"Hello, is this the authorities? I want to report a crime!"
In an office somewhere in a high-rise, a middle-aged man grabbed the phone in a fury:
"A lunatic just barged into my office for no reason at all... Yes, the lunatic was bald — how did you know?!"
The same scene played out at hotels, restaurants, KTVs, supermarkets, and residential complexes. In just two hours the authorities received eighty or ninety report calls, and all of them accused the same bald man.
And so Chu Yao became Batman, prowling the darkness of Demon Capital and cleansing the cosmopolitan metropolis of evil, leaving chaos and pandemonium wherever she went.
Chu Yao knew full well how bad this looked and how easily it could be misunderstood. But to wipe out the Anomalies quickly and save more people, she couldn't spare it a thought — there was no room for anything but recklessness.
If she had to stop and explain the whole business about Anomalies to every ordinary person she rescued, her Anomaly-killing efficiency tonight would drop by more than half.
"Good thing this is just a VR game and not the real world. No matter how awful the things I do in the game are, there won't be any consequences," Chu Yao thought with relief. "Otherwise I'd definitely end up a wanted criminal."
That was what emboldened her most. She knew deep down that this world was nothing but cold program code inside a computer, all of it fake. The moment she logged out, this virtual world would sever every tie with her; even if she came back next time, it probably wouldn't be this storyline at all.
If this were the real Demon Capital, Chu Yao would never dare run wild like this, even with power beyond any ordinary mortal's.
***
"Constable-Captain Chai, another report just came in from Zhabei District. According to the caller's description, the suspect is active around Lingshi Road!"
"Good, understood."
Chai Jin ended the call from authority headquarters and gravely ordered his officers to Lingshi Road at once. Seven helicopters wheeled overhead, and hundreds of patrol cars blared their sirens along the roads.
For a great many people, tonight was destined to be sleepless.
"This is already the ninety-fourth report call. What on earth is he even trying to do?"
Chai Jin was utterly baffled. The bald, burly man was raising hell across Demon Capital — the very thing he feared most had come to pass. Yet in every report call so far, the bald man had not harmed a single person, had not even stolen anything. He simply broke into the callers' homes, trashed the place at will, said something baffling to the empty air, and left.
The bald man's behavior had gravely alarmed Demon Capital's top brass. So dangerous an individual absolutely could not be left free to do as he pleased. Demon Capital had deployed over ten thousand troops to capture him, and officers were patrolling every district closely. Yet even with such a dragnet cast, they still couldn't catch him. He was more Superman than Spider-Man — a casual leap carried him a dozen-plus meters up, and he flitted among the skyscrapers, ranging back and forth across several districts. By the time the officers got a report call and rushed over, he had long since vanished without a trace.
Surveillance cameras had caught the bald man's face, and experts had run it against the national database, but they couldn't match it to any information at all. It was as if he had popped out of thin air like a ghost...
"Wait! A ghost!"
Chai Jin gave a start, remembering the exchange between the two of them the first time they had the bald man surrounded:
"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!"
"Could it be that he was telling the truth? Are there really Anomalies in the world?" Chai Jin was shaken, torn between alarm and doubt.
Experts at authority headquarters were working up a psychological profile of the bald man, but no matter how they profiled and re-profiled him, they could never pin down his motive for raising hell across Demon Capital.
No one believed a Superman ranging across Demon Capital like that could be a lunatic, and Chai Jin agreed.
Now, Demon Capital's renowned constable dimly sensed that he had worked out the man's motive.
He was a materialist and had never believed in the existence of ghosts and gods, but tonight he found himself half-believing.
***
Wee-woo, wee-woo!
Whup-whup-whup!
The wail of distant patrol cars and the roar of helicopters drifted over, and Chu Yao, running down a pitch-black alley, felt a splitting headache coming on.
"There are more and more officers after me. Can't they give it a rest? I'm the hero saving Demon Capital!"
It really was a headache. She was obviously the hero, yet the officers were hunting her like a criminal, and worst of all she had no way to explain herself to anyone. It made her miserable.
She opened the quest panel:
【Main Quest: Kill 100 Anomalies (95% complete) / Investigate the cause of the Anomalies' descent upon Demon Capital (0% complete).】
"Just five more Anomalies and I'll complete the quest to kill 100 Anomalies!"
The end of the quest was in sight. Chu Yao opened the minimap and spotted a building not far off with exactly five little black dots in it. Four were marked as Low-Tier Anomalies, and the other one as a Mid-Tier Anomaly.
"One measly little building actually has five Anomalies, and one of them's even a Mid-Tier Anomaly — this is outrageous!"
Chu Yao set off for the building without hesitation. By now she was a veteran Anomaly-exterminator with a wealth of experience in the trade.
Snap.
Suddenly a beam of light shot down from the sky and landed on Chu Yao.
"Suspect spotted! Suspect spotted!"
The officers aboard the helicopter hurriedly sent word to their colleagues.
"Oh no, the authorities even sent out helicopters."
Chu Yao had a bad feeling about this. She kept dodging and weaving through the alleys, but she just couldn't shake the searchlight. Finally she gritted her teeth and leapt onto a high-rise, trying to get clear of the area.
"The suspect's over there!"
The helicopter swooped low, clinging to Chu Yao as tightly as a maggot on the bone, refusing to give her any chance to escape. Authority headquarters even brought a satellite online to lock onto her, and the other six helicopters all rushed in at once as reinforcements.
"You have nowhere left to run. Raising your hands in surrender is your only way out. This is your first warning!" Chai Jin called over a loudspeaker.
Chu Yao ignored him and just kept running with her head down.
The enormous commotion of the manhunt woke countless sleeping citizens. Some pushed open their doors and windows, others went out into the streets, and they witnessed a scene straight out of a sci-fi blockbuster.
Seven helicopters circled above Demon Capital, their seven searchlights trained on a single figure below, running and leaping ceaselessly among the skyscrapers.
"What's going on?!"
The crowds stood dumbstruck and utterly shaken, wondering if they were even awake.
Armed helicopters, even. An operation on this scale couldn't possibly be as simple as a film shoot — what major criminal were the authorities hunting?
"Second warning. Stop immediately and submit to investigation, or we will be forced to use military force!"
Chai Jin threatened in a low, grave voice.