Fang Mingyue hesitated for a long moment before finally speaking up. “I’m sorry. You saved me, and yet… I still reported what happened with you to my superiors. I know an apology doesn’t mean much, but I will find a way to repay your kindness—even if it costs me my life…”
“Whoa, hold on. I’m not interested in your life. And I already know about your sense of duty as a soldier—I’ve seen it before.” Shen Ge waved his hand dismissively.
Fang Mingyue blinked, caught off guard. “Before?”
“It’s not important,” Shen Ge said. “Since we’ve got nothing else going on right now, why don’t you sit down and tell me about the Rank 7 anomalies in Daijing? I’ve been thinking—the one hiding in the sky yesterday probably wasn’t the Anomaly King. It’s more likely a newly mutated high-rank anomaly.”
Fang Mingyue’s expression turned serious at that. For any shelter, a high-rank anomaly posed a potentially fatal threat.
Since Shen Ge was asking about anomalies in general rather than shelter secrets, she answered whatever he asked.
What surprised her, though, was how little Shen Ge seemed to know about Daijing—or the world itself. He didn’t even know when anomalies first appeared or what triggered the apocalypse.
If she hadn’t seen his strength with her own eyes—and if he hadn’t claimed to be from Rong City—she might’ve thought he’d been living alone in the mountains his whole life.
Still, questions aside, Fang Mingyue answered honestly, and Shen Ge got a solid picture of how this world fell apart.
The apocalypse here had started earlier than in “reality”—even earlier than the timeline shown in the Logs. Anti-anomaly organizations worldwide never got the chance to grow. It all began with anomaly outbreaks in Yuzhou, Tuokou, and Hancheng, then spread rapidly across Asia.
In just three years, the entire world was consumed by anomalous events. Collapsed dream fragments rained down, creating “overlap zones” that brought nations to their knees one after another.
And because anti-anomaly efforts were slow to develop—still relying on conventional military force—the nuclear war that followed didn’t stop the anomalies. It only sped up humanity’s extinction.
Hearing this, Shen Ge finally understood why the environment and climate in this world felt so much harsher than in other dream worlds. Turned out, nuclear war had broken out here before the anomalies had even spread globally.
And the nukes? They didn’t destroy the high-rank anomalies that had already ravaged cities. Instead, they accelerated their mutations. After that, the world gained several new Rank 7 anomalies.
Two years later, the first Rank 8 anomaly appeared in Sakura—and caused the entire island to sink, erasing it from the map.
It wasn’t until after that point that the Great Dynasty discovered the anomalies were linked to an “invisible” gas rising from beneath the earth.
In other words, this world had already reached its end before anyone even realized what was causing it. There was no turning back.
In just a few years, the global population shrank to one percent of what it once was. Even Daijing—once a sprawling metropolis with tens of millions of people—had dwindled to fewer than a hundred thousand survivors, all crammed into underground shelters, hanging on by a thread.
After that, Daijing descended into a chaotic “cage match” period, where survivors had to dodge territorial battles between high-rank anomalies just to stay alive. It wasn’t until the “Anomaly King” showed up that the chaos subsided, giving the shelter a chance to breathe and rebuild.
And ever since the Anomaly King appeared, high-rank anomaly fights had become rare. With the king looming overhead, they kept their heads down and avoided drawing attention.
The fight Shen Ge had triggered yesterday between the anomaly rats and the Rank 5 mutant was only the fifth high-rank skirmish in the past two years.
The sudden appearance of two high-rank entities had already surprised Fang Mingyue. But the fact that a third one had been hiding in the sky? That was on a whole other level.
After listening to Fang Mingyue recount this world’s “anomaly history,” Shen Ge fell silent for a moment. Then he looked up at her and said, “Pin your hair up and come closer.”
“?”
Fang Mingyue gave him a confused look, clearly unsure what he meant.
Shen Ge’s gaze shifted to the scar on her left cheek—hidden behind her hair. The wound stretched down to her jaw, a gruesome mark left by a chunk of flesh that had been carved away.
“I told you before—I can fix that scar on your face. But if you don’t pin your hair up and let me get a good look at it, how am I supposed to help you?” Shen Ge said with a hint of exasperation. He couldn’t help but think how much easier things were with his world’s Fang Mingyue—at least she didn’t question everything.
