Chapter 97
Ever since Xia Country announced the existence of anomalies, all kinds of news regarding anomalies on the internet had been lifted from bans.
After all, every time netizens shared a video related to an anomaly, other people who watched it could gain a better understanding of that specific anomaly.
Therefore, as soon as the video titled [Anomaly Murder Scene Captured on Film] was uploaded, it spread like wildfire.
[This looks way too much like a movie shoot. Is this an anomaly that spreads through watching films?]
[Thanks for the invite, I’m never watching a movie again in this lifetime.]
[Even this works? Talk about a real eye-opener.]
[Last time, because of an anomaly that liked handing out red and blue toilet paper in restrooms, I decided never to use a public toilet outside again. Now, because of an anomaly crawling out of a movie, I’ve decided never to watch a movie again. When on earth will these damn anomalies be dealt with!]
[Help! I’m literally in the movie industry! With this happening, nobody’s going to watch movies. I’m going to lose my job, aren’t I!]
The comments below the video were a mixed bag of everything. Most people were saying they would absolutely never watch a movie again, while a portion of workers in the film industry were wailing in despair.
Cheng Miaohe didn’t happen to scroll past this video because the timeframe when it hit the trending list was exactly when she was busiest at work.
She was so busy that sparks were practically flying; where would she find the time to browse videos?
It wasn’t until she had just finished her work that a colleague shared a video with her.
“Look at this video, it’s terrifying,” her colleague said. “Even watching a movie can draw out an anomaly. Don’t go to the cinema anymore in the future.”
“What video?”
Coincidentally, just as Cheng Miaohe opened her phone and was about to click on the video shared by her colleague, a group of people walked into the office.
Everyone in the office, regardless of whether they had work on hand or not, looked over in surprise.
Because they were all dressed in attire representing Yongzhou, with Yongzhou badges pinned to their chests.
The daily uniform for Yongzhou personnel looked somewhat like a large witch’s cloak—pure black in color and featuring a hood. Word was that the fabric of their clothing was specialized, capable of resisting a portion of attacks. The cloak could cover a person tightly at critical moments, which was why they wore this attire.
Initially, when people saw members of Yongzhou, they would watch them with a trace of pleasant surprise and curiosity. After all, wearing a long black cloak, a hood, and gear resembling a gas mask snapped over their faces looked incredibly cool.
But now, having seen various kinds of news and even personally witnessed people around them encounter anomalies and leave behind nothing but dust, people’s first reaction upon seeing Yongzhou personnel was tension.
Why would people from Yongzhou come to their company?
Could an anomaly have appeared in the office?
Was there pollution?
Had they already unknowingly contracted pollution themselves?
Just like her colleagues, Cheng Miaohe instantly entered a state of high tension. The blood across her entire body seemed to run cold, and she couldn’t help but begin recalling whether she had seen anything unusual today.
The manager, his face equally pale, forced himself to stand up and step forward to negotiate.
The vast office fell into a dead silence as everyone watched the manager interact with them, as if awaiting a sentence of life or death.
Once the manager finished speaking, he turned back and called out:
“Zhou Wangcheng, come over for a moment.”
Zhou Wangcheng—the colleague who had just shared the video with Cheng Miaohe—instantly went stark white, her already anxious expression growing even more ‘terrified.
She walked over with cautious steps as the Yongzhou personnel began questioning her. She nodded anxiously, and as she spoke, she suddenly thought of something and turned her head to look at Cheng Miaohe.
Consequently, Cheng Miaohe was called over as well.
She had never imagined that the Yongzhou personnel had come precisely to ask whether she had opened and watched the video shared by Zhou Wangcheng.
Cheng Miaohe shook her head. “No, I haven’t had time to watch it yet. What’s wrong?”
“It’s good that you didn’t watch it,” the Yongzhou officer replied. “This video is a propagation channel for an anomaly. If you watch it, it’s equivalent to exposing your coordinates, allowing the anomaly to find your doorstep.”
The Yongzhou personnel spoke with deliberate gravity, fearing that Cheng Miaohe might have watched it but was hiding the truth out of fear.
“Right now, we need to bring the people who watched the video back to Yongzhou for protection,” they stated. “If you know anyone else who watched it, please make sure to inform us.”
Cheng Miaohe nodded hurriedly. “Alright, yes, I understand. Then… do I need to delete the shared message on my phone as well? Since I didn’t watch it, the anomaly won’t be able to find me, right? Or rather… is it possible for pollution to travel along the internet cable?”
“You don’t need to worry about this video,” the officer reassured. “We have already taken it down across all platforms. Even if someone downloaded and reshared it, opening it now will only show a black screen.”
Cheng Miaohe instantly let out a sigh of relief.
She was incredibly grateful now that she hadn’t slacked off this morning. Today, a sudden wave of self-discipline had come over her, making her want to finish all her work on hand in one go before taking a break.
If she had followed her usual routine of slacking off here and there during work hours, she would absolutely have clicked on this video already.
A delayed wave of terror surged in her heart, and seeing Cheng Miaohe like this, Zhou Wangcheng was in even greater despair.
