【Killed one Low-Tier Anomaly. Gained 3 Anomaly Coins, 220 EXP.】
"Aiya! This Anomaly was so weak — I should have forced it to tell me why they descended on Demon Capital!"
Only after the kill did this occur to Chu Yao, and she felt a twinge of regret.
"Guess I'll just have to find the next Anomaly and interrogate it."
"By the way, what exactly are Anomaly Coins? Can I use them to buy things?"
Chu Yao was curious about the Anomaly Coins she gained every time she killed an Anomaly. She studied the game interface for a while, found a Shop tab, and opened it to take a look:
【Invisibility Art (invisibility skill, 100 Mana per use): 100 Anomaly Coins.
Divine-Step (speed skill, 200 Mana per use): 200 Anomaly Coins.
Flight Art (flight skill, 500 Mana per use): 500 Anomaly Coins.
Earth-Escape (matter-phasing skill, 1000 Mana per use): 1000 Anomaly Coins.
Great Sun Demon-Subduing Mudra (powerful demon-subduing skill, 2000 Mana per use): 2000 Anomaly Coins.
Heavenly Eye (eye technique that sees through all creation, 500 Mana per use): 5000 Anomaly Coins.
Heavenly Ear...
Mind-Reading...
Buddha-Land in the Palm...】
"Is everything in the Shop tab a divine art?" Chu Yao muttered to herself.
She was very curious: would simply buying these divine arts let her learn the skills instantly, or would she have to cultivate them?
"Too bad I don't have enough Anomaly Coins, otherwise I could buy one and give it a try." Chu Yao felt a pang of regret. She had far too few Anomaly Coins — she couldn't even afford the Invisibility Art, the cheapest of them all.
"If I learned the Invisibility Art, I wouldn't have to worry about the officers hunting me anymore. After all, they wouldn't even be able to see me."
Once she had the gist of the Shop tab, Chu Yao set herself a small goal: scrape together 100 Anomaly Coins as soon as possible and buy the Invisibility Art. She coveted skills like Divine-Step and Flight Art dearly too. She was already extremely fast; with those skills on top, she'd be able to roam all of Demon Capital completely unhindered!
With that, Chu Yao set to work on her little goal, following the minimap on a campaign to exterminate Anomalies.
***
In a luxury villa somewhere in Demon Capital, a young married woman lay soaking comfortably in the bathtub, her alluring figure faintly visible through the bubbles.
Suddenly—
BANG!
The bathroom door was violently kicked open, and a fierce-faced bald muscle-man strode in.
"Who are you?!"
The young woman stared at him in utter terror.
Chu Yao gave no answer. She strode forward and thrust a hand as big as a palm-leaf fan into the bathtub. Sure she was about to be hurt, the young woman squeezed her eyes shut in fear.
As if plucking up a chick by the scruff, Chu Yao lifted out the Anomaly that had been hiding in the bathtub.
The Anomaly's face was a mask of bewilderment as it stared, big eyes to small eyes, at Chu Yao.
Who am I?
Where am I?
What am I doing?
"Talk — why are you here?!"
Chu Yao did her best to look fierce as she menaced and interrogated the Anomaly.
"This... this is my home..."
Eyes still shut, the young woman answered in a trembling voice.
"I wasn't asking you. I'm asking him." Chu Yao gave the Anomaly in her hand a jiggle, and it flailed and thrashed, wailing in panic.
Puzzled, the young woman opened her eyes and saw the bald muscle-man staring intently at the empty air in front of him, as if someone were standing right there.
The Anomaly struggled desperately a couple of times, but it couldn't break that grip, and it understood it had run into someone powerful. Being the type to bully the weak and fear the strong, it answered honestly: "The woman in this house is pretty, so I came over here. If Your Excellency likes her too, I can let you have her."
As it spoke, the Anomaly's eyes kept darting toward the young woman in the tub — a lecherous Anomaly, by the look of it.
Chu Yao more or less caught its meaning, and the high-school girl flushed bright red. "That's not what I'm asking," she went on fiercely. "I'm asking why you appeared in Demon Capital!"
"Why did all of you Anomalies suddenly descend on Demon Capital overnight?!"
An Anomaly?!
Watching the bald muscle-man mutter to himself at the empty air, the young woman went deathly pale as a hair-raising chill washed over her.
"I don't know. Everyone came, so I came along with them." The Anomaly shook its head.
"How did you come?"
"Just went 'whoosh' and here I was."
The Anomaly acted out the "whoosh" with its hands. Chu Yao's face filled with question marks.
Meanwhile, the young woman in the tub was nearly wetting herself in fright. She had been soaking in the bath in the dead of night when a stranger broke into her home, and on top of that she had to watch him talk to thin air — she had never experienced anything so terrifying in her whole life.
What she really wanted to say to Chu Yao was: whether you're here to rob me or to assault me, could you please stop scaring me like this? People scaring people is truly terrifying!
"Your Excellency, I'm just an ordinary Low-Tier Anomaly. I came here dazed and clueless, knowing nothing. If Your Excellency wants to know more, you could go ask the other Anomalies with stronger Anomalous force," the Anomaly suggested, hoping to steer the disaster toward other Anomalies.
Chu Yao mulled it over and decided it had a point. What a Low-Tier Anomaly didn't know, a Mid-Tier Anomaly might; and above the Mid-Tier Anomalies there might be High-Tier Anomalies — though so far Chu Yao had not found any High-Tier Anomaly on the minimap.
That's just how games usually go: you fight your way up from the small mobs to the boss. Thanks to the boys in her class, Chu Yao knew quite a bit about this sort of thing.
"Have you hurt any humans?" Chu Yao demanded, her tiger-eyes suddenly glaring.
"N-no... didn't get the chance!"
Chu Yao was so exasperated she almost laughed. She backhanded it with the Demon-Subduing Pestle, and the Anomaly vanished in a burst of Buddha-light without so much as a scream.
【Killed one Low-Tier Anomaly. Gained 3 Anomaly Coins, 210 EXP.】
Her business here done, Chu Yao wasted not a moment. She swaggered straight out of the luxury villa, heading for the next battlefield where an Anomaly awaited.
The young woman had never been so dumbfounded in her life, her little head buzzing.
So, what exactly had he come to do?
Broke into my home, jabbered at the empty air for a good while, ignored me the entire time, then just left... just left, can you believe it?!
It was a good long while before the young woman came to her senses. Trembling, she fetched her phone:
"I want to report a lunatic who broke into my home. He's very tall and burly, and he's bald..."
***
At the next battlefield, a married couple were fast asleep when a thunderous BANG rang out and their whole front door was blasted to pieces.
The two of them watched, wide-eyed, as a bald muscle-man crawled under their bed and yanked out a wad of thin air.
"Talk! Why did you descend on Demon Capital?!" the bald muscle-man snarled fiercely at the empty air.
"Don't know? Hmph!"
The bald muscle-man snorted coldly, gave the Buddha-pestle in his hand a wave, then turned on his heel and left as if no one else existed.
"Honey, am I dreaming?" Staring at the wreckage strewn across the floor, the woman was struck dumb as a wooden chicken.
The man simply pulled out his phone:
"I want to report a crime! There's a lunatic over here... yes! A lunatic!"