“You can really heal it?” Fang Mingyue asked, her voice skeptical—but her body moved on its own, pulling her hair up and leaning in close, chin tilted upward.
Shen Ge pressed his finger against the deepest part of the scar on her face—firm, stiff tissue. It was clear that right after the injury, they’d done emergency treatment to save her life, but the result was that half her face had suffered total cell death. She couldn’t even control the muscles on that side anymore.
“I can treat it. But it’s going to get a little bloody,” Shen Ge said.
“Bloody?” Fang Mingyue frowned.
“The basic process is: I re-open the wound and let new skin grow back in its place.” Shen Ge said it as casually as if he were discussing what to have for dinner. The content, though, was so shocking that Fang Mingyue’s jaw practically dropped.
Come on—her wound had been so deep it had effectively removed half her face. Just surviving had been a miracle. She wasn’t exactly worried about her “looks” back then.
But Fang Mingyue still remembered the pain and the torment clearly. And now Shen Ge was saying he wanted to cut that half of her face off again—and make it grow back?!
That wasn’t even the issue! The real question was whether it could grow back at all. Humans aren’t geckos—we don’t just regrow lost limbs!
Shen Ge raised an eyebrow, a confident smile playing on his lips. “Don’t believe me?”
“…” Could any normal person say “yes” to that?
But strangely, Fang Mingyue found herself infected by his smile. An inexplicable sense of trust welled up inside her, and she almost unconsciously nodded.
“Good,” Shen Ge said. “Since it’s going to be a bloody process, I’ll use some special techniques. Right now, I need you to get a basin of water and a sharp knife—disinfected, preferably… actually, doesn’t matter if it’s disinfected. Just as long as it doesn’t come with a ‘tetanus’ debuff…”
Shen Ge rattled off a whole list of instructions in a rapid-fire mumble. Fang Mingyue stared at him, dazed. But despite her doubts, her body obeyed, preparing everything he asked for.
Once everything was ready, Fang Mingyue sat on the edge of the bed and suddenly thought of a critical question. She couldn’t help but ask, “Uh, Shen Ge… cutting off half a face… don’t you need anesthesia for that?”
“Don’t worry, I’m good at hypnosis.” With that, Shen Ge waved his hand in front of her face, then snapped his fingers with a sharp crack. Fang Mingyue’s focused, determined gaze suddenly went hazy, and her whole body began to sway.
Shen Ge reached out and steadied her, letting her lean back against the headboard. Then he picked up the knife and—shwipe, shwipe—sliced off half of Fang Mingyue’s face in two swift strokes.
Blood gushed out, soaking her clothes red. If any patrolling soldiers walked in, they’d think Shen Ge was torturing her to death.
But Shen Ge had already expanded his anomaly domain while hypnotizing her, using its power to put her under.
For a single target, this level of hypnosis didn’t even require dream-fragment power—barely any anomaly energy at all.
The dead tissue was gone, but for a human, flesh doesn’t regenerate that fast. And even if it did, the “new” flesh wouldn’t look the same.
Even with hypnosis, Shen Ge couldn’t speed up the process. But what he did have on hand were plenty of healing-type anomaly potions.
Most of them were stored in the Red Mist Armor’s spatial pocket, but he carried some basic ones with him, like “Internal Injury Recovery Pills” and healing bandages. Many of these medicines were made from anomaly flesh and tissue, which had remarkably potent muscle-regeneration properties.
Back during the Daijing anomaly disaster, when Fang Mingyue had a chunk of flesh carved off by an anomaly, Shen Ge had healed her the exact same way. He was just running through the playbook again.
A few minutes later, Fang Mingyue—deep in sleep—felt someone patting her face. She instinctively opened her eyes and sat up. “Shen—Shen Ge? What happened?”
She raised her hand to her face, feeling the layers of bandages wrapped around it. There was no pain—just a cool, soothing sensation.
“It’s… done?” she asked, barely daring to believe it.
Shen Ge nodded and pointed at the mirror and basin he’d asked her to bring earlier, still sitting on the table. “Taking off the bandages is easy enough—you don’t need my help for that. And that water you brought? Wash your face. There’s still some dried blood on it.”
“Huh?” Fang Mingyue was dazed. She’d barely felt involved in the whole process, and it hadn’t even seemed like that much time had passed. Had it really… worked?
