Blood Neon-Chapter 4

Chapter 4
About the Body (1)
The solution to this problem was simple.
After spending the past few days familiarizing herself with the condition of her body and making it through a period of confusion, the girl made a decision. From now on, her name—or rather, her codename—would be "Ying".
Based on fragmented memories of her surname, it could also be "Lin Ying".
She had a strong feeling that this name was probably a homophone or sounded similar to her original one. Otherwise, why did it feel so natural on her tongue?
Yes, that made sense.
Naming herself might seem unnecessary, especially under circumstances where she was completely isolated from other people. But Lin Ying had no choice—because the need arose from something rooted in her own body.
A pitch-black tentacle, radiating an ominous aura, coiled around a nearby can of cola and steadily handed it over to her.
Yes, those strange things were the reason.
With her right hand, she skillfully popped open the pull tab of the can and took a small sip of the cold soda. Lin Ying couldn’t help letting out a satisfied “Ah~”.
To put it simply, what she’d realized now was that humans had their limits… So, skipping over the lengthy chanting, here's the short version:
I woke up and discovered—I wasn’t human anymore.
To describe her current state in more detail: she could now feel that her true body was not the cute, harmless-looking girl with black hair and red eyes, dressed in a white sundress. Right next to her physical form, where the sunlight should’ve cast a simple shadow, there was something else—something that seemed to have depth, no longer just a flat area "blocked from the sun". Within that dark, unsettling shadow—just staring at it could cause unease and anxiety—a large mass of indescribable tentacles was slowly writhing, as if chewing or digesting something.
That was what she currently felt was “herself”.
Don’t be fooled by the harmless vibe of that writhing, sanity-draining mass—Lin Ying knew all too well: if she went without food for two or three days, those things would go berserk in the most merciless way possible. The first victim she had claimed after arriving in this world would definitely agree with that statement.
If she could be satisfied simply by digesting organic matter, maybe Lin Ying could scrape by munching on trees, grass, or mushrooms. Unfortunately, her true body was far too picky—no, it was more accurate to say she was a bona fide predator. In fact, she existed above humans on the food chain, with an absurdly high trophic level. Eating stray cats and dogs in the city barely counted as a snack.
She had basically turned into a full-on “carnage-type ghoul”.
So, in order not to endanger public safety in the conventional sense and to avoid harming innocent people (and tigers) in a state of extreme hunger—Lin Ying currently had no choice but to take the initiative: to hunt down people who had committed unspeakable crimes, such as drunk driving hit-and-runs with an extra stab for good measure, armed robbery and murder, or rape.
Yes, those three charges respectively belonged to the three meals she had already consumed.
There was actually another major reason she chose to feed only on the guilty: she needed to preserve her humanity.
The reason was simple—Lin Ying was no longer human.
She was just a monster disguised as a human. This normal-looking outer shell was merely an advanced form of mimicry—like a carnivorous plant evolving to resemble its prey in order to lure it into a well-laid trap.
Having lost the full set of human neural circuits and the supporting hormonal system, it was easy to imagine how her emotions had already become abnormal. This had become increasingly clear to her over the past few days. Even when consuming humans—pulling them into her shadow where her true body devoured and digested them—she felt nothing. Aside from drooling, there wasn’t any emotion.
Yes, drooling. When her true body experienced the full, bloated satisfaction of swallowing prey whole, her human form would even secrete saliva.
After some basic analysis, Lin Ying understood: although her true body existed somewhere beyond comprehension, because she had once been human, she had retained a few fragments of human emotion. These emotions created a sort of feedback loop with her true body, and the effects showed up in her human form.
In simpler terms, when her true body saw something delicious, that desire got relayed to her humanoid self. Following normal human logic, this would trigger a salivary response—even though it was utterly useless.
Once she became aware of this ghost-like neural pathway—one she could only describe as phantom pain—Lin Ying made a decision. In order to avoid completely losing the seven emotions and six desires of a normal human being and becoming a full-blown monster, she had to maintain some of the habits and thought patterns she had as a human. She couldn’t act entirely on instinct.
At the very least, she needed to stop looking down from tall buildings at the people moving below and feeling like she’d just walked into a conveyor-belt sushi restaurant...