Becoming an Evil God and Stealing His Wife - Chapter 6

Shen Guan repeated himself, his voice cool but deliberate: “I am sorry. Last night was entirely my fault. Thank you for delivering me back safely.”

Li Jiu forced a tight, polite smile onto his face. “Don’t sweat it.”

Truthfully, he had no idea how to properly evaluate the events of the previous night. However, given that his host possessed a terrifyingly high combat index and hadn’t caused him any real physical damage aside from a thoroughly sore lower back and aching muscles Li Jiu decided it was best to treat the entire ordeal as if it had never happened.

His eyes drifted toward the side table next to the sofa. His bundle and paper bag of buns were still resting right where he left them, not too far from where Shen Guan was seated.

Li Jiu pointed at his belongings. “I’ll just grab my things and head out immediately.”

Shen Guan offered a slight nod of permission.

Li Jiu swiftly stepped across the room, snatched up his items, and hauled himself toward the front door. He kept his peripheral vision fixed on Shen Guan the entire time, remaining highly vigilant against any sudden shadow appendages striking out from behind.

“Ensure absolutely no one learns of my existence, or the fact that I reside here,” Shen Guan remarked quietly, watching him leave. “It is for your own safety.”

Li Jiu nodded fervently, his hand already on the door handle. “Don’t worry. I didn’t see a single thing last night, I don’t know anything, and I have absolutely never crossed paths with you.”

Shen Guan lowered his gaze. “Very well.”

Confirming that no rogue tentacles were launching a sneak attack, Li Jiu quickly slipped through the front door, accelerating his pace as he navigated the secluded perimeter to leave the estate far behind. He needed to get back home immediately to check on Li Mengmeng, and today marked his very first official shift at the noodle house. He couldn’t afford to be late.

Dong— Dong— Dong—

The distant town clock tower chimed, striking six times to announce the morning hour.

Li Jiu let out a massive sigh of relief and decelerated his stride. “The noodle house doesn’t open until ten o’clock, which means as long as I arrive by nine, I have more than enough time.”

Before turning a corner, he cast one final look over his shoulder toward the villa. By now, the standalone estate was entirely concealed by dense foliage, leaving not a single trace visible from the street.

Back inside the villa, Shen Guan stood quietly beside the side table, his expression completely blank as his eyes rested on an object that had been left behind.

It appeared to have tumbled out of Li Jiu’s cloth bundle during his frantic departure.

It was pink.

What on earth is this?

Li Jiu returned to his dilapidated housing unit, inserting his key and turning the lock with maximum care to keep his entry completely silent. Since it was barely past six in the morning, Mengmeng would likely still be deep asleep.

He stepped into the cramped kitchen, intending to light the stove and heat up the leftover buns in a bamboo steamer.

Autumn was drawing to a close, and the weather had taken a distinct, biting chill. While the drop in temperature ensured that food wouldn’t spoil overnight, steaming the buns would preserve their freshness and provide a warm breakfast for them both.

He kindled the flame within the hearth, washed a single grey taro, and buried it deep beneath the hot ash to roast. However, the exact moment he spun around to place the meat buns onto the steaming rack, a figure standing silently right behind his shoulder startled him half out of his skin.

“Mengmeng?! You’re awake?”

Li Mengmeng stood with her head slightly lowered. Her usually bright, expressive eyes were completely swallowed by an absolute, glassy blackness not a single trace of white remained in her sclera.

“Brother,” the young girl whispered into the quiet air of the courtyard. “Why did you only return just now? Do you… not want Mengmeng anymore?”

For a split second, Li Jiu felt a strange wave of dizziness wash over his conscious mind, accompanied by a sudden, piercingly cold draft whistling through the room.

He shook his head vigorously to dispel the fog, attributing the sudden vertigo to his extreme lack of sleep. As for the cold draft? It was late autumn; a sudden drop in temperature was perfectly normal. In fact, it would only get colder from here on out.

I really need to scrape together some funds to buy us thick winter clothes, he thought, realizing neither of them possessed adequate garments for the coming frost.

With that practical thought grounding him, his focus refocused on the little girl, who barely reached up to his chest. Li Mengmeng was only eleven years old. While her culinary skills were rudimentary at best, she was entirely capable of operating the stove; during his initial weeks adjusting to this world, she had handled all their meals while he was dead-set on finding a way back home.

However, Li Jiu knew how terrifying it must have been for an eleven-year-old to spend the night alone in a pitch-black house, wondering why her only living relative hadn’t returned.

