【Interstellar Contract Magician】Ruyuanke

I opened my eyes to see the green ivy vine that had been wrapped around my wrist, tightening its grip. Its aerial roots pierced my skin like tiny blades, and I suddenly understood something. A warning pain jerked my consciousness from the seed. The green ivy's usual warnings were futile, forcing it to pierce my skin with such ferocity. The pain was piercing and real.

I gasped, my heart pounding, cold sweat trickling down my forehead. In that instant, I felt myself back here, back in my own body, as if I had been plucked out of some dark abyss.

I suddenly realized how close I was to the edge of no return - that irresistible feeling of being swallowed up seemed to be about to completely devour my soul.

Perhaps, in the future, I will have one more motto in my life: stay away from wheat at all costs.

I looked at the blood beads oozing from my wrist and felt a sense of fear as if I had escaped death.

Yet, my commotion didn't alarm anyone. I looked around. Everyone was still buried in their piles of electronic materials. Only the teacher looked at me with an increasingly deep, unfathomable gaze.

I stared at the culture tank in a daze, then belatedly realized that what I had just seen wasn't an illusion—the wheat seed, which had been dormant, had actually sprouted. A thin, tender sprout, like a tiny green tentacle, poked out from the crack in the seed, vibrant and full of energy.

It's a moment of germination worth celebrating. But for some reason, looking at the slender new shoots, an indescribable chill ran down my spine.

That tender sprout wasn't just any ordinary green; it had a strange, almost transparent cyan, as if it had absorbed something unknown from some obscure corner, even emitting a faint, cold glow. It quietly extended, slowly and tenaciously, as if with some purpose, as if it wanted to continue absorbing something, continuing to grow... until it devoured more.

A thought welled up in my heart: If I really want to grow up, I wonder how many people I will have to "eat" to be enough...

An inexplicable fear crept into my heart.

Finally, the bell rang. With a sigh of relief, I slammed the jar of seeds and liquid soil onto the table. The force of the collision sent a few drops of the now slightly bluish liquid soil splattering, and I didn't bother to wipe them away. Only one thought remained in my mind: get out of here.

Without looking back, I rushed out of the classroom, as if only in this way could I get rid of the cold fear.

As soon as I stepped out the door, I heard a low exclamation behind me, followed by a murmur of discussion. The students had clearly noticed something had changed about the seed—it had sprouted! I could hear them talking, and even the teacher's voice, subdued in surprise.

This should have been joyful, but those exclamations sounded like distant, uneasy echoes to my ears.

I didn't stop, my heart pounding. The seed's vitality unfolded in the culture tank, and I just wanted to get away, as if that tiny sprout was slowly reaching into an abyss I couldn't comprehend.

I don't know if it was my imagination, but the pulsating sound of the seed echoed in my mind like a ghost, low and slow, as if echoing quietly with every heartbeat. Even after I left the teaching building, the faint yet eerie rhythm still loomed, like some invisible chain, firmly connecting me to it.

I hurried down the corridor, down the stairs, and into the sunlight. Yet, in the blink of an eye, in the corner of my vision, in the fleeting darkness, I seemed to see the green sprout in the jar again, swaying slightly, as if growing toward me, even pointing straight at me through the thick wall. Its color was strange, with a faint, cold glow, floating faintly in the depths of my mind, following me like a shadow.

I shook my head vigorously, trying to dispel this absurd illusion. However, every time I closed my eyes, that green sprout seemed to slowly grow and spread in my mind, as if calling, as if waiting for me to look back...