Who could have known that simply scrolling through a short video could provoke an anomaly?
This anomaly was simply too well-adapted to modern times, wasn’t it?
The Yongzhou personnel comforted her: “It’s fine. Once you reach Yongzhou, we have ways to protect you.”
There were many different companies housed in this office building. With so many Yongzhou personnel arriving, they naturally hadn’t come for Zhou Wangcheng alone. They quickly departed, continuing floor by floor based on the video access logs to find every single person who might have watched the video.
Honestly, this method was a bit crude. But expanding the source of information might instead prompt some reckless individuals to intentionally propagate the video’s content or use it to murder their enemies.
It was just like how various schools currently banned playing Pen Spirit games because it had truly caused deaths. Yet those rebellious students in their chuunibyou phase still rushed forward one after another to deliver their lives, and almost every two months, one would hear of a student at some school losing their life to the Pen Spirit game.
On this side, the Yongzhou personnel—who appeared cool but were actually all overworked corporate dogs—remained busy.
On the other side, Cheng Miaohe, who had narrowly avoided being targeted by the anomaly, was too terrified to even stay at the company. She requested leave, planning to head home and hole up inside.
Although her parents usually never watched movies at all, she still made a phone call on her way home, telling them absolutely not to open any movie, and simply not to turn on the television altogether.
Her mother’s cheerful voice came from the other end of the line. “Alright, alright, we’ll listen to you. It just so happens, let me tell you, Miaohe, I bought an amazing item! A medicine that can treat pollution! Hurry home and get it; we’ll take one pill each as a family, so your dad and I can rest easy whenever you go out in the future!”
Cheng Miaohe: “??? What do you mean by a medicine that treats pollution? Was it issued by Yongzhou?”
It was impossible. If Yongzhou had released such an excellent medicine, it would have spread across the entire internet long ago.
Videos like anomalies murdering people would have their trending positions entirely pushed back to make room for the pollution medicine.
“It wasn’t issued by Yongzhou,” her mother explained. “It’s an old traditional doctor’s ancestral prescription passed down through generations, using tons of precious medicinal ingredients! It’s that highly famous Divine Doctor Zhen from before. His family originally didn’t allow him to share these prescriptions externally, but he went against his family’s pressure, refusing to make a profit just to manufacture these pollution medicines. With this medicine, we’ll never have to worry whenever we go out in the future!”
Cheng Miaohe: “…”
“Mom, that sounds exactly like a scammer. How can you still believe in that stuff?”
“What scammer?” her mother grew displeased upon hearing this. “That Divine Doctor Zhen has truly saved polluted patients. Didn’t you see that news from the plane? A person who was polluted and on the verge of death was dragged straight back to life!”
Cheng mother was quite unhappy. “Furthermore, many wealthy tycoons were lining up back then, wanting to use their entire fortunes just to swap for Divine Doctor Zhen’s treatment.”
“Yet he didn’t even want that money, insisting on treating patients strictly based on their registration sequence. That is a true divine doctor!”
The more Cheng Miaohe listened, the more she felt it resembled a scammer. Fortunately, the greatest advantage of modern youth was their proficiency with search engines.
She directly asked for the Divine Doctor’s full name, then opened her phone to search. Sure enough, she found quite a few pieces of news.
Some praised his supreme medical skills, some were posts from patients claiming their pollution had been cured, and others fiercely cursed him as a complete fraud who delayed shipping after they purchased the medicine.
The more miraculously he was hyped online, the more Cheng Miaohe concluded that he was a scammer.
Simply put, if this Divine Doctor Zhen truly possessed such capability, he would have been absorbed into the official system long ago.
To put it without exaggeration, if there were someone at a time like this who could resolve the inevitable death sentence of ordinary people contracting pollution, the entire world would revere him like a deity.
Yet this Divine Doctor Zhen still needed to advertise on small forums, using flashy, multicolored text that read:
[I have made a decision that goes against my ancestors to manufacture pollution medicine.]
Who on earth would believe that was real upon seeing it?
Cheng Miaohe was truly terrified that her parents would suffer issues from taking fake medicine. She didn’t even take the bus anymore, immediately hailing a taxi to rush back home.
“They will definitely believe it, and they’ll take the medicine if they encounter pollution.”
Luo Shizhen looked at the invoice of shipped medicine in his hand, stating with absolute certainty, “Zou Tangzheng operated exactly this way, and the patients believed him completely!”
Ever since Doctor Zhen Shiluo made his debut, all marketing tactics had been benchmarked precisely against that real fraud, Zou Tangzheng.
Although Luo Shizhen didn’t understand many of the underlying reasons, he knew how to copy it verbatim. Coupled with Cheng Yunshao and the others patching up the details from the side, the results were remarkably good.
Furthermore, most importantly: “This medicine is very expensive. How could they possibly not take it after buying it?”
He was highly experienced in this regard; in the past, his grandmother would insist on taking medicine even if it was expired. Back then, when he asked if expired medicine could still be taken, his grandmother said it didn’t matter.
