I'm Taking Every Staircase in Your Building

An eerie, deathly silence hung in the corridor of the unfinished building.

Only the sound of Su Bai chewing his roujiamo rang out with particular clarity.

The full-bearded captain was the first to recover. He looked at the faintly glowing City Appearance Bureau temporary agent bracelet on Su Bai's wrist, a flicker of disbelief in his eyes.

"You... you're the backup Captain Bai sent?"

"Temporary worker. I'm doing this part-time for some extra cash." Su Bai swallowed the last bite of his roujiamo, brushed the crumbs off his hands, and smiled at the three grime-covered agents.

"A hundred thousand to get three people out. Not a bad deal."

Seeing how relaxed Su Bai was, Agent Xiao Li nearly burst into tears.

"Brother! Little brother! Run!" Xiao Li shouted at the top of his lungs. "There's a monster here! It's a second-tier Anomaly derivative, impervious to bullets and blades. Even my armor-piercing rounds can't penetrate its skin! You can't beat it alone!"

The female agent chimed in urgently, "Captain, why did Captain Bai send a kid? Isn't he just sending him to his death?!"

In their eyes, although Su Bai's kick had packed considerable force, there were no spiritual energy fluctuations coming from him, nor had he summoned any powerful divine kingdom followers.

In this world, anyone who fought an Anomaly hand-to-hand without using followers was either a true god or a madman.

Su Bai clearly couldn't be the former.

"Roar!!!"

The Resentment Contractor, whom Su Bai had sent flying with a kick, struggled out of the crater in the wall.

He was clearly enraged. The abyssal maw beneath his hard hat opened to an exaggerated angle, spewing a nauseating cloud of black miasma.

"Dare kick me... dock your pay... die!!!"

The monster scrambled along the walls and ceiling on all fours like a berserk giant spider. The rusty steel rebar in his hand whistled with death as he thrust it straight at Su Bai's face!

"Watch out!" the full-bearded captain roared, trying to rush to his aid. But his divine power was exhausted, and his legs gave out, dropping him to his knees.

Faced with the monster's thunderous attack, Su Bai not only failed to dodge, he didn't even take his hands out of his pockets.

He merely tilted his head up to look at the monster in midair. There wasn't a trace of fear in his eyes, only the fervor of someone who had spotted a premium material.

"A second-tier Anomaly derivative. Now that's a real tonic."

"Hongdou, come out and receive our guest."

Hummm-

Without warning, a deep, icy black spatial rift, carrying an aura of endless despair, tore open above Su Bai's head in an instant!

The rift was much larger than it had been when he dealt with the stray dog.

The instant it appeared, a terrifying aura of contamination, more than ten times as concentrated as the dark matter in the unfinished building, swept through the entire corridor!

The Resentment Contractor, still in midair, bore the brunt of it.

When the monster sensed the aura pouring from the rift, his once-berserk movements went stiff in a remarkably human fashion.

It was the absolute suppression of an inferior by a superior!

If the contamination in the unfinished building was a ditch, then the contamination in Su Bai's rift was a pitch-black ocean!

Before the monster could react-

Ding-

A long, chilling bell toll came from deep within the rift.

Along with the toll, a flash of dazzling crimson shot out of the rift like lightning splitting the night!

It was a shapely figure wearing a red school uniform.

She had no face, only waist-length black hair and a pair of deathly pale, slender hands.

Hongdou hovered in midair in a pose that completely defied the laws of physics. She reached out lightly with both hands and caught the heavily contaminated rusty rebar the monster had thrust at her!

Creak-

A grating friction sound set their teeth on edge.

Under the three agents' horrified gazes, those deathly pale hands easily bent the rebar, which supposedly couldn't even be pierced by armor-piercing rounds, as though kneading dough!

"What... kind of follower is that?!" The full-bearded captain's eyes widened, and his breathing quickened.

As a veteran agent of the City Appearance Bureau, he had seen all kinds of divine kingdom followers.

There were elementals wreathed in flames, beastmen with skin of bronze and bones of iron, and noble, holy angels.

But he swore he had never in his life seen a follower that radiated pure resentment and despair and looked more like an Anomaly than an Anomaly itself!

Was a human commanding an Anomaly, or was an Anomaly wearing human skin?

The monster let out a terrified shriek as his weapon was bent.

He tried to retreat, but Hongdou gave him no chance.

"It hurts so much..."

Hongdou let out a shrill murmur, her figure instantly becoming a red afterimage as she closed right in on the monster.

The next second.

Hongdou's pure black eyes, without a trace of white, locked onto the monster's "face."

[Rule one: Death Gaze, triggered.]

Although the monster had no complete neck, the power of the rule was absolute.

Crack!

With a crisp snap, the monster's huge head, yellow hard hat and all, was forcibly twisted a full 360 degrees by an invisible force!

Pfft-

Black, foul blood gushed from his neck like a fountain, splattering all over the wall.

The massive headless corpse crashed to the ground, twitched twice, and went completely lifeless.

An instant kill.

A clean, decisive instant kill.

The entire fight had lasted less than five seconds.

A deathly silence fell over the corridor.

All three City Appearance Bureau agents sat slumped on the ground, mouths wide open, looking at Su Bai as though he were a monster.

The second-tier Anomaly derivative who had driven them into a desperate situation and tormented them for three days and three nights.

Had just... been killed instantly?

And his head had been twisted right off in a way even more bizarre than an Anomaly?

"Oh, that blood splashed a little too far. What a waste, what a waste."

Su Bai muttered in dismay and hurriedly directed Hongdou to throw the headless corpse and the battered hard hat on the ground into the divine kingdom rift.

