Chapter 453: This City Is Very Strange

2:05 a.m.

The pitch-black night sky looked as if it had been soaked in ink.

Raindrops with no visible source fell from the sky, pattering down as a thick fog shrouded the entire Hua City. Through the gaps in the dense mist, two or three faint lights could be seen.

Perhaps it was because too much had happened in a single day.

Lu Yibei, who had originally planned to stay up all night to prevent Gu Qianqian from “causing trouble and hurting people,” eventually drifted off to sleep to the sound of the rain without even realizing it.

Then…

A chill swept over him, and he suddenly woke up.

He opened his eyes, his pupils contracting as he was startled to find himself barefoot, standing on the rooftop of a tall building. The smooth, mirror-like surface was wet, and as he stepped on it, a cool sensation seeped into his feet.

The sky was covered with thick clouds, and through the gaps in the clouds, a dim, indistinct light shone through, making it impossible to tell whether it was dawn or dusk.

The towering buildings ahead looked as if they had been eroded by time, their surfaces covered in a layer of dark red stains, exuding a sense of decay.

Clusters of dark red mist drifted through the city like wandering spirits, weaving between the buildings.

And the outlines of those dilapidated buildings were almost identical to Hua City.

Lu Yibei steadied himself and suddenly saw a girl at the edge of the rooftop. He felt a sudden chill in his blood, and couldn’t help but shiver.

The girl’s figure was indistinct, hazy like a bubble, yet she felt both unfamiliar and inexplicably intimate and familiar to Lu Yibei.

It was like looking into a mirror…

She wore a long cyan dress, standing at the edge of the rooftop, her long silver hair flowing behind her like silk in the wind.

Lu Yibei watched the girl’s lips move rapidly and frowned.

Was it the PL girl from the dream memory?

She seemed eager to tell me something… Lu Yibei thought.

But when he strained his ears to listen, all he could hear was a ringing in his ears.

Still, what exactly did this PL girl do?

She couldn’t possibly be asking if I wanted cheats, power leveling, or hand-farmed gold, right?

Who would try to sell that stuff in a dream? Lu Yibei thought.

Most of the memories he got from his dreams were clear, basically forming a complete timeline and weaving a rough network of relationships.

But there were still many important pieces of information and details, as if sealed off by some force, shrouded in thick fog.

—-

“Screech–!”

Accompanied by a piercing sound in his ear, Lu Yibei jolted awake from his bed.

Opening his eyes, the familiar chandelier on the ceiling came into view.

He lay quietly on the bed for a few seconds, and when his mind cleared a bit, Lu Yibei noticed that the sound was coming from the living room.

“Screech–!”

“Screech–!”

The sound was like something heavy being dragged across the floor, intermittent.

Every time the sound rang out, it would pause for over ten seconds before starting again, sneaky and cautious.

What’s going on? Is Gu Qianqian up to something?

Lu Yibei grumbled inwardly, tiptoed out of bed, came to the door, removed the glass from the doorknob, carefully moved aside the nightstand blocking the door, then pressed his ear to the door, quietly listening to the movements in the living room. Only when the scraping sound rang out again did he use it as cover to unlock the door.

When the door crack was open enough to see into the living room, Lu Yibei leaned in and peered through the gap, his gaze growing deeper.

Good job, Gu Qianqian. You stayed at my place, and sure enough, you had no good intentions!

The unlit living room was pitch black, yet for some reason, he could see everything clearly.

In the darkness, Gu Qianqian’s body moved like an insect, dragging the chair tied to her, wriggling in a way so twisted and bizarre it made his scalp tingle.

With a series of tooth-grinding scraping sounds, she crossed half the living room and finally stopped at the balcony, peering outside through the gap in the curtains.

And she stared like that for nearly an hour.

Lu Yibei also kept watch, secretly observing for an hour in a state of high tension.

A long time passed.

Lu Yibei realized something was off, straightened his back, stretched his slightly stiff muscles, grabbed the toilet plunger, and moved toward the living room balcony.

……

Maybe there’s really something wrong with my brain.

Otherwise, why would I stare at her like an idiot for so long?

How is this any different from pulling an all-nighter at an internet café watching someone play Minesweeper? Lu Yibei thought.

