He shut the door, locked it, and pulled out a chair to sit down. His movements were as fluid as flowing water and drifting clouds, completed in one seamless breath.
Bang! Bang!
The sound of a vending machine being toppled echoed from outside the door, immediately followed by the cacophony of a crowd battering the frame and hurling insults.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
“Son of a bitch, get the hell out here right now!”
“Motherfucker, you broke into my house, assaulted me, and now you're squatting in it! If you don't come out, I'm calling the cops!”
“Sob, Second Uncle, my bedroom…”
“…”
Jiang Ming naturally remained entirely indifferent to all of this. This group of ‘people' outside, or rather, things, were simply far too weak.
In the diary, even that White One-Eyed Abomination could pin Xiao Ming down and beat him. Although the sheer number and strength of the bizarre entities he was facing had increased, they were still nothing to write home about.
Facing a bedroom door far sturdier than the main entrance, Jiang Ming highly doubted they could smash their way in.
Chances were, they would just vanish into thin air in a matter of minutes.
Five minutes later, the battering against the door showed absolutely no signs of abating. In fact, the curses were growing increasingly vile.
This actually managed to spark a sliver of irritation within Jiang Ming. Just as he was contemplating whether to toss out another two vending machines through thin air, a sharp bark drowned out the tirade of abuse.
“Woof! Woof!”
The moment this bark rang out, the clamour outside the door vanished without a trace.
Clarity dawned upon Jiang Ming's mind. The dog must have made its move. Despite harbouring malicious intentions toward him, it still bore the esteemed title of a guardian deity of the household. Dealing with such feeble anomalies was naturally a walk in the park.
Outside the door, the dog dragged its heavy footsteps around, patrolling the living room. Slowly, the rhythmic thudding approached the bedroom.
This caused Jiang Ming's expression to turn grim. The kitchen cleaver materialised in his grasp.
Fortunately, the dog merely lingered by the bedroom entrance for a brief moment before departing.
Silence reigned supreme once more.
Basking in this long-lost tranquillity, Jiang Ming finally found the time to organise his thoughts and reflect upon the day's events.
He procured a pristine sheet of paper and began to draft and doodle.
Twenty minutes later, Jiang Ming massaged the space between his brows. He had finally sorted everything out, yet the burning questions in his heart had only multiplied instead of decreasing.
An abundance of events had transpired today. Foremost among them was the matter regarding Elder Sister. The moment she appeared, she had helped him resolve the massive crisis with the dog, yet she later exuded naked killing intent toward him.
Even now, he could not figure out whether she truly was ‘Mother's' friend.
At one point, she had driven him into the most perilous corner!
The final outcome, however, was favourable. He had successfully stabilised her and neutralised the threat.
“But why did she punch me at the very end?”
Jiang Ming touched his bruised and blackened forehead, wincing at the sharp pain.
“Was it solely to deliver that single punch for the sake of it?”
Due to this punch, Jiang Ming had fallen into a deep slumber in the bedroom for a full six hours, simultaneously violating a rule in the process.
What was the ultimate significance of such an action? Was it merely to hit him, or to force him to break a rule?
If he had genuinely broken a rule, why had no abnormal phenomena occurred yet?
Was it simply that the time had not yet come, or had the anomaly already manifested without him realising it?
Or, perhaps, was this rule utterly fake from the start?
Jiang Ming racked his brains but remained entirely baffled.
After pondering for what seemed like half the day, Jiang Ming eventually developed a faint premonition: that single punch from Elder Sister harboured a monumentally important piece of information. It might even be intimately tied to the final answer of these Rule-Based Anomalies.
Yet, at this very moment, Jiang Ming could not decipher it.
This canine was insidious and cunning, practically driven mad by its desire to transform into a human. Given the perfect opportunity of his comatose state earlier, it actually chose not to strike?
This was extremely bizarre.
Moreover, the moment Jiang Ming awoke, he had been intercepted by that mob of ‘people'.
His clash with that mob had not lasted very long. After all, the distance from the living room to the bedroom was minuscule.
And the dog had held back the entire time, only making its move after those people had battered the door for a full five minutes. As the guardian deity, it should never have exhibited such tolerance toward these vile things.
This left only two possibilities. The first was that it had been bogged down by something and could not extract itself. But what in this house could possibly pin it down?
Elder Sister had already left. Within this house, the dog was an invincible existence!
Since this hypothesis did not hold up, only the second possibility remained:
“So it was genuinely sleeping earlier?”
“Let me think. The dog typically sleeps at 5:00 PM and wakes up around 11:00 PM. The duration between these two points is exactly six hours.”
“Earlier, Elder Sister knocked me out at approximately 10:00 AM, and from then until 4:00 PM is exactly six hours.”
“If the dog was sleeping just like me earlier, then its sleep duration aligns perfectly with its previous patterns.”
But what in the world did this signify?
For the dog to surprisingly choose to sleep at the exact same time as him was entirely inconsistent with its past behavioural patterns.
Jiang Ming felt certain there had to be some profound secret hidden within this. After all, the mechanical voice from before had explicitly stated that time was of the utmost importance.
Jiang Ming descended into deep contemplation.
“Sleeping? Time?”
“On the seventh day, ‘Mother' will return…”
“The clocks in the bedroom and the living room…”
“…”
However, this meditative trance did not last long. Shortly after, the violent rumbling of his stomach yanked Jiang Ming straight back to reality.
Jiang Ming furrowed his brows, taking stock of his weakened body and the rapid drainage of his physical strength.
“I harboured this doubt earlier. I merely skipped a single lunch, didn't I? Why is the reaction so exaggerated, as though I haven't eaten a single bite in days?”
