That earlier assessment was looking more and more spot-on. Just who was this big shot, and how had they managed to pull off something like this?
That genuinely budding smile was right in front of him. Jane herself seemed completely unaware of it; she simply stared straight down at him.
Fu Qian didn't dwell on this little predicament. Instead, he sighed at the bigger picture.
He'd just been saying how rare it was to find an ordinary, peaceful corner of humanity. In the blink of an eye, the supernatural index was about to blow past its limit. The icy aura around Jane was proof enough.
And it didn't look like she'd simply transformed after being provoked. It seemed more like that old saying: the whole world was at fault.
The tightly drawn curtains, the disappearance of everyone else, the separated milk, and the dark red stains all over the floor that Jane seemed not to see...
All of it pointed to one of two possibilities: either he was under the influence of some powerful mental effect, or he'd become disconnected from the world he'd been in just moments ago.
As if he'd accidentally triggered some switch and fallen into another layer of the world—the Inner World?
The concept was a little theatrical, but it did seem to fit the situation.
This town, slowly aging and dying, was made up of more than one layer of reality.
The quiet yet lived-in place he'd just been was merely the surface. One wrong step and you could fall into a pit—and not just any pit, but a snake pit.
What lay before him could only be described as a cult-horror set, turned up to eleven.
That wasn't what Fu Qian was marveling at, though.
The most important thing was that, even with the