The male administrator leaped nimbly out of the way.
“Explain clearly everything you know. Someone will naturally investigate it later.”
“I’m truly innocent!”
The old hag tried to act up again, sitting on the ground and refusing to get up.
However, the crowd of onlookers watching the commotion stepped in to lend a hand, enthusiastically pulling her up from the ground and surrounding her as they followed the administrator.
Bai Bai was also protected by a group of warmhearted women, following along behind.
In reality, the administrators were only the managers of this residential complex, not even equivalent to subdistrict office staff, yet they were busy as dogs every single day.
They possessed no interrogation authority; when encountering such incidents, their sole authority was limited to escorting both parties involved to the police station.
Upon arriving, Bai Bai and the old hag were separated into two different rooms to record their statements.
Armed with the original host’s memories and observations, Bai Bai clearly provided every name and the unit numbers where they had lived before passing away.
As she spoke, she gradually realized that her mental power might actually be a capability belonging to her own soul.
The earliest suspicious case had occurred a year ago, right after the tenement building was completed and put up for unified public rental. Everyone had been strangers back then, but as a single person, the original host naturally interacted with other single residents.
Retrieving these details from memory now, Bai Bai was surprised to find that she could remember the surrounding environment, passersby, temperature, and weather on the exact days of those people’s marriages and deaths with crystal clarity.
This was undoubtedly a derived capability of her mental power: the higher her mental power, the better her memory.
During the hard times after leaving Lu Lutong’s transport team and being blacklisted, the original host had survived by relying on single folks helping each other out through business referrals.
For perfectly healthy people to die one after another within three months of getting married—just thinking about it was horrifying.
The original host had sensed that something was wrong, but what could she do? She was merely a bottom-tier Awakened individual with a 1-cubic-meter space. Lacking evidence, she could only keep quiet.
Thus, while the original host would occasionally envy neighbors who had family members to support each other during times of extreme exhaustion, she herself had never taken any action in that direction—and now the root cause was laid bare.
The officer diligently took down Bai Bai’s account, and following her narrative, naturally asked why she was a solo free agent rather than joining a team.
Bai Bai took the opportunity to recount her grievances with Lu Lutong’s transport team, including how they had pushed her into bumping her head earlier today, turning around to show the officer the swollen lump on the back of her head.
Regardless of whether this information would prove useful, establishing an impression with the police officers first could serve as an opportunity to cause trouble for Lu Lutong’s crew later on.
Once the statement was fully recorded, the officer printed out the transcript for her to confirm and sign before she could leave.
The old hag next door would be investigated further. Based on police intuition, the officer also felt that something was off—the mortality rate was simply too concentrated, and there were no such coincidences in the world.
As for her hitting someone, in the current era, it wasn’t even worth filing a police report.
These were no longer the peaceful times of the past, where people called the police over verbal spats. Nowadays, unless someone was beaten to death and it was witnessed by onlookers, no one on the street would even bother to check whether a person lying by the roadside was dead or alive.
Stepping out of the police station, Bai Bai saw the warmhearted women still waiting for her by the curb. She went over to express her gratitude and then claimed that her intense emotional distress earlier had left her feeling dizzy and exhausted. Prompted by their insistent urges, she headed home first.
The women remained behind to keep watch outside, eager to hear the latest updates.
Just as she reached the main entrance of the residential complex, she discovered that trouble had broken out inside once again.
Numerous residents were dragging their families along as they fled outward.
“Run! It’s a mad dog! It’s a mad dog!”
Hearing this from afar, Bai Bai’s heart sank abruptly.
Mad dog.
This term didn’t represent ordinary danger; it referred to a humanoid monster that had completely lost control.
In the original host’s memories, awakening carried a probability. Success made one an Awakened, while failing midway through awakening made one a Heart-Eaten—commonly referred to among the populace as a “mad dog.”
“No wonder people died so soon after getting married—mad dogs snuck in!”
Someone ran to the roadside and halted to rest, shouting with lingering terror.
Hearing this as she stood among the frantic crowd that had likewise fled here, a blood-curdling realization suddenly gripped Bai Bai.
Those names she had just reported—those people familiar to the original host—what if all their marriage partners were mad dogs?
How else could one explain such uniform times of death?
Under the high pressure of life, a single person could grit their teeth and bear it, but two people would inevitably experience friction and quarrels.
Any minor trigger could become the final straw that broke the camel’s back, detonating the beastly nature already stirring within the spouse.
That old hag made a living as a matchmaker—just how many seemingly normal mad dogs had she introduced into the complex through her hands?
In today’s society, non-natural deaths were not investigated as strictly as before. A single excuse of “sudden death from overwork” would prevent neighbors from prying further, even prompting sympathy for the surviving widow or widower.
The original host had noticed her friends dying one after another, but with her limited strength, she had no choice other than staying silent and vigilant.
Until she was gone too.
And then, having taken over her body, Bai Bai had exposed the sinister plot in public.
Bai Bai said nothing more, standing quietly among the crowd while waiting for rescue to arrive.
The police station down the street quickly received the new emergency report, using loudspeakers to remind the public to seek refuge on the streets, followed by summoning nearby combat-type Awakened individuals for assistance over the speakers.
The Awakened who heard the broadcast arrived swiftly, charging into the complex against the flow of the fleeing crowd.
Bai Bai couldn’t see the actual battle from the street. She only felt that the fight was over in no time, as she watched the Awakened carry out two mad dogs of unknown vitality, slung up like slaughtered pigs.
A mad dog that could hide stably among the crowd naturally looked normal on the outside, but once a mad dog erupted, it no longer retained a human appearance—twisted limbs, discolored skin, making it obvious to anyone at a glance that it was a monster.
Watching the Awakened lock the two mad dogs into cages, hoist them onto a truck, and drive off, Bai Bai became even more resolute in her determination to move out as soon as possible.
The tenement buildings were a low-rent complex where ordinary people gathered—the lowest tier of housing with practically zero defensive capability. Now that two mad dogs had been carried out, there was no telling if more mad dogs were still hiding inside.
Move out!
She had to move out as soon as possible!
After the two mad dogs were driven away by the truck, the blockade at the entrance of the complex was lifted. Two ambulances drove in shortly after, with the residents following close behind.
Following the crowd back to her building, Bai Bai saw an ambulance parked at the entrance of Unit 3 in the adjacent building. A stretcher was being carried out from the entryway, covered with a white sheet.
Many people gathered around to watch the commotion, but Bai Bai wasn’t particularly curious. She stood at the entryway of her own unit and looked out.
She had seen two ambulances enter earlier, but she didn’t know where the other one was.
Just as the thought crossed her mind, she heard the wailing sirens of an ambulance. Looking up, she saw the second vehicle driving out along the inner driveway from behind, leaving ahead of the other.
“Oh dear, that whole family is gone. What about the one that just drove off? Is anyone still alive?”
“Sigh, both households are wiped out.”
A neighbor who had presumably finished watching the commotion walked over, joining the discussion among the residents.
“Was it done by those two mad dogs?”
“Hard to say. We’ll find out more later.”