Little Elf: I, Boss, Dare to Rub Poop!

Yuan Zhu and the Little Elf's mental exchange looked like pure word-count padding, but in truth, only a few short seconds had passed.

After a moment of dazedness crossed Yuan Zhu's face, he abruptly switched from honest, nervous, and worried to confident mode. Words that had previously been difficult to piece together now became orderly and logically smooth.

In just a few sentences, he clearly explained what had happened to him: That morning, he had driven a truck alone and delivered a batch of anesthetized Goblins. After handing them over and getting the receipt signed, he took his tools to tend the lawn and maintain the garden. At noon, he ate a lavish meal in the cafeteria, then lost consciousness. His memories ended there.

When he woke up again, he was lying in a cold pool of blood. The scene was like hell, with scraps and minced flesh scattered everywhere. Not a single living person was in sight.

That was Yuan Zhu's summary of his situation. As for the specific details of the Sacrifice Ritual, how he had slaughtered everything in sight, and those Pollution Sources and Demonic Beasts corrupted by pollution, he avoided all of it. He simply pretended to have amnesia and skipped past it.

He had only lost the memories between "fainting at noon" and "waking up."

In the Little Elf's words, this was the most logical explanation. Rather than waste effort fabricating a story without his own participation as the Tiger Demon, he might as well shove it all aside, put on an innocent face, and shout:

"I don't know anything! How am I supposed to answer? All I know is that when I woke up, the scene was already this bloody hellscape. There wasn't a single person there."

"I was terrified at the time and truly had no idea what to do. So, the first thing I did was contact the Security Bureau through the manor's Remote Dialing Machine. After that, I tried to search for valuable evidence to prove my innocence."

Yuan Zhu's attitude at that moment was: I don't know anything. I'm scared shitless and panicking inside. But I'm a law-abiding citizen, and I'm willing to cooperate one hundred percent without conditions! With the Little Elf's help in "facial microexpression management," he vividly displayed the mental state a victim ought to have, leaving the two investigators clicking their tongues in amazement.

Your mental state switched so naturally. There wasn't even any transition period—you jumped straight into calm composure. You obviously weren't a normal victim.

Young Man Han, who had already formed a preconceived opinion and harbored prejudice against Yuan Zhu, became even more convinced that Yuan Zhu was hiding something. Yet the detector in his hand showed no abnormal reaction whatsoever. Every indicator was normal.

That meant there were no traces of abnormal energy left on Yuan Zhu's body. He was so healthy it was more bizarre than an ordinary person. One had to know that if they randomly dragged an ordinary person off the street and tested them, their Deviation Degree would hover between 1 and 7.

Yet this guy named Yuan Zhu had personally experienced a Sacrifice Ritual with countless casualties, and his Deviation Degree was actually 0?! How the fuck was that normal?

This was fundamentally abnormal. These were not numbers an ordinary human could have. Especially since he worked at a Cleaning Company like Fire Fang and was always dealing with pollution. He had also been born among the lower-class commoners, so his Deviation Degree should have been even higher! Did he think he was some great aristocrat whose ten fingers had never touched spring water, who had been clothed in brocade and fed on fine food since childhood, never encountering danger? With prejudice in his heart, Young Man Han became increasingly certain that Yuan Zhu was no innocent survivor. On the contrary, there had to be a massive hidden danger lurking within him. His obedient, cooperative expression was nothing more than a fake facade meant to numb people's vigilance.

The longer Young Man Han observed him, the more he sensed that Yuan Zhu possessed an utterly out-of-place aura. There was a huge problem! His tone therefore turned cold and harsh as he snapped, "Why are you wearing a victim's clothes?!"

Yuan Zhu was startled by the sudden interrogation and cursed inwardly, Are you fucking insane? A surprise question—were you trying to catch me off guard? But what kind of bullshit question is that? I'm even wearing Pinru's clothes!

Yuan Zhu could also feel the other man's hostility, so he did not give him a pleasant look either. He shot back, "I woke up because I was freezing! When I woke up, my clothes were gone. What was I supposed to do? Run around naked? I could only pick up some clothes nobody wanted from the ground."

Fatty Wang exclaimed in amazement, "Oh? What kind of Sacrifice Ritual was that? Were they playing that wild? They didn't even want their clothes anymore?"

From his tone, he had clearly misunderstood the nature of the Sacrifice Ritual. After all, Evil Gods ran rampant in this world, so it was only reasonable that there might be wild parties dedicated to someone like Slaanesh Miss.

"You may have misunderstood. Although there was nobody there when I woke up, the scene was exceptionally bloody and cruel, as if a massacre had taken place. It probably wasn't the kind of Sacrifice Ritual you're imagining."

