Chapter 34: Born Bad.

Shao Lan got what she wanted, but it came at a cost—ditching her brother.

To everyone else, she was just some underage girl who hadn’t even hit her prime yet.

Who’d suspect a kid like that could be pulling strings behind the scenes?

No one would ever connect those twisted plots to her innocent little face. All they saw was a poor, unfortunate child. They didn’t see the predator underneath.

Sympathy? Yeah, they had plenty of that for her.

Her only real worry was the Boss Bai. The guy was sharp as hell, the coldest son of a bitch she’d ever met. Calculating. Ruthless. A master at keeping his mask in place.

And you know what?

He reminded her of herself. That’s what scared her. It’s always the monsters in the dark who can sniff out their own. One predator can always tell when another’s circling too close.

But luck, for once, seemed to be on her side. Boss Bai had been a wreck ever since her brother disappeared. He was wound up so tight he looked ready to snap at any moment, teetering on the edge of losing his mind. Seeing Shao Lan, who carried just a trace of her brother in her looks and mannerisms, only pushed him further into the storm. The man’s head was too clouded with grief and fury to think straight, much less sniff out her games.

And just like that, the weight on her chest lightened to nothing. No brother hovering over her. No one to scold her. Boss Bai was too preoccupied to care what she was up to. The leash was off, and Shao Lan finally had the room to unleash her full potential.

She’d always been the clever one. A prodigy, really. While other kids were fumbling their way through childhood, she was memorizing her brother’s heavy, technical books on mechanical programming. By the time she hit her teens, she didn’t just know them; she could recite them backward.

While her brother slogged through soul-sucking jobs to keep them afloat, she buried herself in the basement, experimenting on her secret little projects. When she told him she was running to the library to return books, she was really diving into anything she could get her hands on—biology, biomedical engineering, chemistry, military strategy, weapons design, tech innovation. Didn’t matter. If it had complexity, if it had depth, she’d devour it. Every cell structure, every chemical formula, every intricate blueprint—she soaked it all up and made it her own.

Shao Lan wasn’t just a natural. She was something more. Something darker.

One day, back when her older brother hadn’t undergone his secondary gender differentiation, something about him felt off. He came home looking distracted, like his mind was trapped somewhere else. His gaze kept flicking toward the window, sneaking peeks at the Omega neighbor next door.

That was the first time Shao Lan felt a deep, primal sense of threat gnawing at her. In this world, boys had a high chance of turning into Alphas, and now her brother’s interest in some random Omega?

Hell no. That was a dangerous sign if she ever saw one.

When she pressed him for answers, he admitted he was just curious—curious about how the male Omega next door had gotten pregnant. It hit her then, like a slap to the face: her idiot brother was clueless about the most basic facts of this world. But that wasn’t the worst part.

Curiosity? In Shao Lan’s book, that was a gateway drug, a slippery slope she couldn’t afford him sliding down. She didn’t want him paying attention to anyone else, didn’t want him drifting away, swept up by some nonsense about second genders or irrelevant outsiders.

So, she devised a plan—a cruel, unforgettable lesson.

First, she swiped a personal item from the Omega next door, something laced with his scent—a piece of clothing, intimate enough to drip with pheromones. Then, she tossed it where it would cause the most chaos: a dumpster near the part of town crawling with drifters, vagabonds, and the kind of low-life Alphas who’d never gotten within sniffing distance of an Omega in heat.

In these parts, Omegas were as rare as rain in a desert, and the scent on that discarded fabric?

It was gasoline on a bonfire. Those Alphas were starving wolves, and the pheromones hit them like blood in the water. They couldn’t control themselves. To them, that piece of clothing was an invitation—a promise, even.

Sure enough, the trail she left led those feral bastards right to the Omega’s home. They circled like vultures, but hesitated, wary of the fact that the Omega had an Alpha husband. For now, they held back, but Shao Lan had planned for this too.

Timing was everything. She showed up at the Omega’s door, crocodile tears in her eyes, playing the part of the helpless little sister. She begged the Alpha husband for help, spinning some story about her brother’s crystal ball breaking and needing a tiny replacement part. Her pitiful act worked like a charm; the Alpha couldn’t resist. He agreed to get the part, clueless that the only route to the store passed right through the vultures’ hunting grounds.

He strode through without a care in the world, but the moment he got close, he overheard the vile, filthy things those Alphas were saying about his Omega. Disgusting, degrading slurs, dripping with venom, and not a shred of decency.

The rage hit him like a tidal wave, swallowing reason and restraint. He charged at them, fists flying, his fury igniting a wildfire of violence. The Alphas fought back, emboldened by their numbers, but they didn’t stop there. Oh no, they twisted the knife. They dragged out the stolen piece of clothing, waving it in his face like a trophy, spitting out the vilest insults they could muster.

They called his Omega a filthy, desperate slut. Said he had no shame, no decency, that he was practically begging for it.

And just as Shao Lan had planned, the chaos unfolded exactly as she wanted.

They didn’t just humiliate him; they crossed the line, licking and sniffing her clothes right in front of him, pulling the filthiest, most degrading moves imaginable.

For any man, even if his wife remains untouched, this level of disrespect is beyond endurance.

He snapped. Lost it completely. Alone or not, he didn’t care. All he saw was the need to defend her honor. Like a furious lion, he lunged at the gang of thugs.

But fists against four opponents? Hopeless.

The bastards shot him in cold blood, leaving his rage and humiliation to seep out with the blood staining the ground. He died there—unmourned, unburied—a man consumed by his own fury and shame.

But that? That was just the prelude to Shao Lan’s master plan.

After the neighbor’s Alpha husband was killed, Shao Ye, her older brother, took it upon himself to help. He worked three jobs to keep the widow afloat until her baby was born.

And while he was breaking his back, Shao Lan? She was busy pulling strings.

She’d time her visits to perfection, ensuring her brother and the grieving Omega neighbor spent more and more time together, weaving threads of connection and dependency between them.

Slowly but surely, they grew close—too close. Like family. The Omega neighbor was so grateful he started caring for them like hie own, cooking, cleaning, mothering them.

When the timing was just right, Shao Lan made her move. She trashed every last one of the Omega’s suppressants. Then she sat back and waited for the inevitable.

When the heat hit, it was like a bomb went off. The Omega’s pheromones flooded the air, a signal so irresistible it dragged those drooling, scum-of-the-earth Alpha thugs back like moths to a flame.

The Omega never saw it coming. Not even at the end. He still believed in saving others, even Shao Lan. He locked her in the basement, used himself as bait to lead the wolves away.

She listened from the other side of the wall. The sound of fabric tearing. His screams. Their jeering, grunting satisfaction. She sat there, face blank, calm as still water, idly fiddling with a crystal ball.

Her only wish? That her brother would never, ever leave her.

Her plan was flawless. No loose ends, no evidence. Her brother saw everything—the gruesome aftermath. That horrific sight burned itself into his mind, a trauma that twisted his very core. From that moment on, he feared becoming an Omega himself and developed a deep, unshakable hatred for Alphas.

Exactly what Shao Lan wanted.

Now, years later, looking back on it all, there’s no regret in her eyes. Not even a flicker. Shao Lan is a weapon. Brutal, calculated, and merciless, whether it’s others’ lives or her own on the chopping block.

Bai Boss thinks he’s the one in control, using her as a stand-in for the brother he imagines he misses. He couldn’t be more wrong. Every single detail—the subtle hints of her brother’s mannerisms, her deliberate actions—it’s all by design.

She’s not just manipulating him; she’s reshaping him. Slowly, surely, planting the seeds of obsession.

And as for those clueless scientists and researchers, they’ll never understand why so many of their test subjects keep dying on those cursed gender transformation tables. They were doomed the moment they stepped into her game.

Only she made it. And not just made it—she smashed through the lab's original purpose, morphing into something else entirely. She became Enigma.

They’d die before realizing the truth: Shao Lan was born rotten to the core. A bad seed, straight out of the dirt.

Back when she was still in her secondary differentiation stage, she’d already cooked up the first-gen E serum. A wicked concoction with god-like potential. The kind that let her yank the strings of fate and crush those self-important Alphas beneath her heel, forcing them to crawl like obedient dogs, begging for scraps.

Decades down the line, the history books of the Alliance’s Eight Star Systems would call it revolutionary. But who’d ever guess that the first-gen E serum—a turning point in the galactic power game—was brewed up in a dingy, mold-infested basement in the slums by a teenage girl who didn’t even have a proper lab coat?

Shao Lan had planned it all, every piece, every step. A masterpiece of manipulation.

Even Lin Na, her unsuspecting pawn, had no idea she was working for the devil herself. All she knew was some shadowy figure contacted her online, dangling an irresistible deal: spy on an Omega commoner named Shao Ye at O'Dell Academy, feed back his every move, and get rewarded beyond her wildest dreams.

At first, Lin Na called it bull. No way was some faceless nobody going to help her snatch control of the Lin family. But then came the clincher: this mystery "partner" promised to bust her scientist mother out of life imprisonment within a week.

It sounded absurd. But Lin Na, desperate and hungry, hesitated just long enough for the bait to sink in.

Days later, the Alliance's top-security prison got hit, hard. The galaxy was buzzing with the news—breakout of the century. And guess who walked free? Lin Na’s mother, alive and kicking, back in a rebel lab doing what she did best.

That’s when Lin Na stopped doubting. She made contact, sealed the deal, and dove headfirst into the web. Sure, trust wasn’t part of the equation. It was all give-and-take, a dirty transaction where both sides knew the stakes. But damn, the payoff was sweet, and Lina was hooked.

She started slipping, slowly but surely. The power, the perks—it all blurred her sense of self until she was just another marionette dancing to the mysterious benefactor’s pull.

When word came that Shao Ye had been successfully pheromone-paired, the shadowy figure delivered the final order: Get him out of O'Dell Academy. Return him to the slums.

Turns out, his Alpha match was none other than Lu Zhanxing. Lin Na had half a mind to erase Shao Ye altogether, just to clean house. But the mystery boss shut that down fast, threatening her into compliance: Shao Ye’s survival and escape weren’t negotiable.

Left with no choice, Lin Na rigged Lu Zhanxing’s records, fanned Shao Ye’s doubts about staying on the capital planet, and paved his way out of O'Dell Academy. He escaped, just as planned, heading straight back to the slums where he belonged.

Everything moved like clockwork, just as Shao Lan had engineered it. The gears of fate turning, slow and relentless.

But the unexpected always has a way of sneaking in. The moment Shao Ye fled the Academy, fate—Shao Lan’s meticulous fate—tossed him into Lu Zhanxing’s path.

And Lin Na?

That privileged brat who thought she’d climb her way to glory?

She’d never in a thousand years suspect the truth: the puppet master she served, the one who had her groveling for scraps, was nothing more than a lowborn commoner from the slums.

———TN: "Oh, wow, absolutely terrifying... like, spine-chillingly horrifying—if you're afraid of shadows. Get a grip."