Bit by bit, he crept closer in silence.

When Lu Yibei reached the window and saw Gu Qianqian’s eyes, he froze.

Her pure, flawless eyes, like top-grade amber, stared unblinkingly out the window, her gaze flickering with confusion and curiosity.

Then…

Confusion gradually turned to surprise, and surprise shifted into terror.

Her pupils contracted, and she let out a piercing scream.

“Ah–!”

The scream echoed, and Lu Yibei’s heart skipped a beat. Clutching the toilet plunger, he looked around in panic, on guard for any sudden, terrifying thing that might appear.

Then…

He realized that the “terrifying” thing was probably, maybe, possibly himself.

The silver-haired girl stood with a sword, her face frosty.

Gu Qianqian stared at his reflection in the glass, her pupils shrinking, trembling all over. “Don’t kill me, don’t kill me! Reporting you to The Midnight Watchers Society was all the systems’ idea, it had nothing to do with me!”

Although she truly considered Lu Yibei a friend, she was also genuinely afraid of “Calamity.”

She had seen some carefully selected clips about “Calamity” from the systems, and even those beautified and edited clips had given her nightmares for days.

……

What the hell is a system? Have you read too many web novels?

But…

So that’s why, in my dream memory, I ended up on that damn Wanted List, and I even suspected Gu Qianqian was behind it. Turns out it really was her?

At that moment, Lu Yibei suddenly felt that his wariness and vigilance toward Gu Qianqian were not unnecessary.

Even if she acted harmless, didn’t she still poison and report me?

Tch, so underhanded-who did she learn that from?

“What are you looking at?” Lu Yibei asked in a low voice.

“Um…” Gu Qianqian opened her mouth, glanced at Lu Yibei out of the corner of her eye, shook her head, and answered honestly, “I don’t know what I’m looking at either. I just feel it’s very strange.”

Lu Yibei tilted his head, puzzled. “Strange? What’s strange about it?”

“Well, I can’t really say…” Gu Qianqian thought for a moment and said seriously, “This place looks a lot like Hua City, everywhere looks the same, but I just feel it’s very strange.”

“Like what?”

“Like…” Gu Qianqian looked out the window, tilting her chin. “See that cat?”

“It’ll leave soon, then come back in five minutes, stay under the streetlight for about ten minutes, then leave again for five minutes, and keep repeating like that. Don’t you think that’s strange?”

Lu Yibei didn’t say anything. He just stood on the balcony with Gu Qianqian, watching the tabby cat under the streetlamp as it left, came back, and left again.

Although it wasn’t as precise as Gu Qianqian described, there did seem to be some predetermined pattern hidden within.

Watching Gu Qianqian gaze out the window, lost in thought, saying those things, her pale face reflected in the glass but her eyes invisible, Lu Yibei felt a faint sense of eeriness in the air.

“It’s probably just a coincidence. You’re not a cat, so how would you know what a cat is thinking?”

Gu Qianqian, “……”

“All right, go to bed early. Don’t make any noise and disturb my rest.”

Seeing Gu Qianqian fall silent, Lu Yibei coldly tossed out a sentence, then turned and left the living room balcony, heading toward the bedroom.

“Oh, got it.” Gu Qianqian pouted and replied.

Only when she heard the sound of the door closing and locking did she mutter to herself in a voice only she could hear, “It’s definitely not a coincidence……”

This city is clearly strange, but Lu Yibei can’t see it. When I find the systems, I must tell them that Calamity is being dumb. Gu Qianqian thought very seriously.

Coming to this city with the same name as Hua City, wandering for several days, she had already noticed this kind of strange phenomenon more than once.

Right at the intersection where she found Lu Yibei.

In the morning, there would always be a chubby kid holding a beef guokui.

At noon, a middle-aged woman would always be sideswiped by a shiny electric scooter, spilling the freshly made Beef Noodle in her hands.

At night, a young man dressed like an insurance salesperson would always rush past. Gu Qianqian had never seen what he carried for dinner, only remembered its special aroma.

At that intersection with a staggering daily flow of people, in the vast crowd, such details were easy for most to overlook, but not for Gu Qianqian.

