Because “Shen Ge” in Fragment World 5 had been trapped in the weird space for over two months, he couldn’t deal with the strange incident involving the front desk girl. Add to that the incidents with the weird car and weird rats, and this caused the weirdness in Rong City to spread much faster than in “Reality.”
Shen Ge used to not understand why the Special Strategy Department, a special department dedicated to dealing with the weird, was so “weak.” Later, as he learned the truth about the weird, he gradually came to understand.
The biggest “weirdness” that exists in this world is the Earth itself. The weird energy black mist in the Earth’s core can be seen as the Earth’s resentment toward humanity. Therefore, it not only repels humans but also has a certain corrosive effect on them.
However, without interference from external forces, the weird energy underground would only slowly begin to erupt at some point two to three years later.
But because World 1, through the mechanism of “infinite restarts,” produced an anomaly like “Shen Ge,” who absorbed the Earth’s will, defeated the tenth-tier Weird King, and even “fused” with the Weird King, the Earth lost its ability to restart. And in order to seek a glimmer of hope for World 1, he also set his sights on World 2.
Who would have thought that trying to be clever would backfire, causing World 2 to erupt into a weird disaster ahead of schedule, and even creating a Mirror World 3. “Reality” and the weird space overlapped, alternated, and twisted, causing the three worlds to become chaotic.
And it was against this backdrop that extremely similar situations appeared in both “Fragment World 5” and “Reality.”
In both cases, the system was delivered early, but instead of reaching Shen Ge’s hands, it reached Shen’s father’s hands. This led to the later establishment of the “Haiya Research Institute,” which gathered scientific geniuses from around the world.
Unfortunately, before the real danger arrived, under “peace,” humanity could never truly unite, which led to the destruction of the Haiya Research Institute.
After the Haiya Research Institute incident, the real human faction actually became the part with the least information about the weird. Whether it was progenitor weirdness or research data, more of it flowed into the hands of several weirdo organizations.
From this point on, the anti-weird research departments of various countries were destined to fall far behind the weirdo organizations. It was truly not easy for the Great Celestial Empire to establish the Special Strategy Department under such pressure.
At that time, the Special Strategy Department was completely like blind people crossing a river when it came to anti-weird work and research. Not to mention third- and fourth-tier weirdness, even first- and second-tier weirdness required full-force deployment.
At such times, the country naturally prioritized protecting headquarters. Therefore, most of the country’s dozens of pieces of weird energy equipment were in the hands of headquarters. The Rong City branch, as a low-ranking branch, had only a few pieces of equipment, which even agents had to take turns using.
The Shen Ge in “Fragment 5” and the Shen Ge in “Reality” also diverged in their choices around this time. The former, because he discovered someone watching him and mistakenly thought they were sent by the Special Strategy Department, and because he already had no good feelings toward the official side, chose to reject the Special Strategy Department’s invitation.
Meanwhile, the Shen Ge in “Reality,” because he didn’t discover any watchers, and because he was dragged into the weird rat and weird car incidents, had a fairly pleasant cooperation with Deng Yuqi, and on top of that had his eye on the weird corpses in the Special Strategy Department’s research institute, chose to join the Special Strategy Department.
From this point on, the directions of the two worlds became completely different. Although “Shen Ge” in Fragment World 5, relying on the system and special abilities, hunted weirdness all the way and made his personal strength advance by leaps and bounds, he also accidentally missed some key events.
And although the Shen Ge in “Reality” had slow personal strength growth, because he drove the development of the Rong City Special Strategy Department, he not only gained a dedicated “logistics team,” but also cultivated a group of capable subordinates. This greatly delayed the weird disaster in Rong City, and even slowed the nationwide weird disaster.
Seeing this, Shen Ge immediately felt somewhat regretful. Although he didn’t think the “Shen Ge” in other worlds was himself, watching a world similar to his own head toward destruction still left him with some regret.
The theory of parallel worlds had long been reflected in science fiction movies. Some people even proposed that every different choice a person makes gives rise to a different parallel world.
But in fact, the “self” in each world is an independent individual, like two parallel lines that generally have no intersection at all.
However, due to the wild operations of “Shen Ge” in World 1, the originally parallel World 1 and World 2 derived a World 3, forming a triangle. This caused the worlds to interlace and twist, and also, because of the restart mechanism, gave rise to countless endings.
Even weirder, affected by the Earth’s own weird energy black mist, these “endings” did not dissipate, but remained in the form of world fragments.
Shen Ge, by accident, grasped the power of “dream fragments.” Through these powers, he could enter the worlds of dream fragments.
