Then Everything Suddenly Became Abnormal!

Hao Ren stared blankly at the slip of paper before him. Written on it was an address in a rather remote part of the outskirts, one he knew better than anyone: wasn't that his own home?!

"Why are you looking for this place?" Hao Ren had no idea why a strange girl he had just met would have his home address. To be honest, he was a little excited at that moment, but he was also self-aware enough to know that all the romantic luck he would ever have in this life had been used up before third grade, when he still sat beside girls in class. So he maintained a calm expression, merely looking at the beautiful girl before him with slight curiosity.

Nice figure, nice face. Though her height was a bit of a shame, her lively and cheerful demeanor more than made up for it...

"I'm looking for a place to live!" the beautiful girl answered briskly. "I've been searching all day. I only decided to ask someone because I really couldn't find it—but you were the only person left in the park to ask."

Hao Ren felt that this girl's familiarity with strangers was a little excessive, but his attention was quickly drawn to the words "looking for a place." His mind, muddled from his summer nap, cleared up a little as he suddenly remembered something: oh, he was a landlord. A couple of days ago, he had placed an ad in a local newspaper saying he had rooms for rent. Was this girl looking to rent a place?

After so long without a tenant, he could finally collect rent again today!

Hao Ren folded the slip of paper and handed it back to her. "Of course I know this place. I'll take you there."

The beautiful girl immediately looked delighted. She stuffed the paper into her bag and patted it. "Thanks! I've been looking for it forever..."

Hao Ren stood up and stretched. Just as he was about to head out of the park, a jolt ran through his mind and he finally remembered what was wrong. "Hey, wait! You said you spent the entire day looking for this address in the city center?!"

The beautiful girl nodded vigorously, looking honest and endearing. "Mm-hm, that's right! This place was pretty hard to find."

"Of course it was hard to find!" Hao Ren almost lost control of his tone. He suddenly suspected that this girl might have known him before and held some kind of grudge, that she had come specifically to mess with him today. "Didn't you notice the address says South Suburbs?! South Suburbs! You spent an entire day looking for an outskirt address in the city?"

"But it says Baishi Tower here," the beautiful girl said, raising her hand to point in a direction. Hao Ren knew that was where a commercial building in the city center stood. "Isn't Baishi Tower in the city?"

Hao Ren froze for a moment before he finally understood. "It's Baishi Road in the South Suburbs, not Baishi Tower in the city center!"

There was another half of that sentence he did not say aloud: Miss, do you only read the first two characters when you look at place names?

"Ah-ha," the beautiful girl hurriedly thought back, then looked a little embarrassed. "I forgot. I'm usually kind of careless. But you know where Baishi Road in the South Suburbs is, right? Take me there?"

Hao Ren still felt that there was something off about this girl, but he was the sort of person who could not be bothered to overthink things. Besides, she was just a tenant looking to rent from him. After being a landlord for the past two years, he had long gotten used to not prying into his tenants' affairs. So he pointed toward the park entrance. "We'll have to take the bus. The South Suburbs are far from here, and it'll probably be evening by the time we get there. Oh, and by the way, I'm the Landlord you're looking for. That house belongs to me."

Upon hearing that, the beautiful girl looked stunned and immediately became animated. "What?! You're serious?"

Hao Ren had barely nodded when the energetic girl nearly jumped up. "Wow, what a coincidence! How could there be such a coincidence in the world? Landlord, we must be fated, right?!"

Hao Ren rubbed his forehead. He had felt from the beginning that this girl was rather flighty, and now he finally could not help saying what he had been thinking. "Aren't you afraid of being abducted? What if I'm lying to you?"

That was already putting it tactfully. In truth, he thought this girl was a little dumb... no, extremely dumb! Not only had she spent an entire day looking for an outskirt address in the city center, but after just a few words, she trusted a stranger. She was even about to boldly let that stranger lead her to some desolate suburban area. Why were girls these days so lacking in self-protection? Was she incredibly lucky, or had human traffickers recently been slacking off? How had this girl not been abducted already?

