“Special Event Management and Security Response Department? What’s that? That name sounds like some knockoff organization,” Fang Mingyue said with a hint of disdain in her voice.
“?”
Well, that’s interesting. It looks like the development of this world is completely different from all the others—this world didn’t even have the Special Response Department before it went under.
But come to think of it, it’s not that surprising. In the world line recorded in the system’s 【Log】, Deng Yuqi also died during the Yuzhou incident. So it makes sense that there’s a world out there without the Special Response Department at all.
Shen Ge had originally planned to use his identity as a Special Response Department member to “fool” this future version of his little paramecium, but he didn’t even make it past the first step.
Since things had come to this, Shen Ge could only keep the conversation going: “Sorry—you know how it is in this environment; you have to be cautious. I heard your broadcast and followed the directions all the way here, but then I ran into a fight between monsters.”
“And before that, I got a similar survivor-rescue notice in another city—except those scumbags lured people in just to kill them and treat ‘people’ as resources…”
“When I saw you guys fully armed and searching nearby while monsters were fighting, I thought you were the same as those people, so… sorry.”
Fang Mingyue clearly accepted his explanation. Her attitude softened, and after a moment, she said: “You’ve got some decent skills. Did you train at that Special Event Management place or something?”
“…” Shen Ge was rarely left speechless by Fang Mingyue. The way she said it made it sound like they were some kind of neighborhood security team.
“Something like that.”
“How long have you been here?” Fang Mingyue asked.
Shen Ge casually replied, “Almost two days.”
“Why didn’t you go to the designated meeting point?”
“See that gray-skinned monster covered in spikes? It was sleeping near a building not far from there. I was afraid my scent might disturb it, so I’ve been hiding here,” Shen Ge made up an excuse.
Fang Mingyue turned on her flashlight and looked around the basement as she walked, saying, “You should’ve trusted our broadcast and gone to the designated spot for rescue. We have patrols stationed there. Once a survivor enters the specified area, we release prepared bait to lure nearby anomalies away and help the survivor reach the safe zone.”
“Bait?”
Fang Mingyue nodded. “Yes. We’ve captured quite a few infected hosts ahead of time and kept them in bunkers near the rescue points. If a survivor is being tracked by anomalies, our people guide them to safety and release those infected hosts as bait.”
Shen Ge was taken aback. Of all the things he’d considered, he never imagined that the infected hosts in that bunker were actually “bait” being raised by Fang Mingyue’s organization.
That meant the “commotion” he’d caused near the bunker earlier had probably been spotted by the patrols on watch nearby.
Shen Ge thought for a moment and decided to do a little damage control: “So those infected hosts in the bunker over in the next block—you guys put them there on purpose?”
“You’ve seen them?” Fang Mingyue asked, a little surprised.
Shen Ge nodded. “On my way here, I heard strange noises coming from a bunker. I thought there might be survivors hiding inside, so I opened the door to take a look. When I saw it was monsters, I quickly shut it again.”
“You? Opened the door to take a look?” Fang Mingyue’s tone was laced with disbelief.
Shen Ge pretended not to understand. “Is there a problem?”
“That door weighs several hundred pounds. It’s a specially crafted mechanical door. Without the control console to unlock it, there’s no way to open it from the outside. That’s to prevent survivors from opening it by mistake,” Fang Mingyue explained.
Shen Ge tested the waters: “Maybe it’s just worn out from age? Or… maybe I’m just naturally strong? I mean, it felt pretty easy when I opened it.”
Fang Mingyue clearly didn’t buy Shen Ge’s story, but she didn’t press further. She asked a few more questions about his background and his journey to Dajing, then told him to follow her. After the search team finished scouting the area, they’d head back together to the base beneath the “Broken Spire.”
And as Shen Ge had expected, Shelter 101 was indeed built beneath the collapsed “rubble mountain,” retrofitted from an existing underground research facility. Its predecessor was the Dajing headquarters of the “Special Response Department”—the very place where the Dajing anomaly disaster had occurred in Shen Ge’s “reality.”
But in this world, the Dajing anomaly disaster hadn’t happened at the Special Response Department HQ. The fall of Dajing came after surrounding cities were overrun. After that, Dajing held on for another seven years. Right now, it was three years after Dajing’s fall, and in this world, the year was “2028”—matching the apocalypse timeline in the 【Log】.
After Shen Ge rejoined Fang Mingyue and her teammates, they were quite surprised to see her return from the basement with a stranger.