Li Jiu dropped into a low crouch, meeting her gaze evenly. “It’s my fault, Mengmeng. Please don’t be angry with me. I managed to secure a proper job yesterday, but the shift ended quite late, and I ran into an emergency on my way back. That’s why I couldn’t make it home last night. I would never abandon you.”

“The moment I wrapped up my duties, I ran all the way back. Look, I even brought you something delicious.”

“Do you want to guess what it is?”

The exact instant Li Jiu dropped to his knees to level himself with her, the pitch-black void within Li Mengmeng’s eyes instantly receded, her pupils restoring to their normal appearance.

Initially, she had been consumed by a wave of severe distress and building resentment, terrified that her brother might glimpse the erratic state she had just been in. But hearing his thorough explanation, her anxieties evaporated, replaced by a sudden surge of pure delight.

He didn’t stay out on purpose. He never intended to leave me behind.

A pair of deep, joyful dimples immediately framed her cheeks. “I don’t know what it is, but if Brother says it’s delicious, then it must be amazing!”

Li Jiu smiled, reaching out to ruffle her messy hair before pulling the white treats from his bag. “Look at this. Buns.”

Ten plump, white, perfectly steamed meat buns.

Li Mengmeng’s mouth practically watered at the sight. “M-Meat buns?”

“Big meat buns,” Li Jiu confirmed with a grin. “Incredibly savory.”

The young girl stared longingly at the bundle, though a sudden look of hesitation crossed her face. “But Brother… these must have cost a fortune, right?”

Li Jiu placed the steamer rack over the boiling pot of water. “Remember when I told you I secured a job? I’m working at an established noodle house now. The boss lady gifted these to me personally as a perk they didn’t cost a single cent. Go ahead and eat as much as your stomach desires.”

Li Mengmeng nodded happily, her feet firmly rooted to the spot before the hearth, refusing to move an inch.

Seeing her enthusiasm, Li Jiu handed over the responsibility of monitoring the fire to her and retreated into his small bedroom, firmly shutting the door behind him.

Once inside the absolute privacy of his room, he summoned the mysterious handbook.

Yesterday, he had encountered the traumatized worker, Xiao Zhang, who had been heavily influenced by an anomaly. Later that night, he had witnessed the vastly more bizarre, monstrous transformation of Shen Guan. He wanted to verify if these high-intensity interactions had triggered any shifts within the text.

The results deviated slightly from his expectations, but a structural shift had indeed occurred: a brand-new entry had manifested within the pages.

On the tenth page, the left side featured a vivid illustration of a grotesque, dark entity. It possessed a dense, overlapping cluster of articulated segments resembling a massive centipede while its central torso was a sickening mass of putrid, undulating flesh.

On the right side, the regular analytical commentary was neatly displayed:

Name: Louse Anomaly

Class: Level 4 (Moderately Dangerous)

Ability: Stealth [PLUNDERED]

Weakness: Intense Light Exposure

Note: Blast it directly with high-intensity illumination, then grab whatever structural weapon is within arm’s reach and strike with absolute force. Remember: the disorientation effect lasts exactly three seconds, with a strict cooldown of one minute.

Li Jiu stared blankly at the blunt, rather chaotic note for a moment before his attention was arrested by the word [PLUNDERED] highlighted right next to the ability index.

What does this imply? He distinctly recalled that the previous entry lacked this specific marking.

Li Jiu quickly flipped back to page forty-four the entry detailing the terrifying Blood Eye anomaly and examined the text. Sure enough, the ability index there remained completely blank, devoid of any secondary labels.

Furthermore, there was another glaring structural difference between the two pages.

The illustrations and characters on the Blood Eye page were completely monochrome, rendered in a dead, static grey. The Louse Anomaly page, however, pulsed with a deep, dark crimson hue, accompanied by a faint, shimmering starlight tracing the margins.

It looked completely activated.

Is it possible that an entry is only considered truly ‘collected’ when the ‘Plundered’ state is unlocked?

Taking the terminology at face value, it indicated that he had literally extracted the “Stealth” ability directly from the Louse Anomaly.

Can I actually wield it?

Li Jiu focused his mind, testing the concept aloud: “Stealth?”

Instantly, a foreign, surge of bizarre energy erupted within his core. An innate structural understanding of the mechanic mapped directly into his consciousness, and his physical body underwent a sudden, radical shift.

Li Jiu’s entire physical form grew rapidly translucent, dissolving seamlessly into the ambient shadows of the room.