Hao Ren muttered a whole lot in his head, though it only took a second or two. The dumb girl opposite him—there was no problem calling her that, right?—seemed to have just realized something too. She looked at Hao Ren warily. "Abducted? Are you a human trafficker? Are you planning to sell me?"

Hao Ren said, "...Of course not!" He felt that he ought to stay away from this girl. If she were not a "customer," he definitely would not have spent so long talking to such a fool!

The dumb girl nodded in satisfaction. "Then it's fine. I'm really afraid of being tricked. Shall we go, then?"

Hao Ren sighed weakly. As he stepped out of the park, he suddenly felt his footsteps become exceptionally heavy.

The two soon boarded a bus heading from the city to the outskirts. The trip was anything but boring: Hao Ren discovered that his new tenant was not only overly familiar with strangers, flighty, and suspiciously foolish, but also someone whose mouth never stopped moving! On the bus, she chatted enthusiastically with him the entire way. From the current state of second-tier celebrities at home and abroad to housing prices in second-tier cities everywhere, there was practically nothing she did not talk about. Hao Ren had no idea how these topics even began, but she never had an awkward pause or ran out of things to say. As long as he gave the slightest nod of acknowledgment, the dumb girl found the motivation to keep going and continued babbling away... Still, it was not a major problem. Listening to her was a way to pass the time, and Hao Ren also took the opportunity to learn roughly about his new tenant. That was essential coursework for a Landlord: only by gaining a general understanding of a tenant as quickly as possible could one avoid some very troublesome situations.

The dumb girl's surname was Liu, and her name was Liu Lili. She generously told Hao Ren that he could just call her Lily. She claimed to be a pet doctor and freelance writer who traveled all over the place—though Hao Ren had no idea what kind of job a freelance writer even was. She had just arrived from another city and planned to stay here long-term. She was not picky about where she lived; as long as it sheltered her from the wind and rain and was clean and convenient, that was enough. Her work was flexible, after all...

Based on that information, Hao Ren decided that his new tenant was an adventurous girl with no stable job for the time being, but she did not seem like someone who would cause him trouble. He was quite satisfied with that. Really, how much trouble could such a little girl cause? Although her personality seemed a little foolish... that was her own problem, wasn't it? Hao Ren only needed to do his job as a Landlord.

Just as he had expected, by the time the extraordinarily long bus route finally rattled to a stop at a small station in the South Suburbs, the sky outside was almost completely dark.

Hao Ren led Lily off the bus, but before he could even catch his breath, he heard her cry out, "This is Baishi Road?"

"The sign says South Suburbs Station! Baishi Road is an old street, and we need to take a side road to get there. Have you ever seen a bus drive into an alley?"

"Oh... haha, I tend to get things mixed up. Landlord, please bear with me," Lily said with a dry laugh. After babbling nonstop along the way, she seemed to have grown more familiar with Hao Ren on her own. She turned to look around, her brows knitting slightly. "It's pretty deserted here."

The bus stop stood beside an old-looking road. Every building around them bore the style of twenty or thirty years ago: pothole-ridden pavement, narrow storefronts already closed for the day, and old, cramped five-story apartment buildings behind those shops. Those things alone showed just how desolate and outdated this place was. This street and the surrounding area were already the only "urban district" in the South Suburbs. Sometimes Hao Ren himself wondered whether this place had been completely forgotten by modern society, but at the end of every month, his faith in society was restored: don't panic, the water bureau will not forget you, the power bureau will not forget you, the gas company will not forget you. Not even China Unicom and the insurance salesmen will forget you. With so many people constantly thinking about you out here in the distant outskirts, what was there to be unhappy about...

"Let's go," Hao Ren said, signaling for Lily to follow. "Public safety in this city is pretty good, but this place is remote after all. When it gets late, there may be drunkards wandering around outside. Let's get back to my place and get you settled first. Oh, and let me remind you: try not to wander around at night. If you're safe, that saves me trouble too."

