“Miss Zhuohua, is that right?”

“Yes, Officer.” Zhuohua replied. The interrogation room’s harsh white light made her eyes sting a little. “Everything I said is true.”

The fat man sitting across from Zhuohua nodded. “You said you saw something anomalous. It had blood on it, and it smashed your front door.”

“That’s right, Officer. Luckily, I wasn’t home at the time, or else…” Zhuohua’s breathing quickened. She looked shaken by the thought.

“Officer, what exactly was that thing?”

“It was a hallucination.”

Zhuohua froze. “What? A hallucination?”

“That’s right, beau—graceful young lady.” The officer glanced at Zhuohua’s face and changed the polite phrase he’d been about to use. “It was a hallucination brought on by excessive stress.”

“Your name isn’t Zhuohua. Your real name is Chi Ruanfan, and you’re the only daughter of the Chi family.” He looked at Zhuohua with some sympathy.

“The house you lived in caught fire. Your family all died in the flames, and you were the only one who escaped. But your face was badly burned, and you couldn’t afford to repay the loans your family owed, so you had no choice but to move here.”

No wonder the original owner had such a great figure yet had ended up in such a state. She must’ve suffered a sudden misfortune.

Zhuohua couldn’t help feeling sorry for the original owner.

Maybe only death could free her from despair.

But the officer kept right on talking:

“The anomaly you saw was just a hallucination. You imagined it because you were under too much stress. You even shot through your own front door with a pistol… Everyone in the building heard the gunshots!”

Bullshit. Ever since I transmigrated into this world, I’ve heard the sounds of people setting off firecrackers while they go ‘zero-dollar shopping’ every night. And it’s not like people never fire guns in broad daylight.

So you turn a blind eye to the robbers and come down hard on the person who called the cops, huh?

“I’m right, Chi Ruanfan. You imagined all of it.”

As he spoke, the officer leaned forward, resting his weight on the cold tabletop. His fat, broad face stayed fixed on Zhuohua.

“Anomalies absolutely do not appear in Base 17. Not a chance. We haven’t had a single one here in sixty whole years. There weren’t any before, and there won’t be any now!”

Wow. This place is even worse than I thought.

Zhuohua thought, her face expressionless.

They know something’s wrong, but instead of treating it, they shut everyone else up and just let the condition get worse. Yeah, great plan.

“But don’t worry.” Seeing Zhuohua stay silent, the officer assumed she was scared. He spoke with satisfaction. “As long as you forget what happened today, I won’t have you committed to a psychiatric hospital.”

“You can leave now. And remember to keep your mouth shut.”

The officer hiked up his sagging waistband, stuck out his belly, and waddled out of the interrogation room.

Zhuohua had never imagined this place could be quite this rotten.

When she entered the police station, she’d claimed she’d hit her head and lost her memory. Then she asked the receptionist, who was so bored she was doing a crossword, a few things everyone knew.

The receptionist stared at her with the baffled look you’d give an idiot for quite a while before finally telling her about humanity’s history.

Base 17 was built during the [Ten Years of Weird Turmoil].

This world had once been a perfectly normal, modern civilization in the twenty-first century. Then the sudden [Anomalous Invasion] shattered human society, fragile as it was.

A red anomaly called the [Blood Tengu] had really eaten the moon.

At the same time, ghosts, demons, monsters, urban legends… all the horrors that should’ve existed only in fiction began appearing one after another. In little more than ten years, they turned the world upside down.

The [Ten Years of Weird Turmoil] began after the Anomalous Invasion. Those ten years were when the anomalies struck hardest and terrorized the world most brutally. Cities and villages, deserted places and bustling metropolises—anomalies could be found almost everywhere.

Humanity’s population fell by a full seventy percent before people finally pieced together a complete system for fighting the anomalies and built dozens of apocalyptic bases capable of withstanding their attacks.

After countless lives and more than a dozen bases were lost, humanity finally drove back the [Anomalous Invasion]—at a staggering cost.

The anomalies never appeared before humanity again.

In defeat, they fled to places beyond human reach. For sixty years, not a single anomaly had reappeared in any of the bases.

By then, only a few hundred million people remained. Humanity had no choice but to recover and rebuild the familiar social order at an astonishing pace.

It was a heroic song of humanity. Countless brave warriors had died in the [Anomalous Invasion], all to win a sliver of hope.

………………

That was the official, by-the-book history the receptionist had recited while putting on lipstick.

The trouble was, all the brave ones were dead. Almost everyone left alive was a coward.

Before the [Anomalous Invasion], this world’s leaders had thought it was no big deal. But once the anomalies were confirmed, they moved incredibly fast and managed to preserve a great deal of manpower.

Then, during the [Ten Years of Weird Turmoil], countless bases came under attack. The leaders had also led from the front, choosing to die alongside the anomalies.

But as life gradually returned to normal and the population kept growing, some of the base rulers who’d been lucky enough to survive began to grow ambitious.

They no longer did their best to make sure everyone got enough to eat, as they had during the war. Instead, they focused on cultivating loyal followers and drawing clear class lines. They even drove veterans who’d fought on the front lines and come away disabled into the slums.

After sixty years of recovery, the bases had long since restored their former levels of production. You could find delicious cakes, fried chicken, and puffed snacks on any commercial street.

But while she was holed up in that tiny place, Zhuohua had only been able to eat bread and drink tap water to fill her stomach.

Well… that one doesn’t count. The original owner’s situation was too unusual.

But what was with the gunshots every night, all over a few bills?

Civilization had been rebuilt quickly, but corruption and decay had spread just as fast.

Zhuohua walked out of the police station and looked up at the sky.

The sky was gray and gloomy, with no sunlight. An energy shield covered the entire base, keeping anomalies from outside from invading again.

Though the energy feeding the shield was dwindling. It had gotten so low that she could even see faint red glimmers from the [Blood Tengu] at night.

Still, this was a massive energy machine that had protected humanity through countless storms. Even if a large horde of anomalies invaded, they wouldn’t get in right away… right?

“Meow~” A meow broke Zhuohua’s train of thought. She looked down and saw that the octopus cat had somehow wrapped itself around her pant leg.

“Didn’t I tell you to stay home?” Zhuohua jumped. “Did anyone see you?”

As she spoke, Zhuohua glanced around. To her surprise, everyone nearby was looking at her. But after a few glances, they lost interest, as if they’d only seen someone talking to herself.

Zhuohua blinked and picked up the octopus cat. “Other people can’t see you?”

“Meow~”

“You scared me to death.” Zhuohua let out a sigh of relief, then placed the cat on her shoulder. “You’re something else. But first, I need to find a job, or I won’t be able to feed you.”

“Meow~” the little cat replied again. The suckers on its tentacles clung firmly to Zhuohua’s shoulder, and nothing could shake it loose.

“Once I’ve got some money, I’ll buy kitchenware and make you something tasty.” Zhuohua pulled at the exposed muscles of her face, forcing them into a strange smile, then patted her heavy chest.

The [Storage Bag], containing the anomaly’s corpse and a Desert Eagle, was tucked between her breasts.