"Oh, right," Wang Congshan seemed to remember something and said to Li Ang, "The day after tomorrow is Mid-Autumn Festival. Do you want to come to my house for dinner?"

"Ah?" Li Ang was momentarily stunned.

Wang Congshan continued to lean over the table, her head buried in her arms. She yawned and pretended to say carelessly, "It's just that my cousin's parents are having job transfers and are planning to move to Yin City. My cousin is living across from our place right now. So, we simply decided to spend the Mid-Autumn Festival together. You can keep me company—no, us—and have dinner or something. Um, my dad said he's quite grateful for your help last time."

"..."

Li Ang looked at Wang Congshan's slightly reddened ears sticking out from her arms. He felt a pang of tenderness inside, and his voice became a few degrees gentler. "No need. I still have some things to do the day after tomorrow."

"Seriously," Wang Congshan tilted her head, her ears still warm. Her big, watery eyes tried to maintain a squinty side glance. "Speak normally."

"What's abnormal about me?"

Li Ang instantly changed his facial expression as if performing Sichuan opera face-changing. He dropped his relaxed look and lazily replied, "I am known as Prince Warm Oil. What you heard just now was just my professional voice. You wouldn't get to hear it if you don't pay."

"Psh."

Wang Congshan rolled her eyes, buried her head back in her arms, and said in a stuffy voice, "Who wants to listen to that."

Li Ang smiled and said nothing, ignoring the sour and wistful clicking of Miss Chai's tongue from within him.

"Class is starting."

Tang Hanyi, carrying her teaching materials, hurried into the classroom. She pushed up the glasses on the bridge of her nose, looking somewhat tired.

This Special Affairs Bureau agent hadn't been resting well lately.

Ever since the last fog incident, a thick fog that couldn't be dispersed began to emerge from the underground drilling site on Qianhua Road. It now shrouded over half the street.

This fog, like previous case reports indicated, would devour any object that entered it. The Special Affairs Bureau had sent dozens of scout drones into the thick fog, but as soon as the drones entered the Misty Territory, all contact would be lost. Mice and other living creatures with miniature cameras installed disappeared silently after being released into the fog. Metal poles with camera equipment attached would have the parts that touched the fog eaten away upon entering and exiting the Misty Territory.

All attempts to remotely observe the interior of the Misty Territory ended in failure.

For safety considerations, the Special Affairs Bureau barricaded Qianhua Road, the center of the Misty Territory, with roadblocks. Using "underground pipeline repair" as a pretext, they temporarily evacuated the shops and residents around Qianhua Road. Additionally, they established a temporary base on a high-rise building far from Qianhua Road for the scientific research team to conduct real-time monitoring.

With Tang Hanyi's security clearance level, she had no way of knowing the extent of the Heterodox Academy's and the Special Affairs Bureau's upper echelons' knowledge about the Misty Territory. Nor did she know if the higher-ups planned to send the Mobile Detachment into the mutated Misty Territory.

All she knew was that the underground excavation had stopped. The engineering teams and players specializing in skills common to the Mobile Detachment, who had been called over, were on standby outside Qianhua Road.

As an intelligence analyst, Tang Hanyi found that the school where she was stationed was at the nexus of this series of unusual events.

In any case, not having received a large-scale evacuation order meant that the situation wasn't particularly terrible.

Tang Hanyi couldn't help but rub her temples. Not even energy drinks with wakefulness-inducing qualities could relieve the mental exhaustion caused by prolonged insomnia.

No matter how tired she was, normal classes were still a necessity. However, Tang Hanyi, having learned her lesson after some time, never called on Li Ang to answer questions during class anymore. She allowed him to daydream, let his thoughts wander, fold paper airplanes under the desk, and flick rubber bands.

The last time Li Ang was called upon to answer a question was by the math teacher, who was dissatisfied with Li Ang's languid demeanor and asked him to recite pi. Li Ang got up and started reciting, simply unable to stop.

When Li Ang recited over thirty digits, his classmates were shocked. At over seventy digits, the teacher was shocked. When he reached over a hundred digits, Wang Congshan was also shocked. She was dumbfounded to realize that Li Ang had begun reciting his own QQ number, his home phone number, and even numbers representing the Pinyin initials of all the students' names.

Later on, Li Ang recited whatever numbers came to mind, haphazardly spouting a mess of digits. Due to his poker face, rapid speech, and confident, relaxed demeanor, he intimidated and convinced everyone except Wang Congshan.

(Actually, Li Ang himself could recite pi to several hundred digits if he wanted to. It's convenient to randomly cut a segment from pi, reverse it, and use it as an account password.)

"Please turn to your textbooks..."

Tang Hanyi started the lesson. Li Ang, his eyes wide open, rested his chin on one hand, maintaining a posture of attentive listening. Meanwhile, his other hand reached under the desk, took several A4 sheets, and began folding them into various paper animals using just that one hand.

Previously, when bored, Li Ang often played with Rubik's cubes, flicked paper-cutting knives, spun pens, and performed fancy card shuffles single-handedly under his desk to practice his hand dexterity.

Hmm... if it weren't for the fear of being too handsome and getting photographed, leaving behind a flaw, I might have become a street Mage to earn money to help out at home a while ago.

Teacher Tang looks quite unwell, just like some other staff members who have a whiff of the Special Affairs Bureau about them. But the fact that she's able to come and teach normally indicates that things aren't too dire.

The forum was the same as before, with no particularly significant news. There were some posts about Qianhua Road in Yin City, but they were vague and revealed little in the way of intelligence.

Times had changed. The surveillance intensity near Qianhua Road was stronger than ever, and Li Ang dared not approach the area. Triggering some task there would be bad news.

He peacefully made it through a full day of classes and went home after school. Recently, Mother Wang had insisted on driving Wang Congshan to and from school, possibly because she had learned something and was concerned for her safety. This left Li Ang no choice but to cycle home alone.

Actually, letting Li Ang and Wang Congshan bike home together would have been much safer than Mother Wang driving her.

But that was how things had to be. In the larger context of the unfolding slaughter game, nowhere was absolutely safe. Even moving out of Yin City might not prevent one from being dragged into an unusual event—staying put might actually keep one closer to the protection of the Special Affairs Bureau.

Ordinary people were just too helpless in the face of anomalies.

Of course, the players, with their precarious lives, weren't doing much better either.

Upon cycling home, Li Ang casually chatted with Wang Congshan on WeChat for a few minutes (mainly to confirm that she had reached home safely). After ending the communication, he let Miss Chai out.

Miss Chai leaped out of Li Ang's body and, as usual, jumped onto the sofa to play with her phone. She held it while reading romances in the female-oriented section and muttered almost imperceptibly, "TCH TCH TCH, so cheesy..."

Who knew what she was implying.

Li Ang, as clueless as a Monk scratching his head, didn't bother with her. He sat in front of his computer desk, staring at the calendar in the bottom right corner of the screen.

Mid-Autumn Festival is coming up... Should I go back and take a look?