He felt an incredible, weightless surge of speed coursing through his muscles. With a single thought, his body moved like a blur, tracing the entire perimeter of his bedroom walls and even sprinting effortlessly across the surface of his mattress in a fraction of a second.

Under normal conditions, navigating this cramped room while leaping onto a half-meter-high bed would take at least several seconds of manual effort. Yet, in this state, he had executed the entire sequence in less than a single second.

This Stealth ability… is absolutely incredible!

Thoroughly exhilarated, Li Jiu looped around the room a second time, then a third. But the exact moment he attempted a fourth lap to bound back onto the mattress, his body violently dropped out of the shadow state.

His knees buckled beneath him, and with a dull, heavy thud, he collapsed forward, burying his face directly into the bedding.

He was suddenly drenched in a torrent of sweat, his entire muscular system feeling completely hollowed out as if every ounce of glycogen had been instantly vaporized. An absolute, ravenous hunger clawed at his stomach; he felt as though he could devour an entire ox in a single sitting.

Li Mengmeng’s voice echoed through the door panel. “Brother? Did something happen in there?”

Li Jiu twisted his head sideways to free his mouth from the blanket, gasping for air. “I’m… I’m fine. Are the buns ready yet?”

“Not quite yet. Are you hungry, Brother?”

“Incredibly hungry. Starving.”

Li Mengmeng’s tone instantly turned fierce with determination. “Don’t worry, Brother! I’ll throw more firewood into the hearth right now. I’ll make sure they heat up super-fast!”

“Go ahead,” Li Jiu groaned.

Hearing her footsteps recede down the corridor, Li Jiu let his face sink back into the heavy fabric.

The physical toll is immense.

Wielding an anomalous ability evidently consumed massive reserves of vital physical energy. Right now, he was so thoroughly drained he could barely muster the strength to lift his limbs off the floor.

Unless it is an absolute matter of life and death, I can never allow myself to deplete my reserves like this again.

If a rogue monster or even a common mugger, or a child were to walk through that door right now, he would be completely defenseless.

Despite the severe drawback, a massive, uncontainable grin broke across his face into the fabric of the bed.

Just last night, he had been trapped in a state of absolute despair over his own weakness, vowing to find a path to strength without having the slightest clue how a regular human could bridge the chasm against the extraordinary. Attempting to match an anomaly through standard weight training or physical conditioning was a fool’s errand. Even at the absolute peak of human physical perfection, could a normal body truly withstand the supernatural force of a monster? He highly doubted it.

But now, a genuine path of progression lay open before him.

Li Jiu raised his head, summoning the handbook to hover silently before his eyes, flipping back to examine the Blood Eye entry.

A Level 4 anomaly classified as merely “moderately dangerous” granted an ability this profound. How reality-warping would the abilities of a Level 2 “very dangerous” anomaly be?

Of course, that wasn’t a calculation he needed to make today. Obtaining the Stealth trait had been a complete stroke of cosmic luck, and the Blood Eye remained an absolute death sentence; if he ever crossed paths with it again, his primary directive was to run as far away as humanly possible.

He flipped back to the Louse Anomaly page.

He could state with absolute certainty that this “Plundering” mechanic was an innate function of the handbook itself. But how exactly had the book extracted this specific trait? Which of his recent interactions had triggered the manifestation of this page?

Was it Xiao Zhang, or was it Shen Guan?

The details regarding the entity that had traumatized Xiao Zhang at the noodle house were too scarce for him to draw a definitive conclusion. However, he had witnessed Shen Guan’s transformation with his own eyes, and it shared absolutely zero structural correlation with this multi-legged Louse Anomaly. Shen Guan manifested autonomous, dense tentacles, not rigid, insectoid segments. More importantly, Shen Guan was overwhelmingly powerful likely operating at a scale that dwarfed even a Level 2 anomaly.

Therefore, this entry was far more likely to be linked directly to Xiao Zhang’s encounter.

Could this Louse Anomaly be the exact entity that terrorized the noodle house yesterday afternoon?

Yet, a persistent sense of structural inconsistency lingered in his mind. The only individuals he had encountered who had direct brushes with the anomalous were Xiao Zhang and Shen Guan. If this entry belonged to the beast that hunted near the noodle house, what was the status of Shen Guan’s data? Why hadn’t a corresponding page manifested for the silver-haired man’s abilities?

Was Shen Guan’s underlying nature simply too anomalous or unique for the book to categorize? Or did this entry stem from an entirely separate source he hadn’t accounted for yet?