"She's dead — not even a scrap of her left."
Chu Yao told him, feeling for all the world like a chivalrous knight of old, out righting wrongs.
"Not even... a scrap?!"
Zhang Nanmu's legs shook so hard he nearly wet himself. He glanced around at the pitted, cratered ground — indeed, there wasn't the faintest trace left that the yellow-dress girl had ever existed.
"No need to thank me. It was just a small effort," Chu Yao said breezily, every word radiating the bearing of a knight-errant.
With that, she turned and walked off, following the minimap in search of the next Anomaly.
Zhang Nanmu watched the bald muscle-man's retreating back, the corner of his mouth twitching violently twice. Thank you? Thank you for smashing my once-in-twenty-seven-years romance into not even a scrap?!
That was a living, breathing, beautiful girl — how dare you!
As soon as the bald muscle-man had vanished at the far end of the street, Zhang Nanmu pulled out his phone with trembling hands:
"Hello, is this the authorities? Come quick — someone's committing murder in the street!"
***
Chu Yao had no idea she was about to face a citywide manhunt by the authorities. Right now she was staring at the minimap, sunk in hesitation.
The map showed that the nearest one to her now was a Mid-Tier Anomaly, holed up in a residential building a kilometer away.
"I should be able to handle a Mid-Tier Anomaly too, right?"
Remembering the terrifying power that had just shattered an entire street with one strike of the pestle, Chu Yao felt her confidence surge. Resolute, she set off to do battle with the Mid-Tier Anomaly.
***
Before he put the videotape into the VCR, Zhao Fei recalled what his classmate Huo Yawei had told him so mysteriously that afternoon:
"After you watch this tape, you MUST pass it on to someone else within seven days. Don't ask why — just do as I say and you won't go wrong!"
Zhao Fei curled his lip disdainfully and muttered, "What a load of mystic nonsense. It's just a videotape. What, is a 2D anime beauty going to crawl out of the TV or something?"
A hardcore 2D otaku, high-schooler Zhao Fei often daydreamed about anime plots — especially the heaven-sent genre. He longed for the day a beautiful girl would drop into his life from the sky.
It didn't even have to be heaven-sent. She could crawl out of a bathtub, or climb out of the TV, or even pop up out of the toilet. As long as she was a beautiful girl, Zhao Fei welcomed any method of appearance whatsoever.
His mind churning with these unrealistic fantasies, he slid the tape into the VCR and settled onto the sofa. He was quite curious about the tape his classmate had handed him so mysteriously — and whether it was anything wholesome.
Soon, snow began to flicker across the screen, and an old, decrepit well appeared in the frame.
A white-clothed girl slowly climbed out of the well.
Zhao Fei instantly perked up. Her hair hung like a waterfall, hiding her face, but that curvy, well-proportioned figure of hers was quite alluring.
The girl came walking out of the distance, drawing nearer and nearer to the TV screen.
"She's not going to crawl out of the TV, is she?!"
A bold thought suddenly sprang up in Zhao Fei's mind — and this was exactly the heaven-sent scene he'd yearned for so long.
The closer the girl came to the screen, the more tense Zhao Fei grew.
Finally, the girl reached out a hand — and it passed straight through the screen, into reality.
Crackle, crackle!
The living-room chandelier flickered wildly on and off. Zhao Fei's eyes went wide; it was like a dream.
Never in his wildest dreams had he thought the heaven-sent scene he'd fantasized about all this time would actually happen to him!
So... the anime protagonist was me all along!
Once it sank in, Zhao Fei was beside himself with excitement. By now the girl's upper body was already out of the TV, and the chandelier was flickering even more violently, as though it might explode at any second.
"I'll help you!"
Seeing how hard the girl was struggling to climb out, Zhao Fei rushed over and, ever so warmheartedly, grabbed its two arms and hauled with all his might, like a game of tug-of-war.
The Anomaly froze, tilting its head, a little confused.
Thanks to Zhao Fei's mighty heaving, the Anomaly came free of the TV, and the two of them crashed to the floor together with a thud.
Now the Anomaly came to its senses. The eyes hidden beneath its long hair flashed with murderous light, and it was just about to lunge for the kill when it turned its head — and met a burning, fervent gaze.
"Did you cross dimensions specifically to find me?" Zhao Fei asked excitedly.
"Are you burdened with a great mission — come to our world to seek the Chosen One — and I'm that Chosen One?"
"I'm already prepared to go to war across other worlds with you. I can set out with you anytime!"
Three big question marks rose over the Anomaly's head.
"???"
It had come to kill, and now it was utterly dumbfounded.
Just then the door burst open with a "bang" — kicked to pieces by a bald muscle-man, splinters and wood chips flying everywhere.
Chu Yao burst in, and the instant she laid eyes on the white-clothed Anomaly she knew this was the target she'd come to exterminate. But then she spotted the high-school boy beside it and hesitated, afraid to throw the stone lest she break the vase.
"Who are you? Why'd you break into my home?!"
Zhao Fei was terrified — and he hadn't felt the slightest fear watching the white-clothed girl climb out of the TV.
But in his eyes, Chu Yao's hulking, iron-tower physique looked exactly like a villain from an anime!
"Insolent Anomaly! Surrender at once!" Chu Yao ignored Zhao Fei and railed at the Anomaly.
It was too close to the boy; Chu Yao wasn't confident she could finish the kill before it hurt him. The boy was only an NPC, but Chu Yao still wanted to save him — she kept feeling that the game's NPCs were every bit as real as actual people.
The white-clothed Anomaly took two steps back. She was a Mid-Tier Anomaly, her Anomalous force more than ten times that of the Low-Tier Anomalies Chu Yao had killed before — she could even make herself visible to humans who couldn't originally see her.
She could clearly sense an extremely terrifying Mana fluctuation inside Chu Yao — absolutely not something she could stand against. After only a moment's hesitation she made up her mind and leapt to the side, trying to climb back into the TV and escape.
"Where do you think you're going?!"
Her opponent hadn't taken a hostage but had chosen to flee instead. Chu Yao's first reaction was a leap of delight; then she unleashed extreme-speed Flash to reach the TV and seized the Anomaly's right foot, to haul back out the body that had already half disappeared into the screen.
"Aah! Aah! Aah!"
The instant her right foot was caught, the Anomaly felt the palm gripping it like a red-hot branding iron, searing all the way to the depths of her soul. She writhed and thrashed madly, her screams shrill and piteous.
Zhao Fei cowered in the corner of the living room, trembling. He was certain the bald muscle-man had to be the heaven-sent beauty's enemy — the villain boss — because that was exactly how it always went in anime.
But right now he didn't have the slightest shred of courage to help the heaven-sent beauty fight the villain boss, because the villain boss was just too savage. The villain boss's arm alone was as thick as his waist; he suspected the guy could punch the sh*t out of him with a single blow.
"Aah! Aah!"
White smoke rose from the Anomaly's calf, and its screams grew even more piteous.