“…Why is this happening?” Shen Ge had originally thought that after escaping the infinite loop, there would only be two possible outcomes for what happened next—
One was that, following the situation from his second entry into the dream world, he would make his way to the Spire, re-enter that fleshy room filled with eyes, and attempt to break free again.
The other was that some kind of “restart mechanism” would be triggered again, causing him to enter another form of infinite loop.
But now, it seemed the situation wasn’t that simple. It gave Shen Ge the feeling that after discovering he was gradually mastering the abilities and operational rules of the dream world, the person behind the scenes wanted to create an accident to kill him while he fully believed in the “plot.”
Like that sharp turn into the tree just now. If Shen Ge hadn’t reacted quickly, he might have flown straight off the cliff, dying in a car wreck.
But why would they do this?
Shen Ge couldn’t quite figure it out. The power of the entity behind the scenes was strong enough to control the entire world’s operation, which was clearly far beyond Shen Ge’s ability to handle. It was like facing those two 8th-tier anomalies on Sakurajima—a world-ending battle beyond the control of ordinary people.
And according to the information given in the [Log], after those two 8th-tier anomalies destroyed Sakurajima, the anomaly disaster spread rapidly across the globe, accelerating humanity’s extinction.
Of course, this was just Shen Ge’s speculation. If the entity controlling the dream world truly existed, then him possessing the powers of “Materialization” and “Hypnosis” didn’t quite add up.
Being able to control the dream world while also granting him such supernatural power felt redundant.
If there was no so-called “entity behind the scenes,” then the “interference” after leaving Rongshan Psychiatric Hospital became quite intriguing.
As it stood, “dying” in the dream world seemed to only result in losing a segment of memory as “punishment.” It posed no real harm to him.
Shen Ge sat in the car, catching his breath. He consumed anomalous energy to “hypnotize” himself into healing. The car was wrecked, so he’d have to walk to Rong City from now on.
Thunder occasionally boomed across the sky, and lightning split the horizon, illuminating the woods on either side of the mountain path, making it look exceptionally terrifying. The rain grew heavier and more urgent. Shen Ge pulled the hood of his raincoat down tighter, took out his flashlight, turned it on, and continued down the mountain road.
After walking for several hours, Shen Ge emerged from the mountains and arrived again at the foot of the mountain at Quanshan Village, which seemed long abandoned. He searched around for a while; the place didn’t look much different from his last dream visit. There were no monsters in sight, just many unidentified insects crawling around.
Last time, Shen Ge found a glass bottle, caught an insect, and took it with him. But although the insect was brought out when he left the dream world, it was already dead, greatly reducing its research value.
This time, Shen Ge was well-prepared. He even had things like body bags, which were similar to containment devices, so he thought he’d catch more insects to take back for study.
With the intention of catching one of each insect species to bring back, Shen Ge turned into a bug-catching youth in Quanshan Village. But as he caught them, a question suddenly struck him…
Starting from when he went from Sakurajima to the “future,” Shen Ge had been bringing various research materials and anomalous samples from the future and the anomalous space back to the real world. This had caused the real world’s anomaly research to develop rapidly, to the point where Rong City’s anomaly department had far surpassed other countries, reaching the level of equipping basic eight-piece anomalous energy gear.
But looking at the events of the past few months, the aberrants were also “evolving” rapidly. Even a single anomalous plane incident had resulted in two new types of aberrants.
Then, after bringing Yun Er and aberrant samples back from the Peninsula State, Li Xiang had established a specialized aberrant research department in Rong City, setting the Rong City branch on the path of aberrant research.
Shen Ge couldn’t help but recall the system notification when he first entered the Rong City branch—
[The host bravely ventures into the anomalous headquarters. A large number of high-level anomalous domains appear here. The collision of different anomalous spaces has already caused spatial distortion.]
Could it be possible that the Rong City branch was currently developing towards this “prophecy,” and the root cause was the things Shen Ge brought back from the “future” and the anomalous space?
For example, following the normal storyline, both the alienation of anomalies and the evolution of aberrants would have been much slower. But because they came into contact with the research materials from the “future,” it allowed them to avoid some wrong attempts and find shortcuts and the correct evolutionary path!
Shen Ge also discovered a key issue: the two new types of aberrants that appeared on the anomalous plane, the “wax figure” and the aberrant capable of “weakening anomalous energy and shielding detection,” did not appear in the Sakurajima “future.” They weren’t even mentioned in the research reports.