Fang Mingyue explained that Shen Ge was a survivor seeking refuge and didn’t go into detail about what happened in the basement. The group continued scavenging until a scout came to inform them that the fight between the anomaly and the mutant was almost over—the anomaly had not only defeated the mutant but also devoured it. Worried that the anomaly might go berserk after the transformation, they decided to head back to the shelter early.
Passing through the defensive wall made of stacked car frames in front of the “rubble mountain,” Shen Ge followed Fang Mingyue’s group into a secret passage. Inside, he could faintly hear water rushing downward—clearly the “man-made aqueduct” he’d spotted earlier.
After descending for nearly twenty minutes, winding from beneath the “rubble mountain” to the research facility under the “Spire ruins,” Shen Ge finally saw the underground shelter—built just like Umbrella’s Hive. Along the way, Fang Mingyue also gave him an overview of what had happened in Dajing and Shelter 101 over the past few years.
A year after Dajing fell, high-tier anomalies roamed everywhere. Humans were living in hell, with only two options: stay home and starve, or go out looking for food and get eaten.
The government had practically lost all resistance after a large-scale anomaly disaster. In their final days, officials fled to cities on Earth that were still relatively safe.
Some Anti-Anomaly soldiers who stayed behind rallied what remaining strength they had, searched for survivors, and found this underground research facility to convert into a shelter.
Shelter 101 held on for two grueling years, gathering all the survivors in the city. But life grew harder with each passing day.
The biggest problem was that more people meant faster resource consumption, and with anomalies running rampant outside, there was almost no chance to go out and find food.
The shelter experienced a riot once—starving survivors banded together, claiming that the Anti-Anomaly soldiers were hoarding food and trying to starve them to death.
But after that “purge,” the shelter stabilized and developed steadily for a year, eventually receiving some振奋人心的 news.
The “cauldron” that was Dajing had successfully bred a Tier-7 anomaly. To the world, this anomaly was a cataclysmic threat, but for the survivors barely hanging on in Dajing, it was a “deterrent.” Because of its presence, lower-tier anomalies were forced into hiding by its overwhelming energy.
Those high-tier anomalies that had begun to emerge all ended up as “anomalous energy” in the Tier-7 anomaly’s belly, finally giving Shelter 101 some breathing room.
They observed the Tier-7 anomaly’s “habits” and only went out to search for resources when it was in its “hibernation” phase, digesting the energy it had consumed.
Even though the Tier-7 anomaly’s influence meant that Dajing had rain three hundred and sixty-five days out of the year—well, three hundred out of three hundred and sixty-five—it still gave them a glimmer of hope.
A group even emerged within the shelter, treating the Tier-7 anomaly as a deity, believing it to be a “new god” sent from above to grant humanity a second chance at life.
But Fang Mingyue warned Shen Ge that if he wanted to join the shelter, the first thing he had to do was stay far away from this “New God Cult.”
If it weren’t for the fact that some members of the shelter’s council also believed in the “New God theory,” Fang Mingyue would have led her people to drive those lunatics out of the shelter long ago.
After briefly introducing the current state of the shelter, Fang Mingyue took Shen Ge to the exploration team’s leader’s office. When Shen Ge saw the leaders, he was stunned.
Both the head and deputy head were familiar faces!
The head was Liu Jiayi, and the deputy head was Deng Yuqi. Who would’ve thought that the two top leaders of the Rong City branch would end up as the heads of the exploration team in apocalyptic Dajing—just with their roles swapped.
It seemed that in this timeline, Deng Yuqi never went to Rong City, which meant she survived the Yuzhou anomaly disaster and made it all the way to now as the exploration team’s deputy head.
“Leader, Deputy Leader—this is the survivor I mentioned with pretty good skills.” The main reason Fang Mingyue had brought Shen Ge directly to Deng Yuqi and Liu Jiayi was that she was afraid the New God Cult might snatch him up first.
Currently, the shelter’s situation was complicated, roughly divided into five factions. Apart from the decision-making council, there was the Exploration Team responsible for resource searching and anomaly scouting, the City Defense Team maintaining order, the Anomaly Hunting Team that killed anomalies to make anomalous equipment, and the New God Cult.
Strictly speaking, the council and the New God Cult fell outside the discussion scope, since the Exploration Team, City Defense Team, and Anomaly Hunting Team were all under the council’s management—and many council members were also believers in the New God Cult, making the shelter’s power structure incredibly tangled.
