Burdened with heavy thoughts, Bai Zhi returned to the Real World.
He knew research burned money, but he had never imagined it could burn through it this badly.
That Hong Ye really didn't treat him like an outsider... she treated him like a cash machine that could dispense unlimited cash.
Since no one was home, the villa felt rather empty. Just as Bai Zhi was about to head out and return the Demon Refining Pot to [Zhu Rong], he happened to catch sight of a rat running across the yard...
...Wait, a rat?
Suddenly realizing something, Bai Zhi turned around with a strange expression.
Perhaps because no one had come to this villa in a long time, the rat was quite bold. When it saw him looking over, it showed no intention of fleeing and instead craned its head in his direction.
"..."
Bai Zhi stared at the rat for quite some time in silence.
Whether psychologically or according to his memories, everything told him that it was an utterly common rat... but he had never seen a rat that looked like this.
...How was something like that even able to run?
Looking at the rat before him, which had a perfectly complete body but whose rat head had bizarrely been replaced by a duck neck, Bai Zhi's face was full of conflicted bewilderment.
He had seen plenty of Monsters before, and there had been far more bizarre-looking ones than this rat. It really wasn't anything worth finding strange... but that wasn't the key issue.
The most crucial thing was that his memories concerning "rats" had been forcibly altered by some kind of power.
That was why, when he first saw that rat run past, he hadn't noticed anything wrong at all...
"...A cognitive [Meme]?"
Watching the rat, which had