The truth of the loop was, this wasn't transmigration.

The distraction was successful.

Ye Yanran sighed, "Little sister, do you really want to join our Special Affairs Office?"

Ye Jiang nodded.

Ye Yanran, "Can you accept that the world is more complicated than you think?"

Ye Jiang: "?"

The section chief said the Special Affairs Office has special requirements for hiring. Is this what these special requirements refer to? Hmm, a philosophy assessment?

Ye Jiang didn't understand philosophy, but she knew how to nod. She nodded repeatedly, her expression serious, as if she truly understood the meaning behind the question, "Yes, I accept."

Ye Yanran smiled, "Alright, you're accepted."

Qin Xiu looked up in surprise, then frowned. "Hey, Yan Ran, are you serious? We're hiring..."

"There were special requests, I remember," Ye Yanran continued. "Sister Xiu, haven't you noticed yet? This young lady has fulfilled our special request."

Ye Yanran looked at Ye Jiang with a complicated expression and said, "This younger sister, she didn't show any adverse reaction when she met the Living Dead. She ran back and is now standing in this villa. What do you think of her reaction?"

Qin Xiu looked over upon hearing this. How did the younger sister react?

She didn't react at all.

At this moment, the villa was filled with a thick, chilling atmosphere that made one's heart tremble.

She adapted even better than them!

The Special Affairs Office has a special requirement for recruiting: they can only hire people who can resist the unique aura emitted by the Living Dead.

The Special Affairs Office is severely understaffed, currently only having four people, because it is difficult to find resistance fighters.

Qin Xiu's naturally unfriendly face showed surprise as she stared at Ye Jiang, remaining silent for a long time.

Hearing their conversation, Ye Jiang finally realized what they were talking about. They were looking for employees who could resist Pollution. Ye Yanran Pang Wen to take her away because she was worried about her being Pollution. But Ye Jiang wasn't afraid of Pollution, so she perfectly fit their requirements.

Qin Xiu was speechless for a long while. Then, she said sullenly, "Even if this special requirement is met, we can't just decide so easily. How can we recruit people so rashly on the spot? It's too reckless..."

"Then let's leave it at that for now and do an evaluation after we go out." Ye Yanran made the decision immediately. She was truly eager to find talent, and now the roles were reversed; she was the one afraid that Ye Jiang would leave.

She smiled at Ye Jiang, "Little sister, you've been shortlisted for a job by our company. We'll discuss it in more detail when we get back. I haven't had a chance to ask your name yet, little sister, what's your name?"

"Ye Jiang."

"Ye Jiang? Your surname is Ye?" Ye Yanran smiled and leaned closer. "What a coincidence, we share the same surname! My surname is also Ye, and my name is Yan Ran. The kind-hearted but sharp-tongued lady next to me Qin Xiu; you can just call her Sister Xiu. The one who just took you away is named Pang Wen. By the way, where did Pang Wen go...?"

Ye Jiang didn't listen as attentively to what was said after that; one sentence was stuck in her mind:

Yan Ran, it turns out, her surname is Ye.

Ye Yanran didn't keep nagging; she knew when to stop and her expression returned to normal.

"Ye Jiang, now that you're practically a staff member of our Special Affairs Office, there's something I need to tell you."

Ye Jiang looked up, Ye Yanran stared at her, saying in a deep voice, "This world may be more complex than we think."

She said, "Sister Xiu and I are stuck in a maze."

"This staircase is strange; it seems to have no end. No matter how hard we run, we can't reach the top..."

Ye Jiang: "."

That's because you're running back and forth.

It turns out that Ye Yanran and Qin Xiu weren't playing with the stairs, but rather...

Ye Jiang raised her gaze and landed at the top of the stairs on the second floor, where the real, scale-covered infant Polluted lay prone, maliciously watching the humans running up and down, saliva dripping from its mouth, its fingernails twitching as if waiting to tear the humans to shreds after it had had its fun.

Rather, they were being manipulated by this Polluted, Ye Jiang thought.

Is this a psychic ability?

Ye Jiang guessed, but because she felt nothing, she wasn't sure.

Ye Yanran and Qin Xiu were blinded by their supernatural abilities and couldn't see the Polluted, but Ye Jiang had already seen it. She just didn't take it seriously. Even if she stood there chatting with Ye Yanran and Qin Xiu, the Polluted couldn't harm a single human hair under her nose.

What level of Polluted is this?

Ye Jiang didn't know, and it didn't matter to her.

All the Polluted were too weak to her, like dust, and she couldn't perceive them.

