Strange, or Else You Die.

The nurse smiled helplessly. "I need to get back to my rounds. See you tonight."

With that, the nurse left. A new day, another busy day.

Ye Jiang: "..."

Meanwhile, the nurse left the ward and passed the room next door. Remembering the patient in bed 312 making the same joke twice, she slowed her hurried steps. For some inexplicable reason, she walked over to the empty ward next door and stopped at its entrance.

The light overhead suddenly flickered, startling the nurse into looking up. Thankfully, the corridor's ceiling light merely had a slightly faulty connection. It flickered once, then returned to normal.

She made a mental note to report it to maintenance later. Just as she was about to leave, something struck her: silence. The corridor was unusually quiet. The nurses' conversation at the nurses' station had vanished, as had the patients' groans from the wards. It was as though she stood in a vacuum-sealed

space

where sound had lost its means of traveling.

Why was it so quiet?

She whipped her head around, but there wasn't a single person in sight!

Creak-

The abrupt sound rang out, and she looked toward it in alarm. The door before her had opened toward her on its own. Without warning, her gaze plunged into the darkness beyond. It was clearly daytime, yet no light penetrated the room. The cold darkness churned silently like a coiled beast, as though it would swallow her alive! Alarm bells rang in her head, and she turned to run.

Whoosh-

Water surged out, chasing after her.

Inside the ward, Invisible Man maliciously drove the water to chase the angel in white outside. Whenever it nearly caught her, he let her escape before pursuing her again. Within his domain, the corridor became infinitely long. He was the sole master of this space!

After putting up with an entire night's frustration, Invisible Man felt capable again once that strange human left.

Humans, mere ants!

He would capture this human in white, crush every bone in her body, grind her flesh into paste. He would...

"What are you doing?"

Suddenly, someone appeared at the ward's entrance, thin, pale-skinned, and utterly dispirited.

The human stared at him, her eyes still and calm, quietly watching him.

Invisible Man: "!!"

Invisible Man trembled, and the water in the corridor turned into chaotic whirlpools.

Why was this weirdo back again?!

Oh no, that look in this person's eyes-she was going to knife him!

He was in danger!

Invisible Man shook like a leaf. In his panic, a sliver of clarity suddenly squeezed into his muddled thoughts. He wrote with water: [I, I think something's wrong with my body. I wanted to ask the nurse to take a look.]

Ye Jiang tilted her head. So that was it.

Worried that her fellow patient next door had no candy, she had brought him some. Yet the moment she stepped outside, she saw the nurse wading through water in the corridor. She had found it quite strange, but that explained it.

She asked with concern, "What illness do you have?"

Invisible Man: "..."

What illness did he have?

The Polluted had very low intelligence. Once polluted, they retained only malice toward humans and an instinctive fixation on killing. But now, faced with this weirdo, Invisible Man's panic forced a little reason out of him. Fragments of memories flashed through his mind.

In a luxurious private ward, he lay on a hospital bed, struggling and groaning in pain. Thud. He accidentally rolled off the bed.

A pair of feet appeared before his eyes. His gaze traveled upward from them and met a pair of cold eyes.

Someone had been standing beside the bed all along, watching his agonized struggles with indifference.

Urgh!

Invisible Man came back to himself. In a panic, he wrote in crooked letters: [I, I've sort of forgotten, but I'm very sick. I, I don't want to die.]

Ye Jiang fell silent.

She said, "Then live well."

Live... well?

Invisible Man went blank, his empty eyes staring dazedly at her. Looking at the water in the corridor, Ye Jiang frowned slightly. "Playing with water again?"

Invisible Man withdrew all the water. This time, it wasn't out of fear, but something else.

He sucked the water back in a flash. As the water vanished, he disappeared from the ward as well.

The corridor returned to normal.

Ye Jiang held the candy in her hand-she had forgotten to ask whether her fellow patient ate candy.

She would ask next time.

Ye Jiang walked toward the nurse. The tall nurse had suffered quite a fright. Her face was covered in fine beads of sweat, and she braced herself against the wall, panting. "Wh-what was..."

Ye Jiang approached her and said, "It was the patient next door."

The nurse: "..."

Ye Jiang said, "He's feeling unwell and wanted you to take a look."

At that point, she remembered that her fellow patient had already left, so she added, "But he should be feeling better for now, since he's gone out for a stroll."

The nurse: "..."

Her mouth hung open, but no words came out.

A fellow patient?

That was one of the Polluted, wasn't it?!

Clutching her chest, the nurse murmured, "I'll go call and notify..."

Ye Jiang didn't catch whom she intended to notify. Presumably a doctor. With her fellow patient's condition, he needed a doctor to examine him.

Ye Jiang watched the nurse leave without following her. Professional matters were best left to professionals. As for her... she would go watch television.