Originally, he hadn’t felt anything was wrong with that, until he fell ill himself and was about to take expired medicine, but his grandmother refused to let him. Only then did Luo Shizhen realize his grandmother did it simply because she couldn’t bear to throw away those costly expired drugs.
He rarely went against his grandmother’s wishes, but that time, Luo Shizhen secretly threw away all the expired medications.
From then on, he knew that expensive medicine would be taken even if it expired, let alone their pollution medicine which had just been shipped out and couldn’t possibly be expired.
Xiao Shan kept searching for the pollution medicine online, but he couldn’t find anything useful at all. He couldn’t help but say:
“How about we have Yongzhou promote it a bit?”
Cheng Yunshao shook his head. “Not a good idea. The quantity of these medicines is too small. Supplying the customers who ordered previously is already stretching it. The personnel at Yongzhou probably nearly blinded themselves just to separate this many portions. High demand, low supply—it’s inappropriate for the official administration to step in.”
“If it were officially supplied medicine, the public would take the administration’s protection for granted, and failing to purchase the medicine would only trigger the patients’ resentment. But if it’s just an ordinary doctor from the private sector supplying it, purchasing it is deemed a stroke of luck, and failing to acquire it leaves no room for blame.”
Luo Shizhen tried hard to comprehend, but these social complexities were still a bit too overwhelming for him.
He could only arrive at one conclusion: “I’ll work hard to bear fruit—cultivate even more medicine!”
An invisible thread of spiritual power gently patted his head. Although it couldn’t be seen, Luo Shizhen knew this was Sui-laoshi encouraging him, so he immediately and affectionately pulled the thread down, wrapping it around his wrist.
They waited for roughly a day, and the pollution medicine finally began to ferment across the internet.
It consisted mostly of posts from individuals who had pre-ordered the medicine and, upon receiving it now, went online to inquire whether any polluted individuals had taken it and how the effects were.
On this side, the members of Squad 1 were browsing the web as a group, while on the other side, Cheng Miaohe was also constantly refreshing the comments.
Cheng mother and Cheng father were watching as well.
“It’s coming, it’s coming! Look at this one—a polluted person took the medicine, and it really doesn’t hurt anymore!”
Cheng Miaohe took a glance. The emotion was sincere, accompanied by pictures and follow-up reviews; it looked highly authentic.
But any young person with a bit of online shopping experience knew that the more authentic a comment appeared and the more extravagantly it praised a product, the higher the probability it was written by a shill.
“I’ll look for others,” she muttered. “A single comment can’t prove anything, and this medicine really shouldn’t be taken recklessly…”
Now that anomalies were everywhere and their entire family had managed to survive, it would be far too tragic if they ended up dying from taking fake medicine.
As they were scrolling through the internet, Cheng Miaohe suddenly felt that something was原始 amiss. Why had the room become so cold?
The hairs on her back instantly stood on end, as if her body were instinctively issuing a warning.
Cheng Miaohe, who had written quite a few short articles on “how to guard against anomalies” in the past, instantly realized something was wrong.
She snapped her head around, looking toward the balcony. “Dad, the potted plant you grew? Why is it this tall?”
Cheng father looked puzzled. “I didn’t grow any potted plants.”
A green plant on the balcony seemed to sense that it was being watched, growing at an astonishing speed. A frigid aura propagated, and traces of black pollution invisible to the naked eye vaguely flooded the surroundings.
Cheng Miaohe recognized it with a single glance; this was the new type of anomaly trending heavily online recently, the Vine Building.
It was called the Vine Building precisely because it wasn’t conspicuous in its early stages, looking just like an ordinary plant. But once it erupted, it would grow at an incredible velocity, crawling across an entire building.
It didn’t actively attack humans, but it would pollute every human who came within five meters of it.
Cheng Miaohe: “…”
They were far closer than five meters right now; they were practically face-to-face!
Feeling a sudden chill on her arm, Cheng Miaohe clearly saw root-like patterns beginning to surface on her forearm. “…”
Ah, as expected, today was a truly unlucky day.
She turned around, looking at her parents who were in the exact same state. Far from panicking, she actually felt a wave of calm madness:
“Mom, Dad, let’s take the medicine.”
The small bottle on the table was opened, and three pills were neatly distributed, one for each person.
The Cheng parents were still somewhat dazed. “Didn’t you say these might be fake medicine…”
Cheng Miaohe threw her head back to swallow the pill, then moved to assist her parents in taking theirs:
“We’ll die from pollution, and we’ll die from fake medicine; it’s all the same anyway. Let’s go, let’s go. After taking the medicine, we’re heading downstairs.”
Cheng Miaohe, who had worked diligently all morning, suffered a major fright, and then spent her break investigating fake medicine without a single moment of rest, only to end up polluted anyway:
Haha, dying together as a family isn’t a bad way to go, either.
Fortunately, she had worked hard and already purchased a family cemetery plot. When the time came, everyone would be buried neatly together. What a happy family.
Just as the corporate slave in a semi-frenzied state was letting her mind wander, her mother’s pleasantly surprised voice suddenly rang out in her ear:
“It receded!! Miaohe, look quickly!”
“This stuff on our arms has receded! This medicine actually works!”
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