Fatty Wang nodded, accepting Yuan Zhu's explanation as he recorded it in his little notebook. "Is that so? Then after waking up, what was your deepest impression of the scene? What stood out as worth noting? Don't try to recall and analyze it rationally. Use your intuition! Say what your first feeling was. What things or impressions did you sense immediately after regaining consciousness?"

"Uh..."

The question stumped Yuan Zhu. What feelings could he possibly have had? He had been awakened by the noise of the Great Wilderness Immortal Scripture. If he had felt anything, it was irritation mixed with the helplessness of a vegetative patient lying there like a corpse.

Then came exhilaration! Shadow Power flowed into his body, his Aberrant Spiritual Root loaded in sync, and he gained power unlike anything he had ever possessed. He started with cheats enabled, soared to the heavens in a single step, and slaughtered in every direction. He fully experienced the majesty and dominance of the king of beasts. That simple joy of fighting and crushing his enemies was primitive, yet incomparably pure.

Finally, there was the Little Elf, who had suddenly come online. She spoke sweetly, had a honeyed tongue, and was willing to help him blow up Immortal Scripture Old Geezer's coin stash. A "smart little program" that had betrayed her own class was a traitorous worker in the cheat industry. What else was there to say? He, Yuan Zhu, would protect her life.

After recalling his own feelings, Yuan Zhu decided to tell the truth. He would not lie, but he would provide the abridged version.

"The biggest feeling I had after waking up... was that my mind was in a mess. Does that count? It wasn't ordinary agitation. It was like some invisible force had stirred up my brain, causing my memories to become disordered. Things from my childhood kept surfacing in my mind for no reason, but my memories of the recent period were fragmented and discontinuous. Still, if I tried hard enough to remember, I could recall them again."

Though he said that, he knew perfectly well that the chaos in his mind was entirely the result of the Little Elf mixing 1.3 portions of foreign memories into his soul and stirring them around. But he was not lying. This Sacrifice Ritual had indeed caused a temporary disorder in his soul.

This counted as one abnormality as well. It would withstand a mental examination, if the other side possessed such a skill.

After hearing him out, Middle-Aged Wang was dissatisfied. "This was clearly an illegal Sacrifice Ritual that summoned a large number of evil spirits, causing an uncontrollable accident. Right now, the participants and sacrifices cannot even be accounted for, dead or alive. You think you merely fainted—not even enough to call it amnesia—and only suffered the most ordinary impact to your brain or soul, resulting in memory disorder? You call that abnormal?"

Listening to Yuan Zhu describe his symptoms, Old Wang felt like an old Chinese doctor specializing in difficult and complicated illnesses suddenly encountering a patient seeking help for scraped skin on his hand. It was laughable. If you had come a few hours later, the wound might have healed on its own! "That's it? Think again. From when you woke up until now, has anything unusual happened? Anything you think is related to this murder case? Or are there any uncertain abnormalities still lingering on you?"

"Mm..." Yuan Zhu continued pondering. "After I woke up, everything at the scene gave me a powerful sense of disgust. It was a sickening, instinctive rejection, a feeling that made me want to flee immediately."

The young man beside him was clearly dissatisfied with Yuan Zhu's attitude. "I advise you to be honest. Don't dodge the important points and play clever tricks!"

"Ah, right!" Yuan Zhu put on an expression of sudden inspiration and said, "Also, also—when I woke up, I discovered that the wounds on my body had already healed. I seriously suspect that after I lost consciousness, I was treated as a sacrifice and brutally killed, rather than surviving through luck. Because there were deep wounds on my wrists, ankles, and heart. But when I woke up, those injuries had healed, leaving only scars."

Old Wang raised his pen and began recording. As he wrote, he said, "Oh? That is worth noting. Perhaps you really did die, but not completely, and then some sort of change occurred. The blessing that should have descended upon the believers was transferred, dragging you back from the death that should have claimed you. The other sacrificers, and even the sacrifices, all became the price. That would also explain why you were the only survivor of the entire Sacrifice Ritual."

As he spoke, he recorded these details, along with his own conjectures, in his little notebook.

Then he hesitated and added, "But there is a new problem. If it was simply resurrection from death, that would indeed count as a miracle of some significance and fit an Evil God's descent ritual. But that small blessing alone would not be worth dozens of living sacrifices. If what you said is true, and you were the only survivor at the scene, then what you received was definitely more than a single life. Perhaps something even greater is hidden within you?"

"Captain, I have something to report as well. This kid is very abnormal! His Deviation Degree is below 1, displaying as zero." With that, the young man shook the detector in his hand.

As a portable detector, its readings were not precise. The reason it displayed 0 was not that Yuan Zhu showed no signs of deviation at all, but that the value was below 1.

Deviation Degree was very similar to the Pollution Level the Little Elf spoke of. The natives of Du Ling Star were accustomed to categorizing the twisted erosion produced when both soul and flesh suffered pollution as Deviation Degree.