Beef guokui, freshly made Beef Noodle, unknown delicacies-she remembered them all clearly.

She saw them every day, but could never eat them. It was pure torture.

—-

Lying on the bed in the master bedroom, Lu Yibei stared blankly at the ceiling, replaying in his mind the scene of the stray cat disappearing, reappearing, and repeating the cycle.

Just as Gu Qianqian said, that scene was indeed strange.

That cat seemed stuck in some kind of world bug, never able to get out.

That scene seemed to whisper to Lu Yibei that the past decade or so of his life had been a dream dictated by predetermined rules.

But he refused to believe it.

Memory can deceive, and people can sometimes deceive memory.

Although the father in his dream memories was very, very good, he couldn’t bear to part with his childhood friend Nanling Rao Hua, and even less with Wang Meili, who raised him alone.

—-

After sitting on the bed doubting his life for a while, sleepiness crept in.

Lu Yibei sighed silently, picked up the photo frame by the bed, and spoke to the woman in the photo, “Mom, what’s so fun about Alaskan king crabs?”

“Can you hurry back? If you don’t come back soon, the next time we meet might be in the visiting room of a mental hospital.”

After speaking, Lu Yibei put down the photo frame, lay down on the bed, reached out to turn off the light, and let the room sink into darkness.

In the darkness, in the photo frame on the bedside table, in that half of the photo, a woman seemed to be holding someone’s arm, her beautiful face beaming with a happy smile.

—-

Early morning, 6:55.

A faint light seeped through the sky, and early risers in the half-awake city made sounds from another world.

The living room lights were off, the house was dark, and Gu Qianqian was forced to sit on a chair, hugging her knees.

She kept this posture, gazing out the window, almost the entire night.

At first, she observed the strange cat pacing back and forth, then the moths circling under the streetlamp in some odd pattern.

Now, her attention was on the father and daughter passing through the neighborhood.

Unlike the cat and the moths, there was nothing strange about the father and daughter. The father pedaled slowly, and the little girl on the back seat hugged his waist with her schoolbag on her back.

Watching them, Gu Qianqian couldn’t help but think of her uncle taking her to school early in the morning when she was little, and a wave of sourness welled up in her heart.

It turns out, foodies have feelings too, and sometimes they’re especially rich.

Gu Qianqian felt that her family must be in this strange city.

Back then, they left suddenly not because they didn’t want her, but because, like her now, they accidentally wandered into this city and got trapped here.

Watching the father and daughter disappear from view, Gu Qianqian glanced down at the wires tied around her, pouting.

She felt it was about time for her to leave.

Although she originally planned to eat Calamity into bankruptcy.

But she said she’d mooch one meal and stay one night, so she’d only mooch one meal and stay one night.

I, Gu Qianqian, am honest and trustworthy!

Besides, if I can’t find the systems or my uncle and the others, I should be able to come back and keep mooching, right?

Thinking this, Gu Qianqian stood up with the chair, feet slightly apart, pink fists clenched, arms tensed, and the wires wrapped around her body instantly tightened, making a light “creak creak” sound.

So, after several attempts, the wires binding her snapped with a “pop.”

A few wires could restrain most people, but not Gu Qianqian.

Under someone else’s roof, you have to bow your head. She only cooperated because she was worried Calamity would be upset.

Although after coming to this city, her psychic energy fluctuation had dropped to about D+ level.

But as a psychic with the Powerful God power in her Spirit Pattern, even a bit of Spirit Pattern power was enough to make her strength rival the world’s top warrior.

Breaking free, Gu Qianqian stretched a bit, quietly left, and then……

Soon came sneaking back, carefully found pen and paper, and left a note for Lu Yibei.

“I already told Calamity where I’m going, so it doesn’t count as leaving without saying goodbye, right? Yep, this way, she shouldn’t get mad. I’m so clever!”

As she spoke, she noticed the half bucket of fried chicken left from last night, hesitated, licked her lips, picked up the bag, and packed it to go.

This was left over from yesterday, so it doesn’t count as a second meal!

Thinking this, Gu Qianqian successfully convinced herself, left Lu Yibei’s house in high spirits, and opened the door to greet the bright morning sunlight……