“As time progresses, does the toll for violating the rules grow increasingly severe? Or is this because of that Elder Sister, or perhaps the dog's doing?”
There were far too many potential causes. Jiang Ming could not be absolutely certain, but there was one undeniable truth: he desperately needed to eat something right now. Otherwise, his stamina would deplete even faster!
Jiang Ming raised his head and checked the time. It was 4:35 PM.
“This… There are still 25 minutes left until the dog's usual sleeping hour. To play it safe, shouldn't I just wait out these 25 minutes before stepping out?”
“Even though the dog's footsteps vanished entirely, this bastard is treacherous and sly. It might very well be crouching in ambush right outside the door, just waiting for the perfect moment to launch a sneak attack when I step out.”
“Looking at it this way, waiting 25 minutes before leaving is the most secure path.”
But rapidly, Jiang Ming began to agonise over the decision once more.
“However, the dog has already slept today. It's hard to predict if it will actually go to sleep again later.”
“If it refuses to sleep, the longer I wait, the more strength I bleed away.”
After mulling it over for a long while, Jiang Ming still felt that waiting for a bit was the safest route.
Right as he prepared to sit back down, a brilliant flash of inspiration struck his mind:
“Why am I hiding from it?”
“If I just hack it to death right now, wouldn't that be splendid?”
This notion seemed utterly absurd, yet it swiftly took root and sprouted vigorously within his mind.
Granted, his current train of thought mirrored those suicidal protagonists in horror movies who always actively courted death. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
He fundamentally could not defeat the dog in a straight fight. Marching over there right now was akin to actively seeking his own doom, wasn't it?
Jiang Ming naturally comprehended this fact with crystal clarity. Yet, simultaneously, he understood that he and the dog were now locked in an unending struggle unto death.
It wanted to butcher Jiang Ming, and Jiang Ming could never let it off the hook either!
Even if he managed to evade it for a moment, could he possibly evade it for an entire lifetime?
Furthermore, even if he did hide, this apartment was only so big. Sooner or later, the dog would sniff him out. Staying holed up in the bedroom forever was not a guaranteed safe haven.
Based on his observations and deductions, as time inexorably marched on, the anomalies within these Rule-Based Anomalies would continuously grow stronger.
It was just like how that fake ‘Mother' had manifested on the second day, but the Elder Sister who emerged on the fourth day proved far more terrifying.
Uncle Li's mutation on the second day mostly consisted of a slightly horrifying visage; he could not inflict actual physical harm.
By the third day, that heart-devouring Uncle Li had managed to inflict sheer, unadulterated agony upon Jiang Ming through nothing more than the clamour of his battering and screeching!
Jiang Ming had nearly been tortured to death by the pain alone!
And upon reaching the fourth day, Uncle Li not only revealed his true form, but he even barged directly into the house to fight the dog to a complete standstill.
The dog was the exact same. For the first two days, it displayed zero abnormalities. Yet, upon tasting the metallic tang of blood, it mutated at breakneck speed. In merely a single day, it was already on the verge of completely transforming into a human!
And now, it had even obtained a name!
At this thought, Jiang Ming shifted his gaze back to those slips of paper inscribed with rules, eyeing a few specific lines:
Rule Set Three, Article Six: The home is safe; do not let anyone else in.
Rule Set Three, Article Seven: The door will obstruct the monsters outside.
Previously, Jiang Ming had masterfully exploited these two exact rules, forcing a paradox between them, which allowed him to narrowly escape the debt collection of the two Uncle Lis.
However, Jiang Ming vehemently disagreed with this sixth rule because the home was not the slightest bit safe!
No, that wasn't quite right. For the first two days at least, the home was undeniably a sanctuary. Only as the river of time kept flowing did it begin to warp and mutate.
Did that mean the rules within these Rule-Based Anomalies could undergo mutations as time progressed?
Rules that were initially gospel truth could very well become utterly obsolete later on!
Struck by this chilling possibility, Jiang Ming's heart went cold. If that was truly the case, could even the seventh rule, stating that doors obstructed outside monsters, also undergo a drastic mutation?
Therefore, as the sands of the hourglass trickled away, these anomalies, including the dog, were destined to grow boundlessly more powerful!
It was entirely plausible that by the sixth or seventh day, even the bedroom would cease to be a safe haven!
Looking back at himself, his Sanity was in a steady free-fall, his body was battered and bruised, and his physical stamina was rapidly bleeding dry…
If he sat on his hands and merely focused on dodging shadows, his ultimate fate would undoubtedly be a gruesome death!
Passive defence could never compare to seizing the initiative to strike!
The greatest defence is a relentless offence!
As long as he slaughtered every last one of them, he could finally rest his head on his pillow in absolute peace!
The more Jiang Ming pondered, the more his blood boiled with exhilarating excitement.
However, charging out so recklessly would guarantee his defeat at the dog's hands. It would be nothing more than serving his own head on a silver platter.
While taking the offensive was mandatory, the exact methodology required meticulous calculation.
…
Moments later, a master plan crystallised within Jiang Ming's mind, a brilliant light flashing across his eyes!
The risks accompanying his gambit were astronomical, but the heavenly rewards were equally unparalleled!
Should he succeed, all of his karmic debts would be cleanly wiped out. He would sweep away every obstacle and directly clear this stage!
Having thought everything through, Jiang Ming's mind became flawlessly lucid and unhindered.
Sweeping his gaze over the items strewn across the desk, Jiang Ming snatched up two erasers and stuffed them into his pockets. He then yanked out a sturdy length of rope, hoisted the kitchen cleaver, and ruthlessly kicked open the bedroom door with towering killing intent.