Half-convinced, half-doubting, she walked over to the table and looked into the mirror. Her face was completely wrapped in bandages, hiding whatever lay beneath.
Her hands trembled as she reached for the bandages. It was hard to put into words—that feeling of clinging to hope while dreading disappointment. If it didn’t work, she almost wished Shen Ge had never brought it up.
But even in the apocalypse, no one wanted to walk around with a face that could scare children. That was exactly why Fang Mingyue wore a mask most of the time.
With a nervous heart, she began unwrapping the bandages. With each loop that came off, her pulse pounded in her ears.
When the last layer fell away, Fang Mingyue froze. She still couldn’t tell if it worked—her face was covered in a thick layer of dried blood scabs. But the sunken contour that had once been missing was now perfectly symmetrical with the right side.
“Could it be… really healed?” She stared blankly at her reflection.
From behind her, Shen Ge’s voice came through, laced with teasing. “Since when were you so vain? You’ve been admiring a face full of scabs for this long?”
“Ah—right!” Fang Mingyue snapped back to reality and quickly scooped up water to wash her face. The scabs hadn’t set for long, so they came off easily, revealing pale, fresh skin underneath.
The newly grown skin was slightly lighter in color than the rest of her face—like that part had been covered by a mask and then exposed to the sun. But the scar itself was completely gone. The slight color difference was barely noticeable.
Fang Mingyue stared at herself in the mirror, and tears welled up in her eyes without warning.
“Thank… thank you,” she whispered.
Shen Ge didn’t fully understand her emotional reaction, but he was glad to have helped. He’d stuck around in this place for two reasons: first, to help his little sidekick as much as he could. After all, in “reality,” she’d followed him without hesitation, never flinching in the face of life-and-death danger. And second, to find a way to dismantle the New God Cult and give Rong City’s Special Strategy Division a fighting chance.
“Shen… Shen Ge,” Fang Mingyue suddenly spoke up. “Is this treatment method complicated? Or are the medicines you used rare?”
“Why do you ask?” Shen Ge said.
“If possible… could you treat this part too?” As she spoke, Fang Mingyue pulled up her combat uniform, revealing the area from her left ribs to her chest.
The wound there was even worse than the one on her face—half the skin on her abdomen was missing, stitched up in a patchwork of crude sutures.
Shen Ge was a man, but he approached it with a healer’s mindset as his eyes traced the wound. Still, his gaze instinctively drifted half an inch upward, catching a glimpse of a pale, curved lunar landscape.
“…”
“…”
The room fell into a brief, heavy silence. Fang Mingyue suddenly realized how forward and impulsive her actions must have seemed.
She should’ve yanked her shirt down and blushed in embarrassment. But instead, for reasons she couldn’t quite explain, she held the fabric in place and asked in a low voice, “Can… can you treat it?”
“…Sis, are you using me as a cosmetic surgeon now? And that shy look on your face? I’m not used to it. It’s not like I haven’t seen it before—uh, I mean, yeah, I can treat it.” Shen Ge’s tongue got tangled for no good reason, and he quickly corrected himself by saying “I can treat it.”
“Then… please help me.”
“Sigh. Fine, fine. I really owe you one.”
“Th-thank you.”
“Take off your clothes.”
“Huh?”
“It’s not like you haven’t taken them off before.”
“Wha—?”
“I mean, how am I supposed to operate if you don’t take them off? Ugh, forget it—I’ll do it myself!” Shen Ge felt like if he kept dragging this out with Fang Mingyue, something that wasn’t there would suddenly become a thing. So he just snapped his fingers—crack—and knocked her out again, then took care of business himself while she was under hypnosis.
Two hours later, Fang Mingyue emerged from Shen Ge’s room, cheeks flushed bright red—but her face was practically glowing with excitement. She couldn’t wait to run off and share her joy with someone.
As she passed by the operations department, a few of her subordinates caught sight of their captain’s radiant smile and were about to ask what good news she’d gotten—until they noticed, with utter shock, that the terrifying scar on her face had vanished.
“Whoa, was that the captain who just walked by?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Her face is healed?”
“Looks like… it actually healed? A wound like that can recover?”
“Damn, I never realized the captain was actually pretty good-looking without that scar… Wait, that’s not the point. I remember her injury was severe—half her face was gone. How did that get fixed?”
