Deviant: No Longer Human-Chapter 716: Meeting Lin Xue!

"W–Why did you kill him?"

As Wang Xiao calmly closed the door, he turned to find Zhang Sisi staring at him, eyes wide, horrified, mouth trembling.

Genuine terror.

And maybe a little betrayal.

He looked at her and sighed.

"He wasn’t your brother," Wang Xiao said casually. "His body was taken over by a hell spirit."

Zhang Sisi flinched.

No... That can’t be right.

But he continued, unfazed.

"I last met him on a battlefield in Europe. He said he wanted to assimilate, live like a human... sigh... Too bad. I told him back then—if I ever saw him again, I’d kill him."

He exhaled like he truly regretted it.

As if murder was an obligation, not a hobby.

Zhang Sisi stood frozen. Her body stiff.

What do you mean ’you didn’t want to kill him’... and then killed him?

Can he be a little less whimsical about murder?!

And it didn’t stop there.

Wang Xiao decided it was the perfect moment to scare her a bit more.

He casually mentioned plans to massacre her entire family.

She screamed—loud enough to wake the ancestors. He had to clamp a hand over her mouth before the neighbors called the police.

Then he kept going. Whispering more twisted things, teasing her with impossible scenarios, until her face went pale and—

She fainted.

Five minutes later, he woke her up.

And calmly informed her:

"Don’t worry. I still need Zhao Yang."

She blinked, disoriented.

What...?

But he wasn’t lying.

That hell spirit? The one he’d vaporized?

It was the last of its kind on Earth—and Wang Xiao needed it.

He hadn’t destroyed the spirit. Just reconstructed the old body and reinstalled the little bastard like software.

A few hellish minutes later, Zhao Yang stood there again—giant form reassembled, expression full of pure existential pain.

Like he wanted to scream:

’Why the hell was I killed SIX times?!’

Wang Xiao had calmly muttered:

"Mm... the hand alignment was off."

"Nope, foot’s a little crooked—try again."

Zhang Sisi stood there watching the man kill and revive her "brother" like it was a crafting mini-game.

’He’s not fixing the body... He’s just having fun killing him... again and again...’

She felt emotionally violated.

How can the world allow someone like this to exist?

As for Zhao Yang, she’d deal with that later.

Complicated feelings swirled inside her.

He’d lived with them for years... but she wasn’t really part of the Zhang family either. She’d been adopted.

’If I tell Uncle and Auntie the truth, they’ll be devastated.’

She looked away, exhaling slowly.

Forget it.

If that thing can pretend to be their son... so be it.

Ironically?

Ever since the hell spirit took over Zhao Yang’s body, the family had been doing better.

The old Zhao Yang was a violent, impulsive bully. Nearly arrested more than once.

But now? Peaceful. Diligent. Respectful.

The hell spirit was... actually an upgrade.

"Where are we going?"

Her voice was soft, half breath, half question, carried by the crisp winter air.

The two of them walked side by side through Shanghai’s Pudong district, their shadows stretching under the halo of streetlights. The hour was late. The world quieted into that liminal hush between traffic and sleep, where nothing moved but the occasional breeze or the purring of a distant engine.

Zhang Sisi, wrapped in a dark brown sweater, kept pace beside him. Her legs still trembled slightly. Every step reminded her of earlier.

My first time... and this lunatic wants to visit a prison immediately after?

Her gaze slid sideways at the man next to her, Wang Xiao, who, as usual, walked like he owned the ground beneath his feet.

She had expected pain. She’d been prepared for awkwardness, maybe even regret.

But instead, when she asked for relief, he barely looked at her before muttering:

"It’s not a spell, it’s recalibrated energy alignment. You wouldn’t understand."

And then, snap—just like that, the soreness vanished.

No effort, no magic ritual, just casual absurdity.

But what left her even more dazed wasn’t the magic, it was how disappointed he sounded.

"Letting them squirm and cry a little... it’s visual art," he said. "But fine. I’m feeling merciful today."

She had stared at him, blank.

What kind of psycho calls that "art"?

And why does that voice make it harder to be mad?

Now, she was walking beside him like a reluctant accomplice.

Still trying to wrap her head around how her life derailed from "I’m just an ordinary college student" to "I gave head to an immortal war criminal with a god complex who’s taking me to a prison."

They turned down a quieter street. Ahead stood the dull silhouette of a government building.

Shanghai Central Detention Facility.

"Wait," she said again. "Are we seriously going to jail?"

Wang Xiao nodded, not slowing his stride.

"Yup."

"...Why?"

"I need to meet someone."

"Who?"

"That’s classified."

She groaned, falling a step behind.

"You’re dragging me to a high-security prison and I don’t even get to know why? Do you know how illegal this is... For me?"

"Relax. You have clearance. I checked."

"That’s not the point!"

Wang Xiao finally turned to look at her, expression unreadable in the dark.

"You don’t trust me?"

"...No," she said honestly.

A beat of silence.

Then—

"Good," he said. "You shouldn’t."

Zhang Sisi stared at him, taken aback. His words held no malice. Just... conviction. He wasn’t being ironic.

Just brutally sincere.

"...Then why are you like this?" she asked, quieter now. "So detached. Like none of this matters to you."

Wang Xiao didn’t look at her.

"Because I’ve seen too much to pretend anything does."

"...That’s not an answer."

He exhaled, watching his breath rise in a pale mist.

"Power," he said slowly, "isn’t about helping people or hurting them. It’s about choice."

"Choice?"

He nodded.

"When you have real power, the world stops telling you what to do. You stop being a tool. A number. A pawn in someone else’s system."

He looked at her now, eyes deep, calm, and ancient.

"That freedom... is all power really is. Everything else? Just decoration."

Zhang Sisi felt a cold chill crawl down her spine.

"So... if you choose to hurt people, that’s fine? As long as it’s your choice?"

Wang Xiao smiled faintly.

"Better than hurting people because someone else told you to."

She didn’t have a response to that.

But inside, something tightened.

What kind of man thinks like this?

How much has he seen... to believe this way?

What happened in those seven years?

They walked on in silence. freёnovelkiss.com

One of them dragging their past behind them.

The other—dragging the future into place.

_____

Shanghai Central Detention Facility – Sector D, Cell 4-B

The air inside Shanghai Central Detention Facility was dry, recirculated, and filled with sterilized silence.

This was no ordinary jail.

Sector D, known internally as the Observation Wing, was reserved for high-risk detainees: former military assets, political prisoners, and people the state didn’t want the public remembering too much about.

Down the dimly lit corridor of reinforced glass and titanium bars, the cell lights were already dimmed for curfew.

Most inmates were already asleep or faking it.

But in Cell 4-B, one woman lay awake.

Middle-aged, sharp-featured. The kind of beauty that didn’t fade so much as sharpen into severity. Her hair, once long and jet black, was now tied into a low bun streaked with gray. Her skin bore a pale resilience, not from pampering, but from surviving.

She lived alone.

Not by request, but because the guards didn’t dare place anyone else in her cell.

She was dangerous, they said.

Or cursed.

Or maybe both.

No one ever visited.

She had no family. No lawyer. No one who remembered her.

And tonight, like most nights, she had already turned her back to the hallway, pulling the stiff blanket over her body, preparing for another night of silence and routine dreams—

Clang.

The cell block buzzed with a low mechanical hum.

Her ears twitched.

Not the routine patrol sound.

Something else.

Heavy boots echoed down the corridor.

Keys clinked.

Then came the voice—calm, almost disinterested:

"Lin Xue."

She didn’t move.

The voice came again, firmer.

"You have a visitor."

Now, she turned—slowly. Eyes narrowed.

"A what?"