No matter what, as the world derived from the final “restart,” Shen Ge no longer had a chance to start over. He could only do his utmost to seek the possibility of sustaining his own world from worlds that had already reached their endings. The appearance of the 【Log】 could at least let him avoid many detours.
Pulling back his thoughts, Shen Ge continued to look at the 【Log】 before him. “Shen Ge” in Fragment World 5 had not paid attention to the strange incident in the front desk girl’s neighborhood. Instead, he shook off the “bodyguard” Deng Yuqi had arranged for him and went alone to investigate the sealed zone.
As a result, “Shen Ge” encountered an attack in the sealed zone by two four-armed weirdos sent by a weirdo organization. During the fight, he snatched a teleportation device.
“Shen Ge” was sent by the teleportation device to a weirdo organization’s stronghold. Facing attacks from many weirdos, he escaped heavily injured and recovered in a mountainous area for two months.
During this period, however, a weird disaster broke out in Rong City. With Tom Supermarket as the center, the entire block was made transparent and blocked off by the weird space. The Special Strategy Department couldn’t even get in, let alone deal with it.
“Shen Ge” took the opportunity to escape Deng Yuqi’s “surveillance” and went with the safely relocated troops to Yuzhou, planning to stay there for a while.
“Shen Ge” lived in Yuzhou with day and night reversed. During the day he rested at home, and at night, relying on the system’s early warnings to locate weird incidents, he hunted weirdness to earn system points.
One night in June, while chasing a first-tier weird, “Shen Ge” encountered a woman. The woman claimed to be an agent of the “Asian Anti-Weird Organization,” named Watanabe Natsumi. She greatly admired “Shen Ge’s” anti-weird abilities and invited him to join the Asian Anti-Weird Organization.
“Shen Ge” wasn’t even interested in the Special Strategy Department, let alone willing to trust a foreign girl he had just met. But the other party clearly had no intention of letting “Shen Ge” go. She summoned several accompanying people and tried to subdue “Shen Ge,” but instead was captured by him.
Under cover of night, “Shen Ge” threw Watanabe Natsumi at the entrance of the Yuzhou Special Strategy Department. As for how they would investigate this woman, he didn’t care at all.
Who would have thought that Watanabe Natsumi’s appearance would trigger a chain of problems, causing the Yuzhou Special Strategy Department to join forces with the military and police to impose martial law, sealing off the entire city for searches.
To avoid being dragged in, “Shen Ge” wanted to use the special ability “Silence” to leave Yuzhou early, but accidentally stumbled upon a weirdo organization releasing special weirdness, attempting to create a weird disaster for research.
“Shen Ge” successfully defeated that weirdo squad and killed the special weirdness. After letting the system devour it, he obtained a third special ability—”Non-Emergence.”
With the help of the new special ability, “Shen Ge” successfully left Yuzhou. Believing the most dangerous place was the safest, he went directly to the headquarters of the Special Strategy Department—Dajing.
After arriving in Dajing, “Shen Ge” originally wanted to live as he had in Yuzhou for those few months, hiding by day and coming out at night. Unfortunately, Dajing’s level of martial law was much stricter than Rong City and Yuzhou, leaving him almost no chance to act—until a weirdo organization attacked the Dajing Special Strategy Department and triggered a weird disaster.
While pursuing a cadre of the weirdo organization, “Shen Ge” was led by the other party into an underground research institute located at “*******.” He was shocked to discover that human experiments were being conducted here, and that the weirdo organization’s true goal was this research data.
“Shen Ge” fought the weirdo organization cadre. The other party was forced into a second transformation and became a monster, and was ultimately decapitated by the pig-slaughtering knife.
After obtaining the weirdo research data, “Shen Ge” was just thinking about how to handle it when he encountered a joint team of branch anti-weird agents who had come from all over the country to provide support.
“Shen Ge” met Deng Yuqi, and simply used the materials to exchange with Deng Yuqi for some “resources” and the identity of an “anti-weird consultant.”
“Shen Ge, are you resting?” Just as Shen Ge noted down the address of the weirdo research institute he had discovered in the 【Log】, he heard a knock on the door.
Shen Ge turned off the 【Log】 and got up to open the door. He saw Fang Mingyue standing at the door fully armed, so he asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Something went wrong at Base 1. Remnants of the New God Cult caused a riot, which led to Warehouse 1 being burned down. Now there’s a food shortage. The regiment commander led a team to suppress the riot. The deputy commander’s idea is to have me transport a batch of food from Base 2 to Base 1 to ease the crisis. But the food stores here weren’t plentiful to begin with, and this move triggered resistance from the residents of Base 2. The situation is pretty tense right now, and you’re still recovering, so it’s best you stay in the dormitory and rest. If anything comes up, just have Xiao Zhang handle it for you,” Fang Mingyue said.
