also granted Yue Xing an accurate answer.

“You’re an Alpha.”

Yue Xing’s breathing grew urgent as she watched Shen Jingmian’s brows and eyes lift faintly. With her words, Shen Jingmian pushed her into the abyss.

“An Alpha who can only smell my pheromones.”

Yue Xing could only smell her pheromones.

Shen Jingmian curved her lips, her voice lowering. That smile was cold and vicious, making Yue Xing’s heart go numb in waves.

“Yue Xing, what are you going to do now?”