[Ding! Successfully captured one second-tier Anomaly derivative. High-purity contamination sources and resentment can be extracted. Stored as spare urban legend material.]

Hearing the system notification, Su Bai clapped his hands in satisfaction.

The divine kingdom rift slowly closed.

The terrifying, suffocating pressure in the corridor finally dissipated.

Su Bai turned to the three dumbstruck agents and gave them a radiant smile.

"Officers, sorry you had such a fright. I usually keep a low profile. My special talent is 'garbage recycling.' That monster just now looked a lot like non-recyclable garbage, so I cleared it away while I was at it."

Garbage recycling?

He called that savage display of bending rebar with bare hands and snapping a monster's neck with one look garbage recycling?!

The full-bearded captain swallowed, forced himself to his feet, and gave Su Bai a solemn salute.

"Zhang Lei, captain of the City Appearance Bureau Abnormality Division Third Squad. Thank you for saving our lives, Brother Su!"

The other two squad members hurried to their feet as well, their eyes full of awe.

In this world, strength was everything.

"You're too polite, Captain Zhang. I'm being paid to do a job. It's only right." Su Bai waved a hand. "Now that I've found you, let's get out of here. Stay in a place like this too long and you're liable to get rheumatism."

Su Bai turned and prepared to head downstairs.

But Zhang Lei's expression changed, and he hurriedly called out, "Brother Su! We can't take the stairs!"

"What's wrong?" Su Bai stopped.

Still shaken, Agent Xiao Li pointed toward the stairwell. "There's something wrong with this building's stairs! No matter how many floors we go down, we always end up back on this floor. It's a spatial maze that loops endlessly. That's how we got trapped here!"

"Oh, you mean that ghost wall." Su Bai came to a realization. "I already experienced it on my way up. It was pretty fun."

Pretty... fun?

The three agents looked at one another.

Was this kid just oblivious, or was he truly hiding his abilities?!

"Brother Su, this is no joke," Zhang Lei said gravely. "This is the power of a spatial rule. Unless we find the core of this maze and destroy it, we'll never get out."

"We've tried everything these past three days. Breaking through walls, jumping out of the building-nothing worked. This building has been completely assimilated by the Anomaly."

Su Bai rubbed his chin.

Zhang Lei was right.

Before, he had only been testing it between the first and third floors. Now that he wanted to take the others out, he really did need to break the rule behind this "ghost wall."

Otherwise, he wouldn't get his hundred thousand.

"If it's a spatial rule, that makes things easy."

A mysterious smile curled Su Bai's lips as he turned and walked toward the stairwell.

"Brother Su, what are you going to do?" Zhang Lei and the others hurried after him.

Su Bai stood before the flight of stairs leading to the fourth floor, looking at the gray fog hanging ahead.

"Would you say the principle behind this ghost wall is like the belt on a treadmill? You keep running on it, but the belt's actually turning backward?"

Zhang Lei was taken aback. "That analogy... is pretty apt. But this belt was formed by a rule. How do we stop it?"

"Stop it? Why would we stop it?"

Su Bai turned to look at the three agents, a nearly crazed light flickering in his eyes.

"Since these stairs are a treasure it made, can't I just tear them out, pack them up, and take them away?"

Zhang Lei was dumbfounded.

Xiao Li was dumbfounded.

The female agent was dumbfounded too.

Tear out the stairs?

Pack them up and take them away?

Did he think this was a banquet where he could pack up the leftovers? This was a fucking structure formed by an Anomaly's rule! How was he supposed to tear it out?!

Before they could react-

Su Bai strode forward and raised both hands high.

"System! Full power, suck it in!"

Boom!!!

With Su Bai's roar, his divine kingdom rift, originally only half a meter wide, tore open behind him to a full five meters in an instant, violently and furiously!

An utterly terrifying black fog of dark matter contamination, concentrated to the extreme and 99.5% pure, surged from the rift like floodwaters bursting through a dam!

The entire unfinished building began to shake violently.

Su Bai's divine kingdom was like a taotie that had gone hungry for countless years, opening its abyssal maw.

And the first thing in its path was the flight of stairs before him, containing the "spatial loop rule"!

"Come... up!"

Su Bai grasped at the empty air with both hands.

Under the three agents' disbelieving stares, the supposedly indestructible staircase, cast from reinforced concrete, began to crack under the strain!

Crack! Crack!

Great chunks of plaster fell away, exposing the rusty rebar inside.

Then the flight of stairs, imbued with the power of a rule, was forcibly ripped from the building as though by a giant invisible hand. Along with the gray fog hanging over it, it was sucked wholesale into Su Bai's divine kingdom rift!

[Ding! Successfully devoured one section of a damaged staircase with the 'spatial loop attribute'!]

[Ding! Sufficient building materials and contamination foundation collected.]

[Detected that the host possesses a spare urban legend blueprint-'The Thirteenth Step'.]

[Current fusion progress: 30%... Host, please continue devouring similar scenes to complete the rules!]

Listening to the notifications in his mind, Su Bai rubbed his hands together excitedly.

It really worked!

As long as my contamination is heavier than yours and my suction is stronger, your rules are my building blocks!

Su Bai turned to look at the huge opening ahead, leading to the upper floor where the stairs had been forcibly removed, and swept an arm forward.

"Come on! Follow me upstairs! Today, I'm taking every last staircase in this building!"

Zhang Lei and the other two stood rooted to the spot, utterly disheveled in the wind.

Looking at Su Bai's retreating figure, they felt as though their understanding of the world had shattered all over the ground.

What kind of temporary worker came to carry out a rescue mission like this?

He was clearly a fucking bandit here to carry out a forced demolition!