Xiao Zhang was originally Deng Yuqi’s assistant. With the establishment of Base 2, she transferred to logistics and was currently responsible for arrangements in the dormitory area.
As the exploration team’s “benefactor” and now a “key protection target,” Shen Ge naturally had to have these things arranged properly before Fang Mingyue could go to Base 1 with peace of mind for “disaster relief.”
The glasses girl standing behind Fang Mingyue said nervously, “Mr. Shen, Mr. Shen, if there’s anything you need me to do, please just tell me.”
Although Shen Ge held no position in the exploration team, his status was no less than that of a captain-level figure. Even though Xiao Zhang was the person in charge of the dormitory area, in terms of authority she was still two levels lower than him.
Shen Ge nodded, thought briefly, looked at Fang Mingyue, and asked, “Do you know where ‘******’ is?”
“‘******’? Isn’t that the big shopping mall on the old commercial street? But after the weird disaster broke out, that place was a severe disaster zone and also one of the earliest places to be abandoned. Why are you asking about it?” Fang Mingyue asked, puzzled.
Shen Ge looked at Xiao Zhang and said, “Xiao Zhang, can you help me find a post-disaster map of Dajing? If there isn’t one, an old map will do too.”
“O-okay.” For some reason, Xiao Zhang always seemed a bit nervous when facing Shen Ge, and looked somewhat afraid of him.
Watching Xiao Zhang turn and run off, Shen Ge looked at Fang Mingyue in confusion and asked, “Why does it feel like she’s a little afraid of me?”
Fang Mingyue glanced at Xiao Zhang, who had turned and run off, and said helplessly, “She’s one of the few ‘witnesses’ who has seen you fight weirdness. Back when you were dealing with the weirdness at Defense Line 3, she saw you cut down those weird things… Probably, she thinks you’re even scarier than the weirdness?”
“…” Hearing this answer, Shen Ge was immediately speechless.
Fang Mingyue asked again, “What are you looking for the map for?”
“If ‘******’ is the place where the weird disaster broke out earliest and was also abandoned earliest, then the resources there might still be quite plentiful. Maybe there’s a way to solve the resource crisis,” Shen Ge replied.
Fang Mingyue frowned and said, “That may be true, but the exploration team has thought about going to ‘******’ to gather resources before. But there’s a lot of weirdness there, and even fifth-tier high-level weirdness appears. On top of that, due to the influence of seventh-tier weirdness, the terrain is extremely complex. It’s very hard to get in, let alone move resources out.”
“I have a way.” Shen Ge said. His method was also very simple and crude. He only needed to go to the area around “******” and use the system’s lottery draw to transfer the resources inside out.
Although he had spent more than thirty thousand system points observing the 【Log】 of Fragment World 5, the remaining thirty thousand-plus system points were absolutely enough to empty out a mall.
Of course, emptying the store’s resources to help the shelter was only something done in passing. His main goal was the weirdo research mentioned in the 【Log】.
If this place was also a stronghold of a weirdo organization, then while researching weirdness, there should also be quite a bit of weird energy equipment, and even… progenitor weirdness cells!
Whether obtaining weird energy equipment or progenitor weirdness cells, Shen Ge didn’t need to personally enter the weird disaster sealed zone. This was the “benefit” of using the 【Log】 to “locate” and then relying on the lottery system to transfer things.
“What way do you have?” Fang Mingyue asked curiously.
“Let me first confirm whether the location is feasible before I say.” Shen Ge didn’t speak too confidently. Helping was helping, but he wasn’t about to reveal his abilities.
Soon, Xiao Zhang came back with the maps. She not only brought an old map, but also a map made after the exploration team re-explored Dajing after the apocalypse.
Shen Ge spread both maps on the table and looked at Fang Mingyue, asking, “Where is the location?”
Fang Mingyue picked up a red pen and circled two areas on the two maps respectively. On the old map, from the distribution of buildings and the division of terrain in the circled area, it was clear that it had been a prosperous district. And through the positions of some landmark buildings, Shen Ge could tell that this was actually the commercial street where he had once eaten with “Reality” Fang Mingyue, and later encountered her mischievous younger brother Fang Yaori.
Shen Ge couldn’t help but think of how the system had once warned of a fifth-tier weird reaction underground. Could it have something to do with that weirdo organization’s research institute?
Comparing it with the post-apocalypse map, the prosperous block had been replaced by several large pits, and the landmark buildings had been marked with “×.” It was clear that, as one of the outbreak points of the weird disaster, this place no longer had any of its former prosperity.
“What are you planning to do?” Fang Mingyue asked.