It seemed as if the “wax figure” was a new type of aberrant that evolved in the real world.
However, this speculation wavered after Shen Ge entered the dream world this time, because during the “infinite loop” process, a human-headed spider appeared, and it exhibited a reaction similar to the “wax figure.”
Was this a coincidence?
But if it was a coincidence, it seemed too coincidental that a new species like the “wax figure aberrant” had just appeared in reality, and immediately a “similar aberrant” showed up in the dream world.
For a moment, Shen Ge hesitated, especially after learning about the existence of the Aberrant Association and their past cooperation with the Special Policy Department.
But since he’d come this far, catching a few more bugs wouldn’t hurt.
After collecting several bottles of insects, Shen Ge continued walking towards Rong City. This area was later the East Ring Lake Park, just a few dozen minutes’ drive from downtown Rong City, so it wasn’t far.
The closer he got to Rong City, the harder it rained. The light rain gradually turned into a torrential downpour, greatly affecting Shen Ge’s progress.
In the distance, in the downtown area with its towering skyscrapers, the round Spire pierced the sky, looking exceptionally eerie against the backdrop of the heavy rain and lightning.
The Spire, the skyscrapers… Shen Ge had originally thought that only Rong City had implemented the shelter plan. He never expected that the Ping An Hotel had unintentionally opened a door to the dream world, allowing him to see similar “skyscraper” shelters.
This was enough to show that the situation with anomalies in the “future” was grim; almost every major city had adopted the shelter plan, allowing those in power to continue their privileged lives.
But if the “shelter plan” was used to deal with virally infectious monsters like zombies, that might be one thing. However, the alienation of anomalies couldn’t be completely shut out behind high walls. Instead, they were just building themselves a tomb.
Shen Ge walked along the city streets. Parasitized beings with fleshy petals and scorpion-tailed heads roamed everywhere, and his own life force quickly attracted the monsters’ attention.
Fortunately, Shen Ge had experience dealing with them now. Familiar with the process, he followed his previous route and made his way to the high wall outside the Spire.
Shen Ge looked around and found the room on the fifth floor of the Spire with its window open. Then he went to a nearby tall building, materialized a launching device and grappling hook, and successfully entered the building.
Entering the Spire again, the first thing that greeted his eyes was still that blood-red corridor, like an apartment hallway. A faint, bloody mist seemed to linger in the corridor. Rows of doors were neatly lined up on both sides. Shen Ge was standing exactly at the “entrance” to this floor.
On the left wall was still that warning sign advising people to stay below the tenth floor and to remember to wear “anomalous energy protective suits” to prevent pathological changes. This meant nothing inside the Spire seemed to have changed.
This immediately made Shen Ge even more puzzled. After he left Rongshan Psychiatric Hospital, that “interfering” force had been very strong. But after he entered Rong City, the influence gradually faded, as if everything was back on track.
“What’s going on? Could it be that force only wanted to stop me from leaving Rongshan Psychiatric Hospital, or wanted me to die there? But this is all just the dream world, so what difference does it make?” Shen Ge was very confused.
Shen Ge walked forward along the corridor and saw that soda can with the production date “20320331” again, further confirming his speculation that no “interference” phenomenon had occurred here.
Shen Ge’s memories from his last visit here were still very clear. He remembered exactly where anomalies lurked and which areas were hardest hit.
Soon, Shen Ge found that red research room.
Under the dim red light, the room was filled with experimental equipment and instruments, making it seem less like an operating room or a laboratory and more like a torture chamber for extracting confessions under duress. It was eerie and terrifying everywhere.
The next second, Shen Ge directly raised his hand and “materialized” flames, using his released anomalous energy to burn a cabinet in the corner.
Inside the cabinet were parasitic-type anomalies that had already begun to alienate. Last time, these parasitic anomalies had devoured each other, alienating rapidly and causing him no small amount of trouble.
This time, Shen Ge struck first, giving these parasitic anomalies a barbecue before they could break out of their containers, nipping them in the bud inside the cabinet.
The fire quickly spread through most of the room, simultaneously triggering the room’s fire suppression system. Water began spraying from the ceiling.
But since what Shen Ge “materialized” was his own anomalous energy burning, and the cabinet was the area he’d concentrated his fire on, the parasitic anomalies inside were killed by the anomalous flames before the suppression system could have any effect.