From the limited memories Yuan Zhu had excavated, this planet was connected to multiple Outer Universes at once, allowing energies completely incompatible with this universe's laws to invade. In the eyes of some scholars, these invading substances containing the laws of other universes—regardless of whether they were beneficial or harmful by nature—did not conform to, or adapt to, the laws of this planet. Therefore, they were all classified as "harmful."

If Du Ling Star were viewed as a human body, then the various energies, laws, and phenomena leaking from the Outer Universes were foreign substances invading the body's immune system. Different universes in particular contained Extraordinary Systems far beyond fundamental physical laws, making them harmful substances raised to an exponential degree.

Thus, extremely minute pollution was evenly distributed throughout the planet's air. As long as ordinary people remained alive, whether they breathed, drank water, or ate food, they would slowly accumulate all kinds of corrosive pollution over the years. Because there were simply too many types of Pollution Sources in the air, and people displayed different symptoms after being infected, it was difficult to compile statistics. Therefore, they were uniformly classified by Deviation Degree.

Though it sounded terrifying—mutating with every breath, growing stronger simply by living—the residents of this planet had long since grown accustomed to it. So long as they did not court death by actively approaching "high-pollution zones" or manually playing with "Pollution Sources," the pollution caused by normal breathing and eating was much like a chronic illness.

In fact, most people died suddenly or of disease before their pollution could even erupt. This was like how few animals in nature worried about developing cancer. Unlike humans, ordinary animals had lifespans so short that they were not qualified to wait for cancer cells to spread before their lives had already run their course.

Generally speaking, if a Duling human received good care from childhood, drank clean water, ate healthy food, studied step by step, and exercised regularly, then their Deviation Degree would be low, representing good health. But lower-class residents breathed exhaust every day, had unclean water sources, ate food contaminated by all kinds of pollution, and frequently entered high-pollution areas, causing their Deviation Degree to rise dramatically.

Now look at Yuan Zhu. He had worked at the Element Steam Factory for a long time, being steamed at close range by Elemental Steam Engines every day. He also worked part-time at Fire Fang, occasionally performing heavily polluted exorcism rituals and using special agents to poison and hunt Goblins... His Deviation Degree should have been at least above 6, the pollution level of an ordinary commoner aged thirty-five or older.

But now, the instrument showed that his Deviation Degree was 0.

Yuan Zhu guessed that this was most likely because of the standard edition of the Great Wilderness Immortal Scripture. According to the Little Elf, the Immortal Scripture came with a Soul Firewall, and it had indeed shielded him from those -1, -1, and another -1 Mental Pollution attacks.

He still had not figured out the specific operating principles of the Great Wilderness Immortal Scripture, but in his mind, he had crudely imagined the standard edition as a protective suit with weak defense, or a layer of plastic wrap stuck to his body.

Others found it difficult to distinguish that transparent, skin-tight film, but for Yuan Zhu, this "defense" could effectively block the viruses in the air—low-level pollution—and keep him healthy at all times. That was why his Deviation Degree was 0.

The more deeply hidden Great Wilderness Immortal Scripture VIP Tiger Demon Template, on the other hand, stood above ordinary plastic wrap. It was plastic armor forged from a Pollution Source—Shadow Power. It still provided close-fitting protection, but in terms of strength, defense, and damage output, it utterly crushed the standard edition.

To use an inappropriate metaphor, Du Ling Planet was a gigantic India, where everything in the air had long since reached a shit equilibrium. Ordinary people had already adapted to the ecosystem here, accepting the pollution of Ganges logic every day without showing anything unusual. But they would not actively rub poop—touch Pollution Sources—because that could still cause sudden death.

Yet the standard edition of the Immortal Scripture, when facing Pollution Sources in this world, was like being separated by plastic wrap plus an N95 mask, resisting external pollution elements and remaining invulnerable to every method.

However, he had one more option than others: he dared to actively approach poop without being polluted. But once he actively rubbed poop and used even a little force, he could crush it, causing himself to become polluted, severely deviate, and twist into a Demonic Beast.

The Tiger Demon armor, however, was as tough as plastic. With one punch, it could blast poop apart, while he himself remained untouched by karma, his true body still pure as ice and clean as jade. His enemies, however, would all be struck by the splash damage, stacking Mental Pollution until their mindsets collapsed, their bodies twisted and mutated, and they transformed into mature Dung Beasts!

"Perhaps the zero Deviation Degree on your body is also a positive result brought about by this Sacrifice Ritual? How strange. So many people clearly went missing—or died—so the being provoked had to be a vicious Evil God. Yet not only did you return from the dead, your Deviation Degree also returned to zero. This is the style of a Benevolent God." Old Wang was equally puzzled.

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