Strictly speaking, he should not have said those things. As a Landlord, saying that could easily scare off a tenant or make her suspicious. But Hao Ren had always been an honest person. Though he hated trouble, he hated lying to people or taking advantage of them even more, so he explained the situation here clearly as soon as he opened his mouth. That was also one reason he had not been able to rent out his rooms recently: two people had finally come to look at them, only to be scared away.

Yet Lily, this seemingly small and delicate girl, did not take it seriously at all. "Don't worry, Landlord. I'm really good at fighting."

Hao Ren felt that he had definitely run into an abnormal person today. "That's not what I mean... Sigh, I'll just say it outright. Aren't you afraid of running into bad people at all?"

As someone who had only known her for a day, Hao Ren knew he should not meddle too much. But this was the first time in his life he had encountered such a strange girl—flighty, overly familiar, and unguarded to the point of near stupidity. As a good person, he truly could not help himself.

However, Lily merely waved her hand cheerfully and unconcernedly. "Landlord, you're such a good person. But I'm not afraid of bad guys. I'm especially strong, and I'm good at fighting too. Every bad guy I've met before got beaten away by me."

Hao Ren could not help muttering, So you really have run into bad guys... Is that why you're so uninhibited and unguarded now, because you beat them all away?

Seeing Hao Ren say nothing, Lily smiled to herself and reached down to pull her oversized suitcase along after her. But with two loud thuds, both rubber wheels on the suitcase fell off and quickly rolled away.

"Ahaha, looks like my things are a little heavy." Lily scratched her hair awkwardly.

"No, the road is a little uneven..." Hao Ren's brow twitched. Looking at the battered, pothole-ridden road, he could not help sighing. He felt that, as a man, he ought to do something. "Here, I'll carry your suitcase... Holy crap, what exactly did you put in here?!"

The moment he tried lifting it, Hao Ren realized there was something very wrong with Lily's suitcase. It weighed as though it were filled with cement of the same volume. A big, strapping man like him could not even lift it!

Yet Lily did not notice the strange expression on Hao Ren's face at all. She simply laughed, lifted the huge suitcase with one hand, and slung it over her shoulder. The whole process was as effortless as picking up a bag of cotton.

Hao Ren stood there with his mouth open, watching this Small and Thin girl, a full head shorter than him, carry a suitcase weighing at least a hundred pounds on her shoulder as she strode ahead as lightly as the wind. He almost wondered whether something was wrong with his Worldview. Only when Lily shouted at him from ahead to hurry up and lead the way did he snap out of it, walking while muttering to himself. It's fine. She was just born unusually strong. Don't you see that all the time on variety shows...

Thus, one babbling away while the other was slightly preoccupied, they soon left the relatively broad road and turned into a dark side street. At the end of this path was the so-called Baishi Road, where Hao Ren's inherited old house stood.

Night had already fallen. Of the two streetlights by the path, one was broken. Old, dilapidated houses surrounded them, making the atmosphere even gloomier and more frightening. If not for the nearly full moon shining overhead, even Hao Ren, a grown man familiar with the area, would have felt uneasy walking outside. He could not help glancing at Lily beside him. The girl still followed him without the slightest guard, and she even seemed to be in a good mood.

A dark night, a sparsely traveled path, unfamiliar surroundings, and an unknown strange man at her side—any one of those four things should have been enough to make a girl with a normal Worldview vigilant. Yet this "Liu Lili" was not nervous in the slightest. Was she really that absentminded, or what?

"Flap flap—"

Just as Hao Ren was letting his imagination run wild and worrying pointlessly about a strange girl, an eerie sound of flapping wings suddenly came from overhead.

The sudden noise in the otherwise silent surroundings gave him quite a fright. He immediately looked toward the sound, only to see a strange black shadow flash across the narrow strip of night sky between the high walls on either side.

That shadow seemed to be a bat, but its size... seemed a little off?

"Hah... what the hell is that, flying around in the middle of the night?" Hao Ren naturally did not want to lose face in front of a girl, so he deliberately shouted loudly to show that he had not been frightened at all. Then he looked up at Lily, expecting to see that she had been startled, but...

In that instant, he saw a pair of wolf-like ears suddenly sprout from Lily's head!

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