To be safe, Shen Ge waited until the fire was out and then opened the cabinet to check. The parasitic anomalies had been burned to charcoal, emitting a strange, rotting odor.
Strangely enough, Shen Ge found these smells somewhat “appetizing.” It was like accidentally burning meat while grilling, resulting in a peculiar kind of fragrance.
“Gulp.”
Shen Ge unconsciously swallowed his saliva. A strange hunger suddenly rose in his stomach, and he could faintly hear it growling.
Shen Ge immediately realized this strange hunger was wrong. He had never experienced an appetite for anomalies before. Even when he was eating with Cheng Shengnan at a restaurant where an anomalous event occurred, and the meat steak served radiated an anomalous aura, his first reaction had been one of “disgust.”
Although he had joked with Cheng Shengnan that according to research reports, anomalous meat wasn’t just renewable, but also tasted not much different from normal animal meat, and the anomaly department had even verified it was edible, he still had some reservations about actually eating it himself.
So when Shen Ge now felt “hunger” while looking at the burnt corpses of parasitic anomalies, his first thought was that his mind was being influenced again.
But in fact, since entering Rong City, the “interference force” that had affected his consciousness near Rongshan Psychiatric Hospital had vanished without a trace.
With a “crash,” Shen Ge pushed the cabinet door, causing the shelf to collapse and burying the parasitic anomaly corpses underneath. He was afraid that if he kept looking, he might actually pick them up and eat them.
Shen Ge stood up, preparing to walk towards the door not far away. Behind that door, in the stairwell, a high-level aberrant was waiting.
“Gulp.”
“Gulp.”
Strangely, Shen Ge felt his hunger growing more intense. Even that ugly aberrant in the stairwell seemed like a delicious meal.
Even more so… than those burnt parasitic anomalies, it whetted his appetite even more!
Something’s wrong!
Very wrong!
Shen Ge felt like something was off with both his body and mind. He even had the illusion that he was “aberrantizing.”
Because from the perspective of anomalies and outsiders, the temptation of cannibalizing each other for anomalous energy absorption was far greater than the option of eating humans, which was like enjoying a “little snack.”
“Wait!”
Shen Ge suddenly realized that perhaps the reason the aberrant outside the door now held more appeal than those burnt parasitic anomalies was precisely because of the anomalous energy!
The aberrant outside was nearly 4th tier, far stronger than the 1st-tier anomalies in the cabinet. Its anomalous energy density was higher, hence it stimulated a stronger appetite!
“Gulp.”
“Gulp.”
Shen Ge’s stomach emitted another “hungry” growl. He struggled to suppress this instinct to feed, which was eroded his consciousness, trying to stop himself from approaching the door, but he couldn’t. It felt as if his body was out of control, moving purely on instinct.
With a “creak,” the door slowly opened. The decaying door made a harsh sound, which fully alerted the monster outside.
In the dim red stairwell, the monster’s entire body was like a spread-out, fleshy venus flytrap, taking up most of the space. Every fleshy petal was covered in sharp teeth.
From its back, tentacles resembling rotting flesh extended, sticking to the surrounding ceiling and walls, as if fused with them. In the center of its fleshy body was the upper half of a woman’s body, mostly rotted away, giving the impression that she had been half-“devoured” by the fleshy petals.
Half her face had lost its original features, leaving only skinless muscle tissue and “melted” flesh. The other half, which still vaguely resembled a human face, wore a strange smile.
Yet, in Shen Ge’s eyes—
All of it was delicious food!
“Gulp.”
“Gulp.”
Shen Ge was like a man who hadn’t eaten for days, his stomach growling with hunger, while in front of him lay a lavish grilled meat buffet.
But Shen Ge knew that if he yielded to the consciousness in his mind now, he would surely aberrantize and lose his true nature.
Although he was in the dream world, and even death here wouldn’t greatly affect the real him, no one could be sure whether this “aberrantization” would cause the real him to show similar signs.
Although Shen Ge, having “merged” with the system originating from the progenitor anomalous cell, was already “half-aberrantized,” this level of aberrantization was at least within controllable limits. Once he took the step towards “cannibalism,” maybe there would be no turning back?
Wait?
Hadn’t the system’s “devouring” already taken that step towards cannibalism? Could this current “hunger” be somehow related to the system’s devouring power?
Gulp.
Gulp.
Within Shen Ge’s pupils, a faint hint of blood red began to show.
