“Damn!” Shen Ge’s expression darkened.

Deng Yuqi: ?

“Forgot to grab the pickles! A lunchbox without pickles just isn’t the same. Ugh.” Shen Ge sighed dramatically.

Deng Yuqi ignored him, picking up her lunchbox and heading straight for the dissection room.

Shen Ge’s gaze shifted to the brightly lit hallway ahead, his brow furrowing in thought…

Tom’s Shopping Mall, where a Class-7 anomalous entity had appeared, was classified as a top-tier contamination zone. This place, however, was a high-tier contamination zone, meaning there were likely Class-5 or Class-6 entities lurking around.

If it’s a Class-5 or Class-6 entity four years from now, then right now, it should at least be Class-1 or Class-2.

Was this an entity “kept” by the Special Tactics Division for manufacturing anomalous energy equipment? Or was it one of the entities sealed away after past incidents?

But what really caught Shen Ge’s attention were the words “anomalous entity headquarters.”

The system’s four-year time discrepancy suggested that, in the future, the Special Tactics Division had fallen and become the headquarters of the anomalous entities. And the term “headquarters” raised some serious questions.

The system labeled areas with high anomalous activity as “nests.” Even Tom’s Shopping Mall was referred to as the “lair of a Class-7 entity.”

But “headquarters”?

Did that mean intelligent entities had taken over the Special Tactics Division?

Since awakening the system, aside from Old Wang—who had the “Three Heads, Six Arms” trait—most of the entities Shen Ge had encountered were animalistic.

If humans could turn into entities while retaining their consciousness… now that

would be explosive intel.

Lost in thought, Shen Ge followed Deng Yuqi into the dissection room on the first floor of the tech department, still holding his lunchbox.

Inside the dissection room were nine people: Li Xiang, the lead technician, two assistants, and four fully armed soldiers responsible for their safety.

“Chief.”

“Chief.”

As Deng Yuqi and Shen Ge entered, the two assistants approached. One of them said, “Chief, Mr. Shen, please follow me.”

Since the dissection target was an anomalous entity, entering the inner dissection room required protective suits to minimize exposure to its effects.

Ever since these entities first appeared, human scientists had been studying them. Yet, after all these years, no one knew how they came into existence.

Were they Earth-borne viruses? Alien pathogens? Or something beyond scientific explanation—like… “ghosts”?

No one knew if the protective suits actually worked, but for safety’s sake, protocol demanded treating the entities as viral threats, requiring full protective measures before contact.

After following the assistant into the changing room, Deng Yuqi sat at a small table nearby and opened her lunchbox. “You take him in first. I’ll join you after I eat.”

She’d had a snack at 11 a.m. and had been working nonstop until nearly 7 p.m. when Shen Ge’s call interrupted her dinner plans. Now, she was genuinely hungry.

“Understood, Chief.”

The assistant handed Shen Ge a protective suit, but his attention was drawn to a large, boxy white contraption with wheels in the corner.

“What’s that?” Shen Ge asked.

The assistant replied, “That’s Chief Chen’s protective chair. He injured his leg in an anomaly encounter and had trouble moving around, so the tech team built this for him. You can sit inside it directly. Even though Chief Chen was transferred, the chair stayed.”

“Huh. Since Chief Chen isn’t using it anymore, mind if I borrow it? Looks pretty spacious—I could eat while watching the dissection.” Shen Ge suggested.

Assistant: ?

“You… want to eat while watching a dissection?” The assistant’s face twisted in disgust just imagining the scene.

Meanwhile, Deng Yuqi—who’d only known Shen Ge for two days but had already endured two days’ worth of mental strain—barely reacted.

Shen Ge waved it off, climbing into the boxy wheelchair contraption and digging into his lunch.

“…”

“Mr. Shen, I really think you should—”

Before the assistant could finish, Shen Ge—lunchbox in one hand—started up the “old man mobile” and smoothly drove out.

Li Xiang blinked as Shen Ge rolled up in the odd vehicle. “Mr. Shen, what’s this…?”

“Sorry, haven’t had dinner yet, and I spent the whole afternoon chasing rats. Didn’t want to hold you guys up, so I’m making do.” Shen Ge explained.

“…”

The room fell into stunned silence.

One of the armed soldiers couldn’t help muttering, “Dude, you’ve got a strong stomach.”

But since Shen Ge wasn’t needed for the actual dissection—just to observe the rat entity’s corpse and compare it to its living state—no one stopped him.

Once inside the inner dissection room, Shen Ge saw the rat entity splayed on the table, its skin mostly peeled back, its belly sliced open to reveal grotesque innards.

Shen Ge maneuvered his chair closer, chewing thoughtfully as he examined the corpse. “The wound on the left side of the skull is probably from me. Besides the firebrick, I also stomped on it… maybe a dozen or twenty times.”

“…”

Are you the legendary inheritor of the “Shadowless Stomp” technique?

What kind of hell did this rat go through before it died?

Li Xiang stepped forward, using a tool to lift the rat’s head while an electric saw buzzed to life in his other hand. As he cut into the skull, the creature’s brain oozed out like maggots, “healing” the incision within seconds.

Li Xiang’s expression was grave. “Mr. Shen, as you can see, aside from your inflicted wound, any damage we cause is quickly regenerated by the residual anomalous energy. But in your wound, we detected traces of a foreign anomalous energy.”

“Oh?” Shen Ge shoveled in a few more bites, chewing loudly before swallowing. “Did you test the firebrick I brought?”

The assistant standing beside Shen Ge had already been fighting nausea from the sight of the writhing brain matter. The sound of Shen Ge noisily eating mapo tofu pushed her over the edge, and she bolted to the corner trash can to vomit.

“Is the assistant pregnant or something?” Shen Ge asked curiously.

Pregnant?! She’s puking because of you!

Vomiting during dissections wasn’t uncommon, so Li Xiang paid no mind. His focus was solely on the entity.

“We tested it. The brick also carried traces of foreign anomalous energy,” Li Xiang confirmed.

Shen Ge nodded seriously. “So… I randomly picked up a firebrick at the market, which happened to have residual anomalous energy, and by sheer luck, it became a weapon against the rat entity?”

“That’s a possibility,” Li Xiang mused.

Shen Ge shrugged. “Easy fix, then. Send someone to the construction site across from the fish stall at Chenghong Road Market and grab all the firebricks there for testing. Might score a whole batch of anomalous weapons.”

“Good point! Thanks for the tip, Mr. Shen!” Li Xiang had only just received the brick’s test results and hadn’t reported them to Deng Yuqi yet. He immediately ordered the assistant to dispatch a team.

Of course, they’d find nothing—the residual energy on the brick came from Shen Ge’s own “Immobility” trait when he used it to control the rat entity.

But this revelation opened up a whole new strategy for dealing with anomalous entities!