Outside the hospital, Invisible Man concealed his form and darted through the crowds. At an elementary school, one of his kind seemed to have just wreaked havoc. A cordon had been set up around it, and everything inside was a mess, with 30% of the buildings damaged. The Ability Control Bureau's logistics team was hard at work cleaning up. A delicate-featured woman in work clothes, filthy from head to toe, picked up a pink hair clip. As she stared at it, her eyes reddened. A young man in a black T-shirt stood away from the crowd outside the cordon, speaking irritably into his phone. "...It's been dealt with. Two victims, one

teacher and one student. Fuck, it was only a C-rank Polluted, and it did this much damage..."

Invisible Man swept past the young man. Sensing something, the young man shot a sharp look in his direction, his grip tightening around his phone. "I think a Polluted just appeared..."

"It's powerful," the young man said cautiously. "A-rank."

Only A-rank Polluted were powerful enough for an ability user to determine their rank directly.

Three hundred years had passed since Disaster Day, yet only one S-rank Polluted had appeared, three years ago. It was called "Stormbringer." That disaster had caused the entirety of City S to fall to the storm, killing a million people and displacing millions more. To this day, it remained an empty city.

And Stormbringer had not been dealt with by the Ability Control Bureau. It had disappeared on its own.

Humanity had no means of dealing with S-rank Polluted. The highest ability rank was only A, and there were a mere eighty-seven people at that rank.

Thus, even an A-rank Polluted was a disaster whose scale humanity could hardly predict.

The young man put away his phone, his gaze firming, and followed the Polluted.

Chapter 3: Strange, or Else You Die.

The young man—Zhao Yi—swiftly followed the Polluted, heading into increasingly remote areas until he reached the outskirts. A manor appeared before him. A grand Western-style villa stood on a lush green lawn, and an antique sculptural fountain was running. Within it, a sculpture of a mother and child stood quietly, gentle and divine.

Focused on his pursuit, Zhao Yi suddenly caught sight of the manor. Startled by the realization, he stopped abruptly, his gaze going somewhat blank.

The Polluted paid him no mind. Its presence headed straight toward the manor. As it was about to rush through the towering iron gates, white as though cast from radiant moonlight, Zhao Yi's eyelid twitched violently, and a "Holy shit" slipped out.

Without thinking, he rubbed the blood moon mark on the web of his left hand. The next second, flames blazed, and a fiercely burning curtain of fire appeared in front of the gates, blocking the way. The Polluted, which had remained unseen all this time, was forced to reveal itself. Its body was entirely water, shapeless, with two sinister hollows that seemed to hold endless darkness. Merely being watched by them drew one helplessly into their depths.

The Polluted carried contamination. Mild exposure left people dazed; severe exposure drove them mad. The higher the rank, the more terrifying it was.

The Polluted before him clearly belonged to A-rank. Its gaze alone could shake a person's resolve. Fortunately, the person facing it was Zhao Yi, the foremost B-rank ability user, who had some resistance to contamination. He only lost focus for a moment before coming to his senses.

He gritted his teeth, his body taut, while putting on a calm expression. "Brother, you can't go any farther. Do you know whose manor that is ahead of you?"

"It's the Zhou Family's!" Zhao Yi's mouth twitched into an ugly expression, as though he had eaten shit.

The Zhou Family was a prominent family in City A and the largest financial backer of the City A Branch of the Anomaly Control Bureau. The Ability Control Bureau's poverty was evident from its shabby premises. Its expenses were enormous, and government funding was never enough, merely a drop in the bucket. It badly needed public donations, and the Zhou Family was one of its donors.

But the Zhou Family was not easy to deal with. From the family head to the heir, they were all damned stingy bastards. They gave plenty of money and donated no shortage of supplies, but afterward, they treated the Ability Control Bureau as their own, ordering it around without the slightest hesitation. Forget making the bureau's ability users guard their home-Zhao Yi had even been fucking summoned in the middle of the night to sing the Zhou Family's young master a lullaby.

Everyone working 996 was a beast of burden, even those with secure government jobs!

Zhao Yi was only a B-rank ability user. He didn't believe he could take down an A-rank Polluted, so he had only intended to follow it all along, never to fight it head-on.

That was, if the Polluted hadn't been heading into the Zhou Family's manor.

Zhao Yi flashed a smile that all but cursed someone's ancestors, bitterness filling his heart.

He, Zhao Yi, was fairly gifted. Given time, he could have fulfilled his ambitions. Unfortunately, luck wasn't on his side. He would most likely die for his country right here today.

"Brother, let's negotiate. Could you go wreak havoc somewhere else? Not the Zhou Family. Seriously, anywhere but here!"

The Ability Control Bureau still depended on those stingy bastards for their salaries!

Zhao Yi puckered his lips flippantly, actually making small talk with the Polluted. Yet despite his frivolous demeanor, he never withdrew the curtain of fire. He remained alert for an attack while looking for openings. His loose tongue was merely a tactic.

It was a little strange. This A-rank Polluted hadn't torn him apart immediately. Instead, it hovered in midair, staring at him and listening to him chatter.

The Polluted had no leisure for such things when facing humans. Generally, if they could attack, they never took a break. They killed by instinct.