But putting those two aside, the strongest of the three major forces was the Anomaly Hunting Team, backed by the research institute. On one hand, they fought anomalies regularly, so their strength was unquestionable. On the other hand, after the anomalies they hunted were turned into equipment by the institute, those were naturally given to the Hunting Team first, with the Exploration Team and City Defense Team getting “fair” distributive leftovers.
“Your name is Shen Ge?” Deng Yuqi had received Fang Mingyue’s message ten minutes earlier, briefly describing what had happened when she met him.
If Shen Ge’s identity checked out, his ability to subdue Fang Mingyue, a team leader, in just over ten seconds meant he was skilled enough to join the Exploration Team.
Shen Ge repeated the story he’d told Fang Mingyue. Since he had suddenly “appeared” in the city out of nowhere, the scouts stationed on the city’s perimeter hadn’t recorded any entry or exit logs. That made it hard for Deng Yuqi to verify whether Shen Ge was telling the truth or if he was a spy sent by another faction.
But the various powers were locked in covert struggles, and this year the Tier-7 anomaly’s “hibernation” period had extended far longer than usual, giving everyone a chance to break out of Dajing. They needed all the manpower they could get.
So after asking a few casual questions, Deng Yuqi told Fang Mingyue to take Shen Ge down to rest. Shen Ge didn’t say much more—after all, facing Deng Yuqi, an “old acquaintance,” gave him an odd feeling.
Fang Mingyue led Shen Ge to a clean dormitory, told him to rest there, and went to get him some basic supplies.
When she came back with the items, she had changed into casual clothes and taken off her mask. Only then did Shen Ge notice that her left face was badly injured—there was a scar on her lower left jaw, as if a chunk of flesh had been cut away.
Seeing Shen Ge staring at her wound, Fang Mingyue set the things down and said casually, “Did that scare you?”
Shen Ge smiled and said, “No. I have a friend who looks a lot like you, so seeing you gives me a sense of familiarity.”
“Oh?”
Fang Mingyue raised an eyebrow and sat down on a nearby stool, seemingly unbothered by the fact that Shen Ge’s comment might have been a bit forward. “Just the face? Or the scar too?”
Shen Ge said, “Pretty much everything.”
“Then I’d really like to meet this friend of yours sometime.”
“That might be hard.”
“Why?”
Shen Ge said with a helpless smile, “Because she’s in another world.”
“Oh. Sorry—I didn’t mean to bring up something painful.” Clearly, Fang Mingyue had misinterpreted “another world” as the world of the dead.
“It’s okay. She’s a lot like you in personality too—she never backs down from any challenge. I used to joke that she’s as stubborn as a paramecium,” Shen Ge said with a laugh.
Fang Mingyue smiled but didn’t pursue the topic further. Shen Ge could tell that this version of Fang Mingyue had been through a lot. She seemed quieter now, carrying a weariness about her.
She pushed a plate toward Shen Ge and said, “I got you a standard-issue combat uniform. These are three days’ worth of compressed rations for exploration team soldiers. Right now, the shelter’s resource allocation can only stretch this far. If you need anything else, just let me know—I’ll try my best to get it for you.”
“Alright, thanks,” Shen Ge said.
After a few more exchanges, Fang Mingyue stood up and headed for the door. “It’s getting late. Get some rest. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“Wait,” Shen Ge called out.
“Something else?” Fang Mingyue turned back.
Shen Ge said, “I can heal the scar on your face. Want to give it a try?”
Fang Mingyue froze, a hint of skepticism in her voice. “You… you’re not joking, are you? The research institute couldn’t do anything about it. They said even pre-apocalypse plastic surgeons wouldn’t have been able to fix it. You can?”
Shen Ge spread his hands, his tone casual yet carrying an inexplicable confidence, and smiled. “So… want to give it a shot?”
“What do I… have to give in return?” Fang Mingyue asked tentatively.
Shen Ge thought for a moment and said, “Nothing. This is a paramecium-exclusive benefit.”
“?”
Fang Mingyue looked at Shen Ge warily—she clearly didn’t believe he’d be so generous for no reason. But even in the apocalypse, a woman still cared about her face. After all, no one wanted to walk around with a face that could scare children, especially not a woman.
Just as Fang Mingyue was about to ask Shen Ge how he planned to treat it, a group of people approached the dormitory area. Recognizing the one leading them, Fang Mingyue frowned. “New God Cult?”
