"Finally got myself a win, and man was it hard-earned!"
With his latest match finally won, Liu Haoming heaved a long breath.
His luck had been rotten tonight. Every single game had matched him with trash teammates, and with his losses far outnumbering his wins, he was thoroughly frustrated.
He glanced back toward the entrance. The thick fog blanketing the street still hadn't lifted. Looked like there wouldn't be a second customer coming in tonight.
A little hungry, Liu Haoming grabbed a cup of Master Kong off the shelf behind the counter. On his way to get hot water he passed behind Chu Yao, and out of habit he stole a glance at her computer screen.
The game was in first-person view. Chu Yao's character was surrounded on all sides by dozens of officers, each gripping a pistol with its black muzzle leveled straight at her, poised and ready, as though Chu Yao were some terrifyingly dangerous figure.
That piqued Liu Haoming's curiosity at once. He stood behind Chu Yao and watched quietly for a moment. Was she playing some single-player game, something like Grand Theft Auto?
"I didn't kill anyone — I killed an Anomaly!"
Chu Yao's fair, delicate fingers rattled across the keyboard as she worked the control options, sending that line of dialogue to the officers around her.
A line of text promptly popped up above the head of the middle-aged man in front of her, who seemed to be the officers' leader: "Come with us to the authorities. If it truly is a misunderstanding, we'll naturally clear your name."
Chu Yao: "I'm not going to the authorities. The Demon Capital has already been invaded by Anomalies, and I'm the only one who can deal with them. Every moment you delay me here, more people die at the hands of the Anomalies!"
Middle-aged man: "Whether you go to the authorities isn't up to you. Cuff her."
Two officers stepped out of the circle with a set of shackles, while the rest kept their muzzles trained on Chu Yao to pin her in place.
As the two officers drew closer and closer, Chu Yao refused to go quietly. Her fingers danced nimbly over the keyboard, and her character sprang up in a single bound — like yanking a scallion straight out of dry ground — soaring eight or nine meters into the air.
"So it's the Superman edition of Grand Theft Auto..."
Liu Haoming was secretly stunned. Chu Yao leaped onto the rooftop of a nearby high-rise, and in a few vaulting bounds she vanished into the vast night. Behind her, the officers stood dumbstruck, frozen stiff as wooden chickens; not one of them had managed to fire a single shot.
The swaying first-person view left Liu Haoming a little dizzy. Even as a kid he'd never liked this kind of game, so after a while he stopped watching and went over to the water dispenser to fill his cup.
Back at the counter, Liu Haoming was still rather surprised. He never would have guessed that Chu Yao — quiet and pretty, as delicate-looking as the gentle girl next door — would play a violent game like Grand Theft Auto. It seemed her inner world didn't match her surface at all. Could that be the main reason she didn't get along with her family?
Liu Haoming couldn't puzzle it out, so he stopped letting his mind wander. He polished off the Master Kong in a few gulps and queued up for his next match.
***
The Demon Capital.
"He — he can actually fly!"
The officers stared at one another, aghast. The bald, muscular man had just taken off from a standstill and leaped clean out of their encirclement, and their worldview had taken an enormous blow.
So there really were Supermen in this world?!
Chai Jin's face was livid and grim. He hadn't expected the bald man to be this formidable either. Could that video of him shattering an entire street with one strike of his pestle really have been pure physical strength, and not some explosive weapon?
Just who on earth was he?!
And besides — was that thing he'd said about the Anomaly true or false?
How could there possibly be Anomalies in this world?
By the same logic — how could there possibly be a man who could jump eight or nine meters straight up?
The more Chai Jin thought about it, the more terrified he became.
Leave aside whether the Anomalies were real: the Demon Capital was an international metropolis of over ten million people, its crowds unusually dense. If the bald man were allowed to run wild and wreak havoc, the losses to its citizens' lives and property would be irreparable.
"Keep after him. Next time we run into him... no one fires unless it's absolutely necessary!" Chai Jin ordered his officers.
Instinct told him that even bullets probably couldn't harm the burly bald man. Firing blindly would only provoke his hostility and make him even more out of control.
***
"Finally shook off the officers."
Chu Yao sighed with relief. With her body's tremendous strength, she darted and flitted among the Demon Capital's high-rises, for all the world like a rooftop-running thief of old.
"Look, everyone, it's Spider-Man!"
A passerby spotted Chu Yao and shrieked, pointing at her.
"Oh my god! He's actually flying!"
"Is he shooting a movie? How can he fly?"
"Quick, film it and post it to Douying — it'll definitely trend!"
"..."
More and more pedestrians noticed Chu Yao, all of them stunned by the incredible sight before their eyes. They scrambled to pull out their phones and record it. Out on the road, brakes screeched as several cars rear-ended one another.
"Every single NPC reacts exactly like a real person!" Chu Yao marveled once again, thoroughly impressed by how realistic this game was.
These NPCs were plainly just passersby with nothing to do with the game's main quest, yet the system still rendered their virtual personalities as vividly as life.
"I can't draw this much attention. If I lure the authorities over again, that'll be bad," Chu Yao thought, and she flitted off toward quieter, more remote streets to lie low first.
The game had made her enormously powerful, but bullets didn't have eyes. A few shots from the officers and it would probably be GAME OVER. She loved slaying Anomalies in this game and didn't want it to end so soon.
Not long after, Chu Yao arrived at a deserted lakeside and sat down on a stone bench to think of a faster way to wipe out the Anomalies.
"Hey there, do you know which way Tulip Park is?"
A man-shaped Anomaly had suddenly stepped out of the dense woods nearby and come up behind Chu Yao of its own accord to strike up a conversation and ask the way.
Its question asked, the Anomaly fixed a burning gaze on Chu Yao's back, waiting with immense anticipation for her reaction.
"Answer me, answer me, answer me..."
The Anomaly prayed silently that this was a human who could see it.
As though she'd heard its thoughts, Chu Yao turned and gave it a curious look. "You can see me?"
The Anomaly froze. Something wasn't quite right.
Shouldn't that line have come out of its own mouth?
It was the one who was the Anomaly!
It could sense no Anomaly aura on her at all — she was one hundred percent human.
"Who are you?!"
The Anomaly took two steps back as an inexplicable, hair-raising chill welled up inside it.
Chu Yao had meant to scare this Anomaly the way an Anomaly scares humans, but on second thought there was no need to waste time on a Low-Tier Anomaly. She swung her Demon-Subduing Pestle and smashed him into ashes.