The air was filled with a bitter smell, mixed with a hint of blood.

Li Chonghe was panting heavily. He knew something must have gone wrong... How could elytra, which were only found on the Zerg, have sprouted from his back?

He wanted to cut off the elytra on his back and also wanted to dig open his glands, but both caused him intense pain.

He was even worried that others would find out...

However, at that moment, he still smelled a faint scent of pheromones.

It smells like woody forest pheromones.

He knew it was pheromones; his instincts told him that this was the smell of Alpha pheromones… and he only knew that one person's pheromones were like this.

In that instant, an almost absurd and laughable emotion arose in Li Chonghe's heart. He had thought of many possibilities and many occasions when he would smell Cen Yu's pheromones, but he had never imagined that it would be in such a disheveled situation.

The elytra on his back disobeyed his commands and even spread out arrogantly... The pain, as if it were growing into his flesh, made him unsure whether he should look up.

He prayed that Cen Yu hadn't recognized him, but that was impossible.

So in the end, he turned his head to look in the direction of the pheromones... and saw Cen Yu standing there, looking at him.

Because of the backlighting, he couldn't see the expression on Cen Yu's face.

Li Chonghe reached out and tidied his aching, sweaty hair... He tried his best to make himself look neater, just like when he met Cen Yu in the dormitory supervisor's office.

Unfortunately, his clothes had been torn to shreds by the elytra that burst out of his body, and his body was covered in blood. There were also bits of flesh stuck to his elytra when he burst out of his body... He was in a sorry state.

Li Chonghe saw himself reflected in the jar next to him.

He was like a toy thrown in the trash can, and the elytra on his back, covered in bits of flesh, told everyone one thing: he was no longer human.

"...Haha." Li Chonghe finally lowered his head and laughed. "If possible, it's best not to tell anyone else."

Although he didn't know what he had become, he knew he was probably no longer human.

No human has ever grown insectoid elytra on their back; such a thing has never happened in the history of the Empire…

Cen Yu slowly walked over, squatted down, and looked at Li Chonghe sitting on the ground. "What happened to you? What did you eat?"

Li Chonghe's face turned deathly pale. He looked up at Cen Yu and asked, "Aren't you going to make a move?"

Cen Yu took out an energy supplement and handed it to Li Chonghe.

Li Chonghe carefully examined Cen Yu's expression... Cen Yu at this moment looked just like the first time he saw him in the photo, indifferent and looking down on everyone. Thinking of Cen Shen, Li Chonghe felt a surge of anger and doubt in his heart.

He took the supplies Cen Yu handed him, and after drinking them, he felt the pain in his wound lessen slightly.

"What are you and Cen Shen up to?" Cen Yu asked directly, getting straight to the point.

He looked at the elytra on Li Chonghe's back and could tell that they belonged to the Zerg... He then said that the secondary differentiation was a hoax.

"Was that thing you did to the First Prince?"

Cen Yu rolled her eyes as she watched Li Chonghe look up in surprise. "You think I don't know?"

He stood up. "So you and Cen Shenzhen are researching something called secondary differentiation that changes gender?"

Cen Yu looked around at the jars...

He felt that Cen Shen shouldn't have such ability, or rather, there was no reason for Cen Shen to plot against Li Chonghe in this way. The only possibility was that he didn't know that this thing would produce such terrible consequences.

During the research, he did not expect the side effects of this product to be like this.

"Do you know this person?" Cen Yu took out the photo he had found in the office on the third floor from his pocket.

Li Chonghe leaned on a nearby jar and stood up with some difficulty.

The elytra on his back were relatively well-behaved; although they were still exposed, at least they stayed obediently on his back... He slowly approached Cen Yu and looked at the photo in the other's hand.

Even from just a side profile, Li Chonghe recognized who this person was.

"...He is your brother's mentor."

"As expected," Cen Yu muttered.

It seems that it was indeed a secret experiment on the planet Nott. After being interrupted by the sudden arrival of the Zerg, he returned to Star City and is conducting his research in another way.

"Can you do me a favor?" Li Chonghe suddenly asked.

"What?"

“Cut it off for me,” he said calmly to Cen Yu.

Cen Yu looked at the elytra on Li Chonghe's back and asked, "Are you sure?"

Li Chonghe nodded.

Without hesitation, Cen Yu took out his knife, grabbed one end of Li Chonghe's elytra, and swiftly severed the pair of elytra.

The intense pain, as if his limbs had been severed, almost made Li Chonghe faint.

Cen Yu tossed the elytra aside, then took out some hemostatic medicine and applied it to Li Chonghe's back. After that, he took out a bandage from his small backpack and wrapped it around the wound on Li Chonghe's back.

While Cen Yu was making his movements, Li Chonghe kept touching the glands on the back of his neck.

“I don’t think Cen Shen knows either,” Li Chonghe suddenly said.

"His mentor must have deceived him."

After Cen Yu finished bandaging the wound, he took a few steps back. "Well, he's not that stupid."

Li Chonghe also pulled out his dagger, along with bandages and hemostatic agents.

"what you do?"

Li Chonghe turned to look at Cen Yu, "Some cleanup work."

As soon as he finished speaking, he reached behind him and touched his gland. Under Cen Yu's gaze, he used a dagger to cut open the gland behind his neck, thus digging out the thing that controls Alpha and Omega pheromones.

For a moment, the space was filled with a strong stench of blood.

Even after immediately applying hemostatic agent and bandaging, blood continued to seep down Li Chonghe's neck, forcing him to wrap it with several more layers of bandages to slightly alleviate the bleeding.

"Is it worth it?" Cen Yu suddenly asked.

Even though he had only recently come into this world, he understood how painful it was for them to have their glands removed.

Especially the area behind Li Chonghe's neck, which is probably the newly formed Alpha gland.

He knew perfectly well why the other party wanted to become an Alpha. Because the Empire had no tradition of allowing Betas to inherit, Li Chonghe was willing to take the risk and wanted to become an Alpha as well.

But his dream shattered the moment his elytra grew.

This gland has become a destabilizing factor; no one knows whether it will promote the emergence of elytra again, or whether it will turn Li Chonghe into a true insectoid.

"...It should be worth it," Li Chonghe said softly after bandaging his wound.

The moment the gland was removed, the scent of woody pheromones he had smelled disappeared once again.

He clutched his neck and looked back at Cen Yu, "Some things, you just have to try them."