Ye Jiang blinked slowly, and a mental spell, many times more powerful than the Polluted's, landed on the two humans, instantly seizing control of their minds. The two humans went limp and fell asleep. Ye Jiang appeared in the blink of an eye, supporting their limp bodies and placing them on the stairs, letting them lean against the railing to sleep peacefully. Then, she looked up at the Polluted. The Polluted seemed to sense danger, restlessly scratching its nails—a sizzling sound.

In Ye Jiang's eyes, a Polluted as weak as dust wasn't really a problem, but since she was already inside, she might as well just let it go, consider it a welcome gift to the company.

Thinking this, Ye Jiang conjured a dagger in her hand.

No, no!

A young woman staggered out of the elevator that connected to the basement, saw Ye Jiang holding a dagger, and screamed as she rushed towards him.

"Don't hurt my baby!"

The young woman looked strange; she was covered in Pollution and seemed delirious.

But Ye Jiang's attention wasn't on the woman; it was on the elevator.

There was one other person in the elevator.

She was a woman dressed in black, wearing a black top hat, as if she had come from a funeral.

She stood in the elevator, staring at Ye Jiang, then her gaze shifted to the young man beside Ye Jiang.

She saw Rong Yin, who was rarely noticed by others.

She looked at them, smiled slightly, and had a kind expression.

"Child, don't carry a knife, it's dangerous." The woman said to Ye Jiang in the elevator, like a reliable elder.

But Ye Jiang wasn't a child; she didn't need such reminders and felt... it was too deliberate.

She looked up, silently meeting the woman's gaze.

Contrary to what Ye Yanran and the others thought, the villa wasn't where the owner was out buying baby bottles, and only the sick child, who had become Living Dead, was present.

The villa was crowded and lively.

After stopping the puppet's mechanical behavior, Ye Jiang sensed that besides Ye Yanran and Qin Xiu, there were two other life forms in the villa's basement. That's why she entered the villa. She wanted to know if the puppets outside were the work of someone in the basement, and what their purpose was in creating them.

Of course, finding the people from the Special Affairs Office was also one of her objectives; she couldn't just watch Ye Yanran and the others die.

Chapter 152 The truth about the loop is that this isn't time travel.

The young woman stumbled up the stairs, urgently extending her arms in a gesture of embrace towards the Polluted, her eyes glistening with anxious tears.

She was the mother of the Polluted on the second floor, and she used to be.

The Polluted responded by raising its arms, as if moved by its mother. In fact, its eyes gleamed with excitement, and restless malice coalesced on the hard nails of its outstretched hands.

It waits for humans to pounce, and then--

Disembowel her!

The Polluted was drooling; it was so excited.

Ye Jiang's eyes were fixed on the elevator, but that didn't stop her from using a gust of air to pull the young woman away a split second before the Polluted could slash its nails through a human's chest. At the same time, she threw the dagger in her hand, which flew through the air with precision towards the Polluted.

"Don't want!"

The woman screamed and lunged forward to block the dagger. She lunged forward without hesitation, the air currents controlling her arms. Her forward lunge caused her arms to twist and bend backward, almost breaking them. The woman let out a shrill scream, not for herself, but for the Polluted in front of her.

The dagger froze in mid-air just before severing the Polluted's head. On the stairs, Ye Jiang slowly turned around, her gaze falling directly on the young woman for the first time. In that instant, the young woman attracted Ye Jiang's attention more than the woman in the top hat in the elevator.

"No, no..."

The woman was driven mad by the Pollution, but her love for her child was clearly untainted, pure and ardent.

Ignoring her own arm, she lunged forward repeatedly, crying and saying "No" over and over again.

Standing on the stairs, Ye Jiang watched this scene with trembling eyelashes. Accompanied by the woman's screams, images gradually surfaced in her mind. The images seemed to be taken by an old camera, the lens pointed at the woman upstairs, the finished product a shaky silent film filled with mottled snowflakes.

In that silent video, the background remains the beautifully decorated villa in front of us. The woman sits next to a specially made steel stroller, her gaze gently fixed on the stroller. She gently pushes the stroller with her hands, her mouth moving as if humming a lullaby.

The video seemed to be sped up many times, with a cool color tone, as if a filter had been applied. In the video, the sun rises and sets, day after day, and the woman pushes the stroller, humming a lullaby.

Although the baby lying in the stroller was covered in scales and looked abnormal.

The scene repeated itself in this warm yet strange way. As another sun rose, the perspective suddenly shifted, and the main characters became three other humans who arrived at the villa.

... It was Ye Yanran, Qin Xiu, and Pang Wen who entered the villa.

The three men looked serious as they searched the villa.

Ye Jiang suddenly realized that the three of them were looking for the abnormal child in the stroller, the Polluted.

Three hundred years ago, in a time before Ye Jiang's time travel, Ye Yanran and her companions entered the villa just like they are today, searching for their target: the Living Dead within.