SLAP!
The moment the cold, slick scales slapped across her face, Su An'an's eyes flew open, coming face-to-face with a dazzling set of firm abs.
An eight-pack, streaked with blood, rose and fell with each breath beneath black chains. It was even more explosive than the male model wallpaper she stared at while pulling all-nighters for her pharmacology thesis.
Below the abs was a massive, silver-blue fishtail.
And she was straddling the man's fishtail, a silver stun baton crackling in her hand.
"Not satisfied with the whipping?" The mermaid's voice was like tempered ice. "Want to play with the stun baton now?"
She stiffly raised her head and looked into a pair of icy, blue-green eyes.
A black iron collar was fastened tightly around his neck, and his firm, fair chest was covered in red welts.
Exquisite, alluring, with a tantalizingly forbidden quality.
As unfamiliar memories flooded her mind, Su An'an froze.
'Help me!'
'Didn't I just doze off for five minutes during the "Excellence in Pharmacology" award ceremony?'
'How did I end up transmigrating into the R-rated Beast World novel my best friend recommended, becoming the cruel and vicious female villain who abuses her Beast Husbands?'
The original owner of this body was an Empire Princess, but she was also a good-for-nothing with F Level spiritual power.
To cover up her weakness, she had forcibly taken the Empire's five strongest and most beautiful Beastmen as her Beast Husbands.
But because her spiritual power Level was too low to trigger her Beast Husbands' heat, she was still a virgin—the laughingstock of the entire Empire.
To prove her "female prowess," she had secretly bought the Empire's contraband drug—a Heatwave Inducer—from the black market.
The man before her, forced into his true form by the drug and chained up in a medicinal pool to be tortured, was none other than one of the Five Great Beast Husbands: Empire Marshal Lan Cangming.
"Why are you trembling?"
Lan Cangming pressed a hand with sharp, webbed claws against the small of her back and said coldly,
"An F Level physique can't withstand a mermaid's heat at all. Are you that desperate to die?"
The heat radiating from his powerful waist and abdomen startled Su An'an, and her right hand slipped.
The stun baton fell into the medical pod with a CLANG.
'This is going to kill me!'
'This waist, voted "The One We Most Want to Marry" in Interstellar headlines, felt firm enough to crack a walnut.'
'Her small frame was no match for it.'
"Let me argue my case—no, let me explain."
"I was originally going to get you a nutrient solution, but I grabbed the wrong potion by mistake."
"It's all a misunderstanding. I'll unchain you right now."
Su An'an scrambled to unlock the chains, her fingertips brushing against a wound on Lan Cangming's abdomen.
His pupils contracted. With a sudden movement, his tail fin wrapped around her calf and yanked her down.
Su An'an fell against his bleeding chest, her lips grazing a scabbed-over lash mark.
"Last week, you 'mistakenly' grabbed a quantum blade and sliced off my ear fin,"
he sneered, panting. "This time, you 'mistakenly' grabbed a potion to induce my heat. And now you're resorting to playing dumb?"
"Sir, I was wrong!"
The icy chill of his body made Su An'an flinch, and she begged for mercy pitifully.
Lan Cangming frowned.
Su An'an had always been arrogant and tyrannical, more vicious than a deep-sea black-ringed serpent.
But now, she was as soft as a little rabbit, as if he could do whatever he wanted to her.
His Adam's apple bobbed, and the heat intensified.
Su An'an felt the unusual undulation of the scales beneath her.
Terrified, she sprang away, falling directly into the water and shouting for help.
'Playing hard to get. This trick again!'
A flash of disgust crossed Lan Cangming's eyes as he coldly watched her flail and sink.
A piercing alarm blared:
[Princess's Life Value is dropping.]
[Beast Husband present, please initiate rescue immediately.]
The huge, silver-blue fishtail flicked, and Su An'an landed back on his chest, sputtering and coughing wretchedly, her pale little face a picture of misery.
"What kind of game are you playing?"
Lan Cangming irritably grabbed her slender waist.
Su An'an's nose was slightly red, and tears streamed down her face as she coughed too hard to speak.
'Single for all twenty-five years of her life, she'd never even held a man's hand. What kind of game could she possibly play?'
Lan Cangming's green eyes were cold, but his snow-white skin was flushed, having reached the peak of his heat.
"Don't."
Su An'an shook her head desperately, her pale, pretty face filled with alarm, as if he were the one forcing her.
Lan Cangming found it laughable.
'She was the one who drugged him, and she was the one resisting. She really was treating a Beastman like a fool.'
'He had to teach her a lesson.'
Lan Cangming's large hands pinned her down as he opened his mouth and lunged for her neck.
The rich, icy scent of sea salt washed over her.
Su An'an squeezed her eyes shut in terror, but the alarm suddenly sounded again:
[Mutant Beasts have breached Canglan Sea Area's third defense line! Marshal, deploy immediately!]
Lan Cangming froze.
Su An'an seized the opportunity to push his handsome face away.
"The military order is urgent! Don't let me keep you!"
Lan Cangming took a deep breath, suppressed the surging heat in his body, and released her. "Where's the antidote?" he asked coldly.
"What antidote?"
Su An'an was a little bewildered.
'Playing dumb again!'
Lan Cangming lowered his gaze and forcefully activated the pink Smart Brain on her wrist. "Where is the heat antidote?"
The Smart Brain was very honest: [In the Princess's pants pocket.]
A shiver ran down Su An'an's spine.
Lan Cangming's cold fingers slid past her sensitive waist and down her leg, pulling a black pill from a pocket on her inner thigh.
It was a heat blocker. Mild side effects included internal organ damage and a drop in one's Level.
Severe side effects included one's spiritual power going berserk, turning them into a mindless beast.
"Don't take it!"
Su An'an frantically grabbed Lan Cangming's arm. "You'll be injured!"
"Such hypocrisy!"
Lan Cangming gave a scornful laugh and swallowed the pill without hesitation. His skin instantly turned a deathly, plaster-like white.
He wiped the blue blood trickling from the corner of his mouth and turned to leave.
...
In a spacious and lavish walk-in closet, shelves were filled with jewelry and princess dresses of all colors.
Su An'an dejectedly stripped off her wet clothes, stepped into the shower, and turned on the hot water.
The beads of Lan Cangming's icy-blue blood on her skin gradually dissolved, releasing the crisp scent of sea salt, tinged with a primal, vibrant energy.
Amidst this salty fragrance, a faint scent of bitter almonds suddenly emerged.
She had smelled this scent millions of times in the lab; she would never mistake it.
"Mandala Alkaloid?"
'It's over!'
Su An'an's pupils trembled violently.
What the original owner had gotten from the black market wasn't a Heatwave Inducer at all, but Mandala Alkaloid, a substance that drove Beastmen berserk.
In another three hours, the Mermaid Marshal would transform into Godzilla and raze the city, and from then on, he would hate her to the bone.
Eventually, he would team up with the other four Beast Husbands to dismember her, even gouging out her eyes to keep as trophies.
Su An'an's skin crawled. She haphazardly dried herself off, threw on a pink lace princess dress, and scrambled towards the laboratory.
While rummaging through the medicine cabinet, Su An'an ordered her Smart Brain, "Help me find the Fur Fruit Yuxiang Tree Leaves."
The Smart Brain Ring emitted a pink light, locking onto the top-left drawer.
She pulled it open and saw it was full of brownish-green dried leaves. A translucent view revealed tiny glandular dots and oil chambers.
The glandular dots were structures on the leaves that could secrete special substances, while the oil chambers were cavities for storing specific oils.
'This is it!'
As a pharmacology expert who had once improved countless formulas, she managed to extract a vial of pale green liquid in just nine minutes.
It had a fresh, pleasant scent that was utterly refreshing—the exact antagonist for Mandala Alkaloid.
Next, she just needed to inject this into Lan Cangming's bloodstream to stop his berserk transformation.
Su An'an placed the syringe into a refrigerated medical case, but when she ran to the door, she froze.
'As a weak female who didn't even have a driver's license, how was she supposed to get to the battlefield to find Lan Cangming?'