A Pain-Rearing Method for Female Insects

[Insectoid race + redemption + male-male romance + equally matched leads + seemingly innocent but secretly ruthless]

Calm, gentle, seemingly useless male lead ✖️ loyal, damaged, guileless female lead

Ling Nuo is the runaway young master of the Hidden Star Clan, disguised as a “useless” nobody.

He suffers from emotional numbness and cannot feel love or hatred. The only way he can “taste” what it means to live is by observing other people’s pain.

One day, he finds a defective specimen in a pile of trash in the black market, written off as a failure by a laboratory. Designated K-477, the “monster” has a limp, broken wings, and control chips embedded all over his body. He cannot even take his own life.

Ling Nuo gives him a name and a leaky little house.

He cares for him tenderly, patiently teaches him to smile and feel pain, and calmly records every measure of his suffering.

It was supposed to be a meticulously planned experiment: he wanted to find out whether emotional attachment could take root in a soul that had been utterly destroyed.

K-477 sees him as his only light.

He uses his battered body to shield him from knives, his newly grown wings to build him a nest, and his modified nerves to clumsily learn how to “love.”

He does not know that this tenderness hides a scheme. He only knows one thing: “I love you” is true.

When the disguise falls away, a viper closes in, and the twin nooses of family and laboratory tighten

Ling Nuo holds Cang, bleeding profusely, and for the first time his hands tremble beyond his control.

This monster, incapable of emotion, has actually tasted “heartache” through the pain of his weapon.

It turns out the perfect experiment is one in which the caretaker falls in love with his test subject.

The ultimate redemption among the insectoid race is to be each other’s prisoners